[Congressional Record Volume 170, Number 90 (Thursday, May 23, 2024)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3901-S3902]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           BORDER ACT OF 2024

  Mr. SCHMITT. Mr. President, as though with the voice of God, I have 
been recognized. And I rise to address what just happened here. Senator 
Schumer's failed attempt to resurrect a failed immigration bill in a 
bipartisan beatdown.
  But, first, let me recite some numbers: In fiscal year 2021, there 
were 387,000 known ``got-aways.'' In fiscal year 2022, there were 
606,131 known ``got-aways.'' In fiscal year 2023, there were 670,000 
known ``got-aways.''
  Because of Joe Biden's disastrous border policies, there are nearly 
10 million people who have crossed our border illegally, dispersed 
throughout the United States--many of whom we have no idea who they 
are, where they are from; some given court dates. We hope they return 
sometime in the 2030s.
  Thousands and thousands of Chinese nationals have illegally crossed 
our border since Joe Biden took office. The DEA has stated that the 
most ruthless Mexican cartels now operate in all 50 States. The 
American people are more at risk now from a terror attack than they 
have been since 9/11.
  How did we get here? The answer is pretty simple: Joe Biden reversed 
nearly every successful Trump-era policy that was working to secure our 
border. We had a 45-year low in illegal immigration at the end of 2020.
  That has all changed. His administration reversed the ``Remain-in-
Mexico'' policy. His administration attempted to sell border wall 
materials that had been sitting and rusting at an extreme discount. He 
paused deportations. He took nearly a hundred actions in his first 
hundred days to weaken our border security and signal to the cartels 
that our border was open for their business, a deadly business.
  I said from the beginning that Joe Biden has all the authority he 
needs to shut the border down right now. He could have shut down the 
border as illegal immigration numbers shattered record after record; 
but he didn't. And he won't. And now the American people are seeing the 
absolute carnage caused by Joe Biden's policies.
  Democrats are attempting to give Joe Biden cover by wasting our time 
on this vote that we just saw that went down on a vote for a bill that 
had already failed. Why? I think some people actually believe in open 
borders. They have no real problem with this. They believe that borders 
are arbitrary lines on a map. But the risk for Americans are real.
  And what happened on this floor--I try to draw some analogy. Seinfeld 
was a great show--great show--and it was famously cast as a show about 
nothing. This week was a show about nothing: no vehicles, no amendments 
on anything substantive that could help the American people--just this 
kabuki theater that we just witnessed.
  My criticisms of that bill--that we won't hear now, thankfully--are 
the same as they were in February. This bill would have changed the 
jurisdiction from immigration law related cases from Texas to 
Washington, DC.
  This ``break glass'' emergency authority is a disaster. This bill 
would

[[Page S3902]]

have only potentially shut down the border if there were 5,000 illegal 
crossings per day. That is over a million people per year. Somehow we 
would normalize the idea that a million people can come here illegally 
before we would take this seriously. That would be a step backwards in 
our law.
  The law currently is--and it has been across Republican and 
Democratic administrations--that if you come here, you are apprehended, 
and you are sent back, unless there is some special reason for you to 
stay, like asylum. And 9 out of 10 of those claims are, typically, 
bogus.
  But what else did this bill do? It created more asylum agents to 
create an express lane in a path for citizenship at the border, outside 
of the normal judicial process we have where it is an adversarial 
hearing. Those wouldn't exist anymore under this bill.
  And, most importantly, this bill gave the architect of the border 
invasion, Joe Biden, unilateral authority to terminate the bill's 
meaningless trigger I just mentioned.
  This bill failed for a reason. Now it has failed twice for a reason. 
It took us backwards. But I think it is very important for us to 
remember that we have an executive branch right now that isn't 
interested in executing the law. Joe Biden has every authority under 
the Sun to close this border; he just doesn't want to.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The senior Senator from Iowa.

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