[Congressional Record Volume 170, Number 5 (Wednesday, January 10, 2024)]
[Senate]
[Pages S61-S65]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
Border Security
Mrs. CAPITO. Madam President, as we begin our new year, I rise to
continue our discussion on one of the most pressing matters that has
been so hard on our country. That is our open southern border and the
responsibility for this Senate to take meaningful action.
Since this Chamber last was in session, each of us has traveled back
to our respective States and has had the opportunity to talk with our
constituents about what they are thinking and what they are seeing.
Hands down, I can tell you that the crisis on our southern border is on
the tip of everybody's tongue in terms of asking questions. It is the
No. 1 issue for my State of West Virginia. Time and time again, across
a multitude of conversations, West Virginians have asked me pretty
logical questions: When will enough be enough? When will President
Biden finally wake up and realize that this is a crisis? What can
Congress do to stop this? What are you--meaning me as a Member of the
Senate--going to do about it?
They see the numbers in the news--we saw them all through December,
the mass humanitarian costs broadcasted on our TV sets daily--and the
destruction that the flow of illicit drugs is doing and causing in our
communities. So I share their frustration, and I have voiced it many
times here on the floor. The crisis of our southern border is a topic
that I have addressed repeatedly.
The chronic failure of this President to act has led to the point
where even my colleagues across the aisle--everyone--have begun to
raise alarm as the consequences of the administration's bad border
policy have become undeniable.
One of my colleagues referred to the border as ``porous.'' That is
kind of a nice way of saying it is open and very, very easy to get
through. I am not sure what finally led to this universal recognition,
but I do have some ideas. It could have been the 2.4 million migrant
encounters this past fiscal year--2.4 million. I live in a State of a
little less than 1.8 million. My entire State came through that border,
and more. Or the month after month of record illegal crossings with the
largest month being just this past December of 302,000 encounters. That
is this past December. Or the over 10,000 illegal encounters that we
are experiencing daily, which is the size of many of the small towns in
my State, with the record being 12,600, again, in December--12,600
crossings in December. Or the record 169 encounters with individuals on
our Terror Watchlist just this past fiscal year, with an additional 30
encounters the first 2 months of fiscal year 2024. These are people
whom we know have terrorist ties; whom we know could be a danger to us.
Yet we are catching them as they are joining this brigade of millions
coming across our southern border.
This is just an untenable national security crisis, one where we have
no way of knowing how many terrorists have evaded apprehension and are
now in the heartland of our country. This is a risk that we cannot
take--not now, not ever. Yet very little, if any--and I would say
none--has been taken by this administration to really remedy the
situation.
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There has been a lapse in this border security under the President,
and a subsequent mass flow of immigration is creating a real-life
humanitarian crisis of drug smuggling and human trafficking.
In fact, there is somebody who is thriving during this. The cartels
are thriving with this billion dollars of business with our wide-open
southern border.
It is important to remember that, really, I believe, this catastrophe
is entirely the making of our President. And while congressional
Republicans did not cause this, we are now taking the responsibility,
along with our colleagues on the other side of the aisle, of trying to
address it and make meaningful progression.
This is why we need substantive policy changes to address our broken
border. It has become increasingly obvious that now is the time to act.
Doing nothing will result in what? A continuation of 10,000 people a
day, encounters per day, on our southern border and cover for the
cartels to smuggle drugs and traffic people.
Doing nothing will result in the news, like we got just, I think,
yesterday or maybe earlier today. A New York City high school is being
overtaken and housing migrants for shelter, and the students are being
told that they should engage in remote learning. In other words, don't
come to school; we are using the school to house illegal migrants, and
you do remote learning in school.
Well, what did we learn during COVID about remote learning? It is not
good for our students. With a consistent remote learning program that
we tried during COVID, you could see our falling test scores and a lot
of mental health issues at the same time. So doing nothing will only
increase the national security threats that our country is facing;
therefore, doing nothing is unacceptable.
In a moment as critical as this, we cannot let the perfect be the
enemy of the good. We are currently in a historically narrowly divided
Congress, making bipartisanship an essential component in getting
legislation across the finish line. That is what our Senate negotiators
are engaged in.
We all talk about how bad the situation is at the southern border,
but it is irresponsible to talk about the problem while refusing to
solve it unless you get 100 percent of what you want. I have been here
several years. I can honestly say there are very few times I get 100
percent of everything I want in a bill.
