[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 125 (Wednesday, July 24, 2019)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5048-S5051]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            BORDER SECURITY

  Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, in April of this year, Border Patrol 
agents in South Texas, in McAllen--one of the most crossed areas for 
illegal traffic in the entire southern border--saw a group of 
individuals walking north who had already crossed the border, and they 
broke and ran. They assumed these individuals were illegally present in 
the United States, and they started moving to try to interdict them. 
They searched through a very large and very overgrown field.
  I can tell you that that area is very, very rough terrain. It is very 
isolating, and the brush is exceptionally heavy. On a day in April, 
even in South Texas, it is extremely hot.
  As they searched through the field looking for individuals, they 
happened to hear a child crying in their search. They encountered a 3-
year-old boy who had been abandoned by the human smugglers when they 
broke and ran. This young boy, 3 years old, had these shoes on, and on 
his shoes were written a name and a phone number across them. That is 
the only identifying thing they have. They tested the phone number, by 
the way, and the phone number didn't work.
  Those human smugglers--moving people into the United States, using 
children as the vehicle--are prone to just cast that child aside if 
they slow them down.
  The Border Patrol agents who encountered this child wearing those 
shoes, took him back to the office. Those Border Patrol agents 
personally bought him new clothing. The fellow agents entertained him. 
You can see him playing PAW Patrol back in the station. They spent time 
comforting him and trying to figure out who he was and where he was 
from. Border Patrol agents alternated taking care of him, personally 
buying supplies for him until they can transition him into Health and 
Human Services' care. That is what is really happening on the border 
every single day.
  Border Patrol agents are dealing with children that cartels are using 
to move adults into the United States. Yes, there are some family units 
who are moving in, but every single family unit that moves into the 
United States is being ushered in by a cartel that works the border, 
and they are choosing the time and the place to move those individuals.
  These officers are risking their lives every single day. They are 
working with families every single day to try to figure out who is a 
family unit and who is a child that is just being smuggled to be used 
as a vehicle to get across the border and how to separate the two. 
Then, once they identify the child, they try to figure out this: What 
do we do now with this child that we have? Where are you from?
  Several months ago, most of the children who were moving across were 
10, 11, and 12 years old, and they could interview those children. The 
cartels have figured that out now, and they are sending more and more 
children who are infants, 1, 2, and 3 years old, who don't know where 
they are from and don't know their names or their background or any 
other details. It is becoming more and more difficult for the Border 
Patrol agents to figure this out.

  In fact, Border Patrol agents just like this are now actually 
bringing their own car seats or finding other people from their 
churches and other places that would donate car seats because when HHS 
needs to transport them out of a bus, they don't have car seats there. 
So they are paying for car seats to help some of these abandoned 
children be able to get to a place of safety.
  These are the folks who are being criticized. These are the folks who 
some of my colleagues, even as recently as this week, said they need to 
get 40 hours of sensitivity training because they are so insensitive to 
what is happening on the border. These are the folks putting their own 
personal finances and their lives on the line and who are working every 
day to solve some of the problems that we have.
  For the past several years, there have been disagreements on the 
solutions and wide disagreements on Federal law enforcement and what 
they are doing along the border. There have been a lot of folks casting 
blame on Federal law enforcement and on the President, instead of 
actually trying to figure out what the problem is at the border. Why is 
this happening? Why have our numbers so rapidly accelerated?
  This past weekend, I visited the border with some of my colleagues. I 
went with Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa and Dr. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana. 
We went to the Rio Grande Valley Sector. That area of the border is a 
thin slice of the border between the United States and Mexico, but in 
that area, in that one zone, 40 percent of all illegal traffic moves 
across the border. The most heavily trafficked area of that zone is the 
McAllen Sector, and that is where we went.
  Across that one area, in that one small segment of the border, they 
have between 1,500 and 2,000 individuals illegally crossing the border 
every single day. That is one small sector of a 2,000-mile-long border. 
