[Congressional Record Volume 170, Number 123 (Monday, July 29, 2024)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5535-S5537]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                            Southern Border

  Madam President, America's southern border has been in a state of 
crisis for the last 3\1/2\ years, and our country is desperate for a 
change in direction. They know of the millions of people coming across, 
the drugs that have taken the lives of 108,000 Americans last year 
alone, the crime, the potential vulnerability to terrorist attacks. 
They are not happy with the status quo, which is what the Biden and 
Harris administration have provided us for the last 3\1/2\ years.
  Throughout his time in office, President Biden has shown zero 
interest in stopping the flood of illegal immigration across our 
border. He has only visited the border once, and I doubt he will make 
another trip to the border during the remainder of his term in office. 
But, of course, I don't think he actually talked to the people who 
could have best informed him of what the problem was, created by his 
very policies. His policies have made it worse, not better--certainly, 
worse than it was under the Trump administration.
  President Biden is in Texas today. He is in Austin, TX, and then he 
will go to Houston. But I doubt he will bother to make a quick trip to 
the border because the message he has sent loud and

[[Page S5536]]

clear for the last 3\1/2\ years is that he does not care. He doesn't 
care about the migrants that are swarming into our major cities like 
New York; Washington, DC; Chicago, and the burdens those have placed on 
local taxpayers, about the crime that is associated with the fact that, 
uncontrolled, you don't know who is coming across the border.
  Admittedly, most migrants are coming here for work, for a better 
life, but the criminal cartels who continue to get rich smuggling 
people to the border from all around the world also are the ones that 
smuggle the drugs to the border, only to be distributed to kill our 
sons and daughters who inadvertently take fentanyl, presuming it to be 
some innocuous drug like a Percocet or a Xanax, only to find out it is 
a counterfeit pill contaminated by a powerful opioid--fentanyl.
  What does a potential Harris administration look like? Does it mean 
more of the same when it comes to the border and immigration policies? 
Would it signal a new direction? If so, what would that direction be?
  Well, the truth is, we already know the answers to those questions. 
We don't have to wonder about Vice President Harris's policies because 
she has played a starring role in the current Biden border crisis. 
These are, after all, Biden-Harris policies.
  Just a couple of months into President Biden's Presidency, illegal 
border crossings surged as a direct result of the policies that he and 
Vice President Harris implemented, starting the first day in office, 
mainly by dismantling, piece by piece, the effective policies of the 
Trump administration.
  But it became clear that the situation at the border was veering in a 
dangerous direction, at least in terms of the politics with President 
Biden. So he tapped the Vice President as the administration's border 
czar. That is what the headline from Axios, a political publication 
heralded at the time. It says: ``Biden puts Harris in charge of the 
border crisis.''
  But, curiously, it took 3 months before she made her first and, to my 
knowledge, only trip to the southern border as the individual with the 
administration in charge of the border crisis. She steered clear of the 
Rio Grande Valley, which is ground zero to the crisis, but instead did, 
I guess, what can most accurately and fairly be called a driveby in El 
Paso in Far West Texas, a very different environment than the Rio 
Grande Valley. This was Vice President Harris's first and only trip to 
the border, and it provided an early signal about how little she cared.
  The Vice President was in Texas last week and will be there again 
later this week and, once again, no trip to the border is scheduled. 
You know, if she cared, don't you think she would show up? Don't you 
think that is maybe what someone would do to learn about what is not 
working, what we could do to make it better? But the reality is, over 
the last 3\1/2\ years, Vice President Harris has proven she has no 
interest--zero interest--in stopping the alarming number of people 
streaming across the border. And the results speak for themselves. We 
have seen a record-shattering number of people flowing across the 
border because all of the signals being sent by the Biden 
administration are: Come by any means you can. Come to the border, and 
we will release you into the interior of the United States.
  For the last 3\1/2\ years, we logged more than 8.1 million border 
crossings, which is unprecedented. During the entire 12 years--12 
years--of the Obama and Trump administrations, the United States 
encountered about half of that--excuse me, about 6.1 million migrants 
at the southern border. So that is 12 years we have experienced less 
than what we have experienced in 3\1/2\ years under the Biden 
administration. In those 3\1/2\ years, President Biden and Vice 
President Harris have hit not only that previous total but 
significantly exceeded it.
  The number of illegal crossings at the border, though, only tells 
part of the story. It is only one data point. Every day, Border Patrol 
spots migrants on cameras or sensors, but they are unable to get there 
to them in time to apprehend them. These are known as ``got-aways.'' 
Since President Biden took office, the Agency has recorded more than 
1.8 million ``got-aways.''
  We don't know who these individuals are, where they are now, what 
their intentions were in coming to the border, and what kind of dangers 
that they may pose to the American people. Are they terrorists? Are 
they drug traffickers, convicted rapists, sexual predators? We have no 
idea and neither does President Biden and Vice President Harris and 
they simply don't care.
  On top of that, the administration stood up a number of new programs 
to hoodwink the American people into thinking that the problem isn't as 
bad as it really is while, unbelievably, incentivizing even more 
illegal immigration.
  One example is the CBP app. That is an app for your phone. Customs 
and Border Protection app is what it stands for. This was sold to the 
American people as a safe and orderly way to manage the border crisis. 
Instead, this system is being exploited by cartels and criminal 
organizations. And, basically, all you have to do is schedule your 
appearance at the border, and then the Border Patrol and Customs and 
Border Protection will allow you to come into the country and release 
you. This app requires users located in Central or Northern Mexico to 
schedule an appointment, but the cartels have found a way to circumvent 
that requirement by using a virtual private network or VPN. This has 
allowed them to boost their sales pitch and sell CBP One appointments 
to migrants around the world. They are using it to market their 
services. It has encouraged more illegal immigration, enriched these 
criminal organizations more.
  Another separate Biden-Harris program allows up to 30,000 migrants 
from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela to enter the United States 
every month. That is 360,000 a year--no claim of asylum, no claim of 
credible fear of persecution. Just show up, and you are allowed to 
stay. That is up to 360,000 a year. That is another magnet for people 
to come.
  Record number of illegal crossings, grave humanitarian conditions, 
dishonest accounting--this has been the reality of the Biden-Harris 
administration. And there can be no serious doubt that, if elected, 
President Harris would keep these disastrous policies in place. She has 
already told us as much.
  Before serving as Vice President or even as a U.S. Senator, Vice 
President Harris was attorney general of California. In 2015, then-
Attorney General Harris claimed in an interview that an undocumented 
immigrant is really not a criminal. Well, she knows better. Our 
immigration statutes explicitly establish that illegally entering the 
United States can be a crime. Even though she served as the top 
law enforcement officer for a border State, she refused to acknowledge 
even this basic fact.

