Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded. Mr. President, in the coming weeks, Washington will spend an enormous amount of time arguing about immigration enforcement. There will be speeches.…
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.
Mr. President, in the coming weeks, Washington will spend an enormous amount of time arguing about immigration enforcement. There will be speeches. There will be statements. There will be plenty of noise.
But beneath all of that, the debate before us is far simpler and far more serious. There are two visions competing for the future of this country. One vision holds that immigration law should be enforced, that borders matter, that citizenship means something, and that a nation has both the right and the obligation to decide who may enter, who may remain, and under what rules.
The other vision treats our sovereignty itself as immoral. In that vision, borders are an imperialist evil. The law is a fascist oppression, and our identity as Americans is a source of guilt and shame rather than pride and celebration.
All of these ideas are connected to the kinds of people who are attacking Federal law enforcement in the streets of Minneapolis. They believe that we don't deserve to enforce our laws as a nation because they believe we don't deserve to exist as a nation. They are not hiding the ball. You can hear it very clearly in their slogans:
No one is illegal on stolen land.
So that is what this is. It is a debate about whether the United States remains a nation or not. The rule of law is essential to the American constitutional order. It is the clearest, most visible expression of self-government. A people cannot enforce its own laws, cannot meaningfully govern itself.
As much as some of my colleagues across the aisle wish it was, immigration law is not some break with longstanding norms. A country that cannot say who belongs cannot remain a country at all for very long.
Every serious nation understands this. Throughout history, societies that endured were willing to defend their borders, uphold their laws, and insist that citizenship carried obligations as well as benefits, without apology or shame.
To understand what is at stake, we must be honest--fully honest-- about what the Democrats are demanding, what that vision would mean in practice, and why it represents a fundamental break with the idea of America as a sovereign nation.
To understand what lies ahead, we must be honest about what the Democrats are demanding and what it would mean in practice. They speak the language of accountability--of oversight--of reform. Those words sound reasonable enough. They are meant to.
But when you strip away the euphemisms, when you look at the substance rather than the slogans, the demands all converge on a single outcome, robbing us of the power to enforce our immigration laws.
This is not by accident. It is the continuation of a project that has been explicit for years. Abolish ICE, they say, defund ICE. Pick your slogan. It doesn't matter. It is all part of the same project.
Open borders and uncontrolled, unvetted, unlimited mass immigration-- in the leftwing worldview, anything less than this is unacceptable and an unacceptable crime against humanity.
For them, the problem is not illegal immigration. The problem is any and every attempt to stop it. That worldview rejects a basic premise of nationhood that a people has the right to decide who may enter, who may remain, and under what rules. It denies that citizenship carries meaning, that membership entails obligation, or that law applies equally to those who violate it.
And when a society reaches that point, when it treats enforcement as an offense and anarchy as virtue, it begins to dissolve from within.
The end state of this Democrat vision is plain as day. Maybe ICE continues to exist, but only in name. The law remains on the books, but only on paper. Illegal presence becomes permanent by default, not because Congress voted for it, but because enforcement has been made impossible. You don't actually have to pass a law called ``amnesty'' to get the same effect. But this is an abdication of our duty to the American people.
To understand how this vision is being put into effect, how our immigration laws are being hollowed out without ever being repealed, we must look closely at the specific demands now being advanced and what each one is designed to accomplish. The Democrat vision doesn't begin by repealing the law. It begins by making enforcement personally dangerous and professionally impossible.
It is clever actually. It is twisted. They get to say: See, we don't believe in open borders. We are not repealing any of our fundamental immigration laws--because many of their demands aren't actually going after the law. They are going after the people tasked with enforcing it. But, of course, as they know very well, that gets them the same exact outcome. And that is no accident.
History teaches a simple lesson: If you want a law to die without repealing it, make its enforcement intolerable. I am not going to spend much time debating the Democrats' demands for DHS as we roll into this 2-week debate, 3-week debate, 4-week debate, whatever it is going to be, there will be plenty of time for that over the coming weeks. And I look forward to being on this floor dissecting each one of their proposals and how disastrous it would be for our country.
But consider for a brief moment the demand that officers remove their masks and identify themselves publicly during operations. This is a clear and obvious intent to intimidate and put our Federal agents in harm's way.
ICE officers are already being doxed. Their names and addresses are posted online. Their families are harassed. Their homes are targeted. No one would demand this of narcotic officers, counterterrorism agents, or fugitive task forces because we understand that exposing law enforcement to retaliation is sabotage. The effect is obvious and very well-intended: Make enforcement personally dangerous. Make every operation an invitation to harassment. Make every officer a target.
