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DEAL WITH CRISIS AT SOUTHERN BORDER
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 4, 2021, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert) for 30 minutes.
Mr. GOHMERT. Madam Speaker, it is an honor to follow my fellow former judge from Texas. We both know Jesus, and one of Jesus' comments was that if we were just lukewarm, we would be spit out of the mouth. I know my friend's heart, and he is passionate about things that he sees as unjust, so I know he is in no danger of ever being spit out because he does have that passion and cares so deeply.
Mr. GREEN of Texas. Will the gentleman yield?
Mr. GOHMERT. I yield to the gentleman from Texas, my friend.
Mr. GREEN of Texas. Madam Speaker, I thank my friend for his kind words. He and I spoke earlier today, and I believe that there are people who assume things about us that are just not true.
There are probably people who assume that he and I don't get along, but they don't understand that there are things that can bring people together that supersede the physicalities that we place all of our emphasis on.
I would have the world know that he and I talk and that we don't have hard conversations about the things that are important to both of us. I appreciate his kind words.
Mr. GOHMERT. Madam Speaker, I know that we are brothers, and we are going to be together for a long time. I am not talking about here in this Chamber. Anyway, I appreciate my friend very much.
I didn't know anything about Senator Russell, but I have gotten an education. I thank him.
Mr. GREEN of Texas. Madam Speaker, I thank my dear brother. God bless him.
Mr. GOHMERT. Madam Speaker, my friend was a former judge in Houston. In fact, he was the kind of judge that is the only judge in Texas that is allowed to order an exhumation of a body. We ran into that in one of my criminal trials, and we had to find a justice who would do that. Texas entrusts a great deal with our judges.
I did want to touch on some things that I feel rather passionate about because I know people are being hurt.
My friend Chip Roy and I were talking earlier. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Matt Rosendale, a number of people spoke on this, but we can't speak enough on what is happening at the border. It is absolutely a crisis, and it really does need to be dealt with.
Regardless of what anybody thinks about President Trump, put that aside and look at the border. Look at what it does to people who have been standing in line for years to come into this country legally.
We know, and it has been established numerous times, people are not allowed to cross the southern border unless they pay something to the drug cartels. It may be paid through the gang member, through the coyote that is bringing them into the country, but it is still the drug cartels. They are still in the drug business; they are still in the prostitution and sex-trafficking business.
It disturbs me that not enough Americans are upset about how much sex trafficking has gone on. They get absolutely worked up when they find out an American has been pulled into sex trafficking and not allowed to get out of it. But it happens all the time, especially with Hispanics from south of our border. The rapes that occur along the way have been established by different groups and means.
It is just an abomination that more people are not upset, deeply upset, about what is going on, enough so that a majority in both Chambers, House and Senate, would do something about it, not leave incentives out there dangling to lure more people into dealing with the drug cartels. It used to be they made most of their money from the drug trafficking, and that is still probably true.
As I started to mention earlier, my friend Chip Roy and I had an article dangled in our hearing that says, oh, gee, more drugs came in through public ports of entry than came through illegally across other parts of the border.
But what I have seen with my own eyes and heard with my own ears, spending a lot of time down on the border, the Border Patrol, when they see a big group, especially with a bunch of children, most of the ones I talk to say we know when we get a group like that, the drug cartels are coordinating when they come across the border, especially there at the river south of McAllen.
They know, when they send a group like that, especially in the middle of the night, it is going to take a lot of border patrolmen to go through, ask the questions, document, and in-process each one. They will tell you that is when we know they are sending drugs. Sometimes, it may be a high-value person who they are trying to get across into the U.S.
But I know, one night, on the Texas Department of Public Safety boats--they have a couple of them there on that part of the river. They have the thermal technology and night vision. They were identifying people along the river waiting to come across. The Border Patrol identified the groups, and eventually, the Border Patrol said: Why don't you guys go back to the dock, and then we will catch them trying to enter?
Well, I thought that meant they would be turned away. But this was during the Obama administration, and their instructions were: No, don't turn anybody away. Just in-process them.
There were numerous groups of more than 10 or 20 in size, and we got the report from the Border Patrol that they caught all the groups that were going to cross. But those groups of two or three that appeared to be bringing drugs, they somehow knew where to come across and come into some bushes, and we never found them.
It is impossible for anyone to report how much in the way of drugs comes across our border outside of a public port of entry, an official port of entry, because they don't catch them.
In fact, it seems like, from my experience of being there, I have seen--actually, it surprised me. It sure surprised them. There were some guys that were up on a pump cage, and they were on the move. They had people with them. They were on the move.
It was because they knew a big group had just come across the Rio Grande River, and the Border Patrol had seen the truck. I knew the direction they came from. I had seen the truck. They knew that the Border Patrol would have to zoom to where all of those people were, have to get some kind of a bus like they have there, and process all of those people at the site and get them on the bus and bring them into McAllen.
