[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 41 (Thursday, March 7, 2019)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1722-S1725]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                            Border Security

  Mr. TILLIS. Mr. President, I come to the floor today to talk about 
what I believe is a real crisis at the southern border. I think there 
is even a case to be made that we have challenges at the northern 
border, but I want to focus on what the narrative here in the country 
has been over the past couple of months, weeks, or really years since I 
have been here--sworn in in 2015.
  I think it is very important. We all know that we have the Executive 
order from the President or the emergency declaration. He clearly 
believes there is a crisis at the border--so much so that he was 
willing to invoke an authority Congress granted beginning in 1976--the 
National Emergencies Act--and then amended throughout the 1980s. He 
believes he is within his authority to declare an emergency so that he 
can get resources down to the southern border as quickly as possible.
  It is no secret that I disagree with the method the President is 
using to provide funding down at the southern border, but make no 
mistake about it--I do believe there is a crisis at the border, and I 
take exception to my colleagues on the other side of the aisle who say 
the President is manufacturing a crisis.
  I serve on the Judiciary Committee. I have since 2015. Yesterday, we 
got a briefing from Homeland Security that was truly startling in terms 
of the statistics on the number of crossings--a record number of 
crossings; severalfold; in one case, 10 times--over the past few 
months. I believe one of the reasons we are seeing the increase in 
illegal crossings is that those who are coming from countries other 
than Mexico--who are the majority of illegal crossings today--believe 
that if they get across the border, there is a very low chance they 
will be returned to their country of origin.
  Speaker Pelosi said it is a manufactured crisis. It is not a 
manufactured crisis. Take a look at the data. It is a real crisis. The 
majority leader said the same thing. I think it is a crisis on several 
levels. One has to do with the number of people coming across the 
border today.
  There is something that is very important that I think was missed by 
many people in the committee hearing yesterday. There were a number of 
my colleagues on the other side of the aisle whom I work with--in fact, 
I worked with Senator Durbin on a solution for the DACA population. I 
am not necessarily considered a hawk on all things immigration. But I 
will tell you that when I hear the senior Senator from Illinois say 
that everyone who is coming across the border is fleeing a dangerous 
situation in their country of origin, that doesn't necessarily 
reconcile with the fact that almost 80 percent--8 out of 10 claims of 
asylum are adjudicated not to be valid. Eight out of ten claims for 
asylum are adjudicated not to be valid. And I don't hear anybody on the 
other side of the aisle saying that we should change the standard for 
an asylum claim. So for someone to say that everyone coming from these 
countries is fleeing a fear of some sort of harm by staying in their 
country or maybe staying in Mexico while they sort things out--that is 
simply not true.
  If you take a look at the severalfold increase in illegal crossings, 
80 percent

[[Page S1723]]

of them are deemed invalid in terms of a threat to life or liberty from 
their country of origin based on our standard for asylum. I am not 
making this up; this is a matter of court records. These cases are 
being adjudicated by officials who were appointed by Democrats and 
Republicans, so it is not as though we have someone down there setting 
a different standard for asylum. Eight out of ten asylum claims for 
people crossing the southern border are deemed invalid.
  But now what is happening is that we are spending so much time 
adjudicating, detaining, and processing this influx of illegal 
crossings that we are creating a more dangerous situation because bad 
actors are getting through. Our resources are being spent trying to 
process this influx of crossings that we have to stop. How do you stop 
it? You stop it by preventing future flows. You stop it by changing the 
treatment of a family who crosses from Mexico being different from a 
family who crosses from Ecuador, El Salvador, or any other Latin 
America country. You treat them all the same. You treat them 
respectfully. You try to give them an opportunity to make their case, 
but you also send a clear message that if you can't come through the 
normal asylum process, which means you show up and you lawfully request 
that your asylum claim be heard, then you cross the border and you put 
yourself and your children at risk.
  We have a crisis at the border. I spent a week--in fact, Senator 
Cornyn will be speaking after me. Senator Cornyn invited some of us to 
spend a week down on the southern border, and it was very revealing to 
see what is going on there--seeing crossings happen right before us, 
seeing cane along the Rio Grande River that prevents border security 
from even seeing somebody who may be 10 feet away as they are snaking 
through in the middle of the night. We were on horseback, we were in 
low-draft boats, and we were in helicopters. We saw the crisis at the 
border in real time. That was last year. Now we have severalfold more 
people coming across the border.
