BILL TO OUTLAW WOUNDING OF OFFICIAL WORKING ANIMALS ACT OF 2025

BILL TO OUTLAW WOUNDING OF OFFICIAL WORKING ANIMALS ACT OF 2025

Congressional Record, Volume 172 Issue 50 (Thursday, March 19, 2026) [Congressional Record Volume 172, Number 50 (Thursday, March 19, 2026)] [House] [Pages H2600-H2606] From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [ www.gpo.gov ] {time} 0910 BILL TO OUTLAW WOUNDING OF OFFICIAL WORKING ANIMALS ACT OF 2025 Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 1115, I call up the bill (H.R. 4638) to amend the Immigration and Nationality Act to provide that an alien who has been convicted of harming animals used in law enforcement is inadmissible and deportable, and for other purposes, and ask for its immediate consideration in the House. The Clerk read the title of the bill. The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to House Resolution 1115, the amendment in the nature of a substitute recommended by the Committee on the Judiciary, printed in the bill, modified by the amendment printed in House Report 119-554, is adopted, and the bill, as amended, is considered read. The text of the bill, as amended, is as follows: H.R. 4638 Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE. This Act may be cited as the ``Federal Working Animal Protection Act''. SEC. 2. INADMISSIBILITY AND DEPORTABILITY RELATED TO HARMING ANIMALS USED IN LAW ENFORCEMENT. (a) Inadmissibility.--Section 212(a)(2) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (8 U.S.C. 1182(a)(2)) is amended by adding at the end the following: ``(J) Harming animals used in law enforcement.--Any alien who has been convicted of, who admits having committed, or who admits committing acts which constitute the essential elements of an offense under section 1368 of title 18, United States Code (relating to harming animals used in law enforcement), is inadmissible.''. (b) Deportability.--Section 237(a)(2) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (8 U.S.C. 1227(a)(2)) is amended by adding at the end the following: ``(G) Harming animals used in law enforcement.--Any alien who has been convicted of, who admits having committed, or who admits committing acts which constitute the essential elements of an offense under section 1368 of title 18, United States Code (relating to harming animals used in law enforcement), is deportable.''. The SPEAKER pro tempore. The bill, as amended, shall be debatable for 1 hour equally divided and controlled by the chair and ranking minority member of the Committee on the Judiciary or their respective designees. The gentleman from California (Mr. McClintock) and the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Raskin) each will control 30 minutes. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from California. General Leave Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on H.R. 4638. The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from California? There was no objection. Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, Freddie is a 5-year-old male beagle that was found on the side of a Georgia road and adopted into the USDA's detector dog program. In August 2023, Freddie began his current job as a CBP agriculture detector dog at Dulles International Airport. He and his handler, Melissa Snyder, worked the early-morning flights arriving primarily from Central America and Africa. As of late last year, Freddie had conducted more than 590,000 searches, resulting in more than 2,000 alerts that led to more than 1,800 seizures of prohibited agricultural products and almost 2,500 different pieces of quarantined material. Mr. Speaker, it was during this important work last June when Freddie alerted to luggage on a flight from Egypt. While Agent Snyder questioned the owner, this man violently kicked Freddie with sufficient force to lift Freddie off of the ground. Freddie suffered contusions to his right forward rib area. He was taken off duty for 2 weeks to recover. It turns out that the Egyptian national was smuggling 117 pounds of meat and produce which were prohibited from entering the United States. In the same month as Freddie's attack, leftist protesters in Los Angeles physically attacked horses used by the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department for crowd control during an anti-ICE riot. Horses are used extensively by Federal agencies for crowd control and also for access to remote areas along the border frequented by human and drug traffickers. Mr. Speaker, Congressman Calvert brings us this simple bill that says that if you are convicted of harming a law enforcement animal or you admit to doing so while you are a guest in our country, you will be immediately expelled and never be allowed to return. It is true that we have good laws to punish such animal cruelty, and yes, such assaults can be defined as moral turpitude to bar admission. Yet, as we have discussed before on this floor, that finding can often require Byzantine