Rogers: H.R. 6 Rewards Illegal Immigrants, Ignores Border Crisis

Top Homeland Republican Speaks Against H.R. 6 on House Floor

WASHINGTON – Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) today urged his colleagues to vote against H.R. 6 on the House floor. His remarks, as prepared for delivery, are below.

Madam Chairman, there is a crisis on the southwest border.  We are on track to break nearly every record in recent history. Just last week, CBP apprehended a single group, ONE GROUP, of 1,036 people on the border.

Madam Chairman, we couldn’t fit that many people in this chamber and we certainly can’t fit them in a single Border Patrol station.

This bill does nothing to address this crisis. Instead, it tells an entire generation of illegal immigrants that breaking our laws is rewarded. This is not rocket science, we’ve seen this before.

In 2014, a wave of unaccompanied children came to our borders driven by smuggler propaganda citing DACA and other amnesty policies. The smugglers have doubled down.  They call children “permisos” or permits and use them to get scores of adults unrelated to the children across our border.

Securing our border and enforcing our laws is the only way to break this cycle. Ranking Member Collins introduced legislation to close the asylum loopholes that are fueling this crisis.  That’s the bill that should be on the floor today. 

We also desperately need to provide supplemental funding to get us through this crisis. Last month, I asked this House to provide the 4.5 billion dollars that DHS requested to address this humanitarian and security crisis.  Despite urgent pleas for additional funds from frontline personnel responsible for caring for unaccompanied children, Democrats refused to add funds to the supplemental.

Today, the Majority again rejected these funds during our previous question vote. Democrats haven’t approved a dime to address this crisis.

Because of the political dysfunction in their own caucus, they stubbornly refuse to put forward real solutions. Instead, they put forward a bill today that’s sending a clear message – Democrats would rather reward illegal immigrants than secure our border, enforce our laws, and fix this crisis.

That’s disgraceful.

###