[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 56 (Wednesday, March 30, 2022)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1850-S1854]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
Border Security
Mr. PORTMAN. I am here on the floor today to talk about border
security, an issue that is intertwined with our national security and,
certainly, with the drug epidemic that we see in our communities around
the country. We are in the middle right now of the worst border crisis
in the history of our country.
This chart tells the story.
Monthly border crossings are at an unprecedented level. Customs and
Border Protection reports that there were 164,973 encounters at the
border in February. By the way, that is equal to the population of
Dayton, OH. Actually, it is far greater than the population of Dayton,
OH.
So we have never had this kind of illegal migration into the
country--this many people being apprehended. They told us last week
that they are seeing over 7,000 migrants per day in this month, in
March, and this is while something called title 42 is in effect.
What is title 42?
Well, despite these really big numbers you see here in terms of the
number of people being apprehended at the border, under what is called
title 42, which is a public health authority--it has nothing to do with
immigration, really. It is about public health, and it is in place
because of COVID-19. It allows the Customs and Border Protection folks
to say: Sorry, you can't come into the United States for public health
reasons. And, therefore, they can be turned away.
So that order is in place right now. Here is how that has worked. If
you look at this chart, you will see the people who have been turned
away because of title 42, in orange. Those are the numbers in orange.
Those who have been allowed to come into the country are in blue.
You will see here, at the end of the last administration, in the
Trump years, when we had for the most part a secure border, we had very
few illegal entries. We had about 75 percent of the people who were
coming in who were turned away by title 42.
In this administration, it is closer to about 50 percent. About 50
percent of the people are being turned away by title 42.
Why is this important? Well, obviously, we are making progress on
COVID. COVID-19, we all hope, is not going to be here forever. There
may be another variant out there, but as we are relaxing mask mandates
and telling people that they don't have a vaccination mandate anymore
to be able to come to work or travel across our borders, we are hearing
reports that the Biden administration may rescind title 42, so get rid
of this authority within the next several weeks.
And do you know what? Unless we have a new variant, God forbid, that
comes in and causes a new health crisis, they are probably right. Title
42 shouldn't be used in this way because it is a public health
authority, not an immigration law. The problem is that if that
happens--remember, we already have an unprecedented number of people
coming into the country. Look at this chart. If that happens, then all
these folks who are being turned away--the orange bars here--are going
to be coming across the border also without title 42 in place to have
them be turned away. This is why the Border Patrol tells me--and I know
the Presiding Officer hears the same thing all the time--that they are
already overwhelmed. But they say it will be out of control.
Now, some may argue it is already out of control. But it is going to
get a whole lot worse. So they are worried on the border, and rightly
so, that the current crisis is going to become far worse.
My two colleagues from Arizona, both Democrats, to my understanding,
have just asked President Biden to keep title 42 in place. And I think
that makes sense to keep it in place right now because we are not ready
for a huge increase of migrants coming across the border. We can't
handle the current wave. The information we received from the
Department of Homeland Security is that they are planning for a massive
increase of migrants when this happens.
I am the ranking Republican--the top Republican--on the Department of
Homeland Security oversight committee, called the HSGAC Committee, or
Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee. We are talking to
[[Page S1851]]
the Department of Homeland Security, and they are preparing for a huge
increase. But their plan seems to be more about more buses, more
planes, and more tents to help expedite the flow of these migrants into
the country rather than figuring out a way that an immigration system
should work better to be able to say to people: Come legally. Come
legally. Please don't come illegally--which is what these numbers
represent.
By the way, I am for legal immigration. I think it has enriched our
country. I think it is a very important part of the fabric in our
Nation. It makes us special. We brought people in from all over the
world, including, pretty much, all of our parents and grandparents and,
certainly, great-grandparents. Anybody who is in the Chamber, unless
you are Native American, you came here or your family came here as
immigrants.
