[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 24 (Wednesday, February 5, 2025)]
[Senate]
[Pages S603-S605]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
Border Security
On a separate matter, Mr. President, President Trump and Republicans
were elected to secure the border. That is exactly what we are doing.
In his first few weeks in office, President Trump declared an
emergency at
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the southern border. He restored ``Remain in Mexico.'' He shut down the
Biden amnesty act. President Trump signed an Executive order to defund
sanctuary cities. He began deportation flights for criminal illegal
immigrants. He signed the Laken Riley Act into law. He listed
international drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations. He
pledged to send 30,000 of the worst illegal immigrant criminals to
Guantanamo Bay.
Here are just a few of the criminals who are now off of American
streets:
In Seattle, Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested a Mexican
national who was convicted--convicted--of raping a child. He is being
deported.
In Philadelphia, ICE arrested a Mexican national who was convicted of
possessing child pornography. He was also a drug dealer. He is being
deported.
In Los Angeles, ICE arrested an MS-13 gang member who is wanted for
murder in El Salvador. He is being deported.
In Houston, ICE arrested another gang member who is wanted for
aggravated assault. He is being deported.
In Baltimore, ICE arrested a Cuban national for drug trafficking and
weapons charges. He is being deported.
In Buffalo, NY, ICE arrested a Jordanian national with suspected
terrorist ties to ISIS. He is being deported.
In San Diego, ICE arrested an Afghan national with terrorist ties.
This individual had an existing removal order. He is now being
deported.
In all, there were 7,330 arrests of illegal immigrant criminals by
the end of President Trump's first week in office, and 97 percent of
illegal immigrants who have been deported in the last 17 days were
actually issued removal orders under President Joe Biden, but they were
never removed. That is right--97 percent of those deported had been
given removal orders under Biden. These are people who should have been
removed, who were ordered by a judge to be removed; but yet Biden and
the Democrats defied the law of the land and allowed each one of these
illegal immigrant criminals to stay.
President Trump's bold actions are also discouraging future border
crossings. On Monday, we saw the number of illegal crossings drop
significantly once again into our Nation. This is a drastic reduction
from the previous administration. The average number of illegal
crossings in the final week of the Biden administration was between
1,200 and 1,400 each and every day. All in all, President Trump is off
to a strong start, and there is more to come.
Congress still has important work to do. I spoke with Tom Homan at
the White House last week, where we were for the signing of the Laken
Riley Act. Tom, of course, is President Trump's border czar. His task
is to secure the border and deport illegal immigrants. He previously
ran Immigration and Customs Enforcement. He knows what it means to
secure the border. Mr. Homan said simply to me: I need resources when
it comes to securing the border. And I believe him. They do.
The best way to get these resources is for Congress to pass a
targeted bill, a bill that backs up the President's bold Executive
actions. The Senate is already moving quickly to get President Trump's
personnel in place. We confirmed Kristi Noem to be Secretary of
Homeland Security. We also confirmed Pete Hegseth to be Secretary of
Defense. Congress must now ensure that they have the resources they
need to continue the job.
A targeted reconciliation bill will give immigration officials the
tools they need to secure the border. That means funding to finish the
wall. It means more ICE and Border Patrol agents, more detention beds.
That includes Guantanamo Bay. It means more technology--not just at the
ports but also between the ports of entry--to stop the flood of illegal
immigrants. It is essential that we have the manpower, the technology,
and the wall to prevent illegal immigrants from coming into our
country. All three are needed to fully secure the border.
President Trump has already acted decisively. A targeted
reconciliation bill will be the rocket fuel for safety and for
security. This is the golden opportunity to make America safer.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas.
Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to be able to
complete my remarks before the vote.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I would like to continue along the theme
that our majority whip has talked about, particularly the hand-wringing
that we are seeing and fearmongering we are hearing from some of our
Democratic colleagues over President Trump's promise to secure the
border and the actions that he has taken already early in his
administration to do exactly that, including enforcing our existing
laws by repatriating, or deporting, people who have no legal right to
be here in the first place.
So, instead of the fearmongering of mass deportations, you might just
call this enforcing the law--something that is long overdue and that
the Biden administration did not do--because the fearmongering is not
based on reality. Our Democratic colleagues would have the American
people believe that an elderly grandma down the street--a peaceful
neighbor who would never hurt a fly and who poses no threat to anyone--
will have ICE banging on her door tomorrow morning. Well, that is the
picture that the left wants the American people to imagine when they
hear the words ``mass deportation.''
Last December, in a Judiciary Committee hearing, then-Chairman
Durbin, the Senator from Illinois, went so far as to say the
President's repatriation program would ``weaken our Armed Forces'' and
``devastate our economy.'' That is a lot of hyperbole there. If that is
what enforcing our law means, it certainly sounds disturbing.
But the American people can see right through what our Democratic
colleagues are trying to do here. They are trying to sow fear into the
hearts of the American people that this President, whom a majority of
the voters elected, is going to tear their communities and their
families apart. But the image could not be farther from the truth. We
know that the Biden administration's own policies and failure to
enforce the law have been doing just that--tearing families and
communities apart.
Start with the fentanyl epidemic in our country, which is among the
leading causes of death--the leading cause of death--for young people
between the ages of 18 and 45 and which took the lives of more than
70,000 people last year alone in this country. Then there are the
400,000 or more unaccompanied children who have been trafficked across
our open borders, and tens of thousands of these children have simply
been lost because of the Biden administration's carelessness.
The New York Times ran a couple of investigative stories, saying they
tried to contact the sponsors for 85,000 of these unaccompanied
children who had been placed with sponsors during the Biden
administration. There was no answer and no follow-up because the Biden
administration took the responsibility that it was no longer their job;
it was the job of the child welfare agencies in the various States.
