Madam President, I rise today to bring attention to the serious humanitarian crisis at our southern border. Right now, as we speak, thousands of children have entered the United States illegally and…
Madam President, I rise today to bring attention to the serious humanitarian crisis at our southern border. Right now, as we speak, thousands of children have entered the United States illegally and sit in crowded detention centers wrapped up in emergency blankets, hundreds, even thousands, of miles away from home. They are without their families and without their parents. Many of them have been trafficked and have been physically and sexually abused along the way.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported that just last month alone, 29,792 unaccompanied children came across our border, including 2,942 children under the age of 12. All of these children came here without their parents, and they have come here in large numbers because they know that President Biden is promising them amnesty.
The illegal immigrants coming across our southern border right now are not just children. President Biden's Secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, has said: ``We are on pace to encounter more individuals on the southwest border than we have in the last 20 years.''
In February, more than 100,000 illegal immigrants came across our southern
border, according to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which is 3 times the number of illegal immigrants who came through the southern border in February of 2019, and it is almost 6 times the number of illegal immigrants who came through our southern border in February of 2018.
The Biden administration refuses to call this a crisis, but that is what it is. We have a humanitarian crisis, and we also have a security crisis.
Of the over 100,000 illegal immigrants who came here in February, 71 percent of them are single adults, according to the Pew Research Center.
The Biden administration's policy has been to welcome these illegal immigrants and to halt or slow deportations as much as possible. When Joe Biden became President, he immediately halted construction of the border wall. He ended the ``Remain in Mexico'' policy, an incredible foreign policy victory President Trump negotiated with Mexico, which stipulated that illegal immigrants from Central America crossing illegally through Mexico to seek asylum in the United States would stay in Mexico during the pendency of their proceedings. President Biden ended that, ripping apart that international agreement, and, instead, he reinstated the failed policy of catch-and-release.
So now when we apprehend illegal immigrants, we let them go, including illegal immigrants who are criminals and who are convicted criminals guilty of violent crimes. President Biden's political decisions have produced a crisis and a crisis that is growing.
What the Biden administration has made clear in the last 2 months is that their priority is illegal immigrants and not American citizens. That is why, in just a moment, I am going to propound a unanimous consent request that the Senate pass Kate's Law. Kate's Law is named for Kate Steinle, who was 32 years old when she was tragically killed on a San Francisco peer by an illegal immigrant who had several felony convictions and had been deported from the United States not once, not twice, not three times, not even four times. He had been deported five times. By the revolving door of our border, this violent criminal kept being deported, and he kept coming back, and he kept coming back, and he kept coming back. And beautiful Kate Steinle was shot and killed because of our broken immigration system.
Kate's Law is commonsense legislation. It would amend Federal law to impose a mandatory minimum sentence of 5 years for any illegal reentry offense. Kate's Law is critical to ensuring that illegal immigrants who have been deported, especially those with violent criminal records, are deterred from repeatedly entering the country illegally over and over and over again. If the illegal immigrant, violent criminal wh killed Kate Steinle had been in prison for illegally entering the United States the fifth time, Kate would still be here today.
I have had the opportunity to meet Kate Steinle's family. They don't understand why our system is broken. They don't understand why we keep letting in violent, criminal, illegal aliens over and over and over again. And I will tell you, the American people--roughly 80 percent of Americans--agree with Kate's Law. This is commonsense legislation.
We are about to see a Democrat object to it because today's Democratic Party doesn't care what the American people say. But if this were in the realm of sanity, Kate's Law would pass 100 to nothing. Look, we can have disagreements about legal immigration, about what the rules are, but when it comes to violent, criminal, illegal aliens who enter the country illegally over and over and over again, it ought to be real simple. We ought to be able to come together as Democrats and Republicans and say: All right, let's draw the line there. We don't need more murderers in America.
I have spent a lot of time down in the valley and at the Texas border. I have spent a lot of time with agents from the Border Patrol. Tomorrow, I am going back to the border to see for myself what the conditions are like right now. I am leading a delegation of 17 other Senators, and we are going to go talk to Customs and Border Patrol agents. We are going to meet with CBP leadership. We are going to meet with law enforcement and community leaders. We are going to tour the detention facilities directly.
