[Congressional Record Volume 170, Number 36 (Wednesday, February 28, 2024)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1022-S1024]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                            Border Security

  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, tomorrow President Biden will do something 
he has done only once before in his term as President of the United 
States, he will travel to the U.S.-Mexico border to Brownsville, TX, in 
an attempt to address his biggest political liability. Since the 
President took office 3 years ago, U.S. Customs and Border Protection 
has logged more than 7.2 million migrant encounters at the southern 
border. By that, we mean people who have shown up at the border and, by 
and large, have simply been released into the interior based on an 
initial claim of asylum which has yet to be put in front of an 
immigration judge. And it may be as long as, in places like New York, 
10 years in the future before they ever get in front of an immigration 
judge; or, as we have seen tragically here most recently, these 
migrants will be paroled or simply released into the interior of the 
country--even without a claim of asylum--given a work permit, and stay 
here indefinitely.
  Mr. President, 7.2 million is higher than the total number of 
migrants who came across the southern border under President Obama, who 
served 8 years, and President Trump, who served 4 years. So the Biden 
administration has done in 3 years what it took 12 years for the two 
previous administrations to accomplish. We have experienced more 
illegal immigration in the last 3 years than in the last 12.
  The American people have become increasingly concerned at the 
southern border because they see with their own eyes that this is a 
humanitarian crisis, and it is a public safety crisis. And they 
overwhelmingly--and quite appropriately--blame Biden administration 
policies and the President himself. They see that his policies and his 
rhetoric, rather than deter illegal immigration, have actually 
encouraged it.
  Let me say that again: They understand that the policies of this 
administration and the rhetoric that has been used are the driving 
force behind America's most serious border crisis in history.
  But, as usual, the President refuses to accept any responsibility. He 
has tried to blame everybody but himself. He has blamed congressional 
dysfunction. He has blamed MAGA Republicans. He has blamed anybody and 
everybody that he can possibly think of, rather than accept 
responsibility himself. Not only that, he has, at different times, 
claimed that he lacks the tools to fix this crisis. At different times, 
he has claimed that his hands are tied unless Congress passes new laws.
  The problem with that storyline, that narrative, is the facts simply 
don't support it. For one, the suggestion that only Congress can fix 
the crisis implies that Congress created the crisis. I would point out 
the same laws that were in effect during President Trump's 
administration are still in effect during President Biden's 
administration with far different outcomes.
  As each of our colleagues knows, Congress has struggled to pass any 
immigration laws in recent years; and, certainly, it has not passed any 
that would cause the dramatic surge in immigration that began the day 
that President Biden took office. The President was dealt exactly the 
same hand as his recent predecessors. The only difference is he used 
these authorities entirely differently and sent an entirely different 
message.
  As I have spoken before on the floor, the Border Patrol, which are 
the experts on border security, tell me that there are two main drivers 
of illegal immigration: One is push factors, they call it--poverty, 
violence, a desire for a better life. And we understand that. America 
is a nation of immigrants, of legal immigrants.
  But there is also the pull factors, like a magnet encouraging people 
to make the dangerous journey to our border, even in the form of 
unaccompanied children designed to exploit gaps in Biden administration 
policies and permanently reside in the United States.
  Earlier this week, I was surprised by a New York Times article that 
acknowledged the fundamental hypocrisy behind President Biden's efforts 
to shift the blame once again. This is a quote from February 26, 2024, 
the New York Times. David Leonhardt is the columnist. He said, in part:

       Biden is the president, after all, and a president has 
     significant authority to shape immigration policy even 
     without new legislation. Biden himself has been aggressive 
     about using this authority--albeit to loosen immigration 
     policy rather than tighten it.

  So the current phenomenon, this crisis--humanitarian and public 
safety crisis--is as a result of President

[[Page S1023]]

Biden's own policies. It is not the laws that are broken or inadequate; 
it is his will to actually enforce the law and his active encouragement 
for people to come to the border because they know they will 
successfully be able to stay in the United States.

