Floor Statements

Mr. President, reserving the right to object, the Border Patrol union--our law enforcement officers who patrol the southern and northern border who serve this country and protect this country-- endorsed the bipartisan border security bill that my friend from North Carolina opposed, as did almost all of his colleagues.

The Border Patrol union--the organization that represents law enforcement officers--supported that bill for a number of reasons. It would have surged resources to the southern border to make sure that we properly administered our border and made sure that the only people who are coming to this country have legitimate asylum claims. It would invest in technology to make those Border Patrol officers' jobs easier. It would have granted new hiring authorities to make sure that we can get people down to the border faster rather than just redeploying agents from the northern border to the southern border.

But it is likely that they supported that bill for an additional reason. Under current law, if you are coming to this country to apply for asylum, if you have a criminal history in the United States during a prior visit or in your home country, that question is not relevant under existing law until you go before an asylum judge, before you go before an immigration judge to make your asylum claim.

Senator Lankford, myself, and Senator Sinema thought that didn't make sense. We thought that that question of your prior criminal history should be relevant the minute that you show up at the border; that you don't get into the United States to make your claim of asylum if you have a criminal history.

That was part of the bipartisan border bill. That would have protected the country. That would have protected our law enforcement officers. But my Republican colleagues turned down the opportunity to pass bipartisan legislation that would prevent individuals

with criminal records from coming into the country and applying for asylum because under current law--law that the President is bound to administer and enforce--those questions are not brought into the process until that asylum claim is being heard by a judge.

And so it is just another example of the ways in which the bipartisan border bill--the bill that Republicans asked for, demanded Democrats negotiate--would have made this country safer, would have created a more efficient and more secure border. And I am still furious--and heartbroken--that Republicans decided to keep the border a mess because it helps their Presidential candidate politically instead of trying to solve the problem.

As for this specific measure, as I said last time I came to the floor to object, it is already, under current law, a deportable offense if you commit a crime of violence. It is already, under current law, a deportable offense if you commit and are convicted of any crime involving moral turpitude. And, further, noncitizens who are convicted of any aggravated felony, including misdemeanor offenses, are deportable as well.

So this bill is seeking to solve a problem that doesn't exist because current law says, if you commit an assault on a law enforcement officer, you are going to be deported.

So why are we debating this bill if current law already says you can be deported for assaulting a police officer?

I don't know the answer, but what I know is that there is a broader effort underfoot by former President Trump and my Republican colleagues to try to make Americans believe that there is a specific unique threat posed to you by immigrants; that you should fear people that are coming to this country to seek a better life or to flee terror or torture. It is a familiar trope because it was used against my forefathers when they came here from Ireland. It was used against those who came to the United States from prior generations: You should fear the Irish. You should fear the Italians. You should fear the Chinese. Today, it is that you should fear those coming from Central or South America.

But it is just not the truth. I know it is hard to hear for some folks who believe everything they watch on FOX News, but individuals who are first-generation immigrants to this country are less likely to be convicted of violent crimes than individuals who are born in this country.

In 2020, the Trump DOJ sought to prove that false. They actually commissioned research to examine the rate of crime between noncitizens and citizens because they couldn't believe the data because FOX News said that we should fear immigrants.

Here is one of the papers that was commissioned by the Trump DOJ:

[W]e find that undocumented immigrants had substantially

lower crime rates than native-born citizens . . . across a

range of felony offenses. Relative to undocumented

immigrants, US-born citizens are over 2 times more likely to

be arrested for violent crimes, 2.5 times more likely to be

arrested for drug crimes, and over 4 times more likely to be

arrested for property crimes.

These are quotes directly from a Trump-funded Department of Justice report.

I don't disagree with my colleague from North Carolina. Of course, if someone commits an assault against a law enforcement officer, they should be deported from this country. If somebody commits an assault against a community member, regardless of their occupation, they should be deported from this country. That is what the existing law says: If you are convicted of a felony or a misdemeanor assault--any crime of moral turpitude--you are deported.

And so, to me, this is duplicative at best and, at worst, an effort to just try to reinforce this very dangerous mythology that this country has something to fear from immigrants who are coming to this country to flee economic desperation and violence and terror and torture.

For that reason, I object.

Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I don't think we are in disagreement on the Senate floor on this matter. I think we all agree that noncitizens who are convicted of serious violent crimes--who have committed serious violent crimes--should be detained, and they should be subject to removal proceedings.

The good news is that is the current law. That is the current law. This bill is a reiteration of current law.

Let me tell you what current law requires.

Current law requires the detention of any individual with serious criminal convictions, including those who have committed crimes of violence or theft offenses, including murder, rape, and assault. That is the current law.

Furthermore, this administration has given specific direction to the Department of Justice to prioritize the detention or removal of individuals who have committed violent offenses.

And so, as with earlier unanimous consent requests, this unanimous consent request is essentially a reiteration of current law.

I have a great deal of respect for my colleague. We worked together on a number of important matters. But I find myself asking the question, Why are we being asked to simply restate current law when it comes to the detainment or removal of immigrants who have committed violent crimes who right now are subject to removal for those crimes?

And I come to two conclusions: The first is that it is a means of distracting the conversation from the vote that is going to happen in an hour and a half.

We went through a painstaking process to negotiate a bipartisan compromise. That process was begun at the request of Senate Republicans. In the room was their appointed negotiator and representatives of their chosen leader of the conference. It couldn't be more official than that: their appointed negotiator, Senator Lankford, and the leader of their caucus, Senator McConnell, in the room for 4 months negotiating a bipartisan border security bill.

At the end of that process, we achieved a result. We got an agreement with the people that the Senate Republican caucus told us to get an agreement with. Within 24 hours, almost every Senate Republican had sided against that bill.