These guys knew all of the Border Patrol was tied up with the people. They had a bunch of kids in that group, so that meant they really had to concentrate on that group. These were clearly people who were doing something illicit and illegal.
I didn't see their drugs, but they clearly were doing something very illicit, and they also knew that the Border Patrol was going to be tied up.
I visited with the Border Patrol and had seen what they were doing, watched some of the in-processing, but they knew how long it took to in-process a group like that. They knew they had time to do what they wanted. It was only a mile or two up the road from where they knew the Border Patrol was occupied.
There were a couple of guys up as lookouts and some others who were carrying something down below, but they all took off into the trees. I didn't know if they were armed, and I wasn't armed at the time, so I didn't pursue them.
You have to know, there are a lot of things that cross the border that nobody has accounted for. Look at the business model. If you don't have any conscience, it is a great business model. Fortunately, most people I know do have a conscience and would never do this. But without a conscience, they are thinking: Okay, we need drug salespeople in every town in America. All we have to do is get them across the border, give them the address where we want them to sell drugs.
They give that to the Border Patrol, and either HHS or ICE gets them where they want them. That is why Border Patrol says the drug cartels call us their logistics. They get their future employees across the border.
They think that they are just coming and going to have a free life in America, but they are going to be working for the drug cartels. It is not slavery, as that abomination is known, but it is a form of indentured servitude. They owe being in the United States to the drug cartels, and they are going to have to pay them. They made that deal to get into the U.S.
The reason they were willing to make that deal to get in the U.S. now is because they keep hearing the Biden administration is going to let everybody in and give them all amnesty. That lures more and more people into these terrible circumstances. It needs to stop.
I will repeat again what I have been saying for years. The most caring, compassionate thing we could do for our neighbor Mexico and its citizens to the south of us, when we know they have great raw materials, great minerals, wonderful hardworking people, the majority of whom believe in a God, as most of the Founders did--they love their families.
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I love watching Hispanic family reunions. It reminds me so much of reunions I used to see in the town where I grew up. They love their families. That is a wonderful thing. These attributes that folks south of the border have, those are things that help make America the greatest Nation in the world, and we need more of what they have, but it needs to be done legally.
And to not care at the way that they are manipulated by the cartels?
Their business model, send them across. The U.S. taxpayers will pay to ship them to whatever town we want them to sell drugs in or be involved in prostitution or human trafficking themselves. The U.S. taxpayers will pay to ship them there. And then once there, they all know, we know where their families are in Mexico or Central America, and they will keep paying as long as we tell them or they know we don't mind cutting off heads, cutting off appendages, and sending the message.
So the best thing we could do, though, secure the border. Dry up that tens of billions of dollars, maybe over a hundred billion dollars a year that they get from the drug business, from the human trafficking, from the sex trafficking. Dry that money up. We will never dry it completely up because there are always people who will look for ways.
But you cut that $80 billion or $100 billion or so down to even $10 billion, it dries up their ability to control so much of the national and local government. It would surely put an end to so many policemen, police chiefs, and mayors that have stood up to the cartels only to have their heads cut off and, in some cases, put on a pike.
We are providing the money in this country to the drug cartels to create corruption run amok in the Mexican Government. So caring, compassionate people would say, let's dry up the drug cartels' money, and that will do more for the American people.
They won't have to put their lives at risk or risk sexual abuse, all kinds of abuse, death, being left by coyote out in the desert somewhere. They won't have to risk that because the country they love--
many will say, ``I would rather stay there if there were opportunity.''
They get the opportunity if we help end the corruption. But there is corruption enough. Talking to a DEA agent earlier this afternoon, there is so much corruption you don't know who even in the national government is on the payroll of the drug cartels.
So let's help the Mexican people, Central American people, even some from South America, let's help them by giving them the freedom in their own country without a corrupt government so they can have the kind of freedom we have here.
In this article from March 10th, Alex Nitzberg says: ``More than 92,000 Clark County, NV mail ballots returned undeliverable in general election.''
It talks about corruption in the last election. Just tragic, tragic stuff. If we keep heading this direction, we are surely going to end up like some of these corrupt countries.
But there is another article I just saw today that indicates that Venezuelans are coming from Venezuela into the United States illegally, and why they are doing that is because of the corruption and oppression in Venezuela.
Under their progressive, Socialist country government down there, they have taken what many say was the most prosperous, vibrant country in South America, Venezuela, all the oil they had there. They took that country and, as socialism will ultimately do wherever it is tried, turned it into a fiasco. So the Venezuelans were fleeing and coming to the United States.
And the question continues to come as to what will Americans do? Where will they go? When the path we are on to become the devastated Venezuela are perpetrated on America, where will Americans go?
They can't go to Venezuela. It has already been economically and socially destroyed by the Socialists.
And as friends from Australia told me a few years ago, you know, if anything happens to the freedom in the United States, you are not going to be coming to Australia. They felt like China would take them over before anybody in the U.S. had time to go there. There will be no place to go.
You know, Venezuela, they have got America to try to get into since their wonderful, vibrant country has been destroyed by socialism. We won't have anyplace.
