[Congressional Record Volume 170, Number 21 (Tuesday, February 6, 2024)]
[Senate]
[Pages S408-S409]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                          Supplemental Funding

  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, on Sunday night of this last weekend, 
three of our colleagues released the much anticipated text of what has 
come to be known as a bipartisan border deal. In fact, this was 
negotiated by three main principal Senators here in the Senate: Senator 
James Lankford from Oklahoma, Senator Sinema from Arizona, Senator 
Chris Murphy from Connecticut, along with the Biden administration.
  I want to express my gratitude to Senator Lankford, for our part, for 
the time and effort he has invested in this process. I know of no one 
who has worked harder in good faith to try to come up with a solution 
to our broken border.
  I know, like all of our colleagues on this side of the aisle, he is 
outraged by the Biden administration's failure to secure the border, 
and he is eager to find a way to change the policies which will provide 
that security.
  And I think our Democratic colleagues finally realize that the status 
quo on the border is a huge political liability. Well, what Senator 
Lankford hoped to deliver through this process, unfortunately, has 
become increasingly clear that it has not been attainable. 
Notwithstanding his best efforts, this proposal is not what the country 
needs, wants, or deserves, and I would be happy to explain why.
  Given the fact we are operating in divided government, any successful 
reform requires bipartisan support. As I said, Senator Lankford worked 
in good faith with Senator Murphy and Senator Sinema, who also worked 
in good faith, as well as the White House to craft this agreement.
  But I am disappointed that the White House has refused to budge on 
policy changes that would lead to significant improvements; by that I 
mean reduction in the flow of migrants across the southern border.
  For example, this proposal doesn't place significant limits on parole 
authority. Now, just by way of a footnote here, parole authority means 
that the Biden administration has been releasing people who come to the 
border even if they don't claim asylum; and it is, frankly, just a 
population management tool. They are released into the interior of the 
country, given a 2-year permit and a work permit.
  So no matter what we do on the front end in terms of asylum reform or 
the process to deal with this exploitation of the gaps in our asylum 
system, the Biden administration could still parole as many people as 
they wanted to under this proposal.
  As a matter of fact, no changes were made at all to the fact that the 
Biden administration is releasing up to 30,000 migrants from four 
countries each month, presuming or assuming that they actually should 
be released into the country without any claim of asylum or anything 
else. Just letting them come and stay and work.
  This is a huge magnet--a huge magnet--to people coming from those 
four countries, and that is 360,000 migrants a year. And that is just 
the tip of the iceberg. This bill also does not end what has come to be 
known euphemistically as catch-and-release, and it actually creates a 
new system under which migrants who might express an intent to apply 
for asylum must be released from custody even before an initial 
screening interview is completed.
  Just to take a look back, I think it was in 2005 when then-Secretary 
Michael Chertoff came and testified in front of the Senate Judiciary 
Committee, and he noticed an uptick in the number of Brazilians that 
were coming across the border. What he testified to under oath is they 
realized that the only way you would provide the deterrence that would 
prevent people from coming illegally into the country is to detain 
them.
  In other words, don't catch-and-release them; catch-and-detain them. 
Determine whether they have a legitimate claim, and if they did not, 
then return them to their country of origin. That actually provided the 
kind of deterrence that addressed that problem at that time, and that 
kind of deterrence is missing in this proposal.
  And as I said, it actually creates a new system that can be exploited 
by the people who continue to get rich smuggling migrants to the United 
States from around the world, the same criminal organizations that are 
also involved in smuggling drugs into the United States.
  And the only way you avoid catch-and-release and you provide catch-
and-detain is, you need more detention space. And this proposal does 
not provide adequate detention space and assures that migrants will 
continue to be released into the interior of the country. Again, a huge 
magnet, or in the terminology that the Border Patrol has taught me, he 
calls this a pull factor. The push factors are the reasons the people 
want to leave their home country: violence, poverty, desire for a 
better life. We all understand that. But what the pull factor is, is 
the perception that there are no consequences to coming illegally.