If we do not take this opportunity to make serious reforms, then the
current crisis will continue with no end in sight. We cannot do that.
As negotiations continue, we await the text of a final agreement.
The question that will soon be before us will not be whether this is
a bill that each of us would have personally written--because it won't
be--but, rather, if we will take this opportunity and make serious
reforms--the most serious reforms in decades--to help stop the
overwhelming number of encounters that our Border Patrol agents see
every day and take back control of our southern border. We must bring
order and process back to our immigration policies.
I admire the steadfast and particular dedication of my colleague from
Oklahoma, Senator Lankford, who has personally called many of us. He
called me three times over Christmas. I know he didn't get much of a
break with his family. He has displayed incredible strength throughout
this process.
I encourage my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to recognize the
importance of this moment and the urgent need to respond to the
challenges that we have in front of us.
As always, I maintain my optimism--I am hoping next week we will get
the text, and we can work that bill through this body--and remain
confident in this Chamber's ability to deliver. We must take advantage
of this opportunity.
I have never been at the cusp of an opportunity like this in the last
20 years on immigration that we have right now--something that will
make a difference. So we have to take advantage of this, and we have to
make sure that we are making meaningful changes as we are moving
through this process.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. LANKFORD. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. LANKFORD. Madam President, there has been a big conversation in
this body that actually matches the conversation that is happening
around the country right now. If you ask any random person on the
street what are the key issues that they are thinking about right now,
almost every poll that I have seen for the past several months has said
people are concerned about the economy and they are concerned about
border security. Just about every poll you have seen everywhere, that
has been the one and two. Sometimes border security has been the top
issue, sometimes it has been the second issue, but it has been in those
top two over and over and over again. It is not just border States, and
it is not just Republicans; it is Republicans, Democrats, and
Independents alike.
They see what is happening on the border, and they just want to know:
What is the plan? Because the news came out that last September was the
highest number of border crossings ever in the history of the country
for any September. Then October was the highest number of illegal
crossings of any October. Then November was the highest number of
crossings of any November in our Nation's history. Then December came,
and it was not only the highest number of illegal crossings of any
December in our history; it was the highest single month ever, for any
month in our history. Typically, December is a lower month, but
instead, it was the highest month in our history, with the highest
single day in our history and an average of 10,000 people a day who
illegally crossed the border--right at 300,000 people in a single
month.
Just to put that in perspective, if I go--during the Obama
administration, what we had in December and November exceeded any
single year in the Obama administration--just those 2 months. During
the early days of the Obama administration, we had 21,000 people a year
who requested asylum--21,000 people a year who requested asylum on our
southern border. We had that in 2 days in December. That is how things
have shifted.
That is why this is not a partisan issue; this is a national issue.
People understand the national security implications of this, that we
literally have thousands of people crossing the border every day, and
we have no idea where they are. They cross the border, and I can tell
you quickly how. They cross somewhere in the desert in Arizona, either
through a gap that has been cut in the fence or in areas where there is
a gap in the fence and they just go around it.
They are given a couple different options. One is a parole authority.
It is called 236 parole. You are just released in the country--take
off. There is another one called a notice to appear. You will hear the
common term ``NTA.'' There are just so many people crossing right now,
we don't have time to be able to go through all the paperwork, so we
are going to give you a piece of paper that says show up at an ICE
office--and you can literally go anywhere you want to go in the country
to do this--go anywhere you want to be able to go in the country, hand
them this piece of paper and turn yourself in, and then get a hearing
date set after that.
It may be shocking to everyone: Not many people are actually showing
up at ICE offices and turning themselves in. They are just disappearing
into the country by the hundreds of thousands, month after month.
In addition to that, if you come to our ports of entry and you are
going to do an orderly entry, well, that has shifted, actually. Since
earlier this year, this administration has started using a parole
authority that is termed ``humanitarian parole,'' but they are using it
in a way that no administration has ever used humanitarian parole in
the history of the country. You see, earlier this year--actually, I
should say ``last year'' now that it is January. Earlier last year,
this administration announced to the world that if you will tell us
ahead of time that you are coming, when you come to a port of entry,
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we will give you a work permit when you arrive--that day. So 1,500
people a day come to their appointment at the port of entry, from all
over the world. They show up. They are given a parole document called
212(d), and they are given a work permit that day and released into the
country.