These tragedies are the result of the policies of the Biden
administration, not the Trump administration, and it is one reason
President Trump was elected decisively on November 5, but there is more
to the story.
Untold misery and heartache have been caused by criminals who have
entered our country illegally. By our best estimate, roughly 1.7
million ``got-aways'' came across the open borders during the Biden
administration. These were people who, if they were here for, let's
say, benign reasons, could have just turned themselves in to the Border
Patrol and claimed asylum, knowing they would be released or would have
been paroled by the Biden administration and given a work permit; but
at least 1.7 million ``got-aways'' were evading law enforcement,
frankly, because they were up to no good.
We have now learned what the toll of this invasion of criminality has
caused. Last summer in Houston, TX, a 12-year-old girl named Jocelyn
Nungaray disappeared on her way to the grocery store. She was found
dead in a creek, having been strangled and killed by two men from
Venezuela who had entered the country illegally. Both of these men had
been apprehended by Customs and Border Protection months earlier, but
they had been given a court date and then were released.
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Last month, an illegal migrant from Mexico was caught with a
blowtorch near the side of the Kenneth fire--one of the deadly fires
that was ravaging Los Angeles. This is a man who was already on
probation and had violated that probation.
If it is proven that he had started the fire, this would be a slap in
the face to everyone whose world has been rocked by the devastation we
have seen from these terrible fires out in California. If it turns out
that he was one of the ones who started the fire, that would be another
indictment of the policies of the Biden administration for the last 4
years.
Then 2 weeks ago, Boston ICE officials arrested multiple MS-13 gang
members and criminals on a worldwide law enforcement ``wanted'' list
for serious crimes. They arrested murder and rape suspects, including a
member of the Haitian gang who had 18 convictions. These were the types
of people that the Biden administration allowed loose in our country.
We know that ICE--Immigration and Customs Enforcement--has now
arrested criminals who have committed sexual assault, domestic
violence, and drug- and weapon-related crimes, but these are just a few
examples of the hundreds of criminal arrests made just in the few short
weeks since President Trump took office.
To the Democrats who would decry these arrests, would you want these
criminals to be your neighbor? I am going to guess the answer is no.
With criminal illegal migrants running rampant throughout the
country, it is no surprise that Americans voted overwhelmingly for a
President who pledged to reverse the course from the reckless open
border policies of the Biden administration.
We know last week President Trump signed the Laken Riley Act. I was
honored to be present at the White House with our friend and colleague
Senator Katie Britt to watch him sign this legislation into law.
Laken Riley, for whom this law was named, was a 22-year-old woman who
went missing after going on a run. She was killed by a Venezuelan
national who was also a gang member. He should have never been running
loose in our country in the first place. It was President Biden's open
border policies that led to this horrific murder of Laken Riley.
The Laken Riley Act will now, having been signed into law, require
the Department of Homeland Security to detain noncitizens charged with
or convicted of theft-related crimes or any crime that results in death
or serious bodily injury. I introduced an amendment during the
deliberations on the bill that would add assaulting a law enforcement
officer to that list.
As we know here in the Senate, there is a 60-vote threshold to be
able to close off debate and to actually move on to pass legislation.
It ensures that we have bipartisan consensus. I am glad to say that the
Laken Riley Act passed the Senate with bipartisan support. I appreciate
the recognition that the status quo during the previous administration
could no longer exist.
The Laken Riley Act is not an example of some extremism, but it is an
issue that affects the day-to-day safety and livelihoods of regular
Americans.
I think it is perfectly fair to say that the deportations or
repatriations that the Trump administration has already begun are very
much in the spirit of the Laken Riley Act.
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem made clear over
the weekend that the Trump administration's first priority will be to
detain and deport what she called the ``worst of the worst''; that is,
bad actors with warrants out for arrest for murder, rape, assault, and
drug trafficking.
After the criminal aliens are deported, she said the next priority
will be individuals under final orders of deportation; in other words,
those who have exhausted all possible legal recourse to be able to stay
in the United States, having lost their claim for asylum.
There are more than 1\1/2\ million--1\1/2\ million--immigrants who
have exhausted their legal remedies in a court of law and are under
final orders of deportation, but the Biden administration simply did
nothing about it. So removing these individuals who have no legal right
to remain in the United States and who have been given due process and
have lost their case--deporting them is a commonsense next step and one
that is long overdue.
So when the mainstream media and our Democratic colleagues engage in
fearmongering about these so-called mass deportations, I hope people
remember we are talking primarily about criminals, and we are talking
about people who have no legal right to remain in the United States,
having exhausted all of their legal remedies in order to do so. I hope
we can all agree that these are not people who deserve to remain in
America.
America naturalizes about 1 million people a year. I personally
believe and I think Americans generally agree that legal immigration
has been the secret sauce for America. It is what helped make us the
great country we are today, prosperous and strong. But it is illegal
immigration that has been a scourge and has created much heartache and
misery and, frankly, makes us a laughing stock when we talk about the
rule of law.
Removing and deporting en masse the criminals and gangs who have
entered our country illegally over the last 4 years and faced no
consequences means that Americans will have less to fear, and they will
be safer in their communities and in their homes. They will no longer
have to fear that one of their children will accidentally take a
fentanyl-laced pill--make it less likely. We still have work to do
there, obviously. They no longer will have to fear that their daughter
will go on a run around her college campus or walk to the grocery store
and never return home because she has been abducted and murdered by
somebody who had no legal right to be here in the first place.
By ending President Biden's open border policies and deporting
criminals and gang members and people under final orders of
deportation, President Trump is making our Nation safe again. That is
not something we should fear; it is something we should welcome.
I yield the floor.