When the state refuses to protect its own agents, it sends a message--one louder than any speech--that enforcement is something to be ashamed of, not supported.
And when enforcement becomes dangerous for enforcers, enforcement does not survive. What emerges is not reform. It is amnesty by default--not the kind debated openly, not the kind voted on, not the kind Democrats would have to openly defend to the American people, but amnesty achieved through attrition, through
delay, exhaustion, and paralysis, so that no one has to claim responsibility for the result.
Every step along this path points the same direction. The collapse is not accidental. And once amnesty becomes the default, once presence becomes permanent simply by waiting, the idea of a nation governed by law gives way to something far more fragile: a territory administered by drift. That is the future vision that is produced here.
Today, I want to lay out another vision before this body, one grounded not in drift or denial but in law, order, and national survival: enforcement in the honest application of the rules that everyone can see, understand, and live by. Law without consequence is not compassion. It is chaos. And chaos always falls hardest on the innocent, the lawful, and the most vulnerable.
This vision rejects the moral inversion that has come to dominate the debate so far in the last few days here. It rejects the idea that those who break the law are the only ones deserving of sympathy, while those who enforce it must apologize for doing their jobs.
It rejects enforcement by provision, supervision by activist, and amnesty by exhaustion. Instead, it affirms something older and sturdier: That order is the foundation of freedom, that rights endure only where duties are enforced, and that a people remain a people only so long as they are willing to defend the rules by which they have to live with together.
This vision doesn't ask for new theories or radical departures. It asks for seriousness. It asks for the minimum requirements of sovereignty be treated as nonnegotiable. It asks that the law be enforced as law predictably, humanely, and without apology.
Today, I want to lay out a framework: four principles--four ways to restore enforcement, defend citizenship, and ensure that the United States remains a nation worthy of name, four legislative ideas to protect America, each one restores something that has been deliberately weakened. Each one reasserts a basic function of sovereignty that no nation can survive or expect to endure.
First, end sanctuary cities permanently. Sanctuary policies are not acts of compassion. They are acts of defiance. They announce openly that Federal law will be ignored within certain jurisdictions and that those who violate the immigration law will be protected from its consequences. This creates a two-tiered system, one set of rules for citizens and lawful residents and another for those who remain illegally.
That is why we must support my colleague the Senator from South Carolina's bill to end sanctuary cities. A nation cannot survive if its laws stop at the city limits. Conditioning Federal funds on cooperation is not punishment. It is reciprocity. If a jurisdiction wants the benefits of Federal partnership, it must respect Federal law. Anything less is an admission to the Nation that it no longer governs itself uniformly.
Second, enhance penalties for illegal entry and reentry. Illegal entry is a misdemeanor. It is time to increase that penalty and make it a felony.
And for illegal reentry--entering, being deported, and then reentering, we are going to meet that lawless behavior with swift, predictable consequences for that violation.
It is the only humane alternative to chaos, backlog, and false hope. When weak penalties on entry allow illegal presence becomes permanent by default, borders cease to exist in practice, no matter what the law says on paper.
Third, protect our law enforcement. We should protect the men and women of law enforcement. I have heard on this floor, including from ridiculous politicians across this country, comparing our men and women of law enforcement to the Gestapo, to Trump's secret police, of a Nazi regime, of an invasion. Pump the brakes.
I don't know that you actually believe it, but a lot of the people who are agitating and creating confrontations in very dangerous situations on those streets almost certainly do.
Let's recognize law enforcement are increasingly targeted. Obstruction and assault have been normalized. Weak consequences invite escalation. Modern obstruction is sophisticated now. It avoids fists but achieves the same results. Officers are surrounded, blinded, blocked, and drowned out. Operations are struck down through violence-- not through violence, but through chaos engineered to appear peaceful.
Protecting officers is not about politics. It is about whether the state stands behind those who serve it. A government that abandons its enforcers invites disorder because authority that will not defend itself cannot command obedience. Law must protect those who uphold it, or it will not be upheld at all.
We must pass my Protect and Respect ICE Act that increases Federal penalties for assaulting ICE agents. But we must also be serious about interference and escalation tactics that are becoming more common.
So fourth, dismantle rogue NGOs. There are organizations in this country, nominally ``nonprofits'' that materially provide obstruction, incitement, and even violence against law enforcement. They coordinate interference. They publish officer information. They encourage confrontation. And they do so while enjoying tax exempt status subsidized by the American people. That ends.