We just ask the question: How does that slow down immigration across
the country? Because parole is actually not a status. Parole is
actually listed in our law as a nonstatus. It is that you are actually
here, but humanitarian parole was designed for a situation like what we
had in Ukraine or it was designed for a situation where an individual
has a funeral that they have to get to, but in their country, it takes
too long to get a visa, and they couldn't get to the funeral, so they
get humanitarian parole to be able to come in and get to that funeral.
It is not designed to say ``You all come.'' It is not designed to be
``Anyone from anywhere in the world just show up, and I am going to
hand you a work permit when you get here and release you into the
country at 1,500 people a day.''
Americans see this. This doesn't make sense to people. They just want
to know what we are going to do to get order where there is chaos. They
are not asking for a political solution; they are just asking for a
solution.
This shouldn't be something that we don't address here. For 2\1/2\
months now, my colleague Senator Murphy, my colleague Senator Sinema,
and a whole bunch of folks around the three of us--our other colleagues
in this body and their staff--have worked together to try to get to a
solution on how we can address this in a bipartisan way. This body
requires bipartisan solutions. We have to have 60. So we have to work
on hard issues.
I would tell you, the House of Representatives did a very good bill
called H.R. 2 that addressed a lot of issues dealing with immigration,
but unfortunately the House didn't have any Democrats on board. In
fact, they didn't even have all the Republicans on board that
particular bill.
They passed a very comprehensive set of solutions to be able to deal
with border security. That is what they passed. This body has not
passed anything to be able to respond. The House noticed a long time
ago that this is something that needs to be addressed. This body has
been allergic to working on how to be able to solve the border crisis.
So for the last 2\1/2\ months, we have met in a bipartisan way to
hammer out how do we solve this because it can't be ignored. The worst-
case scenario is for Americans to say, ``Who is going to do
something?'' and for this body to say, ``Not it.'' We have to come to
some solutions.
Some of the issues are obvious. The vast majority of people coming in
across the border will say, ``I have fear in my country'' because the
cartels have told them, ``If you say the magic words, you will be
released into the country because that puts you on a track for
asylum,'' when actually what it does is it puts you into a 10-year
backlog of claims that are out there. And people know, if I cross the
border and just make a statement, I can be in the United States for the
next 10 years.
It is the greatest country in the world. There are billions of people
who would like to be able to be here. That is a pretty easy entry--to
be able to just come across, say the secret word, and you are in. We
have to be able to resolve that.
We as a nation should be able to filter through the people who are
coming and to identify who actually qualifies for asylum and who is
just wanting to come to be a part of the greatest Nation in the world.
If you want to just come for economic reasons, there is a way to be
able to do that, to go through the legal process.
We allow about a million people a year to legally naturalize into our
country. We are one of the most generous countries in the world in our
legal naturalization process. We should continue to be able to do that,
as we have for decades and decades.
But for people who want to game the system, we are lawmakers. Why
would we ignore people who are abusing the law? If we ignore the abuse
of the law, what are we doing making law if it is not going to actually
be enforced?
So let's get back to identifying those who actually qualify for
asylum. And those who are just gaming the system--turn them back around
and say: Go through the legal processes. Don't run through the desert.
Don't swim across the river. Don't come to a border agent and lie to
them.
Let's figure out a legal way to be able to address legal immigration
and turn around illegal migration. We should be able to solve this
issue. It is obvious to everybody. We should be able to bring immediate
consequences when someone has actually violated our law.
Currently, if someone crosses the border, it may be 10 years before
it is addressed. If we can't deal with immediate consequences--as I
have heard over and over again from parents and from every individual,
a delayed consequence is a nonconsequence. So if the consequence is
delayed 10 years, that is not really a consequence, and everyone knows
it. So we have to be able to have immediate consequences, and we have
to have solutions to this issue about just paroling 1,500 random people
from anywhere in the world.
If the standard to get into America is literally just fill out a form
and tell them that you are coming first, and you are released into the
country with a work permit in a nonstatus of parole, literally, that is
an executive authority that could be taken away at any moment--
literally. The next President comes in, they can waive every single
parolee on the first day, and it would be entirely legal because parole
is not a status; it is just a release into the country.
If we can't figure out how to be able to solve that when the mayors
of Chicago and of New York and of Denver are saying: Why is this
administration releasing people into the country between ports of entry
and this other parole process or an NTA with no work permit and just
releasing them by the hundreds of thousands, why is this happening--if
we can't answer that question, then we need to be able to sit down at
the table until we do.
