[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.