[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.


[[Page S5354]]


  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

[[Page S5355]]

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.