Just this year, in that one small sector, they have had individuals 
from 63 different countries cross the border illegally--63 different 
countries.
  I hear a lot of folks say: It is all people from Central America who 
are crossing across the border to flee. That is not true. There are 63 
countries just this year, just around McAllen, TX, not including the 
whole rest of the border.
  You see, the cartels sort individuals by country and by background. 
They send Indians in one direction. They send Pakistanis in another 
direction. They send individuals from Bangladesh in another direction. 
They send folks from Honduras and Guatemala in another direction.
  When I walked into one of the five stations that we visited all 
through that area this weekend, just to do a quick pop-in to see who 
was there at that moment, half of the adults who were there--these were 
single adults--were there from Venezuela and half of them were from 
Cuba, because that is how the cartels sort individuals.
  Just in that one station in McAllen, we have had individuals from 
Pakistan, Yemen, China, Venezuela, Bangladesh, and Syria, in addition 
to many countries from Africa and Asia, and obviously much of Central 
America as well. Those individuals are moving across the border in very 
high numbers. Ninety percent of the apprehensions that have happened 
this year--90 percent--have been from countries other than Mexico.
  Just as recently as 2014, only 1 percent of men who crossed the 
border had a child with them. Now the number is 50 percent of the men 
crossing the border have a child with them--50 percent.

[[Page S5049]]

The numbers have dramatically changed, and what is happening along our 
border is significant.
  The men and women who are actually working every single day to 
protect what is happening at the border are also processing trade that 
is happening. These same individuals are processing 650,000 trucks 
coming into this area, 2.2 million pedestrians, and 9.3 million 
passengers coming across in different personal vehicles. There is a lot 
going on. So when I went down to the border this weekend and visited 
the five different facilities and then spent much of the evening and 
deep into the night riding along with Border Patrol, where one set of 
agents switched vehicles to go with a separate set of agents to ride 
along through the border just to get a feel for what was happening, 
what I experienced was exceptionally painful. What I saw were places 
that were crowded, spartan situations, and in my mind it echoed that 
for months the administration and the committee that I serve on--
members of the Homeland Security Committee--have said for months that 
there is a humanitarian crisis on this border. But it didn't seem that 
anyone was listening until recently, as if all of this had been created 
recently.
  Now, suddenly, people are turning their attention to what is 
happening along this border and saying that there is a serious 
humanitarian problem. And we said: Welcome to the dialogue because we 
have been saying it for months.
  Cartels are making millions and millions of dollars exploiting 
children. They are smuggling children and families across the border. 
It now costs $8,000 to cross a single individual cross the border. You 
pay a toll to the cartels, both to the traffickers and smugglers who 
are moving people--that $8,000 and, then, an additional fee to actually 
physically cross the border at the time of the cartel's choosing in 
that area. But if you bring a child with you, it is half price. It is 
$4,000. The incentive now is that it is cheaper to cross this area if 
you bring a child because the cartel knows they don't have to sneak you 
over the wall. All they have to do is get you to the border and drop 
you off.
  We watched as a family unit and a group of families were sent in one 
direction and Border Patrol interdicted them, and then a mile away, 
three single adults made a sprint for the border. They went to the wall 
with a makeshift ladder and started working their way up the ladder, 
but because it took extra time for them to do that, Border Patrol was 
able to get to their location, interdict, and arrest them.
  Cartels time it to move a set of families one direction to get all 
the Border Patrol gathered around them to hopefully sneak in people who 
most likely have a criminal record who can't just go through the normal 
system. They can't just match up a family with them. They have to move 
them separately and, at the same time, moving large quantities of drugs 
across the border not far away from there.
  On the date I was there, this picture was taken along the border not 
far from where I was. This was taken at 3 o'clock in the afternoon with 
a group of four individuals carrying large bags and boxes across the 
border. Now, I can't tell you for certain what is in those, but I have 
a pretty good guess that at 4 o'clock in the afternoon, four 
individuals bringing almost identical bundles across the border, it is 
a pretty good guess those are drugs.
