[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 183 (Monday, November 6, 2023)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5353-S5355]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
Border Security
Mr. LANKFORD. Madam President, there has been a lot of conversation
about this body--quite frankly, around the Nation--about border
security. Rightfully so. It has been top of mind for a lot of cities,
States, for a lot of families, school districts, businesses, especially
along the border States as they have had a disproportionately large
number of people who have come, many of them from all over the world,
many of them non-Spanish speakers, not from Central America and South
America but literally from everywhere.
The Wall Street Journal had a piece just this weekend where it
detailed how hundreds of thousands of migrants from all over the world
are making their way to the southwest border which is causing a surge
in apprehensions, but it is especially people from Asia and Africa.
Human smuggling networks, it says, are widening their reach around
the globe.
Arrests at the Southwest border of migrants from China,
India and other distant countries, including Mauritania and
Senegal, tripled to 214,000 during the fiscal year that ended
in September.
That was up from 70,000 just the year before. That is tripling that
number.
What is happening is on our southern border, the cartels are finding
it more profitable to be able to move people in from farther. So they
are organizing flights for people to go through seven or eight
countries to be able to then arrive in Mexico, and they are moving them
through in what they affectionately call ``donkey flights'' to be able
to reach farther for the cartels to be able to make more and to exploit
our laws.
America has always been open to people and immigration. We are a
nation of legal immigrants, but we are also a nation of laws. And what
we are finding at this stage is those laws are being exploited and
being exploited dramatically. Let me give you just an example. There
has been no change in the asylum law since 2010, but, in 2010, we had
21,000 people request asylum on our southern border for the year--
21,000 the entire year of 2010. That wasn't an anomaly. That was about
a normal amount of people requesting asylum on our southwest border.
Now, we have that many requests of asylum on our southwest border every
3 days. So it has gone from 21,000 in a year to now every 3 days.
Everyone knows this is an issue. Last week, Secretary Mayorkas was in
front of the Homeland Security Committee, and I asked him about this in
a public hearing. I asked him whether there were policy changes that
were needed.
His answer was very direct. He said:
Yes, policy changes are needed.
I asked him specifically on reforming the asylum system, knowing that
it has been exploited. His exact answer was:
The asylum system needs to be reformed from top to bottom.
I asked him about the issue of withholding of removal, which now
about 55 percent of the people who were released into the country were
actually released under something called withholding of removal. I
asked him about that. His response was:
[Withholding of removal and] the companion element is the
convention against torture our system needs to be able to
work efficiently and expeditiously while not compromising due
process.
I asked him about repatriating individuals in difficult countries
that are called recalcitrants. He said:
Our ability to repatriate individuals to the countries of
origin when they do not qualify for relief under our laws is
of vital importance.
Why am I bringing this up? Because it is not just me saying we need
to reform the asylum process. The head of Homeland Security is saying
we need to reform this process. And it is just not the head of Homeland
Security saying we need to reform the asylum process. It is the
administration.
Two weeks ago, the administration requested additional dollars for
the border to be able to put in the supplemental. They asked for
funding for Israel, for Ukraine, for Taiwan, and for border security.
But then, after they put that request out, Homeland Security released
an op-ed in the Washington Post, which said this:
To be clear, this supplemental funding is like a
tourniquet--urgently needed and critical in the short-term,
but not a long-term solution to a deep-seated problem. Our
national immigration laws, having gone through major
revisions by Congress in 1996, are severely out-of-date, and
our system is completely broken. On this, everyone agrees.
The administration itself, just this past March, put out a release
dealing with what they call ``circumvention of lawful pathways.'' In
it, they did a Q&A back and forth to ask people questions on how it
would function. This is one of the answers from the administration
talking about what is happening currently at our border. They said:
[Such a high rate of migration] risks overwhelming the
Department's ability to effectively process, detain, and
remove, as appropriate, the migrants encountered. This would
put an enormous strain on already strained resources, risk
overcrowding in already crowded [U.S. Border Patrol] stations
and border [ports of entry] in ways that pose significant
health and safety concerns, and create a situation in which
large numbers of migrants--only a small portion of whom are
likely to be granted asylum--are subject to extreme
exploitation . . . by the networks that support their
movements north.
I would be glad to have written that myself.
