[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 16 (Wednesday, January 25, 2023)]
[Senate]
[Pages S89-S91]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            BORDER SECURITY

  Mr. TILLIS. Madam President, I want to thank my friend and colleague 
from Mississippi for her comments on this subject.
  I am down here on the floor to also talk about the crisis at the 
border--the humanitarian crisis, the Homeland Security crisis, and a 
crisis that is resulting in cartels making $800 million a year in human 
trafficking.
  I joined a bipartisan delegation 2 weeks ago. We visited the border. 
It was very productive. It was one of the first bipartisan delegations 
in quite some time. The reason that was important is, if you go down 
there with a

[[Page S90]]

partisan delegation, you are only going to actually talk about one side 
of the issue. If you go down there with a bipartisan delegation, you 
can talk about what we need to do on a bipartisan basis to solve the 
crisis at the border.
  I want to start where Senator Hyde-Smith finished--the humanitarian 
crisis. I am one of the Members who has been trying to negotiate a 
bipartisan immigration reform bill that has border security and asylum 
reform in it. I had a lot of my staff ask me: Why would you do that? 
You know it is going to be unpopular. You are going to get criticized 
from the left for going too far. You are going to get criticized from 
the right for having any discussion about immigration reform.
  I have been down to the border several times. I told my staff that it 
is hard for me to forget border security telling me that they just 
transported an 11-year-old girl who had been repeatedly raped, so much 
so, she screamed so long she couldn't even speak anymore before she 
crossed the border.
  I told them I can't forget going down the Rio Grande River and seeing 
a corpse taken out of the river, realtime, while I was down there. It 
wasn't staged because it is happening repeatedly every year.
  When you hear stories of truckloads of people being bused across the 
border--53 of them dying through suffocation and heat exposure on 
American soil--I can't forget that. That is a humanitarian crisis that 
has to be solved.

  Then I went to the border last week and I started at the Rio Grande 
Sector and then I went over to the Yuma sector. At night, at the Rio 
Grande Sector, we saw two Chinese nationals who had been apprehended.
  Chinese nationals pay, on average, about $35,000 to cross the border. 
In many cases, they don't have the money to do it. They have somebody 
invest in them, and then they become indentured servants in the United 
States to pay off that debt.
  You have people pay $5,000, $6,000, $10,000 who have an expectation 
from the cartel that they have a debt to be repaid. That may be an 
honest job that they could get or that could be an illegal activity 
that helps the cartels.
  Now we go over to the Yuma Sector. The Yuma Sector is in Western 
Arizona. There is a section of border there that hasn't been completed. 
It is about 7 miles wide. But the most important part of that 7 miles 
is about a 12-foot gate. Three years ago, 8,000 people crossed through 
that gate; 2 years ago, 200,000 people crossed through that same 12-
foot gate; and over the last 12 months, 300,000 people have. Five 
thousand of them were Russian nationals; another 5,000 were Chinese 
nationals.
  Look, I understand why people want to get out of Russia, and I 
understand why people want to get out of China. What I don't understand 
is why on Earth in transit to that border--that dangerous crossing that 
you are paying tens of thousands of dollars to a cartel, a 
transnational criminal organization--why on Earth wouldn't you stop in 
a nation that is safe, the first safe country that you can get to out 
of the country that you are trying to flee from?
  That is how international asylum treaties work. You get out of the 
dangerous country. You go to a country that has international 
agreements on asylum. You claim asylum. And then you may even want to 
seek asylum in the United States.
  We had reports in the Yuma Sector of people who are flying into 
Mexicali. They are flying in, not making the trek as many people think 
of caravans coming from Central America through Mexico--flying into 
Mexicali with suitcases and bags and taking a cab to the border, making 
sure their toll is paid and then crossing the border. There is no way 
on Earth that people coming from many of these nations could not have 
sought asylum somewhere closer to home and then give us a chance for 
orderly entry.
  In total, it is estimated that the transnational criminal 
organizations, the cartels, are being paid almost $800 million a year. 
What are they doing with that? If you go down to the border--
particularly if you go down there around midnight--they play the same 
play every night, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. They will take 
innocent people who are going to come across the border, and they tell 
them: Once you get across the border, present yourself to a Border 
Patrol agent, and you will be processed, which is exactly what happens.
  Under the Biden administration, you are likely to be released within 
a few days or not more than about a week. The disturbing trend is the 
one that Senator Hyde-Smith talked about, the disturbing number of 
people who are evading Border Patrol. Why on Earth would you not opt to 
go into a facility that is heated in the winter and cooled in the 
summer and spend a week of being fed three times a day, to have access 
to facilities, to have changing tables for babies, to have play areas 
while they are being detained and processed? Why on Earth would you 
avoid all that and take the dangerous step of evading detection, 
unless, at least for some of them, there is a nefarious purpose.
  Then they are moving into communities where we have already seen--in 
North Carolina, an illegal immigrant murdered a young lady just a 
couple of years ago. We have seen this crime, and it tracks back almost 
invariably to the people who are the so-called got-aways.
  Now I want to go to the Yuma Sector and talk about those 300,000 
Border Patrol. I am wearing a ``Back the Blue'' flag. But as you all 
know, if it is Border Patrol, they wear green uniforms, so I say, 
``Back Law Enforcement.''
  Right now, Border Patrol only has less than half of the people who 
are sworn to protect the border doing those jobs. They are in 
processing facilities. They are driving buses. They are providing 
support for daycare. Literally, I am not exaggerating.
  So that means that we have half as many people protecting a border 
that has wide-open spaces. There are no structures whatsoever. Come 
across. Walk through the Rio Grande. In most cases, you can. You don't 
have to swim. But when those 300,000 people get there--this is the most 
amazing thing about this country--they are going through that 12-foot 
gate. If Border Patrol goes there, then the rest of the border is open 
for the got-aways. Our country is so extraordinary that they say: I 
know that it is only about a 10-minute ride from that 12-foot gate to 
the processing facility, but they won't transport a child unless they 
have a car seat for them. If somebody has disabilities, they have to 
make special accommodations. Imagine 300,000--300,000--people coming 
across the border in a 12-month period, what Border Patrol has to do to 
conform to our laws and treat these people humanely and safely.
  They need time. Time can only come when Congress recognizes that we 
have to secure the border. We have to fill the gaps. We have to insist 
that if you want to come to this country, present yourself at a legal 
port of entry, present a request for asylum, you will be processed.
  We need to send the message: If you want to come to the United 
States, thank you for the compliment you are willing to risk your life 
to come to the United States, but respect our laws and don't pay 
cartels $800 million a year so that they can create a conduit for 
fentanyl and other drugs that are poisoning almost 100,000 Americans a 
year.
  Now let's talk about immigration reform. I think that one of the ways 
that we can provide a future flow--a downward pressure on future flow--
is to simply say to people who want to respect our laws and apply for 
citizenship, for work visas, or other forms of being in this country 
legally, we need to actually fix the immigration laws that we have on 
the books to do that.
  If we do that, I am not going to have to worry about those memories 
of that little girl. I am not going to have to worry about the corpses 
that we are picking up in Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico. I believe we 
will have fewer people dying from fentanyl because less of it will come 
here, for a couple reasons: We will have better security at the border, 
and we will bankrupt the cartels that are making, over the last 2 
years, almost $2 billion.
  We need people in Congress to recognize that a bipartisan solution is 
possible. We have a crisis at the border that needs to be solved, and 
we have to have an administration that spends more than four hours in 2 
years at the border recognizing it is on them to help us fix it.

[[Page S91]]

  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Baldwin). The Senator from Tennessee.

                          ____________________