  This still photo that was snapped at 3 o'clock in the afternoon 
during a weekend was a reminder again of exactly what is happening at 
the border. As cartels line up, families go this direction, single 
individuals with a criminal record go this direction, and then we move 
drugs a different direction to see if we can't work our way through it.
  Why is this happening? This is happening because Customs and Border 
Protection is spending all their time on humanitarian work now. Now 60 
percent of the work of each individual agent is spent on humanitarian 
work processing families. They are doing the work; they are engaged in 
the process; and they are committed to taking care of people.
  When 60 percent are in town taking care of the humanitarian work, 
that leaves only 40 percent to patrol the border. Where there used to 
be literally 60 people who would travel in this region of the border, 
now there are 20 to cover all of those miles. The cartels know it. So 
the more they can send families up through this section and the more 
they can cause chaos inside, the greater likelihood they can move drugs 
across the border freely.
  How does this happen? This happens because the cartels can work to 
get a message to Central America and say: We have a way to get you into 
the United States, and we can get you in quickly. Bring a child with 
you--you pay them $8,000 or $4,000 if you bring a child--and we will 
work you up. They make promises to them of what will happen. Many of 
these people are from high poverty areas of Central America, and they 
will work them toward the border and drop them off at that spot.
  It costs even more if you are not from Central America. Some Chinese 
individuals who have been moved across our border paid as much as 
$30,000 to the cartels--$30,000 to pay the price to move them through 
Mexico and then cross the border at a time of their choosing.
  This is something that is making a tremendous amount of money for the 
cartels, and if we don't engage on solving this issue, we are allowing 
it. We need to realize our laws are broken. They are not only broken 
for immigration and what is happening, they are also not only breaking 
our hearts for what is happening with the humanitarian crisis and what 
is actually occurring, but it is becoming a critical issue that we have 
to respond to, and we should.
  Let me show you this next shot. This is what it looks like now along 
the border. As I traveled through the different locations to see what 
was happening in the five different locations, some of them are gut-
wrenching and difficult because for the Border Patrol, they are a 
police station, basically, along the border.
  Border Patrol--they don't do detention. When you go to a police 
station--and I hope you only go legally to a police station--but when 
you go to a police station, they are not there to hold people. They are 
there to write up all the reports. They are there to go through 
processing, but they are not set up to hold people for long periods of 
time. That is not what a police station does.
  Border Patrol stations are like police stations along the border. 
They are really offices, and they manage that, but now they have also 
become places where they have to hold children and adults by the 
thousands. Thousands of people are crossing the border, and they are 
trying to figure out how to manage it. Some of the facilities are 
exceptionally overcrowded.
  There is a facility that many people have seen the pictures of. They 
effectively call it the ``kids in cages'' facility. I will tell you 
more about that in a little bit. That location was designed for 1,500 
people total. It had 1,590 the day I was there. It has had as many as 
3,000 in that facility, though, within the last couple of months. It is 
miserably overcrowded. There are people packed in together. Those 
individuals are getting meals, showers, toilets, access to supplies, 
and snacks. All the basics are being provided. The Border Patrol is 
trying to figure out how they manage this many people when none of them 
were trained on how to detain people because that is not their task.
  Border Patrol has now set up this facility called a soft-sided 
facility, where they have moved 1,000 family units away from that 
larger, what they call the central processing facility. They moved it 
away from the central processing facility a few miles away, and they 
set up a massive series of tents--air-conditioned and a lot more space. 
This happens to be in one of those where it was actually teenage boys 
in this particular area.
  This is what detention looks like now along the border. They are 
sitting there watching, actually, ``Puss n Boots'' on the TV. There are 
people lying around and getting a chance to get some space, recreation 
space, and plenty of activity that is going on there. This is what 
Border Patrol is currently doing to try to manage it.