But legal immigration, while it should be encouraged, is not the same
thing as what we are talking about here. We are talking about illegal
entry, people who don't qualify under the legal system. And in all of
these countries where people are coming from, others are waiting in
line patiently under the legal immigration system.
So America, typically, is the most generous country in the world,
year after year, in accepting legal immigrants. Sometimes, that changes
based on the refugee flows, and we are seeing the refugee flows today
in Poland, as an example. Poland is going to be the most generous
country in the world, thanks to the brutal and murderous and cowardly
attacks by Putin on that country. But America is a generous country in
terms of immigrants, and we should be.
But with regard to legal immigration, we are not just a country of
immigrants--that has enriched us--we are also a country of laws, right?
So we have to have some laws in place to deal with this illegal
immigration. And, of course, it is not just about people coming
illegally. It is about all the other contraband that comes across the
border, particularly illegal drugs.
So I believe we have to keep title 42 in place for now, but I also
agree this is not a long-term solution to the crisis we have at the
southern border. To use a healthcare authority to effectively take care
of about half the illegal immigration coming across the border doesn't
make sense.
By the way, when you see the difference here in the use of title 42,
it is because, during the Trump years, they used title 42 for families
and for single adults coming over; whereas, here, the Biden
administration chose not to apply it to families for the most part. The
vast majority of families do not get stopped because of title 42. It is
just single adults, which is the vast majority of people coming across
the border illegally. So that is the difference in terms of the
percentage of use of title 42.
So we have a real problem on our hands. It is already overwhelming,
and it is about to get a lot worse. What is the solution?
Well, the solution is to fix our immigration laws. The foundation
underneath all this and the problem that has resulted in these numbers
is because our immigration law doesn't work. It is broken, and
everybody acknowledges that. I don't know a Member in this Chamber who
wouldn't acknowledge, at least privately, that our immigration system
is broken. How can you look at these numbers and not realize that?
And yet we haven't been able to find a bipartisan way forward. It is
very frustrating. What we have to do is we have to look at the
underlying laws and why they don't work.
Well, there is one reason, and it is by far the biggest reason. It
may not be the only one. You can argue that we should put in more
Border Patrol. We should do that. We should have more fencing. We
should do that. But the biggest problem is our asylum policy in this
country. The administration has implemented the asylum policy in a way
that makes getting control of the border impossible.
Now, what is asylum? Well, it is something to help people who really
need relief. And it should be used for that, for people who have a
credible fear of persecution. So back in their home country, they are
being persecuted. They come to America, and they apply for asylum. We
have a tradition in America of accepting those people as we accept
refugees. It is basically the same standard. But the problem is that
people are coming into our country and claiming asylum, going through a
long system, which we will talk about in a minute, not qualifying for
asylum, and yet staying in our country. And this has caused a huge pull
factor where people from all over the world are coming to America
because they are told: Gosh, all you have to do is apply for asylum,
and they will let you in, and it is unlikely that you will ever have to
leave.
That is how the system works now. I mean, that is just the honest
truth, and I think if you talk to anybody who is objective about this,
they will admit it.
Now, some people think: We should not have the asylum policy act as
our immigration policy. These people should just be allowed to come in.
There are some people who believe that. My belief is we ought to
stick with the legal immigration system--again, the most generous in
the world in most years--and say that, for asylum, let's limit it to
people who actually qualify for asylum. Let's not let people misuse the
system to gain entry into the United States.
By the way, the people who are misusing it are the smugglers because
it is the smugglers who go to the family, let's say, in a country like
Ecuador or Guatemala, and they say: Give me a bunch of money--like
10,000 bucks, which is a lot of money for a poor family in one of these
countries--and I will get your kids or you and your kids into the
United States and get them in school, get you a job, because America
has this crazy asylum policy where you can just do that.
And we will talk about how that works in a second, but that is a pull
factor.
I recently went to Latin America and met with the Presidents of
Mexico and Guatemala and Ecuador and Colombia. They all said the same
thing, which is this: Please change your policies because it is a pull
factor. You are taking some of our best and brightest people, and they
all want to come to the American border and go across because they know
this is how they can get into your country. You have a legal
immigration system where people stay here and apply and go through the
process. That is fine. But change your asylum policy.
