[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 163 (Wednesday, October 4, 2023)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4933-S4935]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                            Border Security

  Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, according to news reports, September was 
another recordbreaking month at the southern border. My State, of 
course, has 1,200 miles of common border with Mexico so we are bearing 
the brunt and have borne the brunt of this flow of humanity, this 
humanitarian crisis, which has created now a public safety crisis as a 
result of unrestrained illegal immigration.
  News reports are that more than 260,000--more than a quarter of a 
million--more than a quarter of a million migrants crossed the border 
last month, making it the busiest month on record. I know sometimes it 
is hard to grasp the immensity of these numbers, but let me put it 
another way. It is an average of 8,600 migrants coming to the United 
States every day. Of course, when they come to Texas or Arizona or 
California, they don't stay there. That is why you are hearing from the 
Governor of Illinois, the Governor of New York, the mayor of New York 
City, talking about the impact on their States and their cities.
  Of course, we all know that the fentanyl crisis, which is part and 
parcel of this open border, has taken the lives of 71,000 Americans 
last year alone. We know where the precursors come from. They come from 
China. We know where it is manufactured--in Mexico--and then it comes 
across the border. The business model of the cartels is flood the 
border with people, divert the attention of the Border Patrol who have 
to engage in pushing paper and processing these migrants. Meanwhile, 
the unprotected border allows for the surge of drugs across the border, 
and they end up in all 50 States and in every community.

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  So it is an average of 8,600 migrants per day, but we have seen 
surges up to 11,000 people a day, and it isn't going to get any better 
unless something changes. Former Secretary of the Department of 
Homeland Security Jeh Johnson once warned that even 1,000 migrants a 
day overwhelm the system. We are now operating at more than 8\1/2\ 
times that pace, on average.
  When migration levels are so high, it impacts all of our missions at 
the border, even those that have nothing to do with migration. Law 
enforcement, as I said, shifted from the frontlines. Instead of 
stopping dangerous drugs, many agents find themselves pushing paper and 
changing diapers because we have seen 300,000 unaccompanied children 
come across the border since President Biden took office.
  Unfortunately, as the New York Times has documented, in at least 
85,000 instances, when Health and Human Services--the Office of Refugee 
Relocation--made a wellness call to the sponsors for those children, 
there was no answer and no followup by the administration. So the 
administration can't tell you whether they are being trafficked for sex 
or whether they are being forced to work in dangerous jobs, whether 
they are getting healthcare, whether they are going to school. They 
just can't tell you, and they, frankly, don't care. They say: It is not 
our job anymore once we place them with sponsors.