I submit, everybody probably had different reasons for it, but it was very clear that up until the point where Donald Trump said: Don't do anything; I want the border to be a mess, there were plenty of Senate Republicans who were very invested in that process. Included in that bipartisan compromise are important reforms in the way that we try to make sure that anyone with a violent history never enters the United States.

Under current law, if you have a criminal history outside of the United States or a previous criminal history inside of the United States, that doesn't become relevant to your asylum claim until you present before an asylum judge.

Under the bipartisan bill, that question of whether you have a violent history and whether you should enter the United States happens at the border as part of your credible fear screening. That would be a really important bipartisan reform to make to make sure that anybody with a violent history never enters the United States.

The current law isn't good enough. The bipartisan bill would have made that law better and made this country safer. But Republicans are going to, almost to an individual, vote against that later today.

And so what we are left with are these unanimous consent agreements that don't come close to providing the kind of security that the bipartisan border bill does.

But it also serves a second purpose. It also has a secondary impact. I wish my Republican colleagues didn't care only about crimes committed by immigrants. I know they care about crimes committed by others, but it seems that there is a disproportionate amount of energy on this floor dedicated to crimes committed by immigrants, which gives the impression to the American public that there is a specific problem related to immigrant communities; that they commit crimes at rates that are higher than natural-born Americans, when in fact the opposite is true.

I worry that there is an effort afoot to try to turn us against each other, to make us fear immigrants, when in fact immigrants commit crimes at a rate much lower than natural-born Americans. U.S. citizens are over two times more likely to be arrested for violent crimes than immigrants are. Immigrants are 60 percent less likely to be incarcerated in this country than natural-born Americans are.

The mass shooter in Las Vegas wasn't an immigrant. The mass shooter at Pulse Nightclub wasn't an immigrant. The mass shooter at Sandy Hook wasn't an immigrant. The mass shooter in Uvalde wasn't an immigrant. The mass shooter in El Paso wasn't an immigrant. The mass shooter in Sutherland Springs wasn't an immigrant. The mass shooter in Lewiston, ME, wasn't an immigrant. The mass shooter in Parkland wasn't an immigrant. And yet there wasn't a rush to the floor by my Republican colleagues after those mass shootings to try to fix the problem.

I grieve for every single victim of crime in this country. And I think we should be all working on ways to better protect our citizens. But I worry that these UC requests are an effort, one, to try to paper over the fact that Republicans are about to vote against a bipartisan border bill that would make this country safer and being in facilitation of an effort--whether intentional or unintentional--to try to make us specifically afraid of immigrants, when in fact the truth is that the people who are coming to this country are fleeing economic destitution, trying to save their children's lives, are coming from places in which they were victims of terror and torture and violence and when they get to the United States are actually less of a threat to our public safety than those who were born in the United States.

For that reason, I would object.

Mr. President, I know there is another unanimous consent request to be made, so I will be very brief.

I have always taken Senator Graham's concerns about parole at face value. In fact, the last 30 days of the negotiations over the bipartisan border bill were dedicated to this question of reforming parole.

In fact, the bill we are going to vote on in a matter of minutes involves the most significant, most serious reform of parole likely in the history of the country.

We entered that conversation at the urging of Senator Graham. He was intimately involved in the negotiations over the reform of parole.

The reforms are significant: an elimination of 236(a) parole, the parole that is used between the borders; a substitution for that process with a new rigorous examination of every individual who is arriving credentialed for asylum; major reforms to the humanitarian parole program to make sure that it is truly used only for humanitarian purposes.

So the irony of the complaints that are being made about the overuse of parole is that the bipartisan border bill--negotiated with Senator Graham--involves the most significant reforms to parole, the most significant restrictions to the President's parole authority, that anyone here in this Senate has likely ever negotiated.

That is why it is regrettable that we are debating unanimous consent agreements instead of coming together to vote on a proposal that addresses many of the concerns raised by my colleagues.

I would yield.

I would.

Thank you for the question, Senator Durbin.

As I mentioned, we negotiated this bill in good faith. We negotiated it with the appointed representatives by the Republican conference. Senator Graham was amongst those in those conversations.

We thought we had achieved a product that could get the broad support of the Republican conference because they ticked off to us their priorities.

And they were legitimate priorities. We heard them loud and clear. They said: We want to reform the asylum system. We want to raise the standard for a credible fear. We want more detention beds. We want to reform parole. We want to give the President a new authority to shut down the border at times of emergency.

Obviously, Democrats came to that conversation with priorities as well. We wanted to expand the number of family visas and work visas. We wanted to make sure that immigrants can exercise their legal rights.

We achieved a compromise, an old-fashioned compromise.

The night we released that bill, Senator Durbin, I thought that we were on a path to passage. But it was President Trump who intervened and said, plain and clear, as Senator McConnell has admitted: I want nothing to pass before the election. He said I want nothing to pass before the election, because President Trump's team decided that it would be better for the border to be a mess to help his political prospects instead of solving the problem.

I hear Senator Graham when he says: Well, we don't trust the Biden administration. Well, we didn't trust the Trump administration. That is a road to nowhere.

If we don't pass reform legislation when the other party's President is in power, we will never do the business of the people. We had a chance to do that until the intervention of President Trump.

I wish--I wish--that instead of choosing his political prospects this November, we were choosing to secure the border in a bipartisan way.

That is correct. And, of course, this is a motion to just proceed to debate.

So this isn't final passage. If Members think there are imperfections in this bill, if they want additional restrictions on parole authority, they could vote to proceed, and then we could get into a process by which we could try to solve any remaining differences that have arisen since the announcement of the bipartisan bill with Republican leadership with their designated negotiator.

I wish we could just get onto this bill so we could try to sort this out instead of allowing this issue to become a perpetual political football, as seems to be the interest of many of my Republican colleagues.

