NEW - House Speaker Mike Johnson delivers first floor speech on border catastrophe, accusing President Biden of intentionally creating a "clear and present danger to our national security."
"Since I was elected Speaker less than 100 days ago, more than 700,000 illegals have been welcomed into our country illegally by the Biden administration.
American schoolchildren have been forced into virtual schools so migrants can sleep in their school buildings.
Korean War veterans have been booted from nursing homes that were sold to house migrants.
Our streets are being flooded with fentanyl. Hundreds of thousands of children and adults are being poisoned and losing their lives. Vulnerable children and women are being exploited and trafficked by cartels.
Since President Biden and Alejandro Mayorkas assumed office, there have been more than 7 million encounters with illegal aliens just at our southern border alone.
35 of our 50 states, including my home state of Louisiana, don't have a population that large.
More than 300 individuals who are on our terror watchlist have been apprehended on the southern border.
The frightening question is, how many have entered undetected?
We know there are at least 1.8 million gotaways that have escaped.
Understand that the situation at our border presents a clear and present danger to our national security, and it demands that it be addressed.
FBI Director Christopher Wray told the Homeland Security Committee in November that these gotaways are a great concern for the agency, and all 56 of our Joint Terrorism Task Forces are trying to identify who these people are.
We don't know how many terrorists are inside our borders.
We do know that fentanyl is pouring into our communities like an open sewer.
Right now, the leading cause of death of death in America for Americans aged 18 to 46 is fentanyl poisoning.
To make matters worse, we've learned that the Biden administration is now simply just releasing 85% of the illegals who come across that border right into the country.
For reference, by the way, in 2013, the Obama administration detained 82% of illegal aliens. How do we go from detaining 82% to releasing 85%?
It only happens if this is by design. It only happens if it's an orchestrated intentional effort by the administration to do exactly that, and that is what the evidence shows.
Earlier this month, I released a memo documenting 64 specific actions that the Biden administration has taken to undermine our border security and to promote the mass release of illegals and dangerous persons into our country.
The very first day President Biden walked into the Oval Office, he revoked Executive Order 9844. Do you know what that did?
It ended the construction of the border wall that Congress had already paid for. Everybody has seen the images of the materials out there rotting in the sun. Why?
Because Joe Biden decided unilaterally that he didn't want a wall.
In February 2021, the administration stopped applying Title 42 expulsions to children and incentivize by doing that incentivize families to send unaccompanied children through Mexico under the watch of cartels and traffickers.
Since then, the administration admits to losing track of more than 80,000 unaccompanied children somewhere in the US.
We don't know where they are. Have they been put into trafficking rings? We know that some of these kids are being trafficked for free labor and being forced to do things that are too appalling for us to articulate on this floor.
Everybody here knows that's happening, and we're not demanding the President stop it? He can. He has the power to do it.
In October 2021, the Biden administration revoked the migrant protection protocols that had been instituted under President Trump.
That's the policy that we all know colloquially as Remain in Mexico. The Remain in Mexico policy kept asylum seekers in a safe haven third country while they were seeking asylum in the United States.
Do you know why that works magically so well? Because it sent a message around the world that you shouldn't pay your life savings to a cartel to traffic you through Mexico and drop you over the US border because you're not going to be dropped over the US border.
The word goes out on social media to countries all around the world. They are not going to let you in.
Man, is that the most common sense rule you've ever thought of? President Biden doesn't agree because he stopped it. He issued an executive order to stop that common sense rule.
A senior border patrol officer told us on that trip to Eagle Pass that if President Biden, by the stroke of a pen, would issue an executive order today to just simply reinstate Remain in Mexico, they think that would stop the flow by 70%.
One stroke of the pen by the President. He does not seem to care.
I told President Biden this myself on multiple occasions, most recently, a couple of weeks ago on the phone, I read him the law that says that he has all this authority, but he refuses to act.
And even that's even despite court orders, by the way that instructed the administration to reinstate the institute remain in Mexico while the litigation was going on. You know what they did? They ignored it.
The Biden administration is actively incentivizing illegals to come to the United States. We have laid out the welcome mat. We told everybody around the world, come on, you know what? The US taxpayer will take care of you.
It's costing the American people billions and billions and billions of dollars to provide for people who are intentionally breaking our laws, billions and billions of dollars to house them and educate them and clothe them and take care of them. Why should we bear the burden when they break our laws?
In January 2023, the Biden administration expanded the use of the Customs and Border Patrol One App so illegal aliens could just make appointments and then be released immediately right into America's interior.
Guess what? 95% of all illegals who simply scheduled appointments through the app were released right into the United States. That's right.
All you have to do is just download the app because they all have smartphones, make an appointment, and the President of the United States will release you into a network of NGOs who will put you on a plane to the destination of your choice.
Without identification, by the way, while Americans are waiting in line to get through TSA. All on the dime of the American taxpayer.
In December 2023, CBP recorded more than 302,000 encounters, almost double the population of my hometown of Shreveport, Louisiana. In just one month 302,000 people just walked right into the country.
I could go on and on about the 64 actions we've documented that President Biden has specifically taken to open our border wide up, but it's crystal clear his policy choices and Secretary Mayorkas refusal to comply with the law are driving this border catastrophe.
They have chosen disorder and chaos for us rather than securing the homeland. They've ceded the homeland to cartels and traffickers.
In the Del Rio sector alone in Eagle Pass, Texas, the cartels are making an estimated $3.5 million dollars a day trafficking human beings into our country. Do the math.
They are making billions of dollars a year trafficking undocumented children and victims into this country.
The Department of Homeland Security has effectively become a taxi driver to just help traffickers complete the last few miles of their human smuggling operation, and they're making billions of dollars in the process.
It's absolute madness, and it is dismantling the safety of our communities. More than half a million known criminals and illegal aliens are in the US in our communities, free to re-offend and victimize American people.
When we were at Eagle Pass in the Del Rio sector earlier in January, they told us that 60 to 70% of the people coming across the border right there at that epicenter are single adult males. They're military-aged.
These are not huddled masses of families seeking refuge and asylum. These are people coming into our country to do only God knows what.
The Biden administration is allowing it, and we've noted that they are coming from adversarial nations and from terrorist regions. We have no idea what they're planning.
But in fiscal year 2023, border patrol encountered illegals from 170 different countries, including hundreds from Iran and Syria, thousands from Russia, and tens of thousands have come in from China. Tell me that's not dangerous?
Law enforcement and intelligence leaders are warning us that we may very well suffer a preventable terrorist attack here in the homeland if we don't immediately secure that border and remove these dangerous terrorists from inside our borders.
I read the black letter law to the President of the United States on the phone about two and a half weeks ago. I said, Mr. President, it says very clearly that you have all the tools and the executive authority necessary to reverse the catastrophe that you have created. He has those tools right now, and he has since day one.
We have to decide if we believe in the rule of law or not. We have to decide if we're a sovereign nation or we're not. I believe that border security is part of our solemn obligation to safeguard the well-being of our citizens and uphold the principles that define who we are as a nation.
A weak border weakens America, and a strong border is good for America, and a stronger America is good for everybody around the world. And everybody in this chamber should acknowledge that.
Just as we lock our doors at night to protect our homes, we secure our borders to protect our homeland. And my friends, that is our sacred obligation."
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