[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 72 (Tuesday, April 27, 2021)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2213-S2214]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
Border Security
Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, tomorrow evening, across the Capitol,
President Biden will deliver his first State of the Union Address. As
we continue to make headway in our fight against COVID-19, I expect the
President to reflect on the tremendous progress we have made and
encourage Americans to get vaccinated. So far so good.
But I also believe he will try to frame the nearly $2 trillion
partisan bill that was rammed through Congress earlier this year as the
driving force behind that progress, even though less than 10 percent of
the bill was related to COVID-19.
I expect the President will call on Congress to pass his so-called
infrastructure bill, which is similar to the COVID-19 relief bill in
that it is a partisan bill having very little to do with the title of
the bill itself. Only about 5 percent, in fact, goes toward roads and
bridges, something we would all define as infrastructure.
I am hopeful that the President will finally announce a plan to
address the crisis at our southern border because, so far, the
administration has been largely silent. The crisis at the southern
border is real; it is big; and it is growing. We are breaking all the
wrong kinds of records, including the numbers of unaccompanied
children, total monthly border crossings, and the capacity levels at
our care facilities.
In March, we saw the highest number of border crossings on record,
more than 172,000 individuals. That was a dramatic increase from the
already eye-popping 100,000 in February--February, 100,000; March,
172,000; and, trust me, it is going to get nothing but worse.
Nearly 19,000 of these individuals were unaccompanied children, the
highest numbers we have ever seen in a single month. Sometimes people
will say: That child came to America all by himself or herself. I want
to disabuse my colleagues of any notion that a child--small child--
would make that trip to the United States ``by themselves.'' These
children are being turned over to criminal organizations that are paid
by the head to transport them from their country of origin into the
United States and, unfortunately, these human smugglers, known in my
part of the country as ``coyotes,'' care nothing for the welfare of
those children. It is only the money that they could produce by
transporting them to the United States that they care about.
It is true we know that a spike in migration is not an entirely new
phenomena and, sadly, neither is the dramatic increase in the number of
children, but the current surge is unlike any we have experienced in at
least the last 20 years, according to Director Mayorkas.
These eye-popping numbers are compounded by a deadly pandemic. We
have never seen that before. The pandemic, of course, has made once
routine tasks like transporting and caring for migrants incredibly
dangerous to the men and women who are performing those duties.
In an effort to downplay the seriousness of the border crisis or to
defer attention from it altogether, the administration has spent
literally no time talking about it, especially when compared to the
time and energy that it has dedicated to things like climate change.
In fact, the Biden administration has spent the first several weeks
of the surge denying that there is anything wrong at the border. Then
they came up with some creative euphemisms to describe what has
happened. They called it a challenge. They called it a situation. They
called it a mess. Well, as long as you didn't call it a crisis, they
didn't seem too bothered by it.
A month ago, the President tapped the Vice President to lead efforts
to address this crisis, which I thought was a positive sign, until I
realized Vice President Harris acted as though the President had handed
her a hand grenade and had pulled the pin because she couldn't get away
from it fast enough, saying the next day that, well, her job is purely
diplomatic in nature. She hasn't made a single trip to the border and,
apparently, does not plan to do so at all.
The President has given lip service to encouraging migrants not to
come, but those statements mean absolutely nothing when all of the
other signals being sent by this administration are: There is a green
light and a welcome mat out for migrants to come to the United States.
The situation is such that we are reaching a breaking point, and the
Vice President and President could recognize that if they took the time
to look and to learn from the very same people I have learned from, the
experts who do these terribly difficult jobs along the border.
As you can imagine, I have spent a lot of time listening to those
folks because I represent them. They are my constituents. I visited
border communities and heard from the Border Patrol officers, mayors,
county judges, and NGOs, nongovernmental organizations, that are doing
the best they can dealing with overwhelming numbers.
I had the opportunity to actually talk to some of the migrants
themselves about their journeys to our border and what brought them
here. In the Rio Grande Valley, I spoke with three young mothers
holding their crying infants less than a mile from the river they
crossed into the United States. They had just undergone preliminary
health screenings and were waiting for a bus to take them to a
processing center.
And, please, our colleagues should understand these migrants are not
trying to get away from the Border Patrol. They are literally walking
up to the Border Patrol and turning themselves in because they realize
that is the next step to their being placed into the interior of the
United States and completing their journey.
Of course, as you can imagine, each of these mothers was hopeful.
They made it to the United States and knew that as a family unit with
young children they would be cared for by our government and then
released into the interior of the United States. One of the mothers
paid $3,600, she said, to get here. Another paid $6,000. This is big
business for the smugglers and the criminal organizations that charge
thousands of dollars to bring migrants to the U.S. border.
I think it is important to note that this is not just a Mexico-
Central American phenomena. A couple of months
[[Page S2214]]
ago, when I was down at the Del Rio sector of the Border Patrol, the
Border Patrol Chief showed us a slide with the names of 54 different
countries represented by the people who were detained coming across the
Del Rio sector just so far this year--54 different countries.