Madam President, I am deeply grateful to Senator Sinema, Senator Lankford, Senator McConnell, Senator Schumer, and others who worked with us over the course of 4 months to craft this landmark, unprecedented, bipartisan border security bill that, if enacted, would take the biggest step that we have taken in decades to bring order to our southwest border. It would give a shot of confidence to our constituents that we can find agreement on even the toughest of issues.

I may be coming to a slightly different conclusion, though, on the reason that we are here today than my very good friend Senator Sinema and my great friend Senator Lankford.

I think one of the most important, enduring values in politics is the value of persistence. If you believe something is important, you don't give up the first time.

We worked very hard to achieve this compromise. It is a good-faith compromise. You will see that it is a compromise because there will be Democratic Members who will vote against it today.

We solved some big problems in this bill--reducing the amount of time it takes to process an asylum claim from 10 years down to a handful of weeks or months, giving the President new powers to shut down the border when crossings get too high, giving new legal rights to migrants, allowing for more visas so that folks can come to the United States in a planned way to work or to be reunited with families.

I think that compromise was so important that we shouldn't give up after failing once. I think the American people have told us that solving the problem at the border is so important that we shouldn't put away that compromise simply because the first time, politics won out.

Maybe I am naive, but I had some degree of hope, some degree of faith that maybe the second time we could come together and vote to proceed to a debate, because, remember, that is all this vote is--not a vote on final passage, a vote to bring this bill before the Senate, to litigate the outstanding issues that Republicans may have about the reforms in this bill.

So I deeply appreciate all of the work that Senator Lankford and Senator Sinema did that went into this bill. I just come to a slightly different conclusion. This does not make me less eager to engage in bipartisan compromise in the future. This doesn't dissuade me from trying to reach future compromises.

Frankly, I think our decision to not give up when we have reached this really important product--I think it may, frankly, put wind behind the wings of those in the future who decide to do something really important on something big and work across the aisle to get it done.

We have a chance right now to come together, to put politics and campaigns aside, to vote to proceed on this landmark bipartisan border security reform bill, and I hope my colleagues do it.

Madam President, nearly every day, Republicans come to this floor to tell us how much they care about the border and how much they believe in border security. Yet--and yet--when they have an opportunity to do something about it, they don't just balk; they run for the hills.

If you care about securing the border, then you actually have to pass legislation that secures the border. It doesn't secure itself by itself. Our statutes are outdated. Our Border Patrol doesn't have enough resources. You have to change the law. You have to put more resources on the border. That is what the bipartisan border security bill did. I regret the fact that all but four Republicans voted against it after they requested that we engage in a bipartisan process to develop that border security bill, after they demanded that we pass bipartisan border security legislation.

But because we believe that this issue is so important--because the American people believe that securing our border and compassionately treating those who arrive at our border is such an important issue--we are going to bring this bill back for another vote tomorrow. We are going to give Republicans a second chance to do what they say they want to do: work across the aisle in a bipartisan way to provide more resources to control our southwest border.

So I am glad to be on the floor today with a number of my colleagues who believe as I do; that this is the time to pass significant bipartisan legislation to secure our border, to reform our broken immigration system. It is what the American people want.

We should stop playing political games. Republicans should choose the security of this country ahead of their Presidential candidate's political prospects, and we have the opportunity to do that this week. So I am grateful to have so many of my colleagues on the floor.

I believe starting our remarks will be Senator Kaine.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, tomorrow, we are going to have a chance to come together, Republicans and Democrats, to be able to secure our border, make better sense of our immigration system. This is what the American people want us to do. They don't elect us to hold press conferences. They don't elect us to post on social media.

They don't elect us to argue. They elect us to solve problems.

To my great gladness, there are Republicans who are willing to solve these problems. Senator Lankford is one of them. Senator Sinema, an Independent, Senator Lankford, and I sat in a room for 4 months, and we negotiated a bipartisan compromise--a compromise--that would allow us to get tougher on our southern border, to make sure that only the right people are coming into the United States, those that have a legitimate claim of asylum, those that are legitimately fleeing terror and torture. That would create a more compassionate, more effective, more efficient system of immigration.

We were engaged in this process because Republicans demanded it. Republicans said: We want you to pass bipartisan immigration reform. We want you to get to a result. We will vote for it if you achieve that result.

They selected Senator Lankford as the chosen negotiator.

We achieved that result. Senator McConnell was in the room for those negotiations. It was endorsed by some of the most conservative outlets and organizations in the country, including the Chamber of Commerce, the Wall Street Journal, and the very conservative Border Patrol union. But it only got four Republican votes.

So I want to talk for just a minute about why that happened, what the bill does, and why it is important that we have another vote this week.

First, let's just talk briefly about what this bill does.

Probably first and most importantly, it fixes the broken immigration system, the asylum system in particular. Right now, you come to this country and apply for asylum, it takes sometimes as long as 10 years before you get your claim heard. That is not fair. That is not fair for the individual who is applying, but that is not fair for others who are waiting outside of the country to try to come to the United States. It is not fair for communities that ultimately have to house and provide services for all of those individuals who are waiting to apply for asylum. So this bill fixes that broken system. It takes that 5- or 10- year wait down to weeks or months.

This bill gives the President emergency authorities to close down portions of the border when crossings get too high. You can't handle 10,000 people a day at the border. We all know that, Republicans and Democrats. The American public knows that. They saw that chaos at the end of last year. This bill says the President, whether you are Republican or Democrat, has the emergency authority to close down the border during times of high crossings.

This bill makes significant investments in combating fentanyl. My colleagues have talked about the scourge of fentanyl, hundreds and hundreds of people dying in my State, thousands across this country. This bill invests significant new resources in stopping the flow of drugs across our border. It is a $20 billion investment overall. Much of that money is targeted toward fentanyl.

