Congressman Chip Roy - U.S. Rep. 21st District Joins Houston's Morning News

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Seven fifty two, I was our time here in Houston's
morning news. Congressman Chip Roy joins us. He has reintroduced
his Border Safety and Security Act. Welcome to the show, Congressman.
I want to ask you about the hearings that are
going on, but let's get to this first. You've really
introduced your border bill. Can you remind us of exactly
what's in there and what its attempts to accomplish.

Speaker 2 (00:21):
Sure?

Speaker 1 (00:21):
Great to be on.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
You know, last Congress, before we were able to come
up with the historic Republican package that got dubbed as
an eighth R. Two, the number that you know that
it was filed under. But that bill, which was a
bill that dealt with border security in a in a
really strong, holistic fashion, reforming a lot of the problems
that were being abused under Biden, like the astylum abuses

(00:46):
and the abuse of parole to release people in the
United States, you know, building the wall, you know, ending
a lot of the releases of families, you know, and
changing the policies so we can make that all work.
All of that was done built upon a bill that
I had introduced in late the previous Congress. So heading
into January of twenty three, and that bill, which is

(01:10):
the bill I just reintroduced, does the very simple thing.
It simply says that the Secretary of Homeland Security shall
detain anybody or shall turn them away. Now, what that
means is we don't do any of the ridiculous things
we are doing now, like releasing people into the United
States with some date to appear literally years in the future,

(01:33):
or under quote alternatives to detention. What we say is
we need to literally put them in a facility and
detain them, make a determination if they have some legitimate
claim to asylum, which is a small fraction that people
who ever come across our border or otherwise turn away.
That fundamental change is what would literally stop the abuse

(01:54):
at our boarder. We embraced that model in HR two,
So I refiled my very work three or four page
bill as the model that I think is still important
while we develop our version that we will do as
a conference this year.

Speaker 1 (02:10):
Well and hopefully you got a much better chance of
getting that active upon all right, I want to ask
you a little bit about it. I don't know if
you watched any of the hearing yesterday for Pete Hegseth
or not, but it's pretty clear what the Democrats are
going to attempt to do with President Trump's nominees, especially
the ones that are considered quote unquote controversial. They're going
to try to beat them down to mean them. I

(02:31):
don't know what you thought, or if you saw any
of Pete's performance, but I was pretty impressed.

Speaker 2 (02:36):
Look, I think Pete demonstrated yesterday that he is going
to be the soldier's secretary. He is going to stand
up for the men and women in uniform who are
out there on the front lines, who are taking bullets,
or are the ones who understand what it takes to
defend the country. He's not going to be an apologist
for the brass or the K Street lobbyists that represent

(02:59):
all of the contractors that unfortunately defined so much of
our defense policy. He stood strong against the attacks. He
did so with respect, but with the appropriate amount of
strength that you would expect out of a Secretary of Defense.
I think he's going do a phenomenal job. I've been
supporter of it since he was announced by the President,

(03:19):
and he's we need that kind of change in the
pentagona in Washington.

Speaker 1 (03:23):
All right, And I want to quickly ask you too, the
Los Angeles wildfires, they continue to burn. There are a
lot of people who are calling for government change in
California before providing aid. In other words, as long as
Governor Gavin Newsom in the Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bassar
there with the policies they have, why will we sink
billions of dollars in trying to help California rebuild when
they wouldn't do anything in order to help themselves.

Speaker 2 (03:46):
Well, first of all, you know, we had a lot
of our Democrat colleagues and the administration, the Bide administration
were pretty damned slow to want to help the people
in North Carolina. A lot of times this is a
you know, becomes a political Let me answer the question,
of course, we shouldn't be giving a blank check to
California when they've got ridiculous policies that cause the problem.
But I look at it slightly differently. The reason we

(04:09):
have any kind of disaster of funding at all, why
we have FEMA, is because when there's a crisis, we
help each other out right, So we send resources immediately,
Federal resources combine state resources share, you know, whether it's
National Guard, whether it's firefighters from other states. But the
Feds can do a very specific and quick role for

(04:29):
relief at the moment, right, because that's what you do.
It's like triage, right, you're under attack or you've got
a hurricane flood to get boats here with the fires,
how can we get the fires out? Because the point
here is to get the damn fires out stop the damage.
We should do that immediately, without question. There's no politics
on any of that. FEMA should be all over that.
And I'm sure President Trump, if these things are still

(04:50):
going in a week, which you know, I hope they're
all gone, you know, we should absolutely do what we
can to help them and stop the fires. But when
it comes to a big check for building, then yeah,
we need to have a long, hard conversation about number one,
what is the role of the federal government in doing
that anywhere in California, North Carolina, anywhere, Like, what's the

(05:11):
role in writing big checks that we don't and then
we need to pay for them? But then secondly, yeah, California,
you create the mass. Why are we going to give
you a blank check without changing your policies? Created the mess,
your policies, your water policies. Yeah, I apologize for interrupting service.
We're way past our time, but I want to thank
you for your time. As always, we appreciate it so much.

(05:32):
That is Texas congressmanship. Roy you all have a great day.
We'll see tomorrow morning, bright and early, at five am.