Now, that may surprise some people. People may think: Well, the
Presidents of those countries might like when people leave and send
money back to their family.
But, no, they don't want to lose all these people, and that is what
is happening. Look at these numbers. That is what is happening.
By the way, it is not just people who are from Central America and
Mexico.
So here is an interesting chart that I asked my team to put together.
These are encounters at the southwest border--so when somebody gets
stopped, apprehended by the Border Patrol--of people who are not from
either Mexico or the Northern Triangle.
So look at how this has increased. Back in 2018, there were very few
people coming across the border illegally who weren't from Mexico or
Central America, the so-called Northern Triangle countries. Look at
what happens here. You have a huge increase of people coming over the
border who are from other countries.
So I was told today that there were people coming over the border
this year from 150 countries. You probably heard the stories of people
from Ukraine, a country that is under siege by Russia. You can't blame
the people for leaving that country. And I have been to Poland, on the
border, recently, and I have seen the refugees there. But some of these
refugees are actually coming to Mexico and then finding their way to
the southern border and coming across the southern border, from Ukraine
and also from Russia. And the Border Patrol has confirmed that for me.
So this has ticked up as this conflict continues. Why? Because they
know the easiest way to get into America is to walk across the southern
border and you claim asylum and you get in.
Now, we have just decided to bring 100,000 refugees in from Ukraine
because of this crisis. So maybe that will be a way that more people
can come. They don't have to come through the
[[Page S1852]]
southern border. But now, they know this is the easy way to come in.
And look at these numbers.
So it is not just people, again, from Mexico and Central America.
Now, it is people from all over the world. And for some of these
people, the Border Patrol is nervous because they come from countries
where there are a lot of people who want to do us harm. So people are
coming in from countries in the Middle East, as an example. They are
concerned and for good reason.
So what happens when you come to the border and you claim asylum?
So, after you tell the Border Patrol that you would like to claim
asylum, you then are permitted to come into the country, assuming you
meet a basic standard where you say the right things about having a
credible fear of persecution, and you get in line for an asylum
determination. So you come to Washington, DC, or my hometown of
Cincinnati or Tucson, AZ--wherever it is--and your wait is between 4
and 6 years. Others say it is 4 to 8 years because of the appeals
process, but let's say it is 4 to 6 years--so an average of 5 years
that you are in the United States, waiting for your asylum request to
be adjudicated.
What happens during that time period? Well, you are able to work.
Your kids are able to go to school. You get embedded into the
community, as you might imagine. Some people show up for their court
cases; some people don't. They are in the community. They probably feel
it is unlikely they will be deported. So it is not a system that works
well to have that kind of a lag time.
By the way, there are 1.5 million people in this category--1.5
million people in this backlog. Does this make any sense?
Here is what is most unusual about this process, I will say: At the
end of the process, when the asylum adjudication is made, do you know
what happens? Most people are told: I am sorry. You don't qualify.
In fact, the latest information that we have from the Department of
Homeland Security is that immigration judges granted asylum to roughly
2,400 migrants in fiscal year 2021. These, again, all originated with a
credible fear claim, a credible fear of persecution in their home
countries--2,400. That is just 14 percent of such cases completed. That
would mean, in terms of these cases, these numbers we have here, that
roughly 85 percent or 86 percent of the people who applied, who went
through the process, were not granted asylum.
Now, I have heard different numbers here, but I have never heard
somebody tell me a number that is close to 50 percent. So, the majority
of people who go through this whole process wait 4 to 6 years and
finally have their court cases heard. Again, in fiscal year 2021, it
would appear it was 2,400 in removal. That would be just 14 percent of
such cases completed. The vast majority don't meet our standard.
So who are these people? They are economic refugees. Who can blame
them for wanting to come to the United States of America? If I lived in
one of these countries and wanted to look out for my kids and my
family, as we all do, I might do the same thing.