The Senate is where hard things get worked out. This is a hard thing.
This is something that has not been resolved in more than 30 years. I
understand we have differences of opinion. So does America--except in
this one issue. They want this solved. America wants a resolution on
this. So I encourage us, as a body, to keep negotiating, keep working
at it. We are not going to solve everything; we never do. But we need
to solve as much as we can because this is one of the biggest issues in
the country. And I will tell you, this is one of our greatest threats.
In the past year in the flood of people crossing our border, tens of
thousands of people who came across our border, this administration
declared as a national security risk. The term they use is ``special
interest alien.'' Tens of thousands of people who crossed were given
that designation, ``special interest alien,'' and then released into
the country.
We have no idea where they are. These were identified at the border
as a national security risk. But because we are not managing our border
and we are overrun with capacity, the option they have is releasing
them.
For the sake of our Nation's national security and our future, let's
actually go back to following the law. Let's actually create a process
where when we pass law, we expect it to actually be enforced and to be
done. We can do a hard thing. That is our job.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Carolina.
Mr. TILLIS. Madam President, before the Senator from Oklahoma leaves,
I was wondering if he would yield for a question.
Mr. LANKFORD. Yes, I would.
Mr. TILLIS. Senator Lankford, you have done an extraordinary job of
negotiating what I think is going to be a successful compromise that is
going to get support from Republicans and Democrats. But as you were
going through this work, in the years that you spent studying this
issue as a ranking member and chair in a committee of jurisdiction, I
have got to believe you have looked at, let's say, Canada, for example.
There are a lot of people who think that Senator Lankford and those of
us who are trying to support Senator Lankford are being draconian and
being out of step with the Western World.
But, Senator Lankford, could you just briefly describe how what we
are
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trying do compares to, say, our partner to the north, Canada, their
laws?
Mr. LANKFORD. I don't run into many people who call the Canadians
extreme. Not a derogatory statement towards the Canadians, but they
have a pretty consistent system on it. If you crossed from the United
States into Canada and ask for asylum, they would first ask you: Did
you cross through the United States of America before you came into
Canada? And if your answer was yes, they would turn you around and
immediately return you back to the United States and say you can't
request asylum here in Canada if you haven't requested asylum in the
places you have already traveled through. That is the law in Canada.
Mr. TILLIS. Madam President, may I ask one followup?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Carolina.
Mr. TILLIS. Senator Lankford, isn't it true that tens of thousands of
people who cross our borders today--and who may, ultimately, request
asylum--have looked past an opportunity to safely relocate in the
country they are seeking asylum from, likely transited to another
country where they could have declared asylum, and, in some cases,
passed through four or five or six different safe jurisdictions before
they made the dangerous trip through Mexico, across the Rio Grande
border, and present themselves at the border? Is that an accurate
assessment of what hundreds of thousands of people have done during the
Trump administration?
Mr. LANKFORD. Senator Tillis, that is correct that during the past
several administrations, we had millions of people who have actually
crossed our border, have either never requested asylum--at the border,
they declared they were going to ask for asylum but, literally, never
did, never filled out the paperwork, never even tried because they knew
they weren't eligible--or they travelled through multiple countries on
the way, never requested asylum because they wanted to come to America,
which I don't blame them. It is the greatest country in the world. But
that is not what asylum is. ``Asylum'' means I have fear in my entire
country. There is no safe place in my country, so I fled to the next
safe place. That is what the international definition of ``asylum'' is.
Mr. TILLIS. I thank Senator Lankford through the Chair.
Madam President, I want to spend a few minutes on this subject as
well.
We are reaching a milestone that I think is critically important.
Since President Biden has entered office, the number of encounters at
the border, 8 million--8 million--since President Biden entered
office--that population exceeds the population of 30 U.S. States--the
population of 30 individual U.S. States. That is the number we are
talking about here.
And, ladies and gentlemen, a lot of them are the people who we just
described. Of course, the United States wants to be a haven for people
who are fearing for their lives, suffering from oppression. But the
goal of asylum is to get them immediately out of that dangerous
situation--not to suddenly decide that I want to go through two or
three or four other jurisdictions because what, ultimately, I want to
do is get to the United States.
