On Tuesday, Representative Chip Roy (TX-21) chaired the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government’s hearing on “The Southern Border Crisis: The Constitution and the States.”
Below is a complete transcript of his opening statement; video footage of his remarks can be found here.
We’re here today because the President of the United States is failing to fulfill his duty to defend our country, to defend the borders of the United States, as required by the Constitution.
Specifically, the Constitution states, “The United States shall guarantee to every state in this union, a republican form of government, and shall protect each of them against invasion.” Now, I’ve read and heard, and I’m aware of the academic arguments about the definition of invasion. And I’m sure we will cover that in the hearing today. But the reality of those of us living on the front lines, and the reality of those of us who live in Texas, Arizona, and states along the border, that notwithstanding any protestations to the contrary, we are experiencing invasion at the southern border.
Since the beginning of this administration, there have been more than 7 million encounters at our southern border. That in and of itself doesn’t define an invasion, but when you compare it to the 2.4 million encounters of the previous administration, and when you look at what’s actually occurring now, with over 5 million aliens having been released into the United States, which includes more than 1.8 million known got-aways. This is a mix of releases, gotaways, people that have come in under the so-called CBP One app released, people that have been released in the United States with dates to appear as late as 2035, 2031, 2045. And these, like these numbers on the got-aways, by the way, are likely conservative estimates. Secretary Mayorkas himself admitted some 85% of migrants encountered at the border are being released immediately, automatically released into the United States. That is not a border, that does not allow for any actual determination of an asylum claim or any legitimate claim under law.
Importantly, these releases include hundreds, thousands of criminals that have wreaked havoc on our communities. In 2022, 20-year-old Kayla Hamilton was raped and murdered in her home in Maryland, by an MS-13 gang member released by this administration. We have examples like that in every state in the union. And we have hundreds of examples like that in Texas, of criminal activity, of people being released by this administration. Even those with ties to extremist groups and activities have entered the country through our border. This includes a migrant wanted in Senegal for terrorism-related crimes. Last March, a member of the terrorist group Al-Shabaab crossed the southern border, was released, traveled to Minnesota where he was eventually arrested by ICE. Again, there are many of these examples.
Indeed, since the beginning of fiscal year 2021, 331 known or suspected terrorists have been caught crossing the southern border. I know my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, and someone says, will pull that apart about “Well, you’re, you know, well what list do you have that are associated with terrorists are real terrorist lists? You know, well, is it far, but it’s not a certain part of the world.” The fact is, there is an increasing number of known individuals affiliated with dangerous groups across this world that are flooding into the United States because this administration refuses to carry out its constitutional duty to maintain operational control of the border on behalf of the United States. By the way, that 331 compares to just 11 from 2017 to 2020, under the administration of President Trump, and with the 1.8 million known got-aways, we have no idea how many terrorists and criminals have escaped undetected because these are the individuals that are actually not seeking Border Patrol. They’re not coming across the river and saying, “Please, hi border patrol. I’m here. Can you take me in? Send me over to an NGO and release me into the United States?” Which is what we’re doing to the vast majority of the numbers, but some 50,000 a month are coming in and we don’t know who they are. But we know that there’s some dangerous individuals because we know that they flee Border Patrol.
The flow of illegal immigration has also levied unbearable costs on American communities, particularly in Texas, American students have been kicked out of their schools so the buildings can be used to house illegal aliens, the healthcare system is burdened by unpaid medical bills for services provided to illegal aliens. Texas has been forced to spend at least twelve and a half billion dollars of its own funds to try to fill the void. This invasion of the southern border is a clear and present danger to the citizens of this country and particularly to the people that I represent in Texas. as do my colleagues from Texas. A record number of Texans and Americans are dying from cartel and Chinese-driven fentanyl pouring across our southern border. Now I’ve seen and read the articles by my colleagues on the left, academics on the left who say, “Well, that’s just fentanyl, that comes through the ports of entry, nothing you can do and stop that has nothing to do with the fact that we have wide open borders.” Despite the fact that the experts on the borders, the Border Patrol folks who have to actually do the job, who are pulled off the line to process people in direct contravention of our laws. They will tell you that this is much worse because they’re unable to police the borders, they’re unable to do their job between the ports of entry, or at the ports of entry at the level that they should be able to do so.
As a result, six children in the school district in which my family resides just southwest of Austin in Hays County, Texas died from fentanyl poisoning last year alone. We’ve had witnesses testify here, we had the mother and the father of one of those kids testify here. We just ignore it. We ignore this grim reality, what’s happening to our country. Since 2021, over 5,000 people have died of fentanyl poisonings in Texas alone. Texas has actually been on the low end historically, but it’s going up. Most of the traffic went through Texas to other parts of the country. But now it’s sticking. More than 75,000 Americans have died of fentanyl related poisonings in 2022 alone. We’re still waiting for the 2023 data. Over 200 a day. It’s basically an airplane full of human beings that are American citizens or people that live in this country who have died from fentanyl related poisonings every day.
I met last week in Brackettville, Texas about three hours from my house, about 45 miles from Eagle Pass, with about 200 landowners and local officials in South Texas. Breaking down in tears at the destruction of their community, one rancher who’s had to fix his fence 400 times. He’s had to repair his fence 400 times in the last three years, a ranch he has had in his family losing livestock and people dismiss that as if it’s no big deal. But it is a really big deal to the families and the ranchers who have had ranches in Texas for years. Talk to residents who live near the border have high-speed car chases that are commonplace that result in the death of American citizens recently, and migrants. We act like this is compassionate, that 1,000 migrants died along the southwest border of the United States last year, almost a 1,000.
And this flow of illegal immigration has enriched, emboldened the cartels. John Modlin, the chief Border Patrol agent in the Tucson sector has told Congress that quote, “Nobody crosses without paying the cartels. So, the cartels determine when people cross, how many people cross at the time, all of that it’s controlled by them.” Now, we all know that we’ve seen numerous embedded reporters who start in South America come up through the Darien Gap go through the entire process that the United Nations is fueling, China is helping fund, cartels are getting enriched by moving human beings for profit into the United States through a dangerous journey where individuals die along that journey. Little girls get sold into the sex trafficking trade. All of that happens, and it’s purposeful, to flood the United States. So that people like our colleague, Yvette Clarke from New York can say, quote, “I need more people in my district just for redistricting purposes” end quote. In the context of a conversation about saying there’s no more room in the inn for people to come into the United States. That was the direct quote.
This is very clearly an invasion. It is a purposeful one, and it’s inflicting dangerous consequences on our country and the people of Texas. We’re here to talk about the constitutional powers for states to be able to manage that process in the absence of any effort by the federal government. The Constitution contemplates that states could repel and defend themselves against invasion because they expected the federal government to do its job. In almost a throwaway clause at the end of Article One, but a clause nonetheless, it says “The governors, the people, the state have the right to defend themselves.” It says quote, “No state shall, without the consent of Congress, lay any duty of tonnage, keep troops or ships of war in time of peace, enter into any agreement or compact with another state or with a foreign power or engage in war, unless actually invaded or in such imminent danger as will not admit delay.”
Now, why would this be? Could it be because as Thomas Jefferson put it, “Self-preservation is paramount to all law.” The fact of the matter is, of course the people of Texas have a right to defend themselves, just as I have a right to defend my home and my family, if it is under attack. I don’t go check the statute book. I don’t go open the constitution to determine what I do in the face of a danger posed to the people in my home, my family, as a citizen who derives his rights and the rights for my family from God, not from the government. We have the right to defend ourselves. It is inherent. The Constitution reflects that, and it reflects the fact that governors and states can, should step in if the federal government refuses to do its job.
