[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 150 (Monday, September 19, 2022)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4814-S4815]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                              Immigration

  Madam President, on another matter, the migration surge at the 
southern border has been at a crisis level for a year and a half now. 
Coming from a border State with 1,200 miles of common border with 
Mexico, we have experienced a disproportionate impact of that 
humanitarian surge, as well as the drugs that have found their way into 
the United States as a result.

  This, after all, is part of a business model or plan by the cartels, 
which get rich smuggling people and drugs into the United States. But 
just in terms of the volume of migrants coming across, we have logged 
more than 150,000 border crossings every month for each of the last 17 
consecutive months. That is unprecedented and shocking.
  Alarm bells used to sound when illegal border crossings topped 
100,000 a month, but we haven't dipped below that level since President 
Biden took office. In the last year, Customs and Border Protection has 
logged nearly 2.3 million--2.3 million--border crossings across the 
southern border.
  Now, these records come with serious consequences for everyone 
involved. Our Democratic colleagues and members of the news media focus 
their attention on how this surge impacts the migrants themselves, and 
there is no question that migrants endure a brutal journey to reach our 
country. They typically pay thousands of dollars to travel with human 
traffickers--or coyotes, as they are sometimes called--who are known to 
rape, rob, abuse, and abandon for dead their customers.
  Those who survive the perilous journey to our border still face 
serious dangers. These are people who come not through our legal 
immigration process but who want to jump ahead of the line of the 
people who are waiting, even though we naturalize about a million 
people a year in the United States.
  In June of this year, 53 migrants, including 3 children, passed away 
after being locked in a tractor-trailer rig on a 100-degree day in 
Texas--a horrible way to die. The Washington Post described it as the 
``deadliest smuggling incident of its kind in U.S. history.'' Last 
month, two children died attempting to cross the Rio Grande and drowned 
in that river attempting to make their way into the United States. One 
was a 5-year-old girl from Guatemala who was swept from her mother's 
arms into the river. And just 2 weeks ago, Customs and Border 
Protection confirmed that another nine migrants had died trying to 
cross the Rio Grande.
  Since last October, more than 750,000 migrants have died at our 
border. That does not include the ones we have not yet discovered but 
will eventually discover as a rancher comes across the bleached bones 
of a migrant who has been left behind by the heartless coyotes.
  Migrants are suffering every day, and we can't lose sight of the 
humanitarian crisis, but the migrants aren't the only victims of the 
border crisis. They have chosen to try to enter the United States 
irregularly, other than through legal means, and turn their lives over 
to people who care nothing for them but care only about them as a human 
commodity and how much money they can make smuggling them into the 
United States.
  But migration surges have a devastating impact on border communities 
like the border communities in my State and Arizona, New Mexico, and 
California. Over the last year and a half, I have visited our border 
communities several times and repeatedly have heard of the strain of 
this crisis. Nonprofits that try to assist, in a humanitarian way, the 
migrants lack the space or resources to care for the thousands of 
people entering our country every day. Local businesses try to stay 
afloat amid safety concerns and significant financial losses. Morgues 
have reached capacity due to the influx of deceased migrants. As we 
have discussed during a Judiciary Committee hearing last week, local 
health systems and emergency response services are stretched to the 
breaking.
  Last year alone, in a small town called Del Rio, TX, 15,000 Haitian 
migrants showed up under a bridge. Can you imagine a town of 35,000 
people having to deal with trying to address the needs and treat these 
migrants in a humane way? Well, during the 2019 surge, Customs and 
Border Protection reported that it was on track to refer more than 
31,000 migrants for medical treatment, compared with only 12,000 the 
previous year.
  Of course, the surge in 2019 pales in comparison to what is happening 
now as a result of President Biden's failed border policies. The number 
of migrants needing medical care today is much, much higher. The strain 
this places on local hospitals and public health systems not only 
impacts the migrants but also the American citizens who live and work 
in these border communities.

[[Page S4815]]