They are demeaning and devaluing the concept of asylum. And the
problem is, they are getting those who want to come here--and we should
take it as a compliment that they want to come to the United States--
but they are elbowing out and sapping the capacity for the United
States to make absolutely certain that people who have a legitimate
case for asylum are even being heard. I wonder about how many thousands
of people who desperately need to get to the United States--it is their
only option--are not getting there because we are focused on this
population.
Ladies and gentlemen, we have to do something. This is dangerous. You
know, for a time, conservatives were really in the wilderness, being
viewed as inhumane, insensitive, saying we have to have an orderly
border process. I have been saying that. I am also somebody who thinks
we should probably legally immigrate another 250,000 to a half million
more than we do already. We immigrate about a million.
Let me tell you the other problem we have here that is inherently
unfair. I already talked about people who legitimately should be given
asylum--probably not, because we don't know who they are. We are
dealing with a flood of 300,000 in the month of December alone. Of
course, they are going to be collateral damage in the form of people
who want asylum.
But now the American people are waking up to it. There was a time
when it was purely a shirts and skins--blue jersey Democrat, red jersey
Republican--argument. It is not the case anymore. The American people
expect this administration to do something. And I am glad.
I am also glad we have James Lankford at the tip of the spear
negotiating on behalf of Republicans. He has negotiated--I am part of
the working group; I have seen progress. He has negotiated something
that I think is important.
We cannot miss this opportunity. The stakes are too high, and the
American people agree. Nearly half of those who responded to this
poll--which was an even distribution, ideologically speaking--nearly
half of them think we have an emergency at the border. They are right.
I have been there several times. They are right. People are dying.
Cartels are making nearly $1 billion a year charging tolls to come
across the border. If you try to cross the border without an armband or
recognition you paid a cartel, you are likely going to die or you are
going to get one more chance before you get beaten up. That happens
every day at the border, ladies and gentlemen. I am not exaggerating. I
have been there. I have seen it. I have heard the stories.
Fortunately, now we have a majority of Americans that expect this
administration to come to the table and negotiate in good faith with
conservatives and people like me who have negotiated several bipartisan
deals to solve this problem. If any Democrats are concerned with how
far the negotiations are going, I don't think that they need to. This
is not a political loser for people who are concerned with voting on a
bipartisan compromise. In fact, it is politically smart.
At the end of the day, I hope political advisers and everybody that
is up for election next year know: You know what, you don't even need
political courage to do the right thing here, because the good policy
of border security is also good politics for the overwhelming majority
of people that need a vote for this bill.
We are going to have 30 or 40 people on this side--not 30 or 40--I
think we will probably have 25 or 30 Members in this body that won't
vote for it. Some will be because it didn't go too far; the others will
be, it didn't go far enough; some of them are closer in cycle. It is
very difficult to explain; I get that. But we need about 70 votes
coming out of this Chamber to create a momentum to get it done in the
House. I am going to be one of those 70 votes.
I also want the American people to not only wake up to the reality
that people are abusing our system--they are taking our attention away
from people we should desperately find a path to getting to the United
States--and they are also jumping line. That is what I will leave with
you. How angry do you all get--I love going to a good sporting event or
a good comedy show. You get there early sometimes because you want to
get a good seat if there is general admission. How angry do you get if
you are standing in line for hours and, all of a sudden, somebody jumps
in front of you? Well, imagine if you have been waiting years--more
than a decade--to legally follow the process to be one of those million
people a year that gets citizenship, when you see millions of them
coming across the border every year breaking line. These people that
are working hard, obeying our laws, respecting it, doing it by the
book--they are breaking line, and it is actually elongating the time
for them to get into this country. It is unfair at every level, and it
is unsafe.
The only people who are loving the stalemate that we have in this
Nation today are the cartels who are charging from $5,000 to $50,000 a
person to get you across the border. Not everybody has $5,000, though.
So you know what they do? They say, well, you don't have to pay. But
once you get across the border, you are going to participate in
criminal enterprises until we think
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your debt is done. That is not an exaggeration either. Talk to law
enforcement. Talk to people in these communities. These cartels are
like a cancer metastasizing through illegally present communities,
exploiting them, and causing some people who may not have had a
criminal record in the country of their origin to become criminals
here.
There are a million different reasons why we need to get this border
compromise done. I hope this Congress is the Congress where people set
aside politics, do the right thing, make this country safer, and show
respect for people trying to come to this country legally by making
sure that their place in line is reserved.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Rosen). The Senator from Louisiana.