legal proceedings that eat up many years and thousands of dollars of resources, if they are pursued at all. Mr. Speaker, I know many of our Democratic colleagues support the border policies of the Biden-Harris administration, which encouraged the largest illegal mass migration in history. They allowed members of the world's most violent criminal gangs and cartels into our communities, suppressed American workers' wages, and cost taxpayers an estimated $160 billion a year to support. I know that many are now vigorously and, in some cases, violently opposing the enforcement of our immigration laws under the Trump administration. They can't change these laws, so they seek to obstruct their enforcement and attack, harass, and threaten the law enforcement officers who are upholding them. Some Democratic State and local officials have even revived the disgraced doctrine of nullification that we all [[Page H2601]] thought had died with the Confederacy in order to defy Federal law. There is a deep and irreconcilable divide between our parties that only the voters ultimately can resolve, but can't we at least all agree that kicking a 5-year-old beagle at an airport should disqualify a foreign national from entering our country ever again? That is the entire two-paragraph bill, and I hope we can put aside our differences and all support it. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time. Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, here is what America is talking about: Donald Trump's unauthorized, undeclared war of choice, a forever war in the making, which is costing us between $1 billion and $2 billion every single day and has killed already 13 Americans in uniform, wounding more than 200 Americans in uniform, and killing more than 1,000 Iranians, including 170 school children who were bombed at an all-girls school in Iran. Americans are talking about the fact that gasoline now costs $3.84 a gallon. It has gone up more than 25 percent in 1 week because of Donald Trump's unauthorized, undeclared, illegal war of choice in Iran. Crude oil is now soaring to more than $109 a barrel because Donald Trump's war planners could not have predicted that Iran would try to strangle commerce in the Strait of Hormuz. That is what America is talking about this week. America is talking about when there will be justice for Renee Good and Alex Pretti, American citizens exercising their First Amendment and Second Amendment rights who were shot down in cold blood by government agents in Minneapolis, and the most recent Secretary of Homeland Security libeled them as domestic terrorists and refused to recant from that defamatory lie. That is what America is talking about. When are they going to reform ICE, and when are they going to start paying members of the Coast Guard, TSA, FEMA, and CISA? We have a discharge petition to say: Pay those people, and don't let all of the illegality of ICE bring down the faithful public servants at the Coast Guard, TSA, FEMA, and other Federal agencies. That is what America is talking about this week. Well, what are MAGA Republicans in Congress talking about this week? They are talking about the BOWOW Act. The BOWOW Act? Now, how did they come up with this bill and this title? Well, the President's poll numbers are sinking like a stone, so they needed to find something to do in Washington to put on the floor. They can't talk about Trump's ruinous tariffs that have plunged so many small businesses into oblivion and cost American consumers hundreds of billions of dollars. They can't talk about that because the Supreme Court, which they gerrymandered, sliced and diced, and packed and stacked, struck it down. Even the extremely right-leaning Supreme Court struck down Donald Trump's tariffs. We told them that it was unconstitutional. We told them that only Congress has the power to impose taxes and to regulate commerce with foreign nations, but no. Like lemmings, they followed Donald Trump off of the side of the ship, and now those tariffs are not only economically ruinous for the country, but they are discredited and struck down. They can't talk about that, which was their big policy hit of the administration so far. No, they can't talk about that. Well, they are not talking about the war in Iran. That is splitting even the MAGA base right down the middle because they had talked before Donald Trump about the importance of Congress actually making decisions about going to war. After all, that is what the Constitution says in Article I, Section 8, Clause 11. It is Congress that has the power to declare war. Mr. Speaker, they are not talking about that. They are not talking about the lives that have been lost in Iran with this bizarre, impetuous war of choice that has been thrust onto the country when the President promised us that there would be no more forever wars and regime-change wars. They can't even settle on whether this is a regime-cha

Referenced legislation: HRES1115, HRES1115, HR4638