Then it just takes a bunch of commonsense steps to treat those who are coming to the United States in a more humane way. It says that if you are coming here and you have a legitimate claim of asylum, you should be able to work while your claim is being processed, that you should have a right to a lawyer during that process, that we should provide a little bit of money for young kids, for 8-year-olds to have representation. It provides a pathway to citizenship for certain really critical populations, including Afghans, including the children of H-2B holders.

Inside this bill are a number of really important reforms, and the system just makes more sense, it is more effective, it is more humane. But at the foundation of this bill is border security--making sure we have a border that is manageable, that is not chaotic.

I agree with my colleagues--this bill does not do everything we need to do to reform our broken immigration system. Of course I want a pathway to citizenship for people that are living in the shadows. I want to make sure that those kids who know nothing except for being Americans have a chance to stay here permanently. But this bill is a really important downpayment--a really important bipartisan downpayment on border security and immigration reform.

The question is, Why did it fail? Why did a bill that had the support of Senator Lankford, the appointed negotiator, and had the support of Senator McConnell fail? And the answer is simple: Donald Trump told Republicans to kill the bill. Donald Trump told Republicans that their party would be better off if the border was a mess, if nothing passed, because more Republicans would get elected this November if there were scenes of chaos at the border. So even though you have a bipartisan border bill, kill it because politically it is better for Republicans if the border is a mess.

That is not my analysis; that is literally what Republicans have said on the record repeatedly. Senator McConnell said it himself, said: Donald Trump told us to do nothing. Senator McConnell didn't say: Donald Trump told us to write a better bill; he said: Donald Trump told Senate Republicans to do nothing.

So that is why we are here today, because the American public wants us to pass bipartisan border security legislation, Democrats want to pass bipartisan border security legislation, but as far as I can tell, Republicans do not because they want the border to be a mess.

We will see tomorrow. We will have another chance. If this is an emergency like Republicans say, then let's give it one more shot.

Let me end with this because I do think it is important to just explore for a minute why keeping this issue of immigration unsolved, keeping the border chaotic, is so important to Republicans and in particular to Donald Trump. The reason is that making Americans afraid of each other, turning us against each other, is the centerpiece of Donald Trump's message and thus, for this election at least, the centerpiece of the Republican platform.

The idea is to keep the border broken, to keep the immigration system broken because it helps breed and maintain resentment towards immigrants, towards people that are different from you.

Just last month, Trump said this. He said: Immigrants are not human; they are animals.

I mean, if a major political figure said that 20 years ago, there would be, I think, Republicans and Democrats both standing up and condemning that kind of language. Donald Trump calls immigrants animals, says they are not human--he says it on a regular basis--and he is celebrated by Republicans.

I wish this weren't true. I wish it weren't a foundational aspect of modern republicanism to try to turn us against each other, to try to make us afraid of people who are coming to this country just to save their families' lives, but that is where we are. That is where we are. But that doesn't obviate us from the responsibility to govern.

So Republicans can complain that we are asking them to vote on a negotiated, bipartisan compromise, because it is inconvenient for them to vote against a bill that was endorsed by high-profile Senate Republicans and by high-profile conservative groups. It is inconvenient for them to vote against a bill that actually brings security to the border, that fixes the problem that they want to be fixed, but that is our job.

Our job is to come here and not just do press conferences, not just search for clicks online. Our job is to fix problems, and the broken border and our broken immigration system is a problem. This bill doesn't fix all of those problems, but it is the biggest fix we have had a chance to vote on in a generation.

So, yes, we need to vote on this again to give Republicans the chance to do the right thing, to choose the security of this country, to choose fixing a problem that they identify instead of choosing to try to gain some political advantage in this election, instead of choosing to continue to double down on this strategy of dividing Americans from each other. That is why we are voting tomorrow.

I am hopeful that Republicans and Democrats will come together to support this important, bipartisan border security legislation.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, reserving the right to object, this is an interesting bill to be offered for unanimous consent because it actually does nothing. It does nothing.

Why? Because individuals are already subject to deportation for assault--whether they assault a police officer, whether they assault a milkman, whether they assault your family member. People who are convicted of serious assaults of law enforcement are already deported. They already can face both State and Federal criminal allegations.

Under current law, if an individual is convicted of any crime of violence and sentenced to a year or more in prison--that is an aggravated felony--that person is deportable. Even more so, any crime of ``moral turpitude,'' where the crime is punishable by imprisonment of 1 or more years, is subject to deportation.

Additionally, any noncitizens that are convicted of any aggravated felony, including misdemeanor offenses--including misdemeanor offenses--are subject to deportation.

This bill doesn't do anything. If you are here waiting for an asylum claim or on a green card and you assault a police officer, you are subject to deportation under existing law.

So why are we considering taking this up under UC? Well, I think Senator Budd referenced it in his underlying remarks. It is part of an effort to try to make Americans believe that there is a specific dangerous threat posed to you by immigrants; that you should be afraid of immigrants; that there is a crime wave sweeping this country caused by people who are coming to this country to seek a better life.

Listen, I spent 5 months negotiating a bipartisan border deal because I believe that we need to come together in a bipartisan way to bring greater order to the southwest border. So I won't take a backseat to anybody when it comes to making the tough decisions necessary to bring some border security to this country.

But the Senator offering this motion voted against that bipartisan bill. So did almost every other of his Republican colleagues. We had an opportunity to do something about bipartisan border security, and Republicans rejected it.

Why? Because President Trump said: No. Let's keep the border chaotic. Let's keep this an open political issue. Do nothing until the election.

We had a chance to come together, in a thoughtful way, on a bipartisan border bill, and we did not.

The facts are this. Whether you choose to want to believe the facts or not, that is not my decision; it is your decision.

But immigrants commit crimes in this country at a rate lower than natural-born citizens. You may not believe that if you watch FOX News every night, but I hate to tell you, it is the truth. So if you want a safe town or a safe neighborhood, you are better off--you are statistically safer--if you have immigrants because they commit crimes of violence at a rate lower than people who are born in the United States.

