[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 14 (Monday, January 23, 2023)]
[Senate]
[Pages S46-S47]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
Border Security
Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, after a busy and productive time at home
for several weeks, I am glad to be back in the Senate as we kick off
the new year and a new Congress. After 2 years of Democrats controlling
both Chambers, the House and Senate, the American people voted for a
change in the midterm election. Voters sent a Republican majority to
the House and opted for a divided government.
With a Republican House, Democrats, of course, will no longer be able
to abuse the budget reconciliation process to circumvent the normal
legislative process, which means the end to partisan spending bills.
They will have no choice but to work for common ground and to move
legislation through what we call regular order around here, which means
by the rules.
While there is a lot we need to do in the coming months, one of our
top priorities must be the humanitarian and security crisis at the
southern border. This crisis has been raging since President Biden took
office 2 years ago. Day after day, month after month, migrants have
crossed the border in unprecedented numbers.
Over the years, we have seen migration surges at different times, but
nothing like this. The scale and the immensity of this crisis are
unprecedented.
Last month, U.S. Customs and Border Protection encountered more than
250,000 migrants at the southern border. That is the back door to my
State, the State of Texas. A quarter of a million people in a single
month--that is a new record and a shocking number.
To put that in perspective, Customs and Border Protection encountered
more migrants in November and December last year than it did in all of
2017--more in 2 months, the last 2 months of last year, than it did in
the entire year of 2017.
Those figures tell you a lot, but no words can accurately capture
just how complex and challenging the situation at the border truly is.
To understand what is happening on the ground, you need to show up. You
need to see it firsthand, and you need to listen and learn from the
experts and the people who are dealing with this day in and day out.
I have traveled to the border many, many times over the last few
years, as this crisis has gotten worse. I have spoken with the law
enforcement officials who have taken an oath to uphold and enforce our
laws, the nonprofits--groups like Catholic Charities, which provide
humanitarian services--local officials, mayors, and county judges, who
are responsible to their own taxpayers for providing services that are
overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of people coming across the border.
Then there are private landowners who find that their fences are
knocked down, their properties are trashed, and that people trespass
upon it at will.
Then there are the small business owners that depend on the foot
traffic that frequently comes back and forth across the border and
countless others who are impacted by the current border crisis.
Of course, these are exactly the kinds of people you might want to
talk to if you actually had an interest in learning more about what the
problem is and fashioning some kind of solution.
I was happy to introduce these experts to a bipartisan group of my
Senate colleagues a couple of weeks ago. Both of us representing border
States, Senator Sinema, the Senator from Arizona, and I have had what
you might call an exchange program between our two States.
A couple of years ago I visited Tucson, AZ, and Senator Sinema, in
turn, visited the Rio Grande Valley for a series of briefings. The
first thing that jumps out at you is that the border is big--2000
miles. It covers a lot of territory, and it varies a lot, depending on
whether you visit urban areas like El Paso or rural areas like Yuma,
AZ.
That is why, while I am happy that President Biden finally went to
the border in El Paso, briefly, I know he could not have gotten a full
awareness of the challenges that the current crisis, as a result of his
open border policies, presents.
Nevertheless, seeing two very different border crossings was valuable
to both Senator Sinema and myself, and we decided it was time to share
that information with our colleagues. So we invited several of them to
join us. In total, there were eight of us--eight Senators on the trip.
On the Republican side, we had Senators Tillis, Lankford, Moran, and
myself. On the Democratic side, we had Senators Kelly, Murphy, and
Coons.
Actually, now that Senator Sinema has declared herself as an
Independent, she said that this was not a bipartisan trip but a
tripartisan trip.
We spent a day in El Paso, speaking with law enforcement and local
stakeholders. In recent months, the city of El Paso has been ground
zero and overwhelmed by the influx of migrants. It doesn't have the
capacity--no border community does--to care for the tens of thousands
of people coming across the border daily or the infrastructure to house
them or to transport them safely to other locations.