I don't agree with people who say: Oh, these folks are coming over
here to use our welfare and to commit crimes. Some of them do--we know
that--both of those things, but I think the vast majority of them come
here--and I have talked to a lot of them, as has the Presiding Officer.
If you go to the border, you meet these people. These are families who
are poor and who are looking for a better life, a higher salary, better
healthcare, a future for their kids, but they are not coming legally,
and that is the issue. Economic refugees don't qualify as asylees. They
don't meet the standard to come in under the asylum process. They have
to come in under the legal immigration system.
Look, it is a complicated issue, but in some respects, it is really
very simple, isn't it? We have a process here in our country now
whereby, if you show up to the border and you claim asylum and you get
in, there is a very good chance, although you will not have your claim
adjudicated favorably, that you will end up being able to just stay in
the United States.
There is discussion about how many people are actually deported once
they are put into removal. In other words, if they are told they don't
meet the standards and are put into removal, are they deported? Well,
the priority of Homeland Security--and, again, we are the oversight
committee for this--is people who have criminal records and people who
are terrorists, who pose some threat to the country. That means, for
the vast majority of the people, they are not going to be prioritized
in terms of removal. There is also an opportunity to appeal. That is
why some people say it is not 4 to 6 years but that it is 4 to 8 years.
But let's say it is even 4 years. That is a long time to wait--1.5
million people.
Now, I am told that the administration is coming up with a new rule
to help deal with this issue, and I was initially very encouraged when
I heard about this.
What I have been asking for, for some time, is a system where we
adjudicate these cases at the border as soon as people come across, yes
or no. Let people know. If it is no, go back home, and apply legally.
If it is yes, come on into the United States. You then are a legal
immigrant. Eventually, you qualify for a green card, and eventually you
qualify for citizenship because you are an asylee, like a refugee. But
let's do that adjudication at the border when people come. That is what
the law says. It says people should be detained until they are
adjudicated, but it is not what we do.
I have been pushing for Congress to actually fund this effort--it is
going to be expensive--of places where people can be humanely detained
during a short period of time while they actually go before an
immigration official who can determine, yes, you are in or, no, you
don't qualify, rather than waiting years and years, as we do now.
Again, 1.5 million people are in limbo who are in the United States.
So I was sort of excited when I heard that the administration was
coming up with a new rule for quicker decisions. I think that makes
sense. However, I am learning more about this proposed rule. It appears
to be another asylum appeal on top of an already backlogged asylum
system. This is why I say that: It adds an asylum officer to the
process--who is on the border--and when a person comes forward and says
``I have a credible fear of persecution, and I want to claim asylum,''
this individual, who is not a judge but who is an asylum officer and is
trained, is able to either approve or deny the case.
The problem is, if you approve the person, the person comes in and,
again, eventually gets a green card and becomes a legal immigrant, but
if the person is denied, apparently the individual then goes into the
regular process and can immediately appeal to an immigration judge. It
just adds another layer that can be appealed. So I am concerned about
that.
Now, I am told that there will be an effort to speed up an
immigration judge's decision under this process. So, if there is an
officer at the border who makes the initial determination and if the
initial determination is no, then the judge would have to act more
quickly than the 4 to 6 years that are currently in place. So that
would be an improvement. That would be an improvement if it could be
faster, but I am not sure how that is going to happen because the
reason it is 4 to 6 years is that there is a 1.5 million-person
backlog.
My view would be, as people are coming in, they ought to be
adjudicated quickly, yes or no. If it is yes, come on in. If it is no,
go back home. That would send a message to the next group who is being
told by these smugglers we talked about: You know, just pay me this
money, and I will get you into America. Your kids can go to school, and
you can go to work.
I fear that, unless we fix this system, it is going to give those
human smugglers even more opportunities to encourage unlawful
migration.