Now, you may not see that on TV because the Biden administration is refusing to allow the press to see the facilities. For 4 years, Democrats went on and on and on about kids in cages. Now, those cages were built by Barack Obama, and they are bigger and fuller under Joe Biden. And the Biden administration doesn't want you to see the Biden cages. So they have declared a media blackout, that reporters are not allowed.
The Trump administration allowed the media to go to the border. The Obama administration allowed the media to go to the border. The Bill Clinton administration allowed the media to go to the border. The George W. Bush administration allowed the media to go to the border. But Joe Biden wants to cover up the crisis that his administration has created, and it is a crisis that, sadly, Senate Democrats are complicit in creating as well.
We have yet to have a single Senate Democrat willing to break with the Biden administration on the unfolding humanitarian crisis on the border. The worse it gets, the more kids who are abused, the more kids who are assaulted, the more Americans who are put at risk of COVID, and the more Americans who are put at risk of violent crime. At some point, I hope and pray we will see Senate Democrats willing to say: Enough is enough. It is time to stop being angry partisans, and it is time to come together with common sense and protect the American citizens.
For that reason, as if in legislative session, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary be discharged from further consideration of S. 890, and that the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration; further, I ask unanimous consent that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.
Madam President.
Madam President, I appreciate the warm sentiments of the Senator from New Mexico, but the American people can distinguish the difference between talk and action.
The Senator from New Mexico suggested that all Democrats support holding criminals to account. I would suggest the facts are precisely to the contrary.
Just 2 weeks ago, on the floor of this body, we introduced an amendment to provide that $1,400 government stimulus checks should not go to criminals currently in prison. Every single Senate Democrat voted against that. That amendment failed by one vote. If even one Democrat had said ``OK, that is reasonable,'' it would have passed.
Yesterday, I introduced multiple unanimous consent requests to stop money from going to convicted criminals in prison and to send the money instead to the Crime Victims Fund. A Democrat objected.
I then said: All right, if you don't want to do all criminals, how about murderers? Can we agree, if you were convicted of homicide, if you killed somebody, let's not send you a government check; let's send it to the Crime Victims Fund? The Democrats objected.
I said: All right, how about rapists? The Democrats objected.
I said: How about child molesters? Surely, we can all agree child molesters are not worthy of a $1,400 taxpayer government bonus given by the Democrats. The Democrats objected.
So with all due respect to my friend from New Mexico, it is not the case that Democrats support holding prisoners to account.
Today, in the Rules Committee, the Democrats are pushing forward an election bill, the Corrupt Politicians Act, which would allow every felon in America who has been released from prison to vote. It would allow murderers to vote, rapists to vote, child molesters to vote. So it is not the case that Democrats are willing to stand up to violent crime.
Now, there are a couple of things that the Senator from New Mexico said that I wrote down. He said the only thing he disagreed with was ``the assertion that immigrants are inherently criminal.'' Well, I challenge anyone watching this exchange to read the transcript.
I am glad he disagrees with that assertion. That assertion never came from my mouth. I am the son of an immigrant who came from Cuba. We are a nation of immigrants. I am not remotely asserting that immigrants are inherently criminal. There is a right way to come, and that is to come legally.
But case law isn't about immigrants generally; it only applies to criminals. It is immigrants that have a criminal conviction, that have an aggravated felony conviction. So when my friend from New Mexico says that we need to focus on felons--and he closed his remarks with the following: ``We need to go after criminals and felons, not children and families''--the case law does exactly that.
If the Senator from New Mexico believes the words he said, the next words out of his mouth would not have been ``I object.'' By virtue of objecting, he prevented us from, in a bipartisan way, going after criminals and felons. Case law is targeted at those criminals and felons. It is not targeted at kids; it is targeted at criminals and felons.
I would ask the Senator from New Mexico and every Senate Democrat: What would you say to Kate Steinle's family? I have heard them testify in the Senate Judiciary Committee. I have visited with them personally. If you were looking them in the eyes, what would you say to a system where Kate Steinle's murderer was deported five times--multiple criminal convictions?
I am the original author of Kate's Law. We have voted on this on the Senate floo multiple times. Every time we have voted, every single Democratic Senator has voted against Kate's Law. You don't get to vote against Kate's Law, you don't get to vote against stopping violent criminals from repeatedly entering the country illegally, and then claim you are against violent criminals repeatedly entering the country illegally.
Actions mean more than words, and, unfortunately, the actions of today's Democratic Party are extreme and out of touch with the American people we were elected to represent.
I yield the floor.