I don't know why we are being asked to vote on this bill because it doesn't do anything other than feed this idea, this false narrative, that this country has something to fear from families that are coming to the United States fleeing either economic desperation or violence or terror or torture for a better life.

For that reason, I object.

Madam President, reserving the right to object, I have a great deal of respect for my colleague from Utah. He and I have collaborated on a number of really important pieces of legislation, especially in the national security space. So I say all of this with tremendous respect for the Senator from Utah.

First, let's go to the heart of the argument that he is making because he makes an argument that you hear very often on this floor, that tens of thousands of people are entering the country illegally. They are entering the country illegally.

The Senator knows the law, I would probably guess, better than most here, and so he knows that those people who are entering the United States without permission also have a corresponding right to apply for asylum. So, technically, they enter the United States without permission, but then they are allowed to apply for asylum. And that right to asylum is a superseding right.

And so there has been no dispute--whether the President is Joe Biden or the President is Donald Trump--that if you enter the United States and claim asylum and have a valid claim of asylum that you are able to make, thus passing the credible fear screen, you get to stay in the United States to process that claim.

And so this idea that people coming to the United States to apply for asylum are here illegally is obviated by longstanding law that, in fact, requires the United States to allow those people to stay here while that claim is being processed.

I just think it is important for everybody to understand what the law is and that both Democratic and Republican administrations have allowed people with valid claims of asylum to stay here and to process those claims.

As to the specifics of this bill the Senator is asking for unanimous consent on--again, I say this with great respect for my friend--I have no idea what the Senator is talking about. I literally have no concept of the problem that he just described because it doesn't exist. There are not hundreds of thousands of people coming to the United States using CBP One as their only form of identification. That is not true, and I would suggest that the Senator check with his staff.

In order to qualify for CBP One, you have to have a passport. In fact, you have to have another means of identification in order to qualify for the CBP One program.

CBP One papers are not an accepted form of documentation by TSA. Individuals who are showing up at the airports are showing up with a passport or another means of acceptable identification.

The Senator may have examples of exceptions, but there are certainly not hundreds of thousands of people coming to the United States with only CBP One documentation to present to TSA. It is just not true.

CBP One, in fact, is the way by which we assure that individuals who are coming to the United States are, in fact, who they say they are. Many of the programs, through which we use CBP One, include a vetting process--a vetting process, frankly, that, admittedly, often does not take place outside of CBP One. When people come to the border and claim asylum, if you don't have detention capability--as has been the case under both President Trump and President Biden--many of those people are allowed into the country to process their asylum claim without the kind of vetting that is done in the CBP One program.

I just don't recognize the problem that the Senator is trying to solve here today, and I do think it creates a pretty problematic misimpression that you have the idea that there are hundreds of thousands of people showing up at TSA and plopping down a CBP One document, coming to the United States with only that document.

In fact, the only way you get the CBP One document is to have shown and verified your proper documentation.

In addition, this amendment just feels kind of unworkable. And if there is a specific workaround to the existing system that requires documentation, proof of identity in order to get a CBP One document, then I am happy to work with the Senator on it, but this amendment or this bill makes the requirement operative on the airline. The airline is not actually the entity that checks documentation. Those are entities run by the Department of Homeland Security.

So I just don't see the same problem that the Senator does. In fact, I think the CBP One program is an incredibly important way to validate identity to be able to do important vetting. And through certain processes through which we use CBP One documentation, it is a way to control the number of presentations at the border.

Remember, through CBP One and the CHNV Program, we have been able to greatly reduce the number of people who are showing up in an unplanned way at the border, in particular Cubans, Haitians, and Nicaraguans.

I understand Republicans have a policy disagreement with the mechanism by which we use the CBP One Program to fly individuals into the country with a sponsor, with vetting, so they don't show up in an unplanned way at the border, but it is, in fact, greatly reducing the number of people who are stressing our resources at the southwest border.

So I will continue to defend the use of CBP One as a very legitimate way to make sure that we have an ability to vet individuals and we have an ability to relieve pressure on the southwest border.

I just see this bill as attempting to tackle a problem that I have not been able to exist--I am happy to talk to the Senator offline to see if there is a more limited problem that he has identified that we can perhaps discuss and work together on.

But my broader frustration is this: If the Senator would just vote yes on the motion to proceed tomorrow, we could work on this in the context of a bipartisan foundation. If the Senator is upset about the underlying parole program, well, the bipartisan border security bill-- negotiated by Senator Lankford, Senator McConnell, myself, Senator Sinema--it makes significant changes to that parole program. In fact, it eliminates for all intents and purposes the parole program used in between the ports of entry, the 236(a) program. It makes other substantial reforms to the parole programs that limit the use of parole to true humanitarian purposes. That was vigorously negotiated by Senator Lankford and Senator Graham and others.

I understand that the bipartisan bill is not perfect. It is not everything Senator Lee would want, not everything Senator Lankford would want, and not everything I would want. But it is a compromise. The vote tomorrow is just to begin debate, just to get on the bill so that we can see what amendments might be able to get to 60.

Maybe there is a more limited version of this--I would argue--badly crafted bill that could be added on to the bipartisan border bill, but we can't even have that debate, we can't even get to the bipartisan foundation because, almost to a person, Republican Senators are choosing--are choosing--to vote against this bipartisan bill, even considering the bipartisan bill.

Maybe this is not true for the Senator from Utah, but certainly others have been pretty clear about the fact that President Trump has decided that he wants no compromise, no changes in border policy before the election because he wants the border to be a mess. He thinks that is good politics for him. He wants Republicans to vote against everything--everything--in order to preserve this issue for political purposes.