The administration sees the same thing that everyone else who looks
at the border sees. If you take an honest assessment of what is
happening, our system is being exploited by cartels, and people from
around the world are answering ads that are on TikTok and messaging
services saying: I can get you into the United States if you pay me
enough money.
That is why 45,000 people from India came last year requesting asylum
in the United States--because it is easier to get in and to pay the
cartels than it is to go through the legal process. We are
incentivizing illegal activity, and this body knows it.
We are a nation of laws. We should prioritize the law. We should be
open to legal immigration, but we should be opposed to illegal
immigration and what is happening to enrich deadly, dangerous criminal
cartels in northern Mexico.
Again, the administration in their public statement made this
statement just a few months ago:
The current asylum system--in which most migrants who are
initially deemed eligible to pursue their claims ultimately
are not granted asylum in the subsequent [immigration court]
proceedings--has contributed to a growing backlog of
cases awaiting review by asylum officers and immigration
judges.
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What are they saying? The system is broken because it is packed with
people who do not actually qualify for asylum coming in to flood the
system and request asylum.
We all see the challenge. Now the question is, Are we going to do
something about it?
Republicans in the Senate, this past weekend, released a very simple
proposal to deal with what we all know are the problems--closing the
loopholes in the law that have been exploited. And, yes, it deals with
asylum, and, yes, it deals with withholding because those are the areas
that are being exploited. We see it. The administration sees it. The
question is, Do Democrat Senators see it? That is really the issue now.
Everyone else seems to see it and admit to it.
So what did we propose? We proposed some pretty straightforward
things. One is what is called ``safe third country'' transit. These are
individuals like the 45,000 people who came from India last year. They
fly through four or five countries--including dangerous countries like
France--to be able to land here and to be able to cross the border and
say: I need to find asylum.
Almost everyone sees that as an exploitation, and it is not just us.
There is almost no other country that does what we do. This whole issue
about picking and choosing where I want to request asylum is not how
asylum really works. You see, asylum under international law--and most
people in this body know it--``asylum'' and ``refugee'' have the same
definition under international law. A refugee doesn't pick nine
different countries and then pick the one that they want. They flee to
the next safe place. That is the same international rule for asylum.
If you were to request asylum right now in Canada--cross the border
into Canada and request asylum--do you know what is the first question
they would ask you? The first question they would ask you is: Did you
just cross from the United States?
If you answered yes, they would then say: Did you request asylum
there, and were you denied?
If they say, ``I didn't request asylum,'' Canada will turn you right
back around.
And that is not just Canada. That is most of the EU. If you went to
Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, France, Germany,
Hungary, Ireland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Slovakia, Slovenia, the
UK--if you went to any of them, they would ask: What country did you
transit through before you got here, and did you request and were you
denied asylum before you came in? If you said, ``I didn't request
asylum in the places I transited from,'' they would turn you around
because that is not an unreasonable thing.
When you go through five other countries and then request asylum in
the last one, you are actually trying to emigrate to that country, not
requesting asylum under international law. You are trying to pick the
place.
And, by the way, I don't blame them for picking America. It is the
greatest country in the world. But that is economic opportunity, that
is not asylum.
So the question is, Can we incentivize those individuals to not try
to run a loophole through our system but to actually go through the
legal process and request to come here as a legal immigrant?
We love to see people from all over the world, as we always have,
come into the United States legally, just not exploiting a loophole in
the asylum law. That is the wrong way to be able to do it.
The bill that Republicans have proposed also deals with streamlining
the process. Right now, it can take up to 10 years just to get a
hearing with an immigration judge under a standard that most people
know, and the administration has admitted, people won't qualify for
asylum at the end.
Why is that? Because, when you come across the border, you encounter
Border Patrol or CBP or an asylum officer. They do an initial
screening, and the screening is far lower than the actual standard. So
you may qualify under the screening standard, but everyone knows you
are not going to actually qualify for the actual standard for asylum.
So there are two simple things that can be done here. One is to make
the screening standard equal to the actual standard--to say: We all
know this is what you have got to achieve. So screen for that. Is it
reasonable? Is it even a 51-percent chance that you are going to get to
that standard? If it is, then you come in. If you are not, then you are
screened out.
