[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 175 (Tuesday, October 24, 2023)]
[Senate]
[Page S5127]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                            Border Security

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, over the weekend, the southern border 
crisis set a sobering new record. In the past year, CBP conducted more 
border apprehensions than in any year on record. Officials reported 
more than 2.4 million apprehensions since last October, and this number 
doesn't even count the illegal entries that actually evaded 
authorities.
  Most alarmingly, this news isn't actually new. Last year was the 
third straight year we set an all-time record for border apprehensions. 
In other words, every year that President Biden has been in charge of 
border security, his administration hasn't simply failed; it has failed 
to a historic and catastrophic degree.
  America has had functionally open borders for years. Along with 
millions of illegal aliens, we have allowed Chinese fentanyl and other 
lethal drugs to literally pour into our country and kill thousands of 
Americans every year.
  So the Democrats' border crisis isn't new. What is new is their 
supposed desire to finally do something about it. Now that blue State 
mayors and Governors are starting to feel the consequences of this 
catastrophic policy failure, the Biden administration says it now wants 
to take action. Of course, the administration mostly just wants to 
throw money at the problem and at its friends in local government. 
Apparently, the preferred response to a border crisis is a blue State 
bailout.
  Meanwhile, a particularly dangerous consequence of the President's 
border crisis is making history of its own. In the past year, southern 
border apprehensions of individuals on the terror watchlist broke an 
alltime record, the record that was just set the year before.

  Even President Biden's Department of Homeland Security has admitted 
in its 2024 ``Homeland Threat Assessment'' that ``record encounters of 
migrants arriving from a growing number of countries have complicated 
border and immigration security.''
  The American people have watched the Biden administration spend their 
way into plenty of problems, but they haven't managed to spend their 
way out of a single one yet.
  Our country deserves real law enforcement and real borders. Border 
security is national security. And on that front, the Senate has a lot 
of work to do.