WASHINGTON, DC—U.S. Representative John Rose (TN-06) spoke on the House Floor Tuesday to address the ongoing Southern Border crisis and to highlight some of the looming threats facing the nation as a result.
The full remarks, as prepared for delivery, are below:
Mister Speaker, I rise today to address the negative national security consequences of three and a half years of President Biden’s open border policies. While we hear President Biden and his allies boast about a so-called drop in illegal immigrant encounters in recent weeks, the number of national security threats resulting from this administration’s policies continue to mount.
According to the Department of Homeland Security’s own threat assessment for this year, illegal drugs produced in Mexico and sold in the United States will take more American lives than any other threat we face.
Further underscoring the threat our country faces due to the President’s open border policies, we learned two weeks ago that the Department of Homeland Security identified more than 400 illegal immigrants that have entered the U.S. over the last three years as “subjects of concern.” They’re subjects of concern because they were brought here by an ISIS-affiliated human smuggling network, according to sources who spoke with NBC News.
These unnamed officials report 150 of them have been arrested, but the whereabouts of dozens more are unknown. We also don’t know whether the money earned in this human smuggling operation is funding ISIS activity.
A couple weeks prior to this story, NBC also reported that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested 8 men from Tajikistan, also for suspected affiliation with ISIS, in three major U.S. cities. This turned out to be an entirely separate ISIS-affiliated human smuggling network.
Mister Speaker, these are just a couple examples from recent weeks. We face many, many more national security threats. This is a direct result of open borders and a refusal to uphold existing immigration law.
More than 350 illegal immigrants, who are on the terror watch list, have attempted to cross into the United States since President Biden took office. More than 1.8 million people have successfully evaded border patrol. And hundreds of thousands of unknown individuals have been admitted into the U.S. on parole, with no way of tracking many of them. This widespread abuse of parole authority was a key factor in my vote to impeach DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. It has truly paved the way for countless instances of crime across the country.
The President’s recent executive order is far too little, far too late. It doesn’t go far enough to treat these threats to our safety and security with the seriousness they merit. The action, however, does prove what I’ve been arguing for months, that he has – and has had – the authority to end the border crisis. It also highlights the fact that our Commander-in-Chief waited three and a half years before taking any action to curb the unprecedented flow of illegal immigrants into the country.
This isn’t hyperbole. These are facts. As sobering as they may be, I fear they will persist as long as President Biden is in the White House.
You can watch the speech here.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://johnrose.house.gov/media/press-releases/rep-rose-slams-president-biden-threats-posed-us-southern-border-crisis