Roundup Record Tribune & Winnett Times -

Congressman Matt Rosendale (MT-02) held a bicameral press conference along with Senator Mike Lee (R-UT), Senator Rick Scott (R-FL), Rep. Tim Burchett (TN-02), Rep. Eli Crane (AZ-02), Rep. Bob Good (VA-05), Rep. Mary Miller (IL-15), Rep. Cory Mills (FL-07), Rep. Andy Ogles (TN-05), and Rep. Keith Self (TX-03) insisting the Biden Administration shut down the southern border or, they will vote to shut down the government.

Rosendale said the following at the conference:

“Thank you everybody for showing up today. Obviously, we've got a lot of really big important things that we're trying to address here in the nation's capital. I want to thank the press for showing up, to show your interest and share this information with the general public. I want to thank the Senate for accommodating us and joining us in this important issue today. And I want to thank my colleagues from the House who have been talking about this for quite some time.

The two biggest issues that face our nation right now, the two largest threats that face our nation right now, are the mounting debt at $34 trillion and the absolutely open southern border. They both are posing not just financial burdens, but national security threats that are real. We've been trying to address the problems since Biden took office and they continue to get worse. We've had record amounts of illegals that have been entering our country, both those that have been detected and had encounters with law enforcement and the several million that have come in without even making an encounter with law enforcement, which creates a grave danger. The law enforcement officials down on the southern border no longer call this an immigration problem. They call it a slave trade problem. I've talked to them personally.

Every single person that comes into this country illegally has got a financial obligation to pay to the cartel and they're being forced into slavery and servitude for years to come. We've got fentanyl problems, a thousand, a hundred thousand a year, deaths. Somewhere between 70,000 and 100,000 a year, deaths from fentanyl. We know it's coming in from the Mexican border. We know that the components are coming from China. That boils down to about 350 people a day. If we had a large jet go down with 350 victims inside of it, the United States government would ground those aircraft. We saw them ground aircraft last week because a door blew off and fortunately, we never lost a soul, but if 350 deaths a day were taking place, they certainly would - and yet they turn the other way.

We've got terrorists that are entering our country. Last week, before the House of Representatives went down to Eagle Pass, there were 10,000 illegals that had been herded up together. I talked to CBP and they said that there were 200 people of special interest that were amongst that group. They were trying to get additional information. They wanted to vet them. They wanted to find out where they came from and what they were planning to do once they got into our country and they were whisked away and distributed around our country, just like the other 10,000 remaining illegals were.

Again, this is an imminent national security threat. And at the same time, all of that is taking place. We have cartels that are being enriched in the Del Rio sector alone, they are making roughly $32 million a week off of that slave trade that this administration has been supporting.

This is our obligation. Everybody swore to uphold and to defend the Constitution - and the largest obligation that we have as Members of Congress is to secure our nation. We are not doing it, but this is our opportunity to do so. Right now. When these two major issues come together. Where you have funding that is necessary for large parts of the government and a policy matter that is compromising our national security and that's why this group got together and said we're not going to spend additional funding for the federal government until we can see our border secure. And that's either going to be in the form of passage of HR 2, which is in the Senate right now, or a multitude of other immigration policies that I will be introducing tomorrow.”