I think we would be better off having a debate next week, getting onto the bipartisan border bill, which does have Republican support and has Democratic support--not all Democratic support because it is a real compromise. There are many of my Members who don't support the bipartisan border bill. But we could choose to get on this bill tomorrow, take the Senator's idea, vet it, work it out between the two parties, and have an old-fashioned Senate debate. But we are not going to do that because Republicans are going to vote almost to a person to reject even taking up the bipartisan border bill. Maybe not for every Republican Senator, but for many, that seems to be because President Trump wants to keep the border a mess for political purposes. And I regret that. I think the American people regret that.

I am looking forward to having a conversation with the Senator I have worked with on a lot of other issues, but this bill seems to attack a problem that I can't yet identify. For that reason, I would object.

Madam President, I know my other colleagues are waiting to speak. Very quickly, I know terminology matters a lot to my colleague, so I want just to put a fine point on this.

Republicans may have an objection to the way in which the President uses his parole authority, but the President has always had broad parole authorities. And the individuals who are here under CBP One are not illegal. They have been granted the ability to be in the United States under the President's parole authority. You can have a policy objection to that, and the courts may opine on whether the President has the authority to use parole in the way that he is using it, but those individuals are not here illegally.

That is really important. Again, it is, I think, an unfortunate misimpression to present.

Second, there is a difference between people using CBP One as the legal means to enter the United States versus using CBP One as their documentation to get on an airplane.

It is true. Tens of thousands of people from those four countries have used CBP One as the mechanism to be lawfully in the United States. It is not true that they are not providing documentation in order to use CBP One and in order to board an airplane. They are using passports and other documentation for those two purposes. So those are two different issues.

Yes, tens of thousands of people use CBP One as the means to come into the United States legally. No, hundreds of thousands of people do not use CBP One as their identification mechanism to get on an airplane. I just think it is important to distinguish between the two.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I have a handful of unanimous consent requests to get out of the way.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to legislative session and be in a period of morning business, with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each.

Madam President, I have 11 requests for committees to meet during today's session of the Senate. They have the approval of the Majority and Minority Leaders.

Pursuant to rule XXVI, paragraph 5(a), of the Standing Rules of the Senate, the following committees are authorized to meet during today's session of the Senate:

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the consideration of S. Res. 701, submitted earlier today.

I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it stand adjourned until 10 a.m. on Thursday, May 23; that following the prayer and pledge, the morning hour be deemed expired, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day, and morning business be closed; that upon the conclusion of morning business, the Senate proceed to executive session to resume consideration of the Dalton nomination postcloture and that if the nomination is confirmed, the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table and the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action.

Madam President, if there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask that it stand adjourned under the previous order following the remarks of Senator Barrasso and Senator Wyden.

Madam President, I come to the floor this afternoon to talk about a great friend of mine, Margaret Miner.

My friend Margaret Miner died last week. I am really sad about it. Her family and her friends are really sad about it because she was a great friend, she was warm, and she was generous, because she was funny, she was kind, because she made a lot of other people's lives better.

But I am also sad because Margaret was one of a kind. She was a true Renaissance woman. She was a polymath. She was voracious about intaking the world and about giving back to it.

I have never met anybody like her. I will never meet anybody like her again. I will never see a partnership like the one that she had with her late husband Hugh Rawson. Her legacy lives on, but there is just no doubt that the mold was broken in two when they made Margaret Miner.

She was born in New York City in 1938. Her parents--Tony and Francis--were in show business, which kind of makes sense if you knew her but kind of doesn't.

In 1984, she moved from Brooklyn to Roxbury, CT--Roxbury is a smalltown, quintessential New England village in Northwest Connecticut--and there she became a fixture in the community. She began her life's work of fighting to protect the natural beauty of this State that she called home for the next 40 years.

I first met Margaret as soon as I graduated college. So I went to work for a long-shot congressional candidate who happened to be personal friends with Margaret and Hugh.

And Margaret and Hugh were also, at the time, pretty adept local political activists in Litchfield County. There were no two people who worked harder for that long-shot candidate, their friend, than Margaret and Hugh. They raised money. They knocked on doors. They put up lawn signs--whatever their friend needed, whatever their friend's 22-year- old campaign manager needed. She and Hugh were selfless. I saw that up close. I saw what a good friend Margaret could be.

Then, years later, when I was elected to the State legislature, I got to know Margaret as an advocate. She was in those legislative halls in Hartford, CT, nearly every single day, fighting for her cause, the cause of clean water and a healthy environment.

She single-handedly made her organization, Rivers Alliance, which she led for 18 years, a force to be reckoned with in Hartford. Under her leadership, Rivers Alliance became a force in Connecticut politics.

Her team fought for and successfully helped to pass State laws to create a statewide water plan to protect streamflow in water courses, to ban the water contaminant MTBE in gasoline, to protect funding for the Connecticut Council on Environmental Quality, and to restore and protect State funding for the U.S. Geological Survey. That is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what Margaret did, in terms of what Margaret and the people she mentored produced in Hartford. But her work was always about something bigger than herself or even her organization, Rivers Alliance.

She was really dedicated to building a movement around water quality, around water health, around the environment. She helped teach people all across the State how to advocate for themselves, how to advocate for the causes that they mutually cared about.

She was an organizer of people at heart, encouraging countless individuals all around the State and all around the country to join the causes that she cared about. And she was just good at it. There were fewer people who were more inspiring or convincing than Margaret was.

Now, Margaret wasn't a big, boisterous, loud personality, but she was sincere; she was genuine; and she never ever gave up. Her persistence was her calling card.

Her unrelenting advocacy did not go unrecognized or unnoticed. She received countless awards for her work during her lifetime. She received the first Champion of Water Award from the Connecticut Water Policy Council. She received the Clyde O. Fisher Award for environmental achievement from the Connecticut Bar Association.

