[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 129 (Thursday, July 22, 2021)]
[Senate]
[Page S5028]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              IMMIGRATION

  Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, with COVID-19 cases ticking up all 
across the country, with some bureaucrats and elected officials 
actually talking about reimposing various measures on the American 
people, the Biden administration continues to let illegal immigrants 
pour across our southern border, and reportedly, they are considering 
loosening our border security even more.
  Remember when the Biden campaign's rhetoric and then the Biden 
administration's early actions led to a rush on the border. They tried 
to wave it off as a seasonal, springtime surge, but, of course, that 
wasn't true. The numbers just keep climbing.
  Customs and Border Protection had more encounters on the southern 
border in June than they had in May, nearly 190,000 encounters last 
month alone--the highest number in 21 years. Law enforcement is coming 
across huge groups of hundreds of individuals. With almost 3 months 
still remaining in fiscal year 2021, CPB has already encountered more 
illegal immigrants than it did in the entirety--the entirety--of fiscal 
2019, which was, of course, before COVID. We have exceeded that total 
with almost 3 months to go.
  The Biden administration claims they are addressing the crisis by 
simply speeding up the rate at which they get migrants out of custody, 
out of border facilities, as if simply reducing the head count was the 
goal. Of course, that is no solution at all if the individuals are 
simply being released into the interior of our country.
  Ordinarily, legal immigration is part of the heart of the United 
States of America, and it always has been, but it simply is not a 
universal human right for everybody in the Western Hemisphere who would 
like a better job or to break our rules and turn up at the border. No 
country, none--no country in the world--could govern itself that way.
  In fact, this ongoing crisis is supremely unfair and uncompassionate 
to the men, women, and children whom it continues to entice into the 
scorching desert Sun. Border Patrol agents are having to double as 
humanitarian workers and EMTs. They rescue people who get lost, who are 
at risk of drowning, who have been simply abandoned by smugglers or 
traffickers.
  Amidst all this, in the thick of this crisis, the Biden 
administration has spent weeks flirting with ending its title 42 
authority, declaring the COVID emergency to be finished and over at our 
southern border and letting even more people stream across. COVID is 
already on the rise again, the border is already in crisis, and the 
President and his team want to end the emergency safeguards at our 
border? Reimpose COVID precautions on the American people but end the 
COVID emergency for illegal immigrants? How does that make any sense?
  Meanwhile, our Democratic friends here on Capitol Hill say they want 
to push a massive amnesty plan into the reckless taxing-and-spending 
spree they want to pass later this year on a party-line vote. As if 
damaging inflation, soaring costs, lower real wages, and more debt were 
not punishment enough for the American people, Democrats also want to 
stuff a massive amnesty plan into their tax-and-spend spree. It is like 
they have systematically identified the worst idea for American 
families on every single issue and set about rolling them into one 
huge, reckless proposal.

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