[Congressional Record Volume 170, Number 96 (Wednesday, June 5, 2024)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3965-S3967]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
Immigration
Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, the President of the United States is,
today, using clips of my speech on the floor of the Senate in his
campaign ads talking about border security and immigration. Well, I
would encourage him to use clips of this speech today instead, because
President Biden created the problem at the border right now.
That is not some theory. That is not some political statement. That
is fact. And I can compare that to the two previous Presidents, who
operated under the exact same law as President Biden is operating under
now. We have 2\1/2\ million people--plus--illegally crossing our
southern border this year. Under
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President Obama, we had half a million.
There is no difference in the law between President Obama, President
Trump, and President Biden. The only difference is the Executive who is
actually overseeing that law's prosecution. That is the only
difference.
So why would we have half a million people illegally crossing the
border under President Obama and 2\1/2\ million people under President
Biden? It is the Executive and how they are carrying out the law.
Now, I have been very clear: That last half a million is Congress's
responsibility. We have a responsibility to change the definition of
``asylum,'' to change how the enforcement is done, increase the number
of agents that are there, take away a lot of the appeals that are
frivolous--and we all know it--to be able to allow people who qualify
for asylum to get into the country and people who do not get turned
around so they can go through a legal pathway, not through an illegal
pathway.
That is Congress's responsibility, that last half a million. Those
are changes in the law we have to get done, and I have been very
outspoken on that and will continue to be outspoken on that because we
have not done our job here.
But the other 2 million people who are illegally crossing this year,
last year, the year before that, that is not on Congress; that is on
the President of the United States because he created this.
Why would I say that? Day one of his Presidency, he walked in with an
Executive order day one and announced to the world: We are no longer
going to do a border wall construction. We are going to stop border
wall construction. Day one, this President announced that he is no
longer going to do the Executive order that had been put in place under
President Trump to ensure that there was a meaningful application of
Border Patrol laws and immigration regulations. Literally, he took
those regs and set them aside and said: We are not going to do that.
Day one, he announced a 100-day moratorium on deportations and on
enforcement and then continued to be able to extend it out from there.
This wasn't day one, but it was a week and a half later: DHS
implemented a new policy saying that we are going to change the way we
do removals of people who are illegally present in the country. The
next day after that, he changed the way asylum processing is done at
the border and removed what was called the ``Remain in Mexico''
program.
That is something the Supreme Court actually came back and said: You
can't just remove that; you have to re-implement that. So the Supreme
Court actually required that to be implemented. This President put in
the mechanics to do it but is not actually doing it.
So, as Americans, we are paying hundreds of millions of dollars to
have the facility and the personnel actually there to fulfill what the
Court has required them to do, but they are not actually doing what is
called the ``MPP,'' the ``Remain in Mexico'' program. That is a
decision that they made.
A week after that, in February of 2021, Antony Blinken announced that
he was terminating the agreements with Guatemala, Honduras, and El
Salvador so that they would then enforce their borders more readily.
That agreement that we had made with them with the State Department,
the State Department terminated that to be able to open up the pathways
for more folks to go.
I could keep going on and on and on. You see, what is happening now
is not happenstance; it was a deliberate decision made in 2021 to open
our borders to ``not look so mean.'' But what has actually occurred is
more than 10 million people have crossed our border illegally, and the
administration has announced just in the last couple of weeks that
55,000 people have crossed just this year that they designated as a
special-interest migrant--their definition--55,000 people. Those
individuals are coming from areas that they define as a terror risk.
Those 55,000 individuals have all been labeled by this administration
as a potential risk to national security--55,000 in just the last year.
You know what has happened to those? The vast majority of them are in
the United States right now because they were released by this
administration.
This is a border crisis of this administration's creation. They
created this crisis. While Congress has the responsibility to do the
things that we need to do, this administration created this crisis with
the decisions that they made in Homeland Security, that they made in
the State Department, and they made at the Department of Justice.
Individuals who cross the border multiple times, that is a felony in
American law. Ask the Department of Justice how many of those folks
have been prosecuted as a felony in the last 3 years--I dare you; ask
them--and you will find out it is zero. They have just stopped
prosecutions.
They have announced to the world: We are no longer enforcing American
law. The world has taken the message, and they are coming because we
are the United States of America. We are the greatest country in the
world. But we are also the top terrorism threat in the world because
people come here to do us harm because they hate our freedom and who we
are.
We are not doing the most basic security that every nation does, and
that is protect our border. So the President announced an Executive
action this week, an Executive action that he literally pulled from a
section of the bipartisan bill that we worked on, but it was literally
the bolt-on section on the end of it.
