[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 16 (Wednesday, January 25, 2023)]
[Senate]
[Pages S84-S86]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            BORDER SECURITY

  Mr. CORNYN. Now, Mr. President, to talk about what I came here to 
talk about--talk about the border.
  I live in a border State. We have 1,200 miles of border with Mexico. 
We have, as a country, 2,000 miles of border with Mexico. And we are 
seeing numbers of people showing up at the border that we have never 
seen before--millions of people since President Biden was sworn in as 
President on January 20, 2021, millions of people showing up, many of 
whom are claiming asylum and seeking to immigrate permanently into the 
United States under the asylum laws. Because the administration has a 
policy of releasing those individuals into the interior of the United 
States to await a future immigration court hearing, which may be years 
in the future because of backlog, many of those individuals do not show 
up at their immigration court hearing but simply are willing to play 
the odds that they can just melt into the Great American heartland and 
not be returned or repatriated to their country of origin or actually 
have to appear at an asylum hearing.
  We know that, statistically, the number of people who actually do 
show up for an asylum hearing in front of an immigration judge, only 
roughly 90 percent of them fail to meet the very stringent requirement 
for asylum, which is basically a credible fear of persecution based on 
some classification: race, sex, ethnic origin, or the like. That is a 
very narrow test, and it certainly does not include fear of poverty or 
even violence in your home country. Yet the policy of the Biden 
administration to basically create open borders and place individuals 
who show up and claim asylum--these are not people trying to run away 
from the Border Patrol, by the way. These are people who are turning 
themselves in because they know they can play the system, and they will 
be able to make their way into the United States without any 
consequences--certainly, no legal consequences.
  I am sure those of my colleagues who have visited the border--and we 
had a bipartisan group just a couple weeks ago who did visit again both 
Yuma, AZ, and El Paso. But as my colleagues can attest, there is no 
data, there is no image there, frankly, or no words to adequately 
convey the complexity of what is happening at the border today. To 
understand, you have to see and hear for yourself.
  Several years ago, I traveled to Brooks County, which is a little 
county in South Texas, where I visited a ranch that the Border Patrol 
had a rescue beacon in the middle of.
  And just to explain, the Border Patrol does a lot of humanitarian 
rescues because, as you can imagine, people coming from Central 
America, up across the land bridge into Mexico, up to the United 
States, many of them show up dehydrated, suffering from exposure, and 
some of them, frankly, die on the trip. But the Border Patrol, while 
they have the responsibility of enforcing our immigration laws at the 
border and interdicting illegal drugs,

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they also rescue migrants who are in distress. And what these rescue 
beacons are, out in the middle of nowhere, frankly--what they are are 
large poles with a light on top that allows migrants who are sick, 
injured, or otherwise in distress to contact law enforcement for help 
and immediately get access to first aid, water, food, whatever they 
need. There is a sign at the bottom of these rescue beacons that 
instructs the migrants to press a red button for help and to remain in 
the area.
  Well, when I first went to Brooks County, which is where this--
Falfurrias is probably the largest inland port where the Border Patrol 
has a checkpoint in Brooks County. I was surprised to see the rescue 
beacons not written in just English, not just written in Spanish but in 
Mandarin. Mandarin. This is Brooks County, TX, a rural county 70 or so 
miles from the U.S.-Mexico border, and the rescue beacon is in Chinese, 
the Chinese language. This is a factoid about the border crisis that 
doesn't get nearly the attention that it deserves. What this tells me 
and what I have learned subsequently is that migrants aren't just 
coming from Mexico. They are not just coming from Central America. They 
are literally coming from all around the world.
  Now, when I hear, for example, Vice President Harris or the President 
of the United States or Secretary of State Blinken talk about the 
migration crisis, they want to talk about root causes. And I think, 
although that is a little bit vague, I think what they are talking 
about is they view migration as an economic crisis: people living in 
their home country who are seeking a better life, which we all 
certainly understand, or fleeing violence--they want to talk about root 
causes.
  But I think what they don't understand or certainly aren't 
articulating is the fact that this is far broader than a regional 
problem concentrated in Mexico and Central America. I think the fact 
that these rescue beacons have been, for many years, written in 
English, Spanish, and Mandarin is evidence of the fact that this is a 
far larger problem but one that the administration has simply not 
acknowledged.
  A couple of weeks ago, I traveled with a bipartisan delegation of 
colleagues to El Paso, TX, which is the westernmost point in my State. 
Actually, just a bit of trivia, the city of El Paso is closer to the 
Pacific Ocean than it is to the eastern tip of Texas, to give you an 
idea of the scope of what we are talking about. It is a big place.
  But we traveled to El Paso, TX, which is an urban area, but we also 
went to Yuma, AZ, which, if you look on the map, is the southwestern 
portion of Arizona, another border State, just right up against 
California. But it is an agricultural community. I think it is fair to 
say--I am not disparaging it--it is kind of a sleepy little 
agricultural town.
  We met a number of people in El Paso and Yuma whom I want to mention. 
In El Paso, we went out on a night patrol with the Border Patrol. They 
got on their horses, and they rode over this large area where there is 
a lot of traffic. And then we were informed that they had detained two 
migrants. And so we walked over there to sort of see what was going on, 
and the Border Patrol said: Well, these two are from China. El Paso, 
TX, two Chinese migrants trying to make their way across the border. As 
a matter of fact, one of the Border Patrol Agents had to use an app on 
the phone, I think it is called Google Translate, in order to 
communicate with these migrants.