Fortunately, at least in the near term--and it tends to go in waves,
up and down--most recently, the pace in El Paso has slowed down, but
some of the sidewalks downtown are still lined with makeshift tents and
sleeping bags--migrants camping out in the city, nowhere to go, waiting
for their next meal and waiting for some place warm to be able to
sleep.
We heard about the tremendous burden this crisis has placed on law
enforcement at all levels. You can imagine it. They are already
understaffed, and now they are overwhelmed.
We heard about the growing strain on the nongovernmental
organizations and the cities, as they try to mitigate this crisis.
Again, this is a crisis of the President's own making, as a result of
his open border policies and the failure to enforce our immigration
laws.
We heard from business leaders who depend on customers coming to
their business, as well as other local stakeholders, about the larger
impact this crisis has had on the El Paso community and the southwest
border region, especially the effect it has had on legitimate trade and
travel, which are vital to the region's economy.
I don't know if most nonborder-State Senators understand it or not,
but we have the largest land port in America in Laredo, TX. They have
somewhere between 14 to 16,000 trucks a day come across the border for
legitimate trade and commerce. Obviously, that legitimate trade and
commerce that creates a lot of jobs all across America are impeded by
this vast influx of humanity that are coming currently as a result of
the nonenforcement policies of the administration.
The day after we visited El Paso, we traveled to Yuma, AZ. And, if
you are looking at a map of Arizona, it is in the southwest portion of
Arizona, just right next to California, at the very southern-southwest
tip of Arizona.
Yuma, AZ, is an agricultural community, by and large--a small town,
not a lot of infrastructure, not a lot of hospitals, schools, or other
places for migrants to be taken care of when they come to the border.
So it is no surprise that the Border Patrol there in Yuma, AZ, a little
small town on the southwestern border of Arizona--the Border Patrol
agents--are strained, security missions are taking a hit, and it has
become even more challenging to process and care for the volume of
migrants they see coming across the border.
[[Page S47]]
Now, lest anybody think that illegal immigration is just related to
Mexico and Central America, people fleeing poverty and violence, the
acting Border Patrol chief in the Yuma sector told us that, in that
sector alone, they encountered migrants speaking 200 languages, from
176 countries--this little sleepy town in southwest Arizona, people
speaking 200 languages, from 176 countries.
Well, you might ask: How is that possible? Where are these people
coming from? I thought they were all coming from Mexico or maybe even
Central America.
Well, it just so happens that there is a major city just south of
Yuma, AZ, in northern Mexico, called Mexicali, and what we are seeing
is international human smuggling operations flying people into Mexicali
and then turning up in Yuma and claiming asylum--again, overwhelming
the capacity of this small little border town to be able to deal with
these huge numbers--and people, frankly, abusing the asylum system,
which is supposed to be people fleeing from persecution.
There are people with Gucci luggage coming across the border and
claiming asylum, knowing that, because of the broken asylum process,
they will be transported into the interior of the United States and
given a notice to appear for a future court hearing. But because of the
backlog of the immigration courts, it will be literally years before
they are notified to show up.
If they do show up, 90 percent of them will be unsuccessful in
obtaining asylum. But the fact is they don't, which should be a
surprise to no one.
Well, as I said, I have learned a lot from the experts on the ground,
and I hope our colleagues, our bipartisan delegation of Senators, did
as well.
I appreciate the Senators who took the time to visit El Paso and
Yuma, and I know all of us appreciate the men and women on the
frontlines who took time out of their busy schedules, already
overwhelmed by this humanitarian crisis and border security crisis.
They took the time to talk to us, hoping--just hoping--that we might be
able to do something to help them.
Now, eight Senators--it won't surprise you--have different views and
ideas about how to solve the crisis. Standing together along the border
doesn't mean we agree on everything, but it does mean that we are
interested in finding solutions. There are conversations occurring in
the House and the Senate, and Members from both sides of the aisle are
floating a range of ideas to address the crisis.
There are some bipartisan conversations occurring, including Senator
Sinema from Arizona and Senator Tillis from North Carolina, and I am
glad they are working on this, and I am eager to see what they come up
with.