The heart of the bill was not what you do after thousands of people
are crossing the border; the heart of the bill is what do you do for
the first person that illegally crosses. The bill was set up to say
that the very first person that illegally crosses--they are picked up
at the border, they are screened quickly, and then they are deported
quickly. We changed the screening process, we changed the appeals
process, and we changed all the standards. We rapidly affected the
first person.
This administration has announced a new initiative that they are
going to do not for the first person that illegally crosses but for
somewhere around the 4,000th.
Why do I say 4,000 when they have announced 2,500? Well, you have to
read the fine print. They said: After 2,500 people come, then we are
going to add some new authorities. But the fine print is pretty
important.
They exclude the about 1,600 people a day that they are currently
letting in at ports of entry using what they call the CBP One app. They
are giving those folks parole. They have not gone through any legal
process. They are declaring them as legal when they come through. So
they are not including those folks that are illegally coming across the
border under a parole program they have created. That program could end
tomorrow. Illegal immigration would drop by 1,600 people tomorrow if
they turned off the program they turned on.
They are also not including what is called the Cuba, Haiti,
Venezuela, Nicaragua program. There are 1,000 people a day coming in
under that program. They have just excluded them as well from their
2,500 number.
They are excluding anyone who is an unaccompanied minor. They are
excluding them.
They have also listed a whole bunch of others--if they have a health
issue, others.
So this 2,500 number--I have had several folks say: Well, that is
half of what you all had proposed in your bill. It is not. You have to
read the fine print of what is actually in the Executive order.
What could this administration do? It is pretty straightforward. Here
a few things they could do right now.
Right now, they could actually start putting pressure on recalcitrant
countries, through the State Department, to take individuals back into
their own country. The State Department has stopped putting pressure on
recalcitrant countries. They could do that today.
The law today allows the administration to start doing direct hire
for Border Patrol and for ICE. They are not using that authority. They
are just saying: We can't hire enough agents. They have direct hire
authority they are choosing not to use.
Right now, this administration could speed up the way they handle the
appeals process through all these frivolous regulations and some of the
Executive orders. They had to literally take
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away those things and make it more difficult to actually fight through
the appeals. They could put those back in today.
Today, they could end the Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, Venezuela program
that they created to allow folks to be able to come in in greater
numbers from those four countries. They started that program. They
could end that today.
They could end the catch-and-release that they have created at the
southern border. They could end that today. They started it. They could
turn that off.
They could restart the cooperative agreements with Guatemala,
Honduras, and El Salvador to stop the flow of migrants coming from
Central America up as they are coming through those areas. They could
do that today.
They could reinstate the ``Remain in Mexico'' program. All the
structure is there. The court required them to have it. They could
actually use it, and that would make a huge difference today.
They could actually start prosecuting border crossing cases from
start to finish. What do I mean by that? This administration is
starting the process of prosecuting individuals, but halfway through,
they are just dropping the case. Well, it doesn't take long for the
word to get out to people who illegally cross that even if you start
the prosecution, this administration will drop it and will not finish
it. They text family members back home and say ``come,'' and the next
group actually comes from there.
This administration is currently finding new ways to allow people to
come in. In States like Oklahoma--my State is currently being
prosecuted by the Department of Justice because we passed laws in our
State to put greater requirements on people that are illegally present
in the State and have committed criminal acts. It used to be, under the
previous administration, if someone was illegally present and they
committed a criminal act, they were more active to remove those. Right
now, the Department of Justice is actually putting pressure on my State
of Oklahoma for pressuring people that are illegally present and also
have committed a criminal act.
The Department of Justice could actually enforce our southern border
rather than actually go after States that are trying to actually
enforce the law in our own States.
Quite frankly, one of the things this administration could do today
is to vet people coming across our border better, because they are
currently not coordinating all of the data points we have for foreign
individuals. They are not checking against all of those systems when
people are crossing our border illegally.
This administration and this President need to stop saying there is
nothing he can do until Congress acts. Congress does need to act, but
there is a lot he could do that would make a huge difference. And it is
not just my opinion; I can prove it with fact. Just compare this
Democrat President and his number of illegal crossings against the last
Democrat President and his number of illegal crossings: Biden, 2.5
million a year; Obama, half a million a year.
I understand this President doesn't want to enforce what President
Trump did, although that was more effective than what President Obama
did, but he should do at least what President Obama did.
Stop playing politics with this on all sides. Stop running a speech
that I have given on this floor for his campaign purposes unless he
wants to run this speech and to say this President needs to step up and
do his job.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Mississippi.