In House floor remarks on Wednesday, Rep. Doug LaMalfa (R-CA) touted President Trump's record on illegal immigration.
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00:00Thank you, Mr. Moore. Thank you for leading us here tonight.
00:04And, you know, picking up on what you said there,
00:08you know, we're in this first 100 days of the new administration
00:12and I gotta harken back just 101 and more days
00:16ago, right, to what had been going on the last four years.
00:20And the first thing that comes to mind is the border situation and
00:24as you were saying, how does that make a lick of sense of what was going
00:28on there? I mean, we're allowed and supposed to have
00:32a sovereign border if we're going to define ourselves as a country.
00:36And in the days previous in the formation of this
00:40country for people to immigrate to here, they had to bring a skill,
00:44they had to bring sponsorship, they needed to bring something that added to the growth
00:48of America. And that wasn't seen at the time as racist
00:52or hateful or anything else as people from all backgrounds from
00:56pretty much any continent were coming over here being part of that.
01:00And so we had immigration laws that made sense.
01:02And we really have never lost our immigration laws,
01:04they just weren't being enforced for a lot of time
01:08in the last 20 plus years or so.
01:12So we really,
01:14when you talk about common sense,
01:16it just kind of went out the window on that issue for a long time.
01:18And so now we're regaining back.
01:20We're seeing that the illegal border crossings under President Trump,
01:24which we knew that's what we were going to get.
01:26And that's what voters asked for,
01:28by and large across the country.
01:30Those border crossings have dropped by 95%.
01:34It didn't take a bunch of new comprehensive immigration laws to do that.
01:38It took just enforcing the laws we had on the books.
01:42It took enforcing and having the will to say, no,
01:46we're not going to do this anymore.
01:48And guess what?
01:49We're still pro-immigrant.
01:50It just means legal immigration.
01:52It means following our rules.
01:54It means coming through the portals of entry
01:56and applying under the various ways you would have
01:59of applying for the particular visas we have,
02:02student visas, tourist visas, work visas.
02:05Just go, just apply, just ask permission.
02:08You know, you lock your car when you park it in this town.
02:12You lock the front door on your house when you leave.
02:14And so we're allowed to have gates to the entry to this country.
02:19But I say gates with hinges, well-oiled hinges,
02:23and somebody's staffing them and says,
02:25all right, you got your papers?
02:26Come on in.
02:27If you don't have your papers, go back and apply.
02:29There's a process for that.
02:31Why is that so tough?
02:33You know, when I see interviews on TV talking
02:35whether it's President Trump or Tom Homan or anybody,
02:38and then the interviewers just don't seem to grasp that,
02:42well, so you're against immigration.
02:45You're against people coming across.
02:46Like, no.
02:47It's legal immigration.
02:49Following the legal process.
02:52What is so tough to grasp about that?
02:54It just amazes me how that isn't mentioned.
02:57Like the duplicitous of the media and sometimes the interviewers on that
03:04just not being able to connect those dots.
03:07So when we talk about the 95%, we also note that the number of gotaways,
03:13the individuals who intentionally avoid detection,
03:17and that they indeed pose some of the greatest dangers,
03:20that's also down by 99%, the gotaways.
03:24So when we've seen more lately the reporters down on the border,
03:30they can't find a single illegal immigrant coming across these times.
03:34So indeed, we've seen some dramatically good results.
03:37The catch and release is over.
03:40Since taking office, President Trump has deported more than 139,000 illegal immigrants.
03:47And we're hearing a lot of caterwauling about that.
03:49Oh, the humanity, it's horrific.
03:52Like, well, he hasn't done the most yet because under President Obama,
03:56the number's probably triple of that, okay?
03:59Only because different presidents of different parties have actually, you know,
04:03look at the floor speech or the State of the Union speech.
04:06You can go back to see President Clinton talk about that years ago.
04:09Hillary Clinton has talked about it.
04:11Back before something changed politically and they completely switched on that.
04:16So we've had bipartisan support for border control.
04:20We go back to 86 when a deal was struck with Ronald Reagan and the Democrats
04:25and Tip O'Neill and the gang.
04:27And indeed, he allowed for amnesty.
