On the recordJune 7, 2017
I would like to thank the gentlewoman from Hawaii for yielding to me and for her leadership on this issue. I served with her for 2 years on the Homeland Security Committee of the House of Representatives and saw her ability to balance the national interests and capitalizing and maximizing the opportunity that immigrants provide and have always provided to the United States while ensuring that we protect the homeland and our sacred commitment to every person and family that we represent to make sure that they are safe. I think that the community that I have the honor of representing in Congress, El Paso, Texas, is a case in point. We are one of the safest cities in the United States today. If you use the FBI's crime statistics as crunched by CQ Press, they routinely rank El Paso, Texas, the safest city in not just the State of Texas, but in the United States. For the last 20 years, we have been the safest, second safest, or third safest in the country. That is not in spite of the fact that we are connected with Mexico--our sister city is Ciudad Juarez--and it is not in spite of the fact that 24 percent of the people that I represent were born in another country, most of them in Mexico.…