  What does that look like, and how will things work? When you check in 
at the Border Patrol station, wherever it may be, whether it is in the 
central processing facility that is so overcrowded or whether it is out 
at the

[[Page S5050]]

soft-sided facility, when you get there, the first thing they do is 
they actually swap clothes with you. They have clothes they bought with 
their budgets. They allow you to pick different types of clothes to 
wear. The Border Patrol and their families take the clothes to those 
individual migrants. They have washing machines there set up, and they 
will personally wash all their clothes for them while they get a shower 
and they get cleaned up because many of these folks have not showered 
and cleaned up for a month.
  So the first step is, they help them get all cleaned up and put fresh 
clothes on, a fresh shower, and hot meals. They have hot meals every 
single day. They also have snacks and supplies. This is, again, in that 
same soft-sided facility. This is just one of their supply rooms where 
you get a feel for snacks and drinks and water and toiletries. Back 
over in this area are large quantities of hygiene products and 
clothes--all kinds of things that are all piled up that they have 
gathered to help take care of individuals.
  One of the things I heard so many times is, these kids can't even 
brush their teeth because Americans are so mean and because the Border 
Patrol is so ruthless to them. I went to five different facilities, and 
in every facility, I asked to see their supply room. In every facility, 
I saw these. That looks like toothbrushes to me. In fact, in the 
central processing facility that has had so much attention in the 
media, I asked the director there, and they said they actually have had 
87,000 toothbrushes there. There has always been toothbrushes and 
toothpaste. There has always been soap and water and ways to clean up.
  The challenge is, some of these folks come from very remote villages, 
and guess what, they are not used to brushing their teeth every day. 
That is not a normal hygiene habit for some people in some places they 
come from. So when the media comes to them and says: Have you brushed 
your teeth today, and they say no, it is not because they didn't have a 
toothbrush available. It is because, no, they didn't brush their teeth 
today.
  I actually watched an interview where they went to a child and said: 
Have you brushed your teeth, and they said no. Their response on 
Twitter was: How atrocious. We are better than this as Americans. Well, 
this was what was in the storeroom and what they have been offered.
  Interestingly enough, even as I walked through the central processing 
facility that is way overcrowded, I saw people lined up at the sinks 
brushing their teeth. We are providing supplies and resources to these 
individuals. That is a normal habit.
  This was interesting to me. As I walked through the facility--and 
this was in that central processing facility that was so crowded. As I 
walked through, there was a Coast Guard individual here because, yes, 
the Coast Guard is coming to help the Border Patrol because they need 
additional manpower. This is a Coastie who was coming through the 
facility that found a young girl who was just crying on her own. She 
was alone--one of these kids who has just been dropped off. He was 
walking through the facility, walking her around, holding her while she 
cried, and they had just stopped for a moment to watch TV. This is what 
is actually going on at the border.
  Now, are there facilities that are overcrowded? Absolutely there are, 
and the people who struggle with that the most are actually members of 
the Border Patrol, and they have been exceptionally frustrated that 
they are not getting more support and more ability to transition people 
out of their facilities into actual detention facilities.
  You see, the famous ``kids in cages'' facility that President Trump 
has taken so much heat for is actually a facility in McAllen, TX, they 
call the central processing facility. It was stood up in 2014 and 2015 
when President Obama was facing a rush of children coming across the 
border with no place to put them. So President Obama's team, Jeh 
Johnson, as the Secretary of DHS, built a facility in McAllen to hold 
children there. That is the facility President Obama is getting blamed 
for--I am sorry, President Trump is getting blamed for--that President 
Obama and his team actually designed and built.
  Now, is it a great facility for children? No, I don't think it is, 
nor is it the Border Patrol's fault, though, that it is a bad facility. 
They are using what they have to manage the crisis that is happening in 
front of them.
  I am tired of hearing people say President Trump is trying to throw 
all these kids out and treat them so miserably, when that is not the 
case. They are scrambling to figure out what they can do and how they 
can manage and take care of the kids and the families they have and how 
they can sort out and try to figure out what to do.