She was the first recipient of the Dr. Marc J. Taylor Environmental Stewardship Award, the Rockfall Foundation's Tom ODell Distinguished Service Award. In 2016, I nominated her for the EPA's prestigious Lifetime Merit Award.

People knew what she had done in Connecticut, and so, good for Connecticut that we didn't have to wait for Margaret's passing before singling her out for her seminal achievements in the area of environmental protection.

But what made Margaret so compelling, what made Margaret so amazing was that in addition to being a great friend, in addition to leading one of the State's preeminent environmental organizations, she was incredibly accomplished in so many other fields.

The rest of her life, when you say it out loud, in addition to all of that achievement, it kind of almost sounds implausible.

For instance, in her free time, Margaret was a nationally known and celebrated author, not about the environment, but about the history of quotable people. She was the coauthor of five dictionaries of quotations, including the ``Oxford Dictionary of American Quotations'' with her husband Hugh. In her spare time, she wrote five anthologies of quotations--five books.

She helped found an organization called Our Towns for Sar-E-Pol, a humanitarian effort through the not-for-profit Save the Children to help women and children in Sar-E-Pol, Afghanistan. She was an international philanthropist and an author and environmental advocate.

She wrote a Consumer Reports book on allergies. I didn't even know that until I read the story of Margaret's life. She was an active member of the Roxbury Democratic Town Committee, and just before she passed at 86 years old, she was still serving on the local Zoning Board of Appeals.

She was learning Spanish in her eighties, attending two Spanish classes weekly. And as often as she could, she was playing poker, fleecing her friends of their money whenever possible.

Margaret Miner was an original. As her friend, I will remember her wit, her political savvy, her boundless heart, and on a personal note, I will just say I wouldn't be here if not for Margaret--and for Margaret and Hugh.

When I decided to run for Congress 10 years after first meeting Margaret, she was, not surprisingly, one of my first calls. I planned the early stages of my first campaign at Margaret and Hugh's kitchen table in their cute house in Roxbury, CT. That is how important she was to me. And I am one of hundreds in Connecticut who can say Margaret Miner was one of the most important people in my life.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate be in a period of morning business, with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each.

Madam President, it has been 98 days--almost 100 days-- since Senate Republicans killed the toughest border security bill, the toughest bipartisan border security bill that has been before the Senate in nearly a generation.

We are proud that our Nation is a nation with a robust history of immigration. We know that our future involves inviting people to come to this country to seek a better life, to be part of our growing economy, to start their own businesses, and to flee violence or terror or torture. We are proud of our history of immigration. We know that America only thrives in the future by committing ourselves to a future of robust immigration.

But what has been happening at the border over the past several years is unsustainable. We want people to come to this country, but we cannot handle 5-, 6-, 7-, 8-, 9-, 10,000 people arriving on a daily basis.

Our system of legal immigration is broken. People come to the United States; they apply for asylum; and they often don't get their chance to make their case for 10 years. That is not fair to those individuals, but it is also not fair to others who have been waiting outside of the United States to apply to come here.

Our immigration system is outdated. It is in need of reform. Our border is underresourced, with statutes that are equally outdated.

Right now, there is only one party--the Democratic Party--that is serious about adding resources to the border, about updating our outdated laws because it has been 98 days since a bipartisan border security bill--negotiated by Senate Republicans, including Senate Republican leadership, and Senate Democrats--came to this floor and was defeated because Republicans would not vote for it.

Republicans would not vote for the bipartisan border security bill not because it was an ineffective bill--in fact, it is quite the opposite. Senate Republicans defeated the bill because it would be effective.

Now, that doesn't make sense, right? Why would that be? Why would Senate Republicans vote against a bipartisan border security bill that would have been effective at bringing order to the southwest border?

The reason is this: Republicans have decided that they don't want to solve the problem at the border. Republicans have decided that they want this issue to be outstanding. They want the border to be chaotic. They want the border to be a mess because it helps their political purposes. It helps win an election. If the border was under control, if there were less people presented, if it was more orderly, that would be good for the country, but that might not be good for electoral prospects.

Therein lies the reason that we have not had action on the bipartisan border bill--because Democrats want to get something done; Republicans want to keep this issue open. They want to keep the border a mess for political purposes.

You don't have to listen to me. Senator McConnell said it out loud. Senator Lankford said it out loud. The reason that this bill was defeated 98 days ago was because Donald Trump told Republicans that it is better for Republicans to keep this issue alive and to not change the law to secure the country.

Tomorrow, I am going to reintroduce the bipartisan border bill. My hope is that we will bring that bill to the floor for a vote to give my Republican colleagues another chance to do the right thing, another chance to choose the safety and security of this country over the political prospects of their candidate for President.

Americans want us to come together to pass border and immigration reform. They support compromise between the two parties. That is exactly what the bipartisan border bill represented.

Senator Lankford and I do not share views on the border. Senator McConnell and Senator Schumer do not share views on the border. But we all sat in a room for 4\1/2\ months, along with Senator Sinema, in order to find a compromise that would better secure our border and create a more humane, more efficient mechanism to bring people into this country legally.

Let me just briefly talk about what this bill does. This will make sense to Americans when you hear it. There is nothing radical in this bill. These are commonsense changes to our laws.

First, it gives the President new authority to better control the border. Listen, we can't handle 10,000 people crossing a day. So what this bill does is it says that at periods of time when there are unusually high numbers of people crossing the southwest border, the President can close portions of the border, stop accepting asylum applications until the numbers are reduced to the point where our resources at the border meet the number of people who are arriving.

This is a bold new power, a bold new authority for President Biden, but it is necessary because there are simply some times, some days, some weeks when the numbers are too high.