  The crisis has several layers to it. One of the ones that I think 
every American should get behind is that the crisis is occurring 
because our resources are being diluted by trying to police these 
borders and apprehending people, 8 out of 10 of whom will ultimately be 
deemed not to have a valid asylum claim. While we are tracking them 
down, the cartels are smuggling millions of doses of poison across our 
border that are killing people every year. These are the deaths that 
have been reported, and they are reported, sadly, almost on an annual 
basis--tens of thousands of people dying as a result of drugs coming 
across the southern border. Because our resources are spread so thin, I 
think this will get worse if we don't figure out how to secure the 
border.
  We have deaths of immigrants. Every year on American soil, we recover 
nearly 300 bodies of people who paid hundreds or thousands of dollars 
to the cartels so that they could pass through the plazas at the 
southern border. There is no way you can cross the southern border 
without paying a fee to these organized crime gangs who literally 
control the border. In fact, we were told yesterday in the committee 
that it will cost you $500 to put your foot in the Rio Grande River, 
and if you don't, you are probably going to die before you ever leave 
Mexico.
  We have no earthly idea of the thousands of people--men, women and 
children--who die trying to cross the border and can't pay a toll at 
the appropriate time, or they get caught up in a conflict between the 
cartels along the plazas of the southern border, but I know thousands 
of people have died. Over the last 20 years, nearly 10,000 bodies have 
been recovered on American soil--men, women, and children--because this 
has become one of the most profitable enterprises for the human 
smugglers, human traffickers, and drug traffickers in Mexico. That is a 
crisis, ladies and gentlemen, and it is a crisis that we need to 
recognize.
  Gang members. Thousands of MS-13 gang members have crossed the border 
illegally, and here is the sad reality. When they successfully cross 
the border, they go into Hispanic communities. They go into 
communities, many of them communities where the majority are legally 
present, and make them more dangerous. They hide there. They coopt 
them. They actually recruit kids into their gang activities and use 
minors to do a lot of the illegal activities--distributing drugs, 
trafficking humans, and all the other illicit activities that the gangs 
are involved in. That is a crisis.
  The human toll is devastating. When we were down at the border, we 
were told of one massacre--this is one instance--where there was a 
coyote. That is a person who is responsible for moving people through 
the plazas, ultimately, to cross the border illegally. In one instance, 
we had a human trafficker--a human smuggler--who apparently took a lot 
of the money that should have been passed back to the cartels to pay 
for the passage of these folks trying to get across the border, and 
they didn't have the money to pay the cartel.
  So what did the cartel do? They ordered the massacre of 72 people. 
This is one group--one group--of 72 people on the other side of the 
border who were murdered--men, women, and children. They never got to 
the United States.
  The sad fact is, statistically speaking, after they had spent 
virtually all of their life's belongings, if they had gotten across the 
border, 8 out of 10 of them probably wouldn't have had a valid claim to 
asylum. We have to figure out a better way to help these countries, 
where these folks want to come to the United States and enjoy our 
liberties and enjoy our economic blessings. Crossing the border 
illegally is not the way to do it.
  That is why I have consistently supported any measure to secure the 
border. There is no recommendation that President Trump has made that I 
haven't supported. I supported a package last year that was nearly $25 
billion for people, technology, and infrastructure to secure the 
border--to build all-weather roads, to build walls where necessary, or 
structures, to invest in technology, and to provide more personnel to 
secure the border--not to harm these folks but to help them, to 
actually protect people in the border States, but also to send a very 
clear message: Don't try to come to this country illegally, where your 
claim for asylum is more likely than not going to be rejected, and the 
likelihood that you and your children could be hurt is very high.
  So there is a crisis at the border. We need to fund the President's 
priorities. The President's immediate priorities require $5.7 billion 
to fully fund his 10 key priorities at the border. I support that. I 
applaud the President for taking the steps he did. I am going to do 
everything I can to continue to come down here and send the message to 
those who may be contemplating making the dangerous trip--from whatever 
country where they may be living--with their children and potentially 
being harmed, to not do that. Let's find another way to help them and 
their country of origin. Let's find another way to let them request 
asylum that doesn't involve making the dangerous trip and then, 
potentially, being denied.