  So let me talk through the solutions here. How do we solve this 
crisis that is going on currently with thousands and thousands of 
people who are illegally crossing the border every day?
  Well, some of them, we can start getting the message out, which has 
already happened, that America is open to immigration if you do it 
legally. We have 1.1 billion people who go through the legal permanent 
residence process every single year. We have 700,000 people every 
single year who become citizens of the United States through a 
naturalized system. We have 500,000 people every day who legally cross 
the border from Mexico into the United States. Half a million every day 
legally do it.
  One of the places I stopped to see was the legal border crossings at 
the international bridge, and I watched individuals drive in and show 
their papers and go through the simple process. They show a passport, 
show their visa, whatever it may be, and drive across the border. 
Thousands of people line up to do it and millions a year in each 
facility.
  I watched as people crossed the border on a pedestrian bridge, and as 
they crossed it with their paperwork, they were brought in. As they 
walk up to the bridge, they say: ``I am asking for asylum.'' They walk 
across the border on the international bridge and are taken into an 
air-conditioned room to start processing their asylum request. That is 
happening every day right now.
  Yet everyone in the media is saying that is not happening. The first 
thing we can do is start getting out accurate information of what is 
actually occurring at the border.
  The second thing we can do is--one of the primary issues the Border 
Patrol asked for over and over again, fund ICE. Now, why would the 
Border Patrol ask for more funding for somebody else? Because ICE is 
the primary entity that actually does detention. Border Patrol is the 
police station. ICE does detention.
  When individuals are picked up at the border by Border Patrol, they 
are processed and immediately delivered to ICE. ICE then does detention 
for those individuals. They have facilities scattered all over the 
country where they can house individuals in consistent housing, with 
plenty of space and set up perfectly for that with well-trained 
individuals to detain folks to go through that process.
  Border Patrol's No. 1 request is: Please stop asking us to do 
detention. We don't have facilities for it. Clearly, that is why 
everyone is packed in. Allow ICE to do this.
  Now, why doesn't ICE have funding? Well, because it has been one of 
our biggest battles with our Democratic colleagues who are obsessed 
with defunding ICE. Over and over again they say they want to abolish 
ICE, defund ICE, and get rid of ICE. What is really being stated there 
is there is no place to do detention when that occurs.
  Let me give you an example. In 2018, the request for ICE was $3.6 
billion. Actually, what we could get at the end of it was just over $3 
billion. They were $600 million down from what they said they needed. 
In 2019, the request was $3.5 billion. What they got was $3.1 billion--
again, much less than what they needed.
  When the crisis began to hit in its highest proportion and we finally 
got a humanitarian relief package to these individuals on the border to 
try to get additional support, including building the soft-sided 
facility, my Democratic colleagues held out and refused to do any 
funding for ICE. In the humanitarian package, there was zero funding 
for ICE detention--none.
  Border Patrol said that is the prime thing we need to actually solve 
this problem. What we need, more than anything else, is to allow these 
folks to move out of these temporary facilities

[[Page S5051]]

into long-term facilities so we can actually get them in better housing 
situations, but when we debated our way through this, our Democratic 
colleagues held firm and said: No funding for ICE detention. That 
perpetuates this problem on the border.

  We have to solve this. They should be able to have the additional 
funding that they need so that we can get these kids and families into 
better locations for their housing and not temporary, stopgap 
locations.
  The next issue we need to address is, we should move asylum officers 
to the border. This is one of the prime things that Border Patrol 
wanted. Many of these individuals come and say: I want asylum. Let's 
walk them through the process. Let's get there. The problem is that the 
vast majority of individuals who request asylum do not qualify for 
asylum. They come into the United States because they want to connect 
with family members who are here or for economic or other 
opportunities. I completely understand that. We have a legal process to 
do that. But someone can't just come across the border and say: I have 
a cousin who lives here and I want to come, and that qualifies as 
asylum. That is not asylum. Only 15 percent of the people crossing the 
border who are asking for asylum actually qualify, but individuals wait 
up to 2 years for a hearing to find out if they qualify. So the 
legitimate individuals who desperately need asylum, who have to get 
through that process as rapidly as they can, cannot do so because 85 
percent of the people are clogging up the system, asking for things 
that are not asylum.