  I have mentioned before about a trip that several of us colleagues on 
a bipartisan basis went to Yuma, AZ, a little sleepy agricultural 
community in southwest Arizona right across the border from Mexico. The 
Border Patrol Chief said: Welcome to the Yuma sector. Last year we 
welcomed people from 140-plus countries--not Mexico, not Central 
America, but from 140-plus countries that speak more than 200 
languages.
  Senator Kelly, our colleague from Arizona, pointed out that there was 
an airport in northern Mexico, in Mexicali--which is a fairly large 
city in northern Mexico--and, apparently, what happens is people fly 
into Mexicali and literally Uber over to the Border Patrol and declare 
amnesty--well, declare ``asylum'' is the right word.
  Well, I know the President will have a hard time with this, his 
second drive-by of the American-Mexico border during his term as 
President, but, of course, his goal is to try to shift the blame once 
again. As this journalist wrote, President Biden is the President. He 
wanted to be President. He got elected President. He ought to do the 
job that Presidents do, which is to enforce the laws. That is what the 
executive branch of government does: Congress passes laws. The judicial 
branch decides disputes about those laws as applied to given facts, but 
it is the President and the executive branch--the Department of 
Justice, Department of Homeland Security--that are responsible under 
our constitutional order for actually enforcing the law.
  And what has President Biden done with that authority? He has 
loosened immigration policy rather than tightened it. This is what I 
have been saying for 3 years; and, even now, I can't tell you how 
surprised and pleased I am to see this stated in the New York Times. 
But President Biden could listen to Mayor Adams, the mayor of New York 
City. He has said: This has been a disaster for New York. You hear the 
similar complaints from people like the Mayor of Washington, DC, the 
mayor of Chicago. These are self-styled sanctuary cities that you think 
would welcome these migrants, but they have been overwhelmed.
  Well, what about 7.2 million that are showing up on our back doorstep 
in Texas? It is hard to have much sympathy for the mayors of New York 
and Chicago and Washington, DC, when they have dealt with just a 
fraction of the numbers that we have had to deal with in Texas without 
any help from the Federal Government.
  And the Federal Government has been actively undermining efforts by 
the State of Texas to reduce illegal immigration.
  During his first few days in office, President Biden signed a raft of 
Executive orders related to immigration and border security: He halted 
construction of the border wall. He dismantled the agreement we had 
with Mexico that migrants could remain in Mexico while they waited for 
their asylum claim to be adjudicated. But he ripped that up too. He 
ended an asylum agreement with Northern Triangle countries and even 
issued a 100-day pause on deportations. So even if you were here 
illegally, you knew, at least for 100 days--and very likely for the 
rest of your life--that you would not be deported because of President 
Biden's policies.
  These are just a few examples of the Executive orders President Biden 
issued within days of taking office. In the 3 years since, he and other 
leaders in the administration have gone to great lengths to roll out 
the welcome mat.
  One of the most egregious examples is the administration's widespread 
use of parole. Parole, in this context, means that is a temporary entry 
for foreigners under rare and dire circumstances. It was never meant to 
be used categorically or in a blanket fashion as the Biden 
administration has done. It is meant to be used on a case-by-case basis 
in extreme cases--someone experiencing a medical emergency at a port of 
entry; somebody is donating a kidney or serving as a witness in a 
trial. It was meant to be used on a case-by-case basis which, by 
nature, gives the administration a good amount of discretion. But to 
provide some comparison, during the two previous administrations, an 
average of 5,600 migrants were paroled into the United States each 
year--5,600. Once President Biden took office, that number skyrocketed.
  The Biden administration has used parole to facilitate catch-and-
release at the border at an unprecedented pace, but its use of parole 
extends beyond illegal crossings at the southern border. The Biden 
administration announced a new program which allows individuals from 
four countries--Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela--to enter and 
remain in the United States, all under the guise of parole. You don't 
need to claim asylum. If you can make it to the border, if you pay the 
smugglers enough money to get you there, you know you are going to be 
able to stay here. This program that the Biden administration set up 
intentionally and with great deliberation provides 2 years of legal 
status and work authorization to 30,000--30,000--migrants from these 
four countries each month. That is 360,000 a year. The Biden 
administration: Roll out the welcome mat. Give them a work permit. Say 
``You can stay,'' knowing that they probably will be able to stay 
indefinitely.
  In total, the Biden administration has used its case-by-case parole 
authority to grant parole to 1.6 million migrants in less than 2 
years--1.6 million. As President Biden has shown repeatedly, if you 
give him an inch, he will take a mile.
  Another example of gratuitous discretion came from Secretary 
Mayorkas, who has been impeached by the House of Representatives. 
Secretary Mayorkas issued a final directive for immigration enforcement 
priorities in the fall of 2021. This really should be called--instead 
of immigration enforcement priorities, this should be immigration 
nonenforcement priorities. That would be a more accurate title.
  But under this guidance--one headline summed up the contents rather 
succinctly. It said the ``U.S. Will No Longer Deport Illegal Immigrants 
Based on Undocumented Status Alone.'' We are not going to deport people 
who are illegally entering the country? What kind of message does that 
send?
  But the memo went on to explicitly discourage ICE officers. ICE is 
Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Once you get past the border, ICE 
is the one responsible for repatriating or returning people who are 
here illegally. This memo explicitly discouraged ICE officers from 
arresting or removing illegal immigrants unless they have been 
convicted of a serious crime.
  It defies all common sense to ask law enforcement officers, who take 
an oath to uphold the Constitution and laws of the United States--it 
makes no sense to tell them at the same time to turn a blind eye when 
you encounter people who are here illegally just because the Biden 
administration doesn't want to enforce the law.
  Secretary Mayorkas went further. He laid out mitigating factors that 
should be considered before arresting or removing illegal immigrants, 
including their age, how long they have been in the United States, and 
the impact the removal would have on their family. Even in the case of 
an alien convicted of a very serious offense, like murder, like rape, 
receipt and possession of child pornography, ICE would have to consider 
these mitigating factors before they could take action and remove that 
person.
  The reality of the situation, no matter how inconvenient it may be 
for our Democratic colleagues, is that by entering the United States 
illegally, these migrants are breaking the law.
  There is nothing wrong with prioritizing the removal of the most 
dangerous criminals. Previous administrations have prioritized certain 
categories of illegal immigrants, like those suspected of terrorism or 
those who could be a threat to national security or public safety. But 
there is a difference between prioritizing certain groups for removal 
and exempting entire categories from enforcement.
  Given everything we have witnessed over the past 3 years, President 
Biden has no right--no right--to claim that

