[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 209 (Tuesday, December 19, 2023)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6038-S6039]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                            Border Security

  Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, our colleagues are aware that there is a 
group of Senators who are meeting with the administration officials to 
try to carefully craft an urgently needed solution to the border 
security crisis. I rise today to discuss the urgent need for bipartisan 
solutions to address that crisis.
  Yesterday set a new record that demonstrates the magnitude of our 
border security crisis. U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers 
encountered a record 12,381 foreign nationals who were entering the 
United States along our southwest border without authorization.
  So far this fiscal year, we are averaging nearly 8,500 encounters per 
day, and, this month, the average is nearly 10,000 per day. That means 
that for the month of December, we are likely to reach a record of more 
than 300,000 people crossing the southwest border without legal 
authorization. At the current rate, we are on pace for more than 3 
million encounters in fiscal year 2024, which would shatter the 
previous high set last fiscal year.
  To put this in perspective, that is more than twice as many 
encounters at the southwest border as there are people in the entire 
State of Maine, and these enormous numbers do not include what Border 
Patrol agents describe as the ``got-aways''--in other words, those who 
do not turn themselves in and, instead, elude capture.
  These numbers have grown dramatically in the past 3 years. Since 
fiscal year 2021, we have seen almost 6.6 million encounters and are on 
pace to see nearly 9.7 million individuals by the end of fiscal year 
2024. Jeh Johnson, who served as Secretary of Homeland Security under 
President Obama, once said that, when he was Secretary, a thousand 
migrant encounters a day overwhelms the system. So just think what 
10,000 individuals crossing does to the system.
  And this problem is not limited to the southwest border, even though 
that is where the problem is most acute. We are increasingly seeing 
surges of migrant encounters along our northern border, including the 
State of Maine. According to Customs and Border Protection, migrant 
encounters at the northern border increased 73 percent in fiscal year 
2023 over the previous year and a staggering 700 percent over fiscal 
year 2021 levels.
  In the State of Maine, encounters have increased over 450 percent 
since fiscal year 2021. Increasingly, what we are seeing is that 
migrants are flying to Canada, knowing that they will have an easier 
time crossing the enormous 5,525-mile northern border.
  Just recently, the U.S. Border Patrol encountered a group of 20 
Romanians illegally crossing into the United States near Houlton, ME, 
in northern Maine. Two of these individuals were flagged as 
``transnational criminal organized crime'' matches and detained for 
expedited removal proceedings. The remaining 18 were simply released 
into the local community.

[[Page S6039]]

  Communities in Maine and throughout our country are struggling to 
absorb this influx of people who are being released into the interior. 
The majority of migrants are released pending an adjudication of their 
asylum claims. But that is a process that can take years.
  In Portland, ME, a city of 68,000 residents, more than 1,600 asylum 
seekers have arrived since January.
  Sanford, ME, which has a population of only 22,000, has had 
approximately 400 migrants arrive since May. Over the past 6 months, 
the city of Sanford has spent $1.3 million to provide food, housing, 
and other required assistance to asylum seekers and their families.
  Now, the irony here is these asylum seekers are not allowed to go to 
work immediately upon filing their asylum applications. I have 
introduced a bill that could help lessen the impact on local 
communities by helping asylum seekers support themselves, as they want 
to do. And employers in Maine want to hire them while they await their 
immigration proceedings.
  Specifically, my bill would shorten the waiting period for asylum 
seekers who come through legal ports of entry to apply for employment 
authorization, provided that their applications are not frivolous, that 
they are not detained, and that their identities have been verified 
with their names run through the Federal Government's Terrorist 
Watchlist.
  An out-of-control border, which is what we have now, poses a very 
real threat to our homeland and our people. This is a national security 
challenge for our country.
  Since fiscal year 2021, 294 individuals who were apprehended by 
Border Patrol at the southwest border were on the Terrorist Watchlist. 
That compares to only 11 such individuals in the previous 4 years 
combined. And just think how many others are part of the ``got-aways,'' 
those who did not turn themselves in or were not apprehended by our 
Border Patrol.
  There are also tens of thousands of migrants arrested at our southern 
and northern borders who have criminal convictions or who are wanted by 
law enforcement, such as the two Romanians recently encountered in 
Maine.
  Not only has the failure to control our border led to unchecked 
migration, but it has also contributed to the serious illegal drug 
crisis that is affecting communities throughout our country.
  Mexican drug cartels are using the chaos at the southern border to 
facilitate their trafficking operations. They are sending record 
amounts of fentanyl into this country, enough to kill every American 
many times over.
  Maine, like so many States, has seen record increases in recent years 
in the number of overdose deaths, nearly 80 percent of which are 
fentanyl related. We lost 513 Mainers in the first 10 months of 2023 to 
fatal overdoses, and 373 of these deaths were fentanyl related.
  In addition, the Mexican cartel used the chaos and the uncontrolled 
southern border for human trafficking.
  This is a crisis. It is a humanitarian crisis, and it is a national 
security crisis. And we cannot allow it to continue.
  I have long supported creating legal immigration pathways with 
appropriate guardrails. Immigrants contribute to our great country and 
our communities in so many important ways. However, it is clear that we 
must act to address the ongoing and ever worsening crisis at our 
borders, which adversely affects communities throughout our country.
  We cannot delay any longer. I am a strong supporter for continuing to 
provide assistance to Ukraine to repel Russian aggression. Make no 
mistake about it, Putin will not stop with Ukraine. He will go on to 
re-create, if he possibly can, his vision of, once again, having the 
old Soviet Union. I believe that if he is successful in Ukraine, he 
will next seize Moldova. He then will begin to menace and threaten our 
NATO allies--the Baltic States, Poland.
  So far, we have been able to assist Ukraine without one American 
soldier losing his life or her life. We should continue to do so.
  We need to help our greatest ally, Israel, in its fight against the 
terrorist group Hamas.
  These, in many ways, are border disputes as well, but we cannot 
ignore the border crisis that we have in our own country. And that is 
why we need to work on all of these issues and bring them together in a 
supplemental funding bill.
  The time to act is now. It is unfortunate that the administration has 
been so late to these negotiations, but I still have hope that we can 
put together a package that will address all of these crises: the 
border crisis in our own country, the border crisis in Ukraine, the 
border crisis in Israel with the terrorist attacks from Hamas, and the 
coming border crisis that we are going to see, I fear, with China 
increasingly threatening Taiwan. All of those issues need to be 
addressed in the supplemental. Let's get the job done.

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