  We all remember the strain on our healthcare systems during the 
height of the pandemic. Hospitals inundated with COVID cases made it 
more difficult to get care in the event you were experiencing some 
other health emergency. As Brooks County Sheriff Martinez wrote in his 
testimony in the hearing we had last week, ambulances that ordinarily 
would respond to emergency calls from local citizens are now diverted 
to answer calls in remote areas to answer the needs of the migrants who 
are experiencing a health emergency, reducing the medical services 
available for the local residents who actually pay the taxes that 
support those services.
  The impact of this crisis on border communities in Texas is not a 
consideration for the Biden administration. They simply don't care--or, 
frankly, most of my Democratic colleagues here in the Senate. We heard 
from the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, the senior Senator 
from Illinois, complaining about the terrible state of our broken 
immigration system and what is happening now as migrants are being 
bused to places all across the country, including Chicago. But he is 
the only one who can convene a markup of legislation.
  Our Democratic colleagues have a Democrat in the White House, a 
Democratic Speaker, and a Democratic majority leader in the U.S. 
Senate, yet we have not seen a single piece of legislation offered or 
passed to try to deal with the crisis. It is always somebody else's 
problem or it is just a political issue that you flail in the runup to 
the coming election.
  Migrants are arriving in someone else's backyard--what do you care?--
inundating someone else's public health system along the U.S.-Texas 
border and filling up somebody else's morgue. Apparently, the Biden 
administration doesn't care.
  And I haven't mentioned the 108,000 Americans who have died of drug 
overdoses last year alone. Virtually all of those drugs, including for 
the 71,000 Americans who died from synthetic opioid or fentanyl 
overdoses, come from the southern border.
  The precursors come from China. They come to Mexico, where the 
cartels get rich shipping their poison into the United States. And then 
it is distributed by criminal street gangs, like the same gangs that 
are responsible for the dozens and dozens of shootings that seem to 
occur in a lot of our major cities on a weekly basis, including places 
like Chicago.
  These gangs that distribute the drugs that kill Americans fight for 
market share. They fight for territory. Yet our Senate Democratic 
colleagues who have been in the majority now--who control both the 
Senate, the House, and the White House--have not offered a single piece 
of legislation or a single response.
  In Texas, because of our proximity to the border, we don't have the 
luxury of ignoring this problem. Our communities are somehow expected 
to absorb and care for this vast humanitarian crisis, even though they 
don't have the resources to do so, even though it is the Federal 
Government's responsibility. International borders and immigration 
enforcement is a Federal responsibility. Yet the State of Texas and 
taxpayers in the State have spent billions of dollars to do the job 
that the Federal Government simply refuses to do and even then are 
overwhelmed.
  It simply is unacceptable for our Senate colleagues or our Members of 
the House who haven't lifted a finger to deal with these problems to 
say this isn't our problem because it is not happening to us. Well, 
that is why maybe--just maybe--the fact that migrants who are showing 
up in Washington, DC, in New York, and Chicago seem to be getting the 
attention of others who previously have not lifted a finger or 
expressed any concerns whatsoever.
  By the way, the Biden administration has been shipping and flying 
migrants into the interior of the United States for the last year and a 
half. I mean, you haven't heard a single peep. But when they start 
showing up in relatively small numbers compared to what is coming 
across the border, the Mayor of Washington, DC, declares a crisis. She 
asked for the activation of the National Guard.
  Since April, roughly 9,400 migrants have arrived in Washington, DC. I 
mentioned 2.3 million have showed up at the border. But now, when 9,400 
migrants arrive in Washington, DC--a self-described sanctuary city--the 
Mayor cries out for help from the Federal Government. She declared a 
public health emergency.
  Well, I mentioned the total number, but an average of 6,000 migrants 
cross the southern border every day. And yet the Mayor of Washington, 
DC--a self-described sanctuary city--is in a panic when 9,400 come to 
her city.
  The Border Patrol's Rio Grande Valley Sector alone sees almost an 
average of almost 1,400 migrants a day. Over the last 5 months, DC has 
absorbed the same number of migrants that the Rio Grande Valley Sector 
sees in a single week, and the city is crying out for help.
  The way the Mayor really could help is to pick up the phone and call 
her friends in the Biden administration and say: We need to do 
something about what is happening at the border.
  That would be a constructive thing to do. We are more than happy to 
work with our Democratic colleagues to come up with some solutions like 
the Bipartisan Border Solutions Act that I introduced last year with a 
Democrat, a border State Senator, Senator Sinema; Tony Gonzales, a 
Republican from the 23rd Congressional District; and Henry Cuellar, a 
Democrat from Laredo, TX.
  We offered this bill as a bipartisan, bicameral beginning to come up 
with a solution. Yet we have not heard a single peep out of the Biden 
administration. You would think with the President's poll numbers 
plummeting as a result of his failure to deal with this border crisis, 
they would be looking for some way out, somewhere to land that plane. 
But they have not reached out at all. They have not responded. And 
Democratic leadership in the White House, House, and the Senate have 
taken zero action.
  I would just like my Democratic colleagues to pause for a moment and 
think about the communities in my State that have been operating at 
crisis levels since President Biden took office more than a year and a 
half ago. We are the ones and they are the ones picking up the Federal 
Government's slack and managing a crisis--or trying to--that our 
Democratic colleagues refuse to even acknowledge.
  My constituents and border communities in Texas and beyond are 
exhausting resources paid for by their tax dollars to serve their own 
communities--spending them on the Federal Government's responsibility. 
And it shouldn't be any surprise if they are exhausted; they are 
overwhelmed; and they are desperate for the Biden administration and 
the Democratic leadership in the House and Senate to do something.
  Maybe, just maybe, now that this crisis has caught the attention of 
the Mayors of Washington, DC, and New York, and Chicago--maybe the 
administration will pay attention to those Mayors when they have 
ignored this problem so far.
  Maybe, just maybe, they will see that what is happening along our 
border every day is dangerous, unsustainable, and a problem that we 
need to work on together to address.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Duckworth). The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. SCHUMER. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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