[[Page S1024]]

his hands are tied when it comes to addressing the border crisis by 
Executive action.
  From day one, President Biden made clear that he was willing to use 
Executive action, as David Leonhardt notes here, but he did it to 
loosen illegal immigration, make it easier, not harder. He used 
Executive action to stop border wall construction, end the ``Remain in 
Mexico'' policy, halt deportations, exclude broad classes of migrants 
from removal, parole more than 1.6 million migrants into the United 
States, and so much more. So this is a crisis of President Biden's 
making. This is a manmade disaster, and that man is President of the 
United States.
  If the President believed that he had this much latitude to loosen 
immigration policy, he shouldn't feel constrained by Congress when it 
comes to tightening immigration policy. It would be good politics for 
him. I pointed out that this is a major political liability for the 
President going into an election. He could fix it, just like he broke 
it.
  Executive actions have been used in the past to address migration 
surges--and with a great deal of success.
  Back in 2005, then-DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff testified before 
the Senate Judiciary Committee that I serve on and spoke about the 
Department's response to a surge of migrants from Brazil.
  All of a sudden, a bunch of migrants from Brazil showed up at the 
border. But what did they do? What did the Bush administration do? They 
used their existing authorities to expand the use of expedited removal, 
which allows agents to quickly remove migrants who have no legal basis 
to remain in the United States. As Secretary Chertoff noted, word 
spread fast. After 30 days, the number of Brazilians dropped by more 
than 50 percent. After 60 days, it dropped more than 90 percent.
  President Biden can do precisely the same thing, but he won't do it. 
President Biden has the exact same authority to replicate that effort 
today. He could expand expedited removal, send a clear message that our 
southern border is no longer an open corridor. But, as Mr. Leonhardt 
points out, all the messages he is sending are ``You can come. You can 
stay.'' What more powerful magnet, what more powerful pull factor for 
illegal immigration can you imagine?

  As I pointed out time and time again, it is not just about illegal 
immigration; it is about the drugs, because the cartels have figured 
out that if you flood the border with people, you can overwhelm the 
Border Patrol. Many of them would have to leave the frontlines to 
process paperwork, provide transportation, food, shelter, clothing to 
migrants in order to treat them humanely while they are here, but they 
are not on the border.
  Last year alone, 108,000 Americans died from drugs that come across 
that border, 71,000 of them from fentanyl, the synthetic opioid pressed 
into counterfeit-looking pills that high school-age children are taking 
across the country, thinking that they are taking something relatively 
innocuous, but, in fact, it kills them. Fentanyl is the leading cause 
of death for young people between the ages of 18 and 45. We know where 
it comes from. It comes across that border. It is manufactured in 
Mexico from precursors shipped in from China. But that is part of the 
disaster that the Biden administration's open border policy has 
wrought--108,000 dead Americans last year alone.
  Well, news reports are that President Biden could announce new 
Executive actions on his trip to the border tomorrow. I am eager to see 
whether he will reverse course and issue an Executive order that will 
actually tighten the border or actually do his duty of securing the 
border or whether these are measures more designed to loosen 
immigration policy.
  Of course, I expect that the American people, being very smart, will 
understand why President Biden has chosen this time to take this trip--
the second driveby of the border since he has been President. It is all 
about the election in November, and he understands that this is a 
gaping political liability, and he is trying to plug that. Not only is 
he trying to plug that hole, he is also trying to blame others for his 
failure, and that will not work. The American people, being very smart 
and perceptive, can see through that smoke screen.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. COTTON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the scheduled 
rollcall vote begin immediately.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Without objection, it is so ordered.