By the way, this comes at a time when the DHS recently reported to
Congress that several million migrants in the Western Hemisphere are
getting ready to start their journey to the United States. Why? Because
they know title 42, which we talked about earlier, is going to
disappear. It is in the orange here. So this is a time when,
apparently, there are more people who are thinking about coming. We
know as we have seen the caravans and so on. That is not something that
we want to go through again. It is a pull
[[Page S1853]]
factor, as I said earlier. It is pulling people to the border. It is
giving the coyotes, the traffickers, the smugglers the ability to make
lots of money and to bring people, again, not just from Mexico and
Central America but from all over the world.
By the way, the journey north is a dangerous one. I know everybody
has heard about that and has seen that. We saw recently that there was
a tractor-trailer full of migrants that crashed, and dozens of people
were killed. We know about the sexual assaults of women, girls, boys.
We know about the human trafficking that occurs in connection with
this. We know about the cartels that are involved with this smuggling
and how much they charge people.
By the way, just last year, there were 10,000 requests for Border
Patrol help from people who were in distress because they were left in
the desert to their own devices. They needed water or they needed food.
They needed to be rescued. There have been over 10,000 cases wherein
the Border Patrol has gone and rescued migrants who were left by these
smugglers in the middle of the desert.
So this is not a system that we should hold up as a good system. This
is a system that is broken and corrupt, and the people making money,
again, are the cartels.
Drug cartels, by the way, are very involved in this. So it is about
people, but it is also about drugs, and we all know this. They know
when the Border Patrol agents are being taken offline to process people
who are coming into the country, which leaves wide-open gaps for them
to transport drugs into America. I saw it when I was down there last
year.
I was down more recently also. What I saw was--we were out at night,
and a group of migrants was coming, and the Border Patrol was going to
that location to stop them and to question them. Meanwhile, the drug
smugglers came across. We all heard it on the radio, and you could see
it, but what could they do? They were distracted.
Fentanyl is the deadliest of the drugs. This is the synthetic opioid
that is killing more people than is any other drug. About two-thirds of
the people who die of overdoses in my home State of Ohio and probably
in the Presiding Officer's State are dying from fentanyl or from a
variant of fentanyl.
It used to come from China--through the mail, for the most part. We
did a pretty good job of stopping that, including with legislation
called the STOP Act, which I was proud to be a part of. Yet it is like
Whac-A-Mole, wherein you stop it here, and it starts somewhere else,
and now it is coming in from Mexico. A lot of the analogs and a lot of
the precursors are coming from China, still, into Mexico. It is then
being made into either a pill or into some other substance that comes
into the United States.
I do a lot of work in this area in terms of the prevention and the
treatment and the longer term recovery, and I think that that is really
the most important part--to stop the demand. But I have got to tell you
that it is really hard right now for people who are interested in
helping on the treatment side or in law enforcement back home because
this stuff is flooding across the border. It means that the supply has
gone up, and it means it is so cheap. Law enforcement in Ohio told me
that it is cheaper than marijuana on the street--fentanyl--and that it
is being pressed into pills that say things like ``Xanax'' or
``Percocet.'' Unfortunately, people are taking those pills, not knowing
it has fentanyl, and some are dying of overdoses immediately.
Last year in Ohio, we had, unfortunately, a record level of overdose
deaths again. In America, the same was true--100,000 people died of
overdoses from these drugs. Again, probably 60 percent--two-thirds--in
Ohio were dying of fentanyl.
Last year, we had a 40-percent increase in fentanyl coming over the
southern border, which is based on apprehensions. By the way, Border
Patrol will tell you, when you go and talk to them, that they are not
stopping a lot of it because they don't have the ability; they don't
have the resources. But it is a true crisis--four times as much as in
2019. According to the CDC, fentanyl and these other synthetic opioids
are the biggest dangers.