The second thing this bill does is significantly reform our asylum application system. As I mentioned, you come to the southwest border; you present an application for asylum; and we are so backed up in that system that it often takes people 5 to 10 years before their claim is heard. That is not right for that individual or for the country at large. So this bill shortens that timeframe with new laws and new resources so that instead of it taking 10 years for a migrant to have their asylum claim heard, it could now take 10 days or a few months. That is the right thing to do.

But it also has the effect of dramatically changing the calculus for people who are thinking about paying a trafficker $5,000, $10,000 to come to the United States. If they know that they have an illegitimate claim and it is

going to be judged as illegitimate within weeks, they won't pay the $5,000 to come to the United States. Today, they might be willing to pay it because even if they have an illegitimate claim, they may get to stay in the United States for 5 or 10 years. This fundamentally changes the calculus and decreases the amount of risk that people are willing to take.

This bill also understands that we should have more legal pathways to come to the United States, and when people come to the United States and are waiting to have their claims heard, they shouldn't be living in the shadows. So this bill also increases the number of work and family visas by 250,000 over the course of 5 years to allow more legal, planned pathways for people to come to the United States.

The bill also allows for individuals who arrive at the border to get immediate work authorizations in most cases so that while their application is pending, they can work so that you don't have a situation we have today, where people are being warehoused in homeless shelters and in hotels without the ability to work while they are waiting for their claim to be processed.

And this bill does create some pathways for individuals who are here today to become citizens. In particular, our Afghan partners who fought with us, who stood with us in Afghanistan, under this bill, get the opportunity to become American citizens. And the children of high-tech workers who are here on temporary visas who might have been born outside of the United States but were raised here in the United States, they get a chance to stay here as well.

That is just a handful of the changes in the bill that enhance protections and benefits for individuals who are awaiting for the determination of their claim to be processed.

But the combination of these changes--the new authorities at the border, the emergency authority, the new asylum system, combined with some new protections for individuals who are coming to the United States--it represents a true compromise between Republicans and Democrats, between right and left. It is exactly what the American people want.

My hope is that our Republican colleagues have had the chance to rethink their vote from several months ago. My hope is that Republicans will decide to do the right thing for the country, the right thing for the border.

We negotiated this bill at the request of Republicans. The chief Republican negotiator, Senator Lankford, was chosen by the Republican conference. Senator McConnell and his staff were in the room for all of those negotiations. The Republicans voted against it--with the exception of four of our colleagues--for one reason and one reason only: President Trump said it would be better for Republicans to keep this issue open, to keep the border a mess, better for Republican Presidential and congressional campaign prospects.

So, tomorrow, I will reintroduce this legislation. I don't expect it will get every single Democratic vote because it is a true compromise, but I expect it will get enough Democratic votes that if half of the Senate Republican caucus votes for it, it will pass, and we will be a step closer to doing what America wants: continuing our tradition of robust legal immigration, building upon our tradition as a country founded upon immigration but doing it in a legal way and creating a much more orderly system at the border. That is what America wants: Keep our system of legal immigration; get the border under control. The bipartisan border bill does both of those things, and my hope is that we can come together and Republicans will choose this country and border security over the political prospects of their Presidential candidate, Donald Trump.

I am glad to be joined on the floor by a number of my Democratic colleagues today to talk about the importance of this measure, the chance the Senate has to act in a bipartisan way on border security.

With that, I yield the floor.

Madam President, let me thank my colleagues for coming to the floor tonight to reinforce the opportunity that we have. I think we have gotten used to immigration being a perpetual political football in this country. It almost feels and seems unsolvable--that it is just the subject for campaign ads, for cable news shows, for fundraising emails.

It doesn't have to be that way. We could choose to make progress. We could choose to pass legislation that treats migrants a little bit more humanely, that gives a pathway for individuals like those Afghan partners to be able to become U.S. citizens and gives the President updated powers at the border to make sure that we are doing immigration at the southwest border in a humane, orderly way.

That is not impossible. In fact, it is more possible than ever before because

a group of Senators sat in a room for 4 months, in good faith, and hashed out a compromise that involves a lot of Republican priorities, a lot of Democratic priorities; that is endorsed by the progressive- leaning immigration lawyers group and the conservative-leaning Border Patrol union; that is endorsed by the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal.

I know we are not used to finding common ground on immigration. It seems to happen only once a decade. But we found it. We found it. And I am going to be reintroducing this bill because I believe that there is a chance Republicans will choose to do the right thing.

I get it. The border being a mess is good politics for Republicans. I get it. Keeping this problem unsolved might provide an advantage for Republicans in this next election. But we don't go into this business to win elections, to just put our name on the door.

Senator Lankford said it on this floor. He said every one of us is given a pen. Every one of us has a unique ability to make law, to make the country better. What is the point, Senator Lankford said, of having this job if you are just going to do press conferences, if you are not going to actually engage in the hard work of compromise to make this country better and safer? That is what we did.

Senator Lankford, Senator Sinema, myself, Senator Schumer, Senator McConnell--we sat in a room for 4\1/2\ months. We forged a compromise that unquestionably--unquestionably--will bring order to the southwest border. And, because of that, Donald Trump is telling Republicans: Ditch it. Vote no. We don't want there to be order at the southwest border because that would be bad politics for us.

What is the point of having this job if you aren't willing to make tough compromises that make this country better?

And so I understand there may be long odds to convincing Republicans to change their vote. I understand that, because the bill is a compromise, there will be some Democrats who will vote against it.

But I think this is so important. I take Republicans at their word that it is an emergency to make sense of what is happening at the border, that it is worth it to bring this bill back before the floor. I hope our leadership will decide to schedule a vote on this bill.

I will introduce the bill imminently, I think, with many of my colleagues supporting it. And I am deeply grateful to many of my friends in the Democratic caucus for underscoring the importance of bringing order to the southwest border, investing in border security, and supporting our migrant communities, as the bipartisan border security bill does.

I yield the floor.