  I also wanted to come to the floor today to send a very clear message 
to the President and to the administration: I support the border plan. 
I support funding the wall, people, technology, and infrastructure 
proposals that the President has made. We just have to do it in a 
sustainable way, and we have to do it in a way that goes far beyond the 
$5.7 billion we need right now to fund the President's immediate 
priorities.
  I want to end by thanking Senator Cornyn. Senator Cornyn said 
something yesterday that I think was extremely important. It is 
interesting for somebody in a State, maybe in New England or far, far 
away from the border, to say: There is no crisis. We don't have an 
issue down at the border.
  I have to believe that somebody like Senator Cornyn, who knows this 
issue, knows the threat, knows the impact, and knows the human toll 
better than just about any of us, can say: Why don't you come down 
there and spend some time with me? Why don't you do what so many others 
have done to see it firsthand?
  Now, let's get out of the politics and saying that it is a 
manufactured crisis the President is acting on. It is a real crisis. 
Human lives are at stake. So many lives have been lost. We have to stop 
the carnage, get the politics out of it, secure the border, and move on 
to immigration reform and so many other things that we should do.

[[Page S1724]]

  With that, I yield the floor, and, again, I thank Senator Cornyn for 
all the great work he has done on this issue and for his leadership. I 
am glad to follow him into any issue that, hopefully, will get us to 
secure the border.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas.
  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, at the risk of sounding like the mutual 
admiration society, let me express my appreciation to the Senator from 
North Carolina, who gave an outstanding presentation, talking about the 
crisis that exists at our southern border. I really can't improve on 
it, but I will try.
  Fortunately, Senator Tillis is one of those rare Senators who 
actually has traveled down to the border at my invitation. As he said, 
he rode horseback as we tried to find our way through the carrizo cane, 
which obscures visibility for the Border Patrol, and he saw it for 
himself. I appreciate his bringing the benefit of that experience here 
to the floor and adding to this important debate.
  I was struck by a hashtag I saw being used in the House of 
Representatives. It is ``FakeEmergency''--hashtag ``FakeEmergency.''
  Well, let's mention two sets of parents. For the 7- and 8-year-old 
boy and girl who recently died in CBP custody at the border who made 
their way from Guatemala, I don't think this is a fake emergency for 
them. As Customs and Border Protection Commissioner McAleenan said, 
many of these immigrants who come all the way from countries like 
Guatemala suffer from exposure, including dehydration. Many of them are 
physically or sexually assaulted. Then, there is the danger of 
infectious diseases, because many have not been vaccinated for common 
childhood diseases that American citizens would be protected from.
  Unfortunately, they are a commodity to the criminal organizations 
that transport people for roughly $5,000 per person. The cartels--the 
criminal organizations--are commodity agnostic. They will just as soon 
usher a migrant from Central America up here who wants to join a family 
member and perhaps find a job. They will just as soon charge somebody 
who will ultimately be trafficked and become the victim of modern-day 
slavery, involuntary servitude, or sex slavery, or they will be happy 
to move drugs, heroin, methamphetamine, cocaine, marijuana--you name 
it. In fact, 90 percent of the heroin that comes into the United States 
comes from Mexico, and of the 70,000-plus Americans who died from drug 
overdoses just last year, according to the Centers for Disease Control, 
a substantial portion was from the opioids. In other words, that came 
from Mexico--whether they be pills, fentanyl, or heroin, which is 
perhaps the cheapest form of opioid.
  The Senator from North Carolina and I serve on the Judiciary 
Committee, and we heard at length from the Commissioner McAleenan of 
Customs and Border Protection. The picture he painted was pretty bleak, 
but it bears repetition. Unfortunately, around here it is hard to know 
when people are listening. Sometimes you have to say the same thing 
over and over and over before it begins to penetrate people's 
consciousness. But this is important. So we need to emphasize this.
