[Congressional Record Volume 170, Number 90 (Thursday, May 23, 2024)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3876-S3877]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                           Border Act of 2024

  Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, three Senators started, about 8 months 
ago now, working to try to get some solutions on border security. It is 
for obvious reasons, because we have record high numbers over and over 
and over again at our southern border. We had a record high number in 
October, record high number in November, and record high number in 
December. In fact, December had the highest number of illegal crossings 
ever in the history of the country in a single day.
  As of yesterday, we had about 5,200 people that illegally crossed 
yesterday. In fact, almost every day this year, we have had more than 
5,000 illegally crossing day after day after day.
  This is a very big issue that the American people want solved. It is 
a frustrating issue that we have not been able to get to a resolution 
on. It is an issue that people have been frustrated with President 
Biden because President Biden has not enforced the border the same way 
President Trump did or the same way President Obama did.
  To be clear, this year we will have 2\1/2\ million people illegally 
cross the border. With the same law in place under President Obama, we 
had half a million people that illegally crossed that year.
  And as I have raised over and over again with this administration, if 
they would just enforce the border the same way President Obama did, 
things would be very different. But they have chosen not to. They have 
chosen not to enforce it the same way President Trump did.
  Instead, we have absolutely been overrun with people from literally 
all over the world. To put this in perspective, in the last 3 months, 
we have had more people illegally cross than any full year under 
President Obama.
  They need to do what they can do. But Congress needs to do what we 
can do. We have got to change the definition of asylum. We have to 
change the appeals process. We have got to be able to speed up the 
process. We have got to provide more clarity so that we don't have 
people waiting around 8 years for a hearing. We can't just release 
people at the border, as what has happened day after day after day for 
years now. We can't have a brandnew parole program that the Biden 
administration literally invented that no President has ever used to 
release thousands of people a day. We can't have that.
  We need to solve this in the administration. We need to solve this in 
Congress. I wish that is what we were doing today, but we are not.
  When Senator Murphy and Senator Sinema and I started working on this 
months ago, we were working to solve it. We were not able to get that 
done.
  But today is not a bill. Today is a prop. Today is a political 
messaging exercise. Today is an opportunity to be able to have a vote 
that is sitting out there so people can send fundraising emails 
out later tonight and say, ``Look, I tried to do something,'' when no 
work was actually done to try to get something done and completed and 
passed today.

  In fact, I anticipate there will be fewer votes today than there were 
2 months ago when this came up--on both sides of the aisle--because 
everyone sees this for what it is. It is not an effort to actually make 
law. It is an effort to do political messaging.
  That doesn't help us as a country. We still have people that are 
illegally present here that need attention, and we are not getting it.
  Now, we can say--Democrats can bring this bill up and say: Look, we 
tried to do something.
  Well, so what. Republicans can do the same thing. We brought H.R. 2 
twice. That has passed the House with a broad, sweeping piece of 
approval in the House to come over here to be able to change the way 
that actually asylum is done, the entire process. That has been voted 
down twice on a strictly partisan vote.
  So we can have this vote today, and people can say: Well, Republicans 
voted against this; so it didn't pass.
  Republicans can say: Democrats didn't vote for H.R. 2; so it didn't 
pass.
  That still doesn't solve the problem. At the end of the day, the 
people in my State say: There is another 5,000 people that illegally 
crossed the border. Why aren't we sitting down and resolving this?
  So, today, I am going to vote no on a bill that I think should pass, 
but there has been no effort to really get this to pass. Let's get us 
back to the table. Let's actually resolve this issue as we need to get 
done.
  With that, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arizona.
  Ms. SINEMA. Mr. President, I stand here today, yet again, as the 
border crisis continues to devastate my State.
  On February 7, I stood here, angry that rank partisanship tanked the 
single most important piece of border security and immigration 
legislation produced in decades.
  As we all remember, last October, I joined with Senators James 
Lankford of Oklahoma and Chris Murphy of Connecticut to craft this 
legislation. We worked every single day for over 4

[[Page S3877]]

