Mike Cloud: “I thank the gentleman from Pennsylvania for yielding. This debate over securing our border has become a debate over the…”

“I thank the gentleman from Pennsylvania for yielding. This debate over securing our border has become a debate over the morality of our efforts, and I welcome that debate. But if we are to debate this issue of border security on the basis of morality, it is fair for us not only to ask how this issue affects our own Nation, but to look across our border and see how our national policy affects those beyond our borders. For those of us who live near our southern border, we understand all too well the effects of the criminal cartels who profit from abusing our Nation's generous immigration laws. When I visited the Rio Grande Valley just recently, a rancher with land on the border described the situation, saying that he finds dead migrants on his land all the time. In my hometown of Victoria, Texas, 19 migrants died of suffocation and overheating after being trapped in the back of a trailer abandoned by a smuggler with a callous disregard for human life. But beyond our borders, these cartels carry an outsized influence in Mexico and in developing nations in Central America. We know that cartels profit from smuggling drugs and humans across the border. They siphon oil from pipelines. They extort families and businesses and kidnap for profit. The barbarism of these criminal cartels has led to 150,000 homicides in Mexico, alone, since 2006.…”