  Legal immigration has been one of the biggest blessings for this 
country that we have ever received because almost a million people a 
year are naturalized. They go through the system the right way. They 
take the citizenship test. They go through the background check, and 
then they become American citizens like you and I. That is an 
unmitigated blessing, in my opinion. Illegal immigration--or 
outsourcing our immigration policy to drug and criminal cartels--is a 
disaster.
  Well, this proposal also does not make a meaningful investment in 
enforcement resources to actually remove people who don't have the 
legal authorization to stay in the United States. That is a job 
ordinarily performed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE. So 
if people can come to the country, can be released either on parole or 
released while they are awaiting the decision on their asylum claims, 
and there is no mechanism to make sure that they are repatriated to 
their home country if they don't qualify to stay, then they are going 
to continue to come, which is the reason why we have seen roughly 7 
million migrants come to the United States and stay over the last 3 
years.
  In other words, this proposal does not fix the single biggest policy 
failures that have contributed to this crisis. I believe this is the 
responsibility, again, of the Biden administration, which has done 
everything they can to handcuff their negotiators and to fail to meet 
the requirements of what a proposal would look like that would actually 
make things better or would actually work.
  I have said from the beginning that I would only support an agreement 
or proposal that would make significant policy changes and change--by 
that, I mean reduce--the influx of humanity coming across the border, 
and this proposal does not meet that requirement.
  But this is, while disappointing, it is not entirely surprising. 
After all, President Biden is the leader of an open-borders 
administration that has ushered in the largest border crisis our 
country has ever seen. The only reason I think President Biden all of a 
sudden took an interest in the border is because he saw the approaching 
election and his plummeting poll numbers.
  Since President Biden took office 3 years ago, U.S. Customs and 
Border Protection has encountered more than 7 million migrants--I 
mentioned that a moment ago--7 million in 3 years. And that doesn't 
even count the 1.7 million ``got-aways.'' ``Got-aways'' are people who 
are seen, although not detained, on cameras and other sensors and who 
are intentionally evading law enforcement. You can only imagine what 
they are up to, and I assure you, it is no good.
  But we have seen, under President Biden, nearly double the number of 
illegal crossings that we saw during the entire 8 years President Obama 
was in office.
  Now, to be clear, Congress has not dramatically changed immigration 
laws in the interim that caused this dramatic increase in migration 
under President Biden. Under President Trump, the laws were essentially 
the same, and there was no crisis of such epic proportions. This fiasco 
is a direct result of the policies and the actions of the Biden 
administration. The President created what, in effect, is a high-

[[Page S409]]

powered magnet for illegal immigration.
  The problem isn't just that more migrants than ever are crossing into 
the United States, it is also that more migrants than ever are being 
released into the United States.
  The Biden administration has gone to great lengths to ensure that 
people who cross the border illegally can stay here. It is really, if 
you think about it, an insult to the people who follow the law and 
immigrate legally. They wait patiently in line. They play by the rules. 
And in the meantime, the Biden administration is waving through 
millions of migrants who are violating those rules and who are not 
waiting in line. Instead of detain and deport, this administration has 
focused all of its energy on catch-and-release.
  Last month, Secretary Mayorkas told Border Patrol Agents that more 
than 85 percent of migrants who were caught crossing the border were 
being released. Now, this is from a man whose responsibility it is to 
enforce our immigration laws, the Secretary of Homeland Security, and 
he admitted to Border Patrol Agents that 85 percent who were caught 
crossing the border illegally were simply released.
  Again, this is not a major shift in immigration policy. The Congress 
hasn't tied President Biden's hands or restricted his ability to detain 
and deport illegal immigrants. President Biden was dealt the exact same 
hand as his recent predecessors when it comes to enforcement 
authorities, but he has simply refused to use them, which is what gets 
to the root of the problem here: The White House really doesn't want a 
solution; it wants political cover.