months, navigating difficult policy positions, working carefully to get 
it right.
  After months of tireless negotiations, we delivered a strong product. 
We produced a bill many thought impossible. We ended catch-and-release. 
We added more detention beds. We increased deportation flights. We 
quickly decided asylum claims, and we put Border Patrol back in the 
field where they belong--securing the border, not stuck inside 
processing paperwork.
  Yet, less than 24 hours after we released the bill, my Republican 
colleagues blocked it, despite the fact that this is the most 
restrictive migrant legislation in decades.
  My Democratic colleagues blamed Republican political theater for 
blocking action. So did I. They were right.
  I spoke here on the Senate floor twice in defense of our legislation. 
It turns out that my Republican colleagues were all talk and no action.
  Today, though, my Democratic colleagues have chosen more political 
theater instead of real efforts to solve this crisis.
  All talk and no actions goes both ways. Today, the Senate will hold a 
show vote whose sole purpose is to point the finger back at the other 
party--yet another cynical political game.
  These games demonstrate exactly why Americans have lost faith in 
their elected leaders: a Congress bickering and fighting for power 
instead of solving problems and making progress--any kind of progress--
for regular people. Today's vote is not an attempt to solve the problem 
or provide relief to Arizona border communities. Today's vote is to 
send a message.
  But Arizona doesn't need your message. Arizona needs your help. 
Arizona needs action.
  These games of tit for tat, caving to the political messaging game, 
force both parties further to the fringes and further away from real 
solutions. Today, the Senate is proving what many Americans already 
think about Congress: that Senators come here for political games, not 
to deliver results.
  Today's vote won't deliver lasting results for Americans, but the 
impact of today's vote is actually worse than simply being a useless 
message, because this vote does send an important message, but it is a 
message to us as lawmakers.
  I have often asked my colleagues in the interest of our Nation to 
step out of partisan boxes and work with me to find real solutions to 
real problems. We have done it time and time again. This time it didn't 
work.
  Nearly 4 months later, I am still deeply disappointed that we didn't 
solve the border crisis for my State and for our country. But to use 
this failure as a political punching bag only punishes those who were 
courageous enough to do the hard work of finding compromise in the 
first place.
  So who will be courageous next time? Who will stand up and do the 
hard work? Who will take the risks? Who will say: Yes, I will help 
solve this big challenge our country faces. Why would anyone?
  We don't leave today with a political victory. No one wins. No one 
gets the higher grounds. Instead, we are saying to each other: Don't 
step out. Don't try to solve big problems. Stay in your partisan 
corner. Yell some more. Blame the other side.
  Today, yet again, the Senate has chosen politics, but my State is 
still suffering. As I said on the floor back on February 7, if you want 
to spin the border crisis for your own political agendas, go right 
ahead. If you want to continue to use the southern border as a backdrop 
for your political campaign, that is fine; good luck to you. But I have 
a very clear message for anyone using the southern border for staged 
political events: Don't come to Arizona for your political theater. Do 
not bring it to my State.
  In Arizona, we are serious. We don't have time for your political 
games. There are big challenges facing the Senate and our country, and 
evidently this is not a Senate interested in solving those challenges. 
Americans deserve better.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Butler). The Senator from Connecticut.
  Mr. MURPHY. Madam President, I am deeply grateful to Senator Sinema, 
Senator Lankford, Senator McConnell, Senator Schumer, and others who 
worked with us over the course of 4 months to craft this landmark, 
unprecedented, bipartisan border security bill that, if enacted, would 
take the biggest step that we have taken in decades to bring order to 
our southwest border. It would give a shot of confidence to our 
constituents that we can find agreement on even the toughest of issues.
  I may be coming to a slightly different conclusion, though, on the 
reason that we are here today than my very good friend Senator Sinema 
and my great friend Senator Lankford.
  I think one of the most important, enduring values in politics is the 
value of persistence. If you believe something is important, you don't 
give up the first time.
  We worked very hard to achieve this compromise. It is a good-faith 
compromise. You will see that it is a compromise because there will be 
Democratic Members who will vote against it today.
  We solved some big problems in this bill--reducing the amount of time 
it takes to process an asylum claim from 10 years down to a handful of 
weeks or months, giving the President new powers to shut down the 
border when crossings get too high, giving new legal rights to 
migrants, allowing for more visas so that folks can come to the United 
States in a planned way to work or to be reunited with families.
  I think that compromise was so important that we shouldn't give up 
after failing once. I think the American people have told us that 
solving the problem at the border is so important that we shouldn't put 
away that compromise simply because the first time, politics won out.
  Maybe I am naive, but I had some degree of hope, some degree of faith 
that maybe the second time we could come together and vote to proceed 
to a debate, because, remember, that is all this vote is--not a vote 
on final passage, a vote to bring this bill before the Senate, to 
litigate the outstanding issues that Republicans may have about the 
reforms in this bill.

  So I deeply appreciate all of the work that Senator Lankford and 
Senator Sinema did that went into this bill. I just come to a slightly 
different conclusion. This does not make me less eager to engage in 
bipartisan compromise in the future. This doesn't dissuade me from 
trying to reach future compromises.
  Frankly, I think our decision to not give up when we have reached 
this really important product--I think it may, frankly, put wind behind 
the wings of those in the future who decide to do something really 
important on something big and work across the aisle to get it done.
  We have a chance right now to come together, to put politics and 
campaigns aside, to vote to proceed on this landmark bipartisan border 
security reform bill, and I hope my colleagues do it.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.
  Mr. SCHUMER. Madam President, I will be very brief.
  For years, we have heard that if you want to fix the border, then 
Congress needs to act. Today, we have a chance to act on the strongest 
border bill Congress has seen in generations.
  To those who have said for years that Congress needs to act on the 
border, this bipartisan bill is the answer, and it is time to show we 
are serious about fixing the problem.
  It is our chance to hire more Border Patrol agents and asylum 
officers and immigration judges. It is a chance to stop the flow of 
fentanyl and give law enforcement the tools they need to scan 100 
percent of what is coming into the country. It is our chance to give 
the President emergency powers to close the border, to update asylum 
laws, and improve vetting. It is a chance to show the American people 
we are listening, we are acting, we can still reach across the aisle 
and work on one of the most vexing problems facing the Nation.
  I implore my colleagues, do not let this moment pass.
  I yield the floor.