Juan Ciscomani: “I thank Mr. McClintock for yielding me time here to talk about this bill. Mr. Speaker, I am proud to rise in support of…”

“I thank Mr. McClintock for yielding me time here to talk about this bill. Mr. Speaker, I am proud to rise in support of my legislation, H.R. 35, the Agent Raul Gonzalez Officer Safety Act. We have heard talk on both sides of the aisle on the floor on this bill on the merits of it, and I am very proud to be supporting this and to actually share a little bit of the story of how we came about this bill. One of my first official meetings that I had after being elected in '22 was to go back to one of my border counties in Cochise. This meeting happened in early '23. I asked them, if there is one bill that I could start on immediately, what would it be? This meeting included law enforcement, local law enforcement from the State, from the county, Border Patrol, and stakeholders. The unanimous vote and feedback was to make sure that something like what happened to Agent Raul Gonzalez never happened again. The issue we homed in on dealt with the issue of high-speed chases and the inability of law enforcement to be able to pull over and punish those that are fleeing law enforcement and their failure to yield not being a Federal crime. This was it. To all those on the other side of the aisle here who criticize this bill as saying that it is anti-fill in the blank, this came from the same people that my friends on the other side claim that this is against. This is a bill that came from the feedback of those that are highly impacted by this in our border communities.…”