As I think Reagan said, this is the last best chance on Earth. We have been so blessed. And the old saying about give a man a fish and he can eat for a day; teach him how to fish, and he can eat for a lifetime. Instead of just saying, yeah, come on to America, we will let everybody in and we will all pay you welfare, we will give you free healthcare, ultimately the whole system will be bankrupt and nobody will have anyplace to go, why not help them get rid of the corruption and stay in the country they love?
Then we have neighbors like Mexico and Venezuela, if we can help them stop the corruption, with whom we can trade, we can visit, we can vacation.
My wife and I had our honeymoon at a place in Mexico. We haven't been back in recent years, though we thought about it, as we keep celebrating anniversaries. It would be nice to go back where we had our honeymoon, but there is just too much corruption in Mexico and it is not worth the chance, in our opinion.
So wouldn't it be wonderful if we took a stand, we dried up the drug culture, the drug cartels' money by securing our Southern border?
And then the Mexican people have a vibrant country that Americans fall in love with all over again. We visit, vacation there. They visit, vacation here. And we mutually help each other. But continuing to fund tens of billions of dollars to go to the drug cartels in Mexico keeps the Mexican people under the thumb of the drug cartel corruption.
Now, going back to the point about the DEA, the U.S. Government, they cannot know how much in the way of drugs that they don't know about. And I know I have got friends on the other side of the aisle who think, oh, well, there is a report, there is more drugs going through our public ports of entry than there are going across our border, where we don't know they are crossing.
The truth is, we don't know what we don't know about how much and what kind of drugs are coming across our border.
I know. I voted against putting Sudafed behind the counter, but I understood drugstores, grocery stores had a problem with people stealing it because that was an ingredient in making methamphetamine. But according to what pharmacies and others tell me, law enforcement, in Texas, okay, once you put Sudafed behind the counter, making it harder to get, certainly harder to steal, homegrown meth ceased being the problem it used to be, and now we are getting much stronger drugs coming from Mexico, and they are much more addictive than even the methamphetamine.
And I had enough people come in, meth cases that I totally understand. It is extremely addictive. But now we have got more and worse drugs coming from Mexico than what we had when they were homemade. It did get more difficult for a while when a new way of cooking methamphetamine, what they called a cold cook, didn't smell as bad. For so long it was easy to find meth plants because they smelled so bad.
But, anyway, how much meth being cooked, not to the extent it used to be in Texas. They are bringing up stronger, more addictive, more individual-destroying drugs from Mexico.
President Trump did what he could to get the border secure. We were on the way to a much more secure border.
In fact, people are not aware in the second term of George W. Bush, a number of Texas Members of Congress were upset that more had not been done by a Republican administration headed by a Texan to secure our border. And, actually, President Bush had Karl Rove meet with us. And we began to meet every 2 weeks, as I recall, and Rove would have the latest report every 2 weeks about how much progress was being made toward securing our border.
One thing he didn't have--that President Bush didn't have was more fence or walls on the Southern border, which makes it easier. Sure, people can build a bigger ladder, as some used to say, but it at least slows them down where it is easier to keep them out of the country with their illicit, illegal drugs and sex trafficking.
So President Trump knew the value of a wall, and his knowledge of how important a wall or a fence was has been totally and for all time confirmed by the Democratic administration and the Speaker and the Senate majority leader, as evidenced by the wall or fence, whatever you want to call it, with all the razor wire around the top. Some places you have got two layers of that.
So all this time people were saying, you know, it doesn't help, you can't stop people. It doesn't do any good. But we knew it did good because former President Obama got him a new house up somewhere around here and built a 10-foot wall around it. So we knew, regardless of what people were saying, they knew that a wall or a fence could make a difference.
But we are hoping that since there is no threat and since the concerns that the Speaker and majority leader here in the House had that there was going to be another inauguration last Thursday--we knew that wasn't going to happen. I am just surprised that they were believing QAnon. I didn't know anybody on our side who believed QAnon, but apparently the Speaker and the majority leader were concerned that QAnon knew what he or she or they, whatever it is, were talking about. So we called off Congress--they called off Congress last Thursday.
So we are hoping that as they see that their beliefs and their concerns are being assuaged, the acting chief of the Capitol Police has confirmed there is no Member of Congress who is a threat to another Member of Congress, no intel from any source that indicates that. I have had friends across the aisle say, well, Lauren Boebert talked about wanting to bring a gun on the floor, and that is scary.
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Well, that is also a testimony that firearms can be the great equalizer. Lauren tells me she is five foot exactly, so that should reaffirm if she has got people in this body that are concerned about her, it is not because of her five foot status, it is because sometimes she has a firearm with her, and it truly is the great equalizer.
And I don't hear a lot of people talking about the number of lives that are saved by law-abiding citizens that have firearms and prevent crimes.
Madam Speaker, I see my time is expiring. I yield back the balance of my time.
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SOURCE: Congressional Record Vol. 167, No. 46
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