[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.