I am honored to be a new Member of Congress where our purpose is to listen to the people, and represent their voices, and lift up our communities.

The failed drug war, plus failed anti-immigrant policies that close any legal pathway to immigration creates the underground market for cartels and criminal groups in the first place.

I hope that today's Republican Party and today's leaders within the party are willing to come to the table and actually pass comprehensive and important immigration reform.

More than nine out of 10 people caught are lawful U.S. residents.

The Republicans on this committee keep trying to link immigrants to the opioid crisis, but the facts are clear. Immigrant families fleeing violence and poverty are not the source of the fentanyl crisis as they cross the border.

If we actually want to take on fentanyl overdoses, then let's call a hearing on successful addiction treatment programs.

No one should have to pay smugglers and brave the jungle and the desert and nights on top of a train to save their family.

They should have just been able to apply and come here in an orderly and legal manner.

Congress should be proud of the way that those bills helped save people's homes, kept people in their jobs and kept people alive.

I want to be clear. No one in the country is more strongly against fraud than my working-class constituents who needed those COVID dollars to make sure their small businesses kept running.

Any dollar taken from those programs by fraudsters is a dollar taken away from people who needed support.