As we all know, President Biden has shown that he is completely
unwilling to use his current authorities to secure the border. And the
truth is, he has plenty of authorities but refuses to do his duty and
enforce our laws.
So it is time for Congress to take action. Of course, that is
something that is easier said than done--535 of us, 435 in the House
and 100 in the Senate. It is not easy to get everybody--or at least a
majority--on the same page, and we have the new reality of divided
government, as I said earlier. But we do have within our capacity the
ability to try and to achieve consensus and the art of the possible.
I know it is going to be a huge reach, a steep hill--pick your
metaphor. It is going to be hard because the Democratic majority in the
Senate has a very different approach than a Republican majority in the
House. But we have to be realistic about what can pass the House and
earn 60 votes in the Senate. A bill that will pass only one Chamber
won't accomplish anything in dealing with this crisis.
Of course, at this moment, the border crisis is consuming all the
oxygen in the room, but this must be addressed before we will be able
to come to an agreement on any other immigration reforms. It is a
prerequisite, a foundation, for any larger agreement. The million-
dollar question is, What will that look like?
As my colleagues and I saw a couple of weeks ago, one of the biggest
challenges is processing and holding capacity. This is a feature of the
current catch-and-release policies of the Biden administration. It is
not a bug. It is a feature of their catch-and-release policies, and it
is being exploited daily by the criminal organizations that continue to
get rich smuggling people and drugs across the border.
Our system simply was not designed to keep up with the influx of this
many people crossing the border every day. As a result, Border Patrol
agents told us that they are being shifted from the frontlines to
process people in the back office, leaving huge security gaps--fully 40
percent, in some instances, of the border left unprotected because the
Border Patrol has to process the migrants, and they have to leave the
frontlines to do so, which means that the drug smugglers have an
opening, which they exploit on a regular basis, to move illegal drugs
into the United States.
Cartels are using these corridors to traffic fentanyl and other
dangerous drugs into the country--the drugs that took the lives of
108,000 Americans last year alone. One hundred eight thousand Americans
died due to drug overdoses from drugs almost entirely coming across the
southwestern border.
You wonder what it will take to get people's attention, to wake up to
this public health hazard, this public safety hazard, this humanitarian
and national security crisis.
At the same time, migrants with weak and even frivolous asylum claims
are being released into the country to await a court date that is years
down the line. As I said, many are no-shows, having successfully made
it into the United States without any legal right to immigrate. That
has got to change.
We also need to strengthen border security, which I would define,
again, based on learning from Border Patrol and other experts along the
border--border security requires a combination of personnel,
technology, and infrastructure. That includes appropriately located
barriers, fences, levees. It includes sensors, cameras, roadways, and
more agents to prevent dangerous people and dangerous substances from
entering our country. A safe and secure border relies on all of these
elements.
It is clear that Congress needs to invest in more resources, but more
than that, in correct policies so that immigration across our border
will be safe, orderly, humane, and legal.
This movement of masses of humanity--250,000 a month--handled by the
human smugglers and by the cartels who are getting rich--this is not
good for anybody. It is not good for the migrants, who are viewed as a
mere commodity--many of whom are left to die. Many young girls and
women are sexually assaulted en route because these cartels don't view
them as human beings; they view them as a commodity, something they can
trade for money.
Well, there are a range of other reforms that I am looking at as we
try to find our way toward a solution. I am open to hearing from anyone
who has an idea, and I hope we can have a serious debate and solutions
here in Congress.
What the President saw in El Paso was a snapshot of a sanitized
border. I have no illusions that he has any depth of understanding
about the complexity of what we are dealing with there, but I am glad
he finally showed up after 2 years.
Given a Republican majority in the House and a Democratic majority in
the Senate, we need to be realistic about what it is we might be able
to accomplish. But, again, this is all about what somebody has called
the art of the possible. That is what legislating is all about. But the
fact is, there is an unprecedented humanitarian and security crisis at
the southern border, and it is past time for Congress to do something
to address it.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Tennessee.