[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 181 (Thursday, November 2, 2023)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5329-S5330]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                            Border Security

  Mr. President, there are lots of conversations happening right now 
about border security, and rightfully so. I mean, it is not news in 
this Chamber. It is not news nationwide--the numbers that have 
increased and people crossing the border that are not legal.
  Millions of them in the past 3 years have crossed the border asking 
for asylum. Now, a lot of folks have said: Hey, we want to help people 
all over the world. We are the United States of America. That is who we 
are.
  I would say: I agree. We are the United States of America, and we are 
dominantly made up of immigrants in our country.
  That is a good thing, and it is a strength of this culture that we 
have of people who want to succeed, want to be able to work hard, and 
want to be able to contribute to their neighbors and their families. 
Let's draw them from all over the world.
  But things have really significantly changed. Americans see it on the 
headlines in the news, but they may not understand the data behind it 
and how significant the change has been.
  If I go back to 2010--ancient history, 2010--that year we had 21,000 
people cross our southern border and ask for asylum that year--21,000 
in the year 2010. We now have 21,000 asking for asylum in 3 days now.
  There is a huge shift. What has occurred is that the cartels have 
found a gap in our law. The gap in our law is not new. It is just being 
exploited in a new way. That is that they are recruiting people 
worldwide and saying: I can get you into America for a fee.
  And they are asking people worldwide to be able to give them 
thousands of dollars. They will get them across the border, teach them 
the magic words to say: ``I have fear in my country.'' That meets the 
minimum threshold. No matter how many countries they have been through 
to be able to get there, they can say, ``I fear my original country,'' 
and we allow them in and then put them in line to get to an immigration 
judge. That line currently in New York is 10 years long to get to a 
judge.
  So they wait 10 years to get to a judge on the first stage. Then they 
still have got to do the next stage. It could be up to 20 years now, 
with the backlog, before they get an answer to the question: Are you 
eligible for asylum?
  By the way, statistics show the vast majority are not eligible for 
asylum, and everyone knows the joke. But there is a gap in our law that 
is being exploited by cartels.
  How can I say this so certainly? Well, Canada closed that gap two 
decades ago. Canada also saw the same gap that was being exploited 
there, and so they made a simple change in their law; that is, if you 
have crossed in another safe country and then come to Canada and want 
to ask for asylum, they will just respond to you: You should have asked 
in the previous country. That is the international standard, by the 
way. It is not crazy. That is actually normal. You see, asylum is the 
same as refugee status, the same in international law. A refugee is 
somebody who flees to a spot, who is afraid, gets to a refugee center, 
and says to the U.N.: I have dramatic fear of persecution in my 
country. If they do, then they actually share them all over the world, 
including here in the United States. We take refugees here from all 
over the world.

  Asylum seekers are on the same standard. They are supposed to go to 
the next safe place, get there, and request asylum. That is the 
international standard, but we don't do that here.
  Can I give you more evidence? So far this year, we have had 45,000 
people from India who have crossed our southern border, paid the 
cartels, crossed into our country, and said they had fear in their 
country--from India. They take about four flights, including through 
dangerous countries like France, to be able to get to Mexico--the 
closest airport--and then literally take a bus rented by the cartels up 
to the border to be dropped off for their last delivery there to us so 
they can say: I have fear in my country.
  This doesn't make sense to just about everyone in the world. Just 
about everyone in the world has shifted on this except for us. We are 
literally inviting people from all over the world to exploit our 
system.
  I am a ``tall fences, wide gates'' person. I think we need to have 
good border security so that we know who is coming in but have wide 
gates so we are open to legal immigration and to say: We want the 
interchange of people from all over the world to be able to come here, 
work here, grow their families here, and invest in the future of 
America. But when we are encouraging illegal immigration, that is a 
real threat to us as a country.
  Don't just take my word for it; ask mayors all over America. They 
will tell you. They don't know what to do with the number of people who 
are coming--this is not a red State-blue State issue--whether it be New 
York State and New York City, which are saying ``Make it stop,'' or 
whether it is areas in South Texas and Southern Arizona that are saying 
``Our small communities are absolutely overrun.'' None of those folks 
are opposed to immigration. They are just opposed to illegal 
immigration, what everyone knows is an exploitation of the system. We 
should fix the system.
  Now, this is more than dollars. There has been a lot of conversation 
in this body lately. We will just add more money to it. They just need 
more dollars. Well, I would say not only do I not agree with that, 
Secretary Mayorkas, the head of Homeland Security, doesn't agree with 
that. On Wednesday of this week, he released an opinion piece, 
published in the Washington Post, which I would encourage every one of 
these Members to read.
  There you go--you just heard a Republican say: Read the Washington 
Post. It is a new day.
  If you read that opinion piece from Secretary Mayorkas, in it, he 
calls the funding request for DHS a ``tourniquet,'' saying that what 
they really need is a change in law to be able to make a difference for 
what is happening on the southern border.
  It is not dollars that are needed. It is policy changes that are 
needed. It is this administration enforcing different policies, but it 
is also us fixing obvious gaps.
  Right now, of the around 6,000 people a day who are currently 
crossing the border illegally--6,000 a day is the most current number--
about half of those are being released under something called 
withholding. Now, I would dare say most of the folks in this room and 
most of the folks listening--of the five people watching C-SPAN right 
now--most of those folks are not familiar with the term 
``withholding.'' Withholding is a new thing that is being exploited by 
the cartels. It is another gap in our system like asylum is. It says 
basically: Hey, I am afraid--not on asylum necessarily--I am afraid 
there is going to be violence in my country. I want to go to an 
immigration judge.
  As soon as they say that, they end up in the line that is 10 to 20 
years long to get to an immigration judge, and they are in the country. 
Then their next step is, once they are in, they snap a picture of their 
new little document they have, send it back to their family,

