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Rep. Roy's Remarks on H.R. 1808

July 29, 2022

WASHINGTON—Friday afternoon, Rep. Chip Roy (TX-21) gave the following remarks on the House floor regarding the Democrats’ gun control bill, H.R. 1808:

We shouldn't be talking about disarming the American people, when it is my colleagues on the other side of the aisle that are leaving the American people exposed to dangerous cartels and dangerous narcotics flying to our communities, and dangerous criminal gang members, and criminals that are coming in and harming the American people, including people that are affiliated with terrorist countries and organizations.

And my colleagues on the other side of the aisle don't seem to care a whit about that. Yesterday, Mayor Bowser, Mayor Bowser, is all upset because 4,000 people have been bussed to DC from Texas since April. 4,000 people. Do you know how many people were apprehended in Texas yesterday? About 4,000 people! Welcome to the party. Because that's the reality of what we're dealing with at our southern border. And virtually all of the people being apprehended are being released into the United States under notice to appear or parole. There is only one barrier to all being released, and that is the use of Title 42 during a pandemic.

Now I notice a number of the staff, a number of the folks on the other side of the aisle, people that are still masked, we still are under emergency declarations. And yet we're gonna allow people to flow into this country. And we're going to remove the one last vestige of security that this administration remotely will actually look at and use: Title 42 at our border.

They're building facilities to process more people, to release them into the United States. Mayor Bowser wants to complain and then call out the National Guard, because 4,000 people were shipped from Texas to DC. This 4,000 that Texas gets on a daily basis. Again, welcome to the dang party!

And you know what, you know what you're not talking about, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle? The 73 human beings caught in a stash house in Washington DC this week. 73 human beings, in a stash house in our nation's capital. But my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, my colleagues particularly on the Judiciary Committee, brushed that aside, patting themselves on the back, in the false name of compassion, for how much they love brown people for having open borders. Well, the brown people in South Texas are sick and tired of it. The brown people of South Texas that I know, the candidates on my side of the aisle, are standing up for a secure border. And that begins with enforcing our laws under Title 42 during a pandemic, to ensure that we turn people away.

My friend, Yvette Herrell introduced a bill that would solve the problem. And that is what we would proceed to. We have a discharge petition that would unleash that bill. I welcome any of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle to join that discharge petition. Perhaps, particularly, if you're in a tough race, you might want to be able to go home and say that you actually care about a secure border. But what I'll tell you is, is that we should be moving to secure the border of the United States, rather than a fool's errand of unconstitutional taking of Americans’ Second Amendment rights.

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