  Then, when we went to one of the detention facilities or processing 
facilities, actually--not actually detention--we met a family from 
Uzbekistan while touring the Border Patrol Central Processing Center in 
El Paso--not in Mexico, not Central America, but Uzbekistan. You can 
look that up on the map. It is not a part of the region that the 
President, the Secretary of State, and Vice President are talking about 
when they are talking about root causes of illegal immigration.
  But when we went to Yuma, the little sleepy agricultural town on the 
border of Mexico and the United States, the Acting Border Patrol Chief 
told us that one of the unusual features of a number of the migrants 
who came across Yuma were they came from 176 different countries, and 
they spoke more than 200 languages.
  And you might ask: How in the world is that possible? Well, Senator 
Kelly, one of the Arizona Senators, said: Well, there is an airport 
right across the border in Mexico, at the northern border, in a city 
called Mexicali. Again, if you look at your map of Mexico, you will see 
that Mexicali is a pretty large urban area right there on the Arizona 
border. And people fly into there. Of course, they have to pay human 
smugglers, criminal organizations that are a network that smuggle human 
beings for money from anywhere in the world to that airport, and then 
they walk across or walk up to the Yuma Border Patrol and claim asylum.
  They noted that many of them are apparently well-to-do. Somebody 
mentioned Gucci luggage. I don't know whether Gucci makes luggage or 
not, but you get the idea. These are the not the sort of mental 
pictures that I think many people have of migrants who are seeking a 
better life, necessarily, fleeing poverty, I should say, or fleeing 
violence.
  So the reason I mention this is because the reality of what is 
happening on the ground along the border undercuts the rhetoric we hear 
from the administration about how to solve this problem.
  The White House has pushed a narrative that the only way to fix the 
border crisis is to fix the ``root causes'' of migration, meaning the 
economic and security concerns that cause people to come here. It has 
honed in on the Northern Triangle, including El Salvador, Guatemala, 
and Honduras, as the primary region of concern.
  The administration's border czar, Vice President Harris, even led the 
development of the ``root causes strategy.'' The problem is the data 
shows that this is not the region driving illegal migration.
  Last month, Customs and Border Protection encountered more than a 
quarter of a million migrants at the southern border. Fewer than 33,000 
of those 250,000 were from Northern Triangle countries--33,000 out of 
the 250,000 were from Northern Triangle countries. So these are the 
three countries that the administration is focused on.
  It reminds me of the story of people who look through a soda straw at 
a problem. Well, they can look down the soda straw, and they can see 
what is happening there, but they don't see what is happening around 
it, and they lose any sense of context or the complete picture. That is 
what the administration is doing when they are looking at the border 
and the humanitarian and national security crisis occurring there on a 
daily basis and in my State's backyard.
  As a matter of fact, these three countries represent only about 13 
percent of the migrants encountered at the southern border in December. 
Mexican nationals, the large country right on our southern border--
Mexico is not driving the numbers either. Only 19 percent of the border 
encounters in December were Mexican nationals.
  So where are all these men and women and children coming from? Well, 
you can take a global map, a map of the world, and you can take a dart 
and throw the dart at the map and you are likely to hit a place where 
these migrants are coming from. Last year, across the entire border, 
Customs and Border Protection encountered migrants from 174 different 
countries. People from every corner of the globe are traveling through 
Mexico and crossing America's southern border.
  There is no question that the conditions in Mexico and the Northern 
Triangle are contributing, but they are only a small fraction of the 
problem. People around the world see the Biden administration catching 
and releasing migrants by the thousands on a daily basis. They see the 
yearslong wait for asylum cases to be adjudicated. They see the lack of 
any interior enforcement by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and as 
they look at this picture, they realize that if they can make it across 
the southern border, they are likely to be able to stay in the United 
States for years, if not a lifetime.
  Despite what the administration may think, this is not just a 
regional problem; it is a global phenomenon, run by transnational 
criminal organizations. That ought to concern all of us.
  Last year, CBP encountered migrants from 174 different countries. If 
the administration wants to fix the ``root

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causes'' of this crisis, are they going to fix the world? You can see 
why their misconception, their misunderstanding, their erroneous 
narrative of what the problem is doesn't help solve the problem.
  It is time for the Biden administration to acknowledge the reality of 
the situation and look at solutions that are realistic and effective. 
In order to get this crisis under control, we have to move quickly on a 
bipartisan basis to insist on the enforcement of our immigration laws 
when people attempt to enter our country other than through legal 
means. That is the only viable path forward, and the sooner the 
administration understands that, the better off we will all be.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Hickenlooper). The Senator from Nebraska.

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