  This is up to the Child Protective Services in each of our States. As 
the Presiding Officer knows, all of our States are seeing tremendous 
caseloads in their Child Protective Services, and they can't handle 
what they have now much less the thousands more coming each day.
  Under President Biden's leadership, the crisis at the border just 
gets worse. As I said, we have hit a record of 260,000 a month. The 
United States has pretty much broken every record on the books at the 
border and broken those records again. The busiest days, years, months 
at border crossings have all happened under President Biden's watch. 
With each day that passes, the border crisis is affecting the safety 
and security of our country, and the White House refuses to accept any 
responsibility or to change anything about the way they operate or to 
reach out or to even receive suggestions or have a willingness to meet 
to try to solve the problem. They just show no interest.
  The President and his administration act like their hands are tied 
and they can't do anything, but that is simply false. In the 1990s, 
President Clinton signed a law establishing what is called expedited 
removal. It allows the Border Patrol to detain and quickly remove 
illegal immigrants. Expedited removals have been utilized by Republican 
and Democratic administrations over the years. It is a powerful 
deterrent, and what we lack now is any sense of deterrence.
  I learned with interest today that the mayor of New York is making a 
trip to Central and South America to give the message: Don't come. 
Don't come to the United States. Don't come to New York City.
  Of course, that voice is lost among the images on TV that demonstrate 
that people who do come can successfully make their way to the border 
and into the country. Of course, then there are people who successfully 
make it and call their relatives back home and say: I made it. You can, 
too. Come.
  So there is no deterrence, but there would be if we used the law that 
President Clinton signed which allows for expedited removal, because 
not all of the people coming to the border are claiming asylum, but 
they are being paroled in the nomenclature of our immigration laws. 
They are being released into the interior of the United States without 
even claiming any legitimate basis for being here.
  President Biden has the authority to conduct expedited removals 
today. He had that authority from day one, but he refuses to utilize 
it. Rather than stand up new facilities or hire more personnel to make 
the expedited removal process function, the Biden administration has 
simply been releasing people into the interior of the country at an 
unprecedented pace.
  CBS News reports that the Department of Homeland Security has 
released most migrants into the interior in recent months, instructing 
them to undergo immigration court proceedings which are years away. One 
of the New York newspapers recently reported that in order to get a 
hearing in an immigration court in New York, it could take up to 10 
years.
  The administration has engaged in catch-and-release on an 
unprecedented scale, and communities across our country are paying the 
price. Their children are being stolen by fentanyl. Their streets and 
sidewalks are filled with migrants who have nowhere to go. Their city 
budgets are being wrecked by a crisis that should be managed by the 
Federal Government.
  I have often asked myself, what is it going to take for President 
Biden to care and do something about this crisis? He seems unfazed by 
the more than 6 million border crossings that have happened since he 
became President, not to mention the 1.5 million ``got-aways.''
  He seems unconcerned that this crisis serves as a perfect diversion 
for the drug cartels that are trafficking fentanyl and other deadly 
drugs into the United States. He seems unbothered by the fact that the 
administration has lost track of hundreds of thousands of migrant 
children, including countless kids who we know are being exploited for 
child labor.
  Thanks to President Biden's neglect, the border needs far more 
resources than ever. We need more agents; we need more detention space; 
more physical barriers; more immigration judge teams; and more 
flexibility to remove individuals who have no legitimate claim to 
remain in the United States.
  I will give you an example of where one small tweak in our asylum 
practices could change a lot. It could send a message that you can't 
come unless you have a legitimate claim. It involves something like 
what is known as safe third country transit.
  For example, about a year and a half ago, Del Rio, TX--a small town 
of 35,000 people--had 15,000 Haitians show up. You can imagine the 
chaos and the burden just of trying to take care of the basic human 
needs of that many people at one time. Well, it turns out these 
Haitians did not come from Haiti, at least not directly. They had been 
living in South America. But because they knew that they could show up 
at the border, say the magic words, and then be released into the 
interior of the country, only to be told to show up for an immigration 
court hearing years in the future, they knew they could beat the 
system. They knew how to exploit the system.

  Well, neither little cities like Del Rio nor, apparently, big cities 
like New York City have the infrastructure or the ability to manage 
this many migrants in a fair, orderly, or humane way. But given the 
administration's complete lack of interest in solving the problem, the 
only thing I know to do is for Congress to act. We need Democrats and 
Republicans to try to work this out.
  I have worked on immigration issues the whole time I have been in the 
Senate, and, believe me, it is one of the most frustrating topics to 
work on that I can imagine. But I don't think we have any choice but to 
keep trying. This should be a point of agreement among our colleagues 
on both sides of the aisle. After all, the impact of this crisis is now 
being felt far beyond the southern border.
  The majority leader's home State of New York is overwhelmed, they 
say, by the burden of the migrant crisis even though Texas and Arizona, 
for example, have had millions of people come across our borders. Now 
Mayor Adams of New York City is crying uncle when 10,000 people show up 
in New York City. The Governor of New York and the mayor of New York 
City have sounded the alarm over the devastating impact of this crisis.
  The majority whip's home of Illinois is feeling the burden too. 
Governor Pritzker recently made similar comments to the Governor of New 
York and to the mayor of New York City. The situation has become so 
untenable that hundreds of migrants have begun sleeping on the floors 
of police stations and the O'Hare International Airport in Chicago.
  Cities more than 1,000 miles away from the southern border are 
overwhelmed by the unbearable weight of President Biden's border 
crisis. Thanks to his failed policies, every State has now become a 
border State. No community is immune to the consequences of the 
security failures at the southern border, including communities where I

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have met with the parents of young people who lost their lives by 
consuming fentanyl, by taking a pill that they thought was innocuous 
but that had just enough fentanyl to take their lives.
  We know where it is coming from, and it is a result of the failure to 
control the borders. There is nothing safe, orderly, or humane about 
the status quo; and our colleagues across the aisle need to work with 
us to fix it. This is now a nationwide disaster that affects every 
State and every community in America, and I hope we can rely on the 
courage and the leadership of the Members of the U.S. Congress to take 
action.
  Border security is national security. It is not just a problem in my 
State or in Arizona or in New Mexico or in California. We need to be 
clear-eyed about the vulnerabilities at the border and what the 
ramifications of an open border are, and then we need to take decisive 
action to address them.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Michigan.