A few months ago, I was in Nogales, which is south of Tucson, where
the Presiding Officer lives. I was there to ride with the Border Patrol
and to go to the port of entry and meet with the Border Patrol and
customs officials. They are doing an awesome job with what they have--a
24/7 job--to try to protect our Nation from these narcotics and these
bad actors, who come from around the world now and try to enter through
this vulnerable southern border, and just to deal with the migrant flow
that we talked about. It was pretty alarming. They need better
equipment. They need help. They need more resources. They need better
technology to be able to scan the cars and trucks that are coming in,
particularly for the drugs we talked about.
Fentanyl, by the way--a relatively small package--can kill thousands
of people, so you can hide this stuff in a car or in a truck much more
easily.
Some of the ports of entry have more technology than others, but here
is the average: Less than 2 percent of the passenger vehicles and less
than 20 percent of the commercial vehicles coming into the United
States are scanned for illegal drugs, like fentanyl. Those are the
numbers. It is unacceptable. A smuggler with multiple pounds of
fentanyl concealed in a hidden compartment, who is going to make
hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars on that, has a very good
chance of getting across the border without a search. It is not a gap
in our security; it is a gaping hole, and it helps lead to this flood
of cheap fentanyl and other dangerous drugs. Last year, Customs and
Border Protection seized nearly 10,000 pounds of deadly fentanyl--
again, a 40-percent increase from 2020.
We also face challenges between the ports of entry. In Nogales, the
Border Patrol Agent in Charge I rode with showed me huge gaps in the
fencing and described an overwhelming, recordbreaking number of
unlawful migrants and drugs coming into the United States and of the
urgent need, as he told me, for more agents, more trucks, and more
technology, including cameras and sensors. These gaps and broken areas
of fencing that need repairs, it is just inexcusable. We should fix
them.
By the way, the smugglers know where these gaps are. The human
smugglers know well. The gap I saw, there were all kinds of bottles and
old backpacks and stuff where people had discarded things as they come
across the border. And you could see the trails. You could see the
tracks where people had come across because they know where the breaks
are in the fencing. So this is a system that is broken.
The difference between what was happening here at the end of the last
administration and this system is there were changes in policy that
were put in place right away. One widely reported one was the one to
stop the installation of the fencing on day one via Executive order.
By the way, fencing alone is not enough. You have to have technology
that goes with it. But, unfortunately, they stopped the technology too.
I was in El Paso probably a year and a half ago, and they showed me
the gaps in the wall, and maybe 80 percent of the fencing was done; and
then 20 percent was openings where, unfortunately, 24/7, the Border
Patrol had to be there or else people would just come across. So it
wasn't slowing anybody down.
But I focused on the technology because you want the sensors and the
cameras and all that. The fence itself is not as effective. In fact, it
is not very effective at all if it doesn't have the technology.
They said 90 percent of the technology had yet to be installed
because of that decision on day one of the Executive order because it
stopped all the technology, too.
And I know my colleagues on the other side of the aisle and I talk
about this a lot. They are for the technology because they understand
this is an issue. But somehow, I don't know, this issue just is one
where there is a disconnect between the clearly broken system and what
we were able to get together and do on a bipartisan basis.
Since the President's inauguration, the southern border has faced the
worst unlawful migration crisis we have had. The men and women of the
Border Patrol--Customs and Border Protection--I have met over the years
are doing the best they can. We need to help them more. They have got
really difficult jobs right now.
[[Page S1854]]
For the Border Patrol, I am working on bipartisan legislation to
increase the number of agents, address retention challenges of the
existing workforce--they are losing people--and let them respond faster
to humanitarian crises, including having a Border Patrol reserve they
can call on where people are qualified and ready to help.
The ongoing crisis at our southern border is clear, and it is
persistent. It is not seasonal anymore, if you look at these numbers.
Again, we welcome legal immigrants. We always should. They enrich our
country. But we are both a nation of laws and immigrants.
I urge the Biden administration to change course, to fix this broken
system, to fix and reform this asylum process that acts as a pool
factor to America, to stop these policies that send a green light to
the human smugglers and the drug traffickers that leads to so much
human suffering and a border that is not secure.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon.