[Congressional Record Volume 170, Number 125 (Wednesday, July 31, 2024)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5638-S5639]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            BORDER SECURITY

  Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, it has been less than 2 weeks since

[[Page S5639]]

President Biden's name was removed from the Democratic Party's ticket. 
I have already spoken about how the effort to sideline Democrats' de 
facto nominee robbed primary voters of their role in the electoral 
process.
  Now, as the dust settles, more and more Americans are realizing this 
wasn't just a process foul, it was also a massive promotion for someone 
with a failing record in her current job.
  Remember, just 2 months into their term, the President asked the Vice 
President--gave her the task of getting to the bottom of the surging 
illegal immigration at the United States-Mexico border. He called her 
``the most qualified person'' to lead on this issue.
  So why don't we take a look at how she did. In the past 3\1/2\ years, 
the crisis at our southern border has made history. Border Patrol 
agents have recorded over 9.9 million illegal encounters. We know that 
nearly 2 million more have literally gotten away, and the 
administration's catch-and-release policies have let in over 3 million 
without any credible means of enforcing immigration law.
  What rapidly became a humanitarian crisis on Vice President Harris's 
watch is also a national security vulnerability of alarming 
proportions. Since October 2021, CBP have encountered 539 individuals 
on the Terror Watchlist along the southern border.
  The failure is vast. The facts are shocking. The numbers are 
staggering. But for too many American families, there is only one 
number that matters: the one empty chair at the dinner table.
  For some families, that chair is empty because an illegal immigrant 
killed their loved one. For many more, it is empty because Chinese 
manufacturers and Mexican cartels have exploited the chaos at the 
border and made fentanyl the leading cause of death for American 
adults.
  And yet--yet--in the face of pain and suffering, the administration's 
point person on the border has approached this crisis with profound 
unseriousness. It took the Vice President months to get around to 
visiting the border. When asked why she hadn't made time to see the 
effects of the administration's open border policies firsthand, she 
quipped that she had not been to Europe either.
  Sometimes, instead of deflection, she has employed outright denial. 
For example, she said:

       We have a secure border.

  Another example:

       [E]verything . . . is going rather smoothly.

  Of course, years earlier, under an administration that took border 
security seriously, then-Senator Harris found plenty of time to 
elaborate on her aversion to that commonsense policy.
  In 2017, when a Federal judge blocked the previous administration's 
effort to deny Federal funding to sanctuary cities, she reacted as 
follows:

       It's fantastic, I'm jumping up and down. Put five 
     exclamation points after what I just said.

  Democrats are poised to nominate someone with a long record of being 
dead wrong on securing American borders. So perhaps it is not 
surprising that their immediate allies are working overtime to absolve 
the Vice President of responsibility for the undeniable crisis that has 
unfolded on her watch.
  Last week, we read headlines like: ``No, Kamala Harris Is Not The 
`Border Czar.'''
  And claims that ``the Vice President's role was more limited.''
  After the short hiatus of asking tough questions about President 
Biden's fitness for office, the legacy media are back in the business 
of papering over Democratic vulnerabilities, even in this case if it 
means blatantly gaslighting the public.
  But at the end of the day, the American people know what neglect 
looks like. Families missing loved ones know what this sort of 
catastrophic failure feels like, and in November, I expect they will 
have plenty to say about it.

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