Congressman Mike Rogers, R-Alabama, delivered a speech on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives Friday praising the Trump Administration’s efforts to secure the border. Rogers urged his fellow House colleagues to vote against S. J. Res. 54, which would reject the Trump Administration’s border security emergency declaration.
“In the last year, nearly one million migrants have attempted to illegally cross our southwest border,” Rogers said. “Let me put that in perspective for you. One million is more than the population of Delaware, South Dakota, North Dakota, Alaska, Vermont, and Wyoming. One million is approximately the population of Austin, Texas; San Jose, California; and Jacksonville, Florida.”
“For months, migrant families and children arrived at the border in droves, thanks to sophisticated smuggling operations,” Rogers continued. “Coyotes told vulnerable populations that a child was their ticket into the United States — whether it was their child or not. The massive groups of migrants overwhelmed our Customs and Border Protection facilities, leading to overcrowding and unacceptable conditions for migrants and law enforcement alike.”
Rogers said that at the high-water mark of the crisis, more than half of Border Patrol agents were pulled from border enforcement in order care for the record number of migrant children and families.
“The men and women of CBP have worked hard to manage this crisis while Democrats in the House were busy talking about the “Fake Emergency” at our border,” Rep. Rogers said. ‘The Administration has taken extraordinary steps like the Migrant Protection Protocols, DNA testing to catch child traffickers, and implemented new rules to reduce abuse of our asylum laws. While the President is doing everything in his power to manage the crisis, House Democrats have done nothing.”
Rogers said that Democrats, “Steadfastly refuse to do anything to fix our broken immigration system, protect vulnerable families and children from human smugglers, reduce the asylum backlog, or expand migrant processing and long-term housing.”
Rogers said that SJR 54 would “take away the President’s authority to respond to this crisis and prevent another one from happening. What a duplicitous disgrace.”
Trump has been diverting money from defense construction projects, including from Alabama projects, to begin building a border wall on the U.S. Mexico border.
Trump has advocated for building a border wa
Rogers is the ranking member of the House Homeland Security Committee. Rogers is serving in his fifth term representing Alabama in the Third Congressional District.