  We should move asylum officers closer to the border to do faster 
processing so we can help individuals who are seeking asylum to get it 
and also identify people who are gaming the system and say: You cannot 
just game the system. You have to go through the process legally.
  Additionally, we have to deal with this 20-day release issue. Right 
now, the rule is that a family with a child or a child can only be held 
for 20 days total. They can be held for only 20 days, and after that, 
they have to be released into the country. The cartels and human 
smugglers know that rule, and that is why we have seen an increase from 
2014 from only 1 percent of the men bringing a child to now 50 percent 
of the men bringing a child, because they know that if they bring a 
child, they will be released within 20 days.
  Here is what is different, though. In 20 days, we can do our record 
checks in the United States to see whether this person has a criminal 
record, but when we contact any of the 63 other countries that these 
individuals are coming from, just in that sector, most of those 
countries can't respond to us with their country's criminal record 
within 20 days.
  What is really happening on the border is individuals are coming 
across with a child. They are being detained for 20 days while we 
request criminal records from their home country. They are still there 
when on the 21st day we have to release them, and 10 to 15 days later, 
we get word that the individual actually had a murder warrant in their 
home country. That really happened just a few days ago.
  Also, a few days ago, we released an adult with a child and then 
found out a few days later that their home country was seeking them 
because they were a pedophile in their country. But we had just 
released that adult with a child into our country because we have a 20-
day restriction and we can't wait until we get criminal records from 
another country. That is absurd.
  We are encouraging the trafficking of children by saying that you can 
get into our country no matter what if you just bring a child, and we 
are encouraging people with a criminal record to come in and bring a 
child because they know that is their fast track to be able to get in, 
because their home country can't fulfill our request fast enough. Why 
would we do that as a country? Why would we knowingly, willingly do 
that?
  We can solve this problem. It is a horrible humanitarian crisis. We 
need to pay attention to it and be logical about this. Stop saying 
``abolish ICE'' when what we really need is the ICE facilities to help 
us to detain people in the best possible of environments while we find 
out who they are, what their records are, who is related to whom, and 
what their background is.
  Stop ignoring the obvious things. We have some people coming due to 
poverty. We have some people coming to smuggle drugs. Until we can sort 
that out, we should figure out who is who. That doesn't seem irrational 
to me.
  We should also find a way to process asylum requests faster than we 
are so that individuals pursuing asylum can go through the system and 
get processed and individuals who are gaming the system do not get to 
game the system.
  We can do better, and we have to do better. I would encourage us to 
be serious about immigration in the days ahead. This Congress can solve 
this issue, but it won't because it is just a political game. When it 
is about scoring political points rather than solving a humanitarian 
crisis, people in this body have to decide which one they want to do 
more.
  I will never forget last year, sitting with a bipartisan group of my 
colleagues, and as we discussed solutions to immigration, one of my 
Democratic colleagues said out loud: I haven't decided what I want to 
do on this yet. There is an angel on one shoulder saying this problem 
needs to be solved, and there is a devil on my other shoulder saying 
this is the greatest political weapon I have against the President. Why 
would I give that up? And I haven't decided which way I am going to go 
yet.
  I looked at them and said: Here is a basic rule of thumb I live by. 
When there are an angel and a devil talking to you, go with the angel 
every time.
  This is something we should do, and we should stop playing political 
games and trying to hurt the President and ignoring the obvious 
solution we all should see. This is not a partisan issue; this is a 
humanity issue. Let's solve it together.
  With that, I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

                          ____________________