  President's Biden mishandling of the border has landed him in red ink 
in the polls. He is looking at the upcoming election, and he needs to 
change his posture and the appearance that he looks like he is actually 
taking this seriously for the first time in 3 years, but I have no 
expectation that this will lead to any sort of meaningful shift in 
enforcement.
  Congress can pass all the laws that we want, but it is the executive 
branch, the President of the United States, that enforces those laws. 
And when they are not enforced, under our system, unfortunately, there 
is not much recourse. After all, if Joe Biden really wanted to fix the 
border breakdown, he could have done so at any point in the last 3 
years. He could have used existing authorities to hold lawbreakers 
accountable and provide deterrence, which would have mitigated the flow 
of humanity across our border.
  Instead, he created new incentives, new pull factors, from parole to 
the CBP One app. Now, President Biden has finally realized that this is 
such a liability that 9 months before the next election, he has decided 
he wants to change his position--at least publicly. But I can tell you, 
we are not interested in being complicit in a PR stunt. We are 
interested in actually securing the border and deterring illegal 
immigration.
  So, on Wednesday, when we vote on whether to proceed to the proposal, 
along with aid to Ukraine, Israel, and the Indo-Pacific, I will vote no 
on the motion to proceed.
  To be clear, this is not no; this is not now. In other words, when 
cloture ``fails,'' which is the technical procedural term, it means we 
need to continue to discuss this and to work it out and come up with a 
better solution.
  But fixing this bill really requires us to go back to the drawing 
board and for the administration to accept some of the border 
enforcement proposals that we have called for, like ending catch-and-
release.
  Voting for this proposal, some 300 pages of technical immigration law 
changes, 3 days after it was released is really a bad joke. There is 
just no way, given the complexity of the subject matter, that Senators 
can do their due diligence and really understand what the impact of 
this proposal will be.
  Now, I have spent most of my career in the Senate on the Immigration 
Subcommittee. And obviously coming from a border state, we are at 
ground zero when it comes to this crisis. But many of our colleagues 
have not steeped themselves in the complexities of immigration law, and 
we need time--all of us need time--in order to do our due diligence to 
understand both the intended and the potential unintended consequences.
  In the 3 years since President Biden took office, the security 
situation at the southern border has dramatically deteriorated. I think 
at last count there were about 170 individuals on the Terrorist 
Watchlist that were detained at the border. We have no idea--and the 
Biden administration can't tell you--how many more individuals on the 
Terrorist Watchlist were among those 1.7 million ``got-aways.''
  In the years I have been representing Texas in the Senate, there have 
been many ups and downs in migration levels at the border. There have 
been surges, some caused by events beyond our borders, others triggered 
by policies from the occupant of the White House. There have also been 
drops in migration levels, some caused by events like the pandemic, 
others a result of stricter policies that have actually deterred 
illegal immigration.
  In the countless conversations I have had with folks along the Texas-
Mexico border, everyone has shared the same sentiment: They have never 
ever seen it as bad as it is now. Law enforcement, local elected 
officials, NGOs--nongovernmental organizations--and private property 
owners agree: This is unprecedented and unsustainable. We need a major 
policy shift, not a figleaf. We need a major policy shift to address 
the Biden administration's many failures, and we need a change of 
behavior, not just in the policy but in actually enforcing the laws 
that Congress has passed.
  Because our colleagues have--and the Biden administration in 
particular has--refused to budge on policy changes that would actually 
force his administration to apply the law to deter illegal immigration, 
I cannot support it as written.
  But now, as I said, the majority leader, the Senator from New York, 
has teed up a process that would force us to vote on this massive bill 
totaling, I think the last count, $112 billion, including this border 
provision, just 3 days after the full text has been released. At this 
point, Senator Schumer has given our colleagues a binary choice: Take 
it or leave it. For me, the choice is obvious. I will not vote just no; 
I will vote not now.
  We need to continue this process. We need to see a change in 
behavior. We need to see a change in real policies that will prevent 
and deter this fast humanitarian and public safety crisis occurring at 
our border under President Biden's open border policies.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Louisiana.