The second is that we actually have three different screenings. Many
people don't know this. We screen for asylum, and then we separately
screen for what is called withholding, and we separately screen for
Convention against Torture. Those three different screenings are made
at three different times--sometimes across a decade of time. Everyone
knows, if you don't qualify for the first one, you are likely not going
to qualify for the other two, either. But you can request it, and you
can run that loophole, and then you are in the United States. And the
cartels literally teach people exactly what to say in their last step
so that they can exploit that loophole.
So let's actually have a screening standard that is the same standard
you have to get to, and let's screen for all three of those things at
the same time. That actually sounds like government efficiency. I know
we are not good at that as a nation, but, if we screen all three of
those things at the same time, it allows somebody to have due process.
We don't want someone not to have due process. If someone is a victim
of torture, we want to make sure they have an opportunity to go through
that process. But why wouldn't we go through all three of those at the
same time, rather than across 10 years, waiting for multiple different
hearings?
Republicans also proposed something pretty simple. Right now, the law
says that if you committed a felony, then you are not eligible for
asylum. But the problem with that is, there are some crimes that are
not considered a felony at the earliest days, and we are still allowing
them in.
Let me give you a for instance. What if you had three DUIs? What if
you are dealing meth? What if you are a member of a gang and you show
it? What if you have a domestic violence conviction?
If you have a domestic violence conviction, you can't own a firearm
in America, but you could get asylum in America. We literally invite
people to be able to come in whom we already know have domestic
violence convictions.
So we are making it pretty simple. We are saying: Hey, listen, let's
keep the standard where it is for a felony, but let's actually prevent
the loopholes.
Why would we invite someone into the country whom we know has had
multiple DUI convictions? Why would we do that? It is not safe for our
streets.
Do any one of you want to sit down with a dad and say: Your daughter
was killed in a DUI because we were loose on our asylum rules? I would
assume not.
We are not asking for something extreme. Again, it is typical for
many places around the world that this is how it would be done. All we
are trying to do is to be able to fix the loopholes and to be able to
secure our Nation.
This proposal we put forward keeps families together. I know there is
going to be an immediate thing that this is about separating families
at the border. Actually, no, it is very explicit that if families
travel together, families stay together for their hearing, to be able
to make sure that we are protecting that family. But we are also
raising a simple question. We all know and we have all seen the
stories, and for those of us who have gone to the border, we have seen
it with our own eyes: children traveling with adults that--we are all
parents, and we can see clear enough that is not really your child--
where children are literally used as a free pass to be able to get into
the country and to be able to expedite.
We would like to be able to protect those children and make sure
children are actually not used to be a free pass into the country.
There is a way to be able to prevent that and to be able to protect
those families that are actually real families at the same time.
We do a couple other things. We also raise just a very simple
statement about the Border Patrol. Many people here may or may not
know, but the Border Patrol can't actually get overtime if you are at a
certain level. If
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you are other Federal law enforcement, you do get overtime. But if you
are Border Patrol, you do not.
So these guys may work 100 hours for 2 weeks, but for the additional
hours they are working, they don't actually get overtime pay. That is
not right.
So what happens is, Border Patrol has a hard time with retention, not
just because the job is incredibly difficult but, once they get to a
certain level, their families encourage them and say: Why don't we do
another Federal law enforcement somewhere else--still stay in Federal
law enforcement, but we can actually earn overtime pay at that point
rather than actually being punished for staying in the Border Patrol
and trying to be able to serve?
Why don't we fix that?
Why don't we fix some of the training issues that have come up?
Why don't we actually try to respond to those things?
Why don't we provide the opportunity for the Biden administration to
be able to lay out a strategy for how to secure the border? We are not
writing it. Just give them the opportunity to be able to do it.
And here is one thing that has been interesting that I have already
heard pushback from. We have a section where we talk about the border
wall. What is interesting is, what we have actually proposed is we
actually fulfill the border wall portion that President Biden has
already said he is going to do. We actually just want to put it in
writing so the President can't just say orally, ``I want to do this.''
We have to actually put it in writing to be able to do it. That is a
reasonable thing to be able to do.
Listen, we are not asking for crazy stuff. We are asking for what
Americans are asking for: Just secure the border. We want to be a
nation that welcomes immigrants, but we also want to be a nation that
honors the law. We can do both. That is what we are setting in front of
this body--to say: When we are talking about the supplemental, let's
actually talk about not just securing Israel and securing Ukraine and
securing Taiwan; let's also secure the United States of America.
With that, I yield the floor.