  Many migrants make this arduous journey for days, weeks, or sometimes 
for months, traveling without food or water. When they arrive, they are 
often sick and require extensive medical treatment. Of course, there 
is, as I indicated a moment ago, the horrific stories of physical and 
sexual abuse. The percentage of women and girls who are sexually abused 
en route from their homes in Central America is revolting, to use a 
word.
  The Border Patrol spends a vast amount of their time dealing with the 
human needs of children. In other words, these are law enforcement 
officers who are basically trying to supply diapers and juice boxes to 
children who are coming with their families and overwhelming our 
capacity at the border. While the cartels exploit the fact that the 
Border Patrol is tied up with this sort of processing of asylum 
seekers, the drugs come into the country. That is part of the cartel's 
plan. They have studied our laws. They know where there are gaps in 
coverage. They know what they can do to distract law enforcement 
officers so that drugs and human trafficking can get through the 
border.
  Despite all of this and despite the facts that the Senator from North 
Carolina detailed, we still hear our friends on the other side refusing 
to engage or offer any solutions whatsoever. As a matter of fact, one 
of our colleagues on the Judiciary Committee yesterday said: We need to 
preserve the two things that are the biggest obstacles to getting to a 
solution. We need to preserve those. In essence, what she was saying is 
that we need the Border Patrol not to secure our border. We need the 
Border Patrol to just wave people on through, like a traffic cop. As 
long as we have these gaps in our asylum laws where we treat people 
from noncontiguous countries differently than we do from Mexico or 
Canada and as long as they can wait for years before their asylum claim 
can be finally adjudicated by an immigration judge, the criminal 
organizations are winning. They have won because they can successfully 
place a person in the United States, notwithstanding our laws, by 
overwhelming our resources at the border and in our interior.
  I have talked about the need to increase border security many times 
on the floor, and I know I risk sounding like a broken record, but as 
long as we have people in the other body sending out hashtags on social 
media calling this a fake emergency--when President Obama himself, in 
2014, called this a humanitarian crisis--it is going to be necessary, I 
am afraid, to keep telling the story and talk about what is necessary 
in order to bring security to our southwest border.
  My State has 1,200 miles of common border with Mexico. Our 
relationship with Mexico is very important because they are one of our 
main trading partners. There are a lot of good and important things 
that come back and forth across the border in terms of people legally 
visiting the United States and in terms of commerce and trade. I have 
seen one estimate that about 5 million American jobs depend on trade 
with Mexico. It is not just Texas, either. But the toll that the 
current status of our immigration laws has on the lives of immigrants 
crossing our border is real, and the strain it puts on our ability to 
engage in legitimate trade and commerce to flow freely through our 
ports is real as well. All of these need to be addressed and without 
delay.
  Let me talk a little bit about the records that have been broken. We 
saw last month alone that 76,000 people illegally crossed the border 
and were apprehended by U.S. Customs and the Border Patrol--76,000 
people. According to the Commissioner, we are on track to see 600,000 
to maybe 650,000 during the next calendar year. This is an 11-year high 
and averages more than 2,000 people a day. This is not a record we want 
to be proud of.
  We have seen a growing number of family units. The reason why the 
cartels and criminal organizations bring family units is because they 
know what our law requires in terms of separating the children from the 
adults and then placing the children with a sponsor in the United 
States, only to have them raise their asylum claim in front of an 
immigration judge years hence. As I said, many simply don't show up for 
that, and so game over.
  We have seen a growing number of family units coming across the 
border, a 338-percent increase in 2018. The cartels have studied our 
laws. They are advertising down in Central America, saying: If you want 
to come to the United States, all you have to do is come as a family 
unit. We have studied American law, we know where the gaps are, and we 
are going to exploit them.
  Already Border Patrol has apprehended more family units than in all 
of 2018, and the border regions of Texas are feeling the strain. Our 
local officials--the mayors, the county judge--and our medical 
facilities are just not designed for this massive influx of humanity. 
In the Rio Grande Valley, family unit apprehensions have increased 209 
percent since this time last year. Here is a staggering figure: In El 
Paso, TX, it is a 1,689-percent increase.