  When campaigning for President in 2019, then-Senator Harris affirmed 
that she still held that belief. The moderator of a debate asked the 
candidates to raise a hand if they supported decriminalizing illegal 
border crossings. Of course, her hand shot up into the air. It is hard 
to decriminalize something that you don't think is a crime, but we get 
her drift.
  Of course, that is only the beginning of Vice President Harris's 
views concerning the border and immigration. Back in 2018, then-Senator 
Harris was asked if she supported the ``abolish ICE'' movement. You may 
recall this was back when our colleagues on the left, the Democratic 
Party, supported ``defund the police.'' She went even further and said 
we ought to abolish ICE. That is Immigration and Customs Enforcement. 
Those are the folks who enforce our immigration laws. She said we need 
to start thinking about that from scratch. I guess that means, when you 
start from scratch, eliminating all the laws that currently exist and 
replacing them with something new. But she was certainly willing to 
abolish ICE while she created something unspecified different.
  That same year in a Senate hearing, she compared U.S. Immigration and 
Customs Enforcement to the Ku Klux Klan. How outrageous and 
irresponsible is that? These are law enforcement officers who serve the 
Nation, put themselves in peril, in harm's way, and she said they are 
like the Ku Klux Klan. That says everything you need to know about how 
a potential Harris administration would approach illegal immigration 
and border security, including dismantling the very enforcement Agency 
responsible for enforcing

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our immigration laws. Beyond that, Vice President Harris has advocated 
for a pathway to citizenship for the 11 million or so people in the 
country illegally.
  I also heard this weekend, one of our colleagues, the Senator from 
Massachusetts, say one of the things she would anticipate from a future 
Harris administration would be establishing a pathway to citizenship 
for people here illegally in the United States.
  We also know she supports Federal health coverage for undocumented 
immigrants. In other words, she wants all of us as taxpayers to pay for 
the healthcare of people who won't even respect our laws and who 
entered the country illegally.
  And she has demonstrated that she is all too quick to judge and 
vilify law enforcement. Three years ago, border agents were trying to 
control a crowd of 3,000 migrants in Del Rio, TX. Del Rio, TX, is about 
35,000 people. Can you imagine the chaos and the challenge associated 
with 15,000 migrants from Haiti showing up in this town of 35,000 
people? One photographer captured an image that went viral for all of 
the wrong reasons. The image showed an agent grabbing the back of a 
man's shirt while on horseback while the horse's reins dangled on the 
side. At first glance, people like then-Vice President Harris assumed 
the worst and accused the agent of whipping the man to the ground.
  But before the Agency could even investigate the matter, she had 
attacked, disparaging the very law enforcement officials that are 
responsible for enforcing security at the border. She said these images 
evoked those of slavery and described the agent's behavior as 
``horrible and deeply troubling.'' Had she waited to actually 
investigate the incident, she would have learned the facts that there 
was no whip, and there was no whipping. If she bothered to speak to the 
head of Border Patrol, she would have been told the same thing. But as 
reports indicate, the Vice President of the United States, who was 
appointed the border czar by President Biden, has never spoken to the 
head of the Border Patrol, neither the current one nor his predecessor.
  Think about that for a minute. If your job is to be the border czar, 
wouldn't that be the first person you would talk to--the head of Border 
Patrol--maybe to learn what you could about the problem and what you 
could do to help fix it? But she hasn't even bothered to talk to either 
the current or the previous Border Patrol Chief.
  The fact is that Vice President Harris has played a key role in 
fueling the largest immigration crisis our country has ever seen. If 
she was able to accomplish that much as the Vice President and border 
czar, I hate to know what kind of damage she could inflict from the 
Oval Office.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Butler). The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. SCHATZ. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The Senator from Hawaii.