[[Page S5330]]

and say: I paid this cartel. I said these words. I am in the country. 
And everybody else keeps coming from there.
  We should fix this gap if we know there is a problem. Why? Not 
because it is just being exploited in sheer numbers; it is because we 
don't know who these folks are. Many of them are folks who are coming 
to work and coming to connect with family. I get that. They should come 
through a legal route, and we should encourage them to be able to do 
that. But some of these folks are not coming for our good.
  In the past year, 150 people were picked up who are on our Terror 
Watchlist, coming across our southern border. That is more than the 
last 5 years combined just in the past year. And those are the people 
we picked up. This past year, over 1 million people crossed our border 
who literally the Border Patrol could see in the desert but couldn't 
get to. We have no idea for those million. They weren't turning 
themselves in like some other folks are; they are in camo and running 
from Border Patrol.

  Right now, Border Patrol can't get to them because they are 
processing so many other folks, they don't have the manpower to do it. 
So the conversation is, well, let's just add more manpower. The problem 
still remains. We may have more manpower, but we still have millions of 
people crossing and mayors all over the country saying: Make it stop. 
We want a legal process to go through.
  There is a way to be able to do this, and we should.
  In the past 2 years, 70,000 people--in just the last 2 years--have 
been released into the country who are considered by DHS special 
interest aliens. These are folks from Syria, from Iran, from Iraq, from 
other areas of known terrorism. They weren't on our Terror Watchlist, 
and we don't have any criminal records for them, but where they are 
from and their specific areas cause national concerns. What happened to 
those folks? Those 70,000 who were released into our country are 
awaiting a hearing 10 years from now. That is what happened to them 
because the system is being gamed.
  If there is any lesson we should have learned from 9/11, where 19 
people who were not legally present in the country killed thousands of 
Americans, it should be that we have to be able to manage legal 
immigration, to encourage legal immigration and discourage illegal 
immigration.
  It is an issue that I have talked about over and over again in this 
body, but it is an issue that continues to rise in the hearts and the 
minds of the American people because more people are feeling it 
nationwide and in more States, and they are just asking a simple 
question, and they usually catch me and say a simple statement: I am 
not anti-immigrant; I just want it to be legal. That shouldn't seem 
like a radical idea to a body that makes law, that we would want things 
to be legal in America, but for whatever reason, it has become more and 
more challenging to just follow the law and to make clear law.
  One other thing. The administration, a year ago just last week, put 
in a new Venezuela policy. We are at the 1-year anniversary. They put 
in this new Venezuela policy where they were going to limit access to 
only a certain number. They did see a decline a year ago for a couple 
of months. But if you go back to October of last year, we had 22,000 
people who were crossing from Venezuela a month. If you look at 
September of this year, we had 66,000 people from Venezuela crossing a 
month.
  The Venezuela policy didn't work, so do you know what the 
administration did in October? They started actually returning people 
back to Venezuela if they crossed and said: You are not eligible for 
asylum. Within days, the number of Venezuelans trying to cross the 
border plummeted. Just enforcing the law changes dramatically the 
policy and the reality on the ground.
  Right now, Border Patrol and CBP are processing people they know are 
a threat to the United States. They know. When I visit with Border 
Patrol, they will often say to me: I picked up a person between ports 
of entry who was running, 25 years old, with two other 20-somethings, 
all dressed in camo, in the night, trying to be able to get across. We 
encountered them. Within 24 hours, they were released.
  They are nervous because they have no idea where they are going or 
what they are going to do. As law enforcement, they did their best to 
interdict, but the current policy just releases them into the country 
anyway. That is not right.
  This body should find a way to be able to solve the border crisis and 
not just ignore it. We should be able to come together and figure this 
out. Our country is at risk. This is a national security issue, not to 
mention drugs and everything else that the Border Patrol can't go 
interdict because they are processing so many migrants at this time.
  It is not that migrants are going everywhere. And I have heard it a 
lot: Well, there are migrants all over the world. That is true. But the 
folks who are coming here are coming here because it is the greatest 
country in the world, and I don't blame them for coming here. But let's 
encourage them to do it legally, not through a process that we all know 
is being gamed and is illegal. Let's empower those families to be able 
to move here. If they fit who we are as Americans and add value and 
they pass their background checks, let's invite them to be a part of us 
as Americans. Let's not have the person screening the people coming 
into the country be the cartels in Mexico because that is who is 
currently controlling our immigration policy, are the Mexican cartels, 
not us. That should not be so, and I would hope this body would work in 
the very short period of time in the days ahead to resolve that.
  With that, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.

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