As I said, many of these ``customers'' are children traveling with no
parents. We know the journey is not a safe or easy one. In fact, it is
dangerous, and it is hard, and many children arrive in critical health,
having endured days, weeks, and months on the road. And the tragic fact
is, some of these children don't make it. They die en route.
I have heard horrific stories of physical and sexual abuse that
occurs at the hands of the criminals, cartels, and human smugglers, and
others traveling in a large caravan of immigrants. At the Kay Bailey
Hutchison Convention Center in Dallas, which is now serving as a
shelter for migrant boys, I talked to one young man who endured a 3-
month-long trek on foot from Central America to the United States. He
told us he slept in the jungles along the way and that food was scarce.
As you can imagine, he was happy now to be in a shelter receiving three
square meals a day with a roof over his head.
These stories are not unique. Many of us have seen the heartbreaking
video of a young boy abandoned by smugglers in the Rio Grande Valley,
dropped from the top of the wall into the interior of the United
States. And we have read the story about a young girl who drowned
trying to cross the Rio Grande River. And we have seen where the
smugglers who care so little for the welfare of the people they are
smuggling into the United States--and in one instance they threw a 6-
month-old child into the river, knowing the Border Patrol would be
diverted in order to save the child, which thankfully they did, while
they skedaddled into the United States.
I think it is heartbreaking that these children are enduring this
sort of trauma, and it is infuriating that cartels and criminal
organizations are getting richer in the process.
So make no mistake, there is a crisis at the border and the policies
of the Biden administration helped make it worse. Despite warnings from
folks on both sides of the aisle, the administration revoked policies
of the previous administration without any alternative plan in its
place. Making matters worse, they entirely failed to prepare for the
obvious consequences. Now the question is, What are they going to do to
address it?
I believe the American people deserve to hear from President Biden
his outline of a plan to address the border crisis and to manage this
surge of humanity in a fair and humane way. If the President is still
working on that portion of the speech, I would like to make a friendly
suggestion.
There is a grassroots plan out there that was built from bottom up by
the Senators and Congressmen most familiar with the crisis. It includes
input from the men and women who dealt with migration surges in the
past and who are working around-the-clock to manage the consequences of
uncontrolled movement of migrants across the border now. It is called
the Bipartisan Border Solutions Act.
Senator Sinema from Arizona, who also represents a border State, and
I have introduced this legislation here in the Senate. We are proud to
work with two Texans, one Republican and one Democrat, Henry Cuellar of
Laredo and Tony Gonzales, a Republican in the 23rd Congressional
District. He represents, I believe, the largest single section of the
U.S.-Mexico border of any Member in Congress. Our bill seeks to address
the most urgent problems on the border today. There is more we can and
should do, but at least this would address the most urgent problems.
First, it would establish four regional processing centers to
streamline the processing of migrants. Right now, the smugglers know
that if they flood the zone with children, the Border Patrol are going
to have to go off the frontline in order to take care of the children,
leaving it wide open for smuggling narcotics and other migrants--
narcotics which, by the way, contributed to roughly 88,000 drug
overdoses in America alone in the last 12 months.
Our bill would provide protections for migrant children who come into
the country without a parent or any relatives.
It would help reduce the immigration court backlog and remove a major
pull factor for migrants who do not have a legitimate asylum claim. But
it would, more importantly, speed up the process for the most
vulnerable migrants who do have a valid asylum claim.
I think these are commonsense reforms that should earn the support of
Members from both parties in both Chambers in Congress, as well as a
number of respected outside organizations.
We would be glad to receive the support of the administration or at
least a phone call so we can begin conversations. Ignoring this crisis
will not make it go away. We have spent the last couple of months
demonstrating that inaction will only make it worse.
As I said, we have seen surges in the past but never like this. The
busiest months are usually April, May, and June, not February and
March, which indicates, by historical trends, it is going to get worse
and worse and worse. If our facilities and our personnel are
overwhelmed today, which they are, and we haven't yet reached the
normal busy season, how much worse are things going to get? How many
more children will die in the hands of these criminals on their way to
the United States before we decide to take action?
As the Presiding Officer and I have discussed before, there is nobody
else to solve these problems except us. On something as important as
this, it seems like a logical area for Republicans and Democrats to
work together to try to take at least some modest steps to address this
crisis. I hope the President will work with us and be part of the
solution and not part of the problem.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma.
Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I was listening intently to the Senator
from Texas, who is certainly familiar with the problems on the border.
It happens that I spent 30 years down there as a builder and developer
many years ago. I got to know the border people. They are trying to do
a great job down there against some pretty impossible odds.
You know, one thing I always think about is, it has nothing to do
with Central American citizens or Mexicans; it is the people from the
Middle East, terrorists from all over. Open borders don't work. So I
applaud him for his efforts on that