04:30You know, it's the A word now.
04:33There's a distrust around striking additional deals like that.
04:37But Reagan said, okay, we will give amnesty for the ones that are here back in 1986,
04:43a much smaller number than we have now here legally,
04:46in order to have strong border patrols,
04:48border patrol and border patrol infrastructure put in place.
04:52Stronger fence, all that.
04:54Well, that wasn't fulfilled.
04:56We never really got the whole border barrier that we needed in order to make it much,
05:01much simpler and easier for our personnel down there to be able to do their job.
05:04President Trump is backing that up, having a barrier.
05:08Is it perfect? No, no thing's going to be perfect
05:10because, you know, you invent a better mousetrap
05:12and someone else finds a way to round it.
05:14But at least it deters the massive tide.
05:17Is it symbolic? Is it actually a good barrier?
05:20It's probably both.
05:21But it also shows that the U.S. is determined to enforce its border
05:27and that alone is going to deter people from saying,
05:32well, I'm not going to try it now because I don't have President Biden
05:34waving everybody in and giving you a free T-shirt.
05:36So when you see that 150,000 illegals have been arrested,
05:44many of them gang members, we're having success.
05:47Violent gangs like MS-13, they've been actually designated as foreign terrorist organizations.
05:52Hallelujah, it's time, you know.
05:55Yet what do we see lately in the news?
05:57Some of our Democrat colleagues just bending over backwards
06:00to go to El Salvador to bring a guy home.
06:02How about just half of that effort being expended on the Israeli hostages over there
06:07after the horrific Hamas attacks back there on October 7, the previous year.
06:11So President Trump has taken these measures.
06:16Gang leaders operating in Virginia, Florida, and New York are now in custody and off the streets.
06:22President Trump shut down the Biden-Harris migrant app,
06:26which had served as a fast pass into the country.
06:29Why would we develop an app to make it easier to come in illegally?
06:33He invoked the Alien Enemies Act to speed up deportation
06:36and dismantle criminal networks operating on U.S. soil.
06:39Yet we have the left trying to throw that out as a tool to use.
06:44And hopefully it's going to succeed in tests in the court.
06:48Construction of the border wall, again, resumed.
06:50More than 85 new miles of barrier already in place.
06:53Still a lot to do, but at least we can keep it funded and get the job done
06:57and aid so much our border personnel.
07:00Taxpayer-funded goodies for illegal immigrants, luxury hotel stays, food stamps,
07:06special college funding, at least at the federal level, have been eliminated.
07:09Now California is still giving away as fast as they can.
07:12We have a nine and a half billion dollar Medicaid,
07:15Medi-Cal handout to illegal immigrants in the state of California.
07:18You know, we're going to hear cattle walling there on some of the other things
07:21due to cost-cut, for cost-cutting measures here federally.
07:25And California could take a long leap towards that just by not funding illegal immigrant activity.
07:29Sanctuary cities finally being held accountable, as they should.
07:35President Trump has taken legal action and moved to cut off federal support for jurisdictions
07:40that refuse to cooperate with immigration enforcement.
07:43Why would they not cooperate with federal law?
07:46It's a violation of federal law.
07:48I see more and more local municipalities pushing back,
07:51pushing back against state mandates on this.
07:53And I commend them for doing so up in some of my Northern California counties.
07:58City of Oroville did it.
07:59Siskiyou County's done it.
08:02Others have and others will continue to do so.
08:05So really, what it's done is help to deliver justice.
08:08Really, we passed the Lake and Riley Act.
08:11It is now law.
08:12And it even ended up getting bipartisan support at the end.
08:16A powerful mind of this administration will never forget those whose lives were taken
08:21by illegal immigrant crime.
08:24So this is real leadership.
08:26These are promises made.
08:27These are promises kept.
08:29President Trump is helping get that done for all of us.
08:32For those of us who have been here even a lot longer and have battled on this issue
08:37to try and have common sense apply to our border and so many other things that we're seeing here
08:42as a result of President Trump's leadership and partnership with the House and the Senate.
08:47With that, I yield back to my friend and colleague from Utah.
08:49Thank you, Mr. Moore.
08:50Thank you to the gentleman.