  As Secretary Nielsen said yesterday, testifying in front of the 
House, our border is at the breaking point. Our capacity to deal with 
this influx of humanity is creating a genuine crisis. These are not 
just percentage points or numbers; they illustrate the human

[[Page S1725]]

misery and the challenges of the dedicated law enforcement personnel 
along the border and also the folks who work trying to deal with the 
children, whether it is providing them medical care or trying to find 
them a safe place to live in the United States. This is not a 
manufactured crisis. This is a real crisis.
  In a normal political environment, these numbers would raise the 
alarm bells, and we would take action--we would actually do something 
about it--but we aren't operating in a normal political climate, to be 
sure.
  Back in 2006 and 2008, Republicans and Democrats voted on something 
called the Secure Fence Act. It wasn't particularly partisan or 
political. This year, the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, called 
physical barriers ``immoral.'' The Democratic leader of the Senate, the 
Senator from New York, said not one penny was going to be appropriated 
for any physical barriers along the border.
  For those who would argue this is a fake crisis, I would ask them to 
check with the Texans who live across the border and deal with this 
every day.
  I recently got an email from a friend of mine who has a ranch outside 
of San Antonio, my hometown. He said he and his wife basically have to 
arm themselves, and they have to take precautions against people coming 
across their land because they don't know whether it is going to be 
some hungry migrant who is just simply looking to find their way to San 
Antonio or to Houston and then north or whether it is going to be 
people wearing backpacks carrying fentanyl and heroin. They just don't 
know, so they have to prepare. They basically have to lock their doors, 
and they are captives in their own house.
  So what has changed since we talked about this back in 2006? What has 
changed?
  My question is more of a rhetorical one because we know Democrats 
will stop at nothing to prevent President Trump from delivering on his 
promise to provide border security, even if it means turning their 
backs on something they have historically supported.
  As you might imagine, I have made a point to spend a lot of time in 
communities along the border. I have talked to the experts--our Border 
Patrol agents, sheriffs, mayors, landowners, and countless others--on 
how to best deal with this security and humanitarian crisis. These are 
the people who know best. They are the experts. They know how best to 
secure the border.
  They will be the first to tell you that when it comes to border 
security, one size does not fit all. I have mentioned before my friend 
Judge Eddie Trevino from Cameron County. I was in a meeting with 
Senator Cruz--my colleague from Texas--local stakeholders, elected 
officials, along with Customs and Border Protection and Border Patrol. 
What Judge Trevino told us then was: Look, if it is the experts, the 
Border Patrol agents, telling us what we need, we are all in, but if it 
is people from Washington, DC, trying to micromanage the border, who 
don't know anything about it, then count us as skeptical.
  What we have heard from the experts is that border security is a 
combination of three things: barriers in hard-to-control places, 
people, and technology.
  While a physical barrier may work best in an urban or high-traffic 
area, it doesn't make any sense in places like Big Bend National Park. 
Anybody who has been out west to Texas knows the cliffs over the Rio 
Grande River, in parts, can rise to 30 feet. It doesn't make much sense 
to put a physical barrier there.
  The determination of what is needed and where it is needed should not 
be a top-down Federal mandate. It should come from the experts who know 
the threats and the challenges along every mile of the border and whom 
we entrust on a daily basis to secure it.
  We should continue to listen to our vibrant border communities, which 
are the economic engine of the region, and ensure that we can maintain 
the flow of legitimate trade and travel also through these areas.
  Implementing a solution that would allow our law enforcement experts 
to work with the Federal Government on the right combination of 
technology, people, and physical barriers is what we ought to be 
focusing our attention on.
  I would add just a footnote to that on dealing with this problem of 
people abusing our laws on asylum. Again, the cartels have figured this 
out. I have worked with my friend Henry Cuellar, who is perhaps one of 
the last remaining Blue Dog Democrats in the House of Representatives. 
He represents Laredo, TX. We actually introduced a bill called the 
HUMANE Act, which would establish parity of treatment of immigrants 
coming from noncontiguous countries like Central America. 
Unfortunately, we weren't able to get that passed.
  We could fix this pretty quickly, but it requires our Democratic 
friends to drop their Trump derangement syndrome and come to the 
negotiating table in support of something they have historically been 
for during this time of need.
  The crisis is staring us in the face, and it demands action. I can 
only hope our colleagues across the aisle will answer that call.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Scott of Florida). The clerk will call the 
roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. BROWN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. Fischer). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.