If an organization materially supports or incites domestic violence or obstruction of law enforcement, it is not a charity. It is a political weapon. And it will not receive a penny of taxpayer subsidy.
Taken together, these four principles don't harden the Nation; they steady it. They replace drift with direction, paralysis with purpose, and apology with resolve. They move us away from amnesty by default and back toward something far more just and enduring--a country governed by law.
If the Democrat vision prevails, the consequences will not arrive all at once. They never do. They arrive quietly, incrementally, under the comforting language of reform and restraint until one day, the reality can no longer be denied. Enforcement retreats. Illegal presence becomes permanent. Citizenship is diluted--not by law but by neglect. The authority of law erodes first at the margins and then at the center.
When rules are enforced selectively, obedience becomes optional. When consequences are delayed indefinitely, deterrence disappears. When a nation signals that persistence matters more than legality, it invites exactly the behavior it claims to oppose. Borders become symbolic. The distinction between lawful and unlawful becomes blurred. And the moral authority of citizenship--earned, protected, and passed on--gives way to a system governed by drift.
This is not collapse by invasion; it is collapse by abdication. It is what happens when a society convinces itself that enforcing its own laws is somehow mean-spirited while refusing to reckon with the human cost of disorder--communities stretched thin, public trust eroded, and a growing sense that the rules apply only to those who follow them.
Moments like this don't come around very often, but when they do, they clarify things that have been obscured for years.
This debate that we are going to have potentially over the next few weeks will shape the next generation. Long after the headlines fade and the talking points are forgotten, the consequences will remain written into the meaning of citizenship, the authority of law, and the character of the Nation itself.
No nation can outsource its future to avoidance. No society can long survive by pretending the hard questions will resolve themselves if left unanswered. Eventually, the cost of inaction becomes greater than the cost of decision.
That is where we stand now. The choice before us is unavoidable: We can affirm that the United States remains a nation governed by law or we can allow that law to dissolve into suggestion.
Every subsequent generation inherits a country it did not build from scratch, and every generation decides what it will pass on. Enforcement is the quiet, necessary work of self-government. A nation that cannot say no can no longer say yes to anything that matters--not to citizenship, not to equality under the law, and not to the promise it makes to future generations.
The future, ladies and gentlemen, belongs to the countries that believe in themselves enough to enforce their laws.
Does the Senator yield for a question?
You and I were talking last night and you mentioned, in closing, resetting debate. I think that is so important right now.
We are talking about appropriations bills, which is fine. I fully supported that. The chairwoman has done a great job. But what we are also hearing now is, the Democrats have now moved to they want a policy debate and policy changes on approps. I thought that is what we were supposed to do in this place, but that is what they want to do whether it is in 2 weeks or 4 weeks or whatever we come up with on this potential CR for DHS.
I think it is very important for us to remind the country as to how we got here. This didn't start this weekend in Minneapolis, and it didn't start last year when President Trump came into office. It started in January of 2021 when Joe Biden let 15 million people in here illegally and fought every single attempt to stop it. What we discovered was that laws don't really mean anything if they aren't enforced. Yet we have a President now who ran on this central platform of enforcing our immigration laws and deporting people who are here illegally, and the Democrats cannot accept that. They can't come to grips with that reality, which is that the American people--and I hear a lot of: We are preserving democracy. Well, if democracy means anything to you, it means, when the American people saw what happened and they sent this guy back here to clean up the mess, that maybe we ought to respect that for a year and a half, but they don't want to do it. So we are going to have this debate, right?
So the reason I laid out the four ideas is that I want to make very clear to my Democrat colleagues that this is a home game for us. If you want the debate on immigration, bring it on, and we can be out here every single day for 2 weeks or 4 weeks at every single hour because the American people are fed up with this, and I know you believe that too?
It is.
That was a question mark at the end. ``I know you believe that too?''
``I know you believe that too?''
Wouldn't you agree that the reason we are here--if it were about ICE or if it were about DHS or if it were about President Trump, you would see this everywhere in the country. The fact of the matter is, the incidents of violence against ICE agents is 500 times more likely in 9 sanctuary counties in this country, and so Minneapolis has become the epicenter. Why? Because the local law enforcement doesn't help ICE agents. They are having to do the job that local law enforcement might do. They are not telling them when criminals are being released on the streets.
Think about that, that the American people know of the murderers and rapists and child molesters who are illegal immigrants and that we are not going to tell Federal law enforcement about it because you want everybody to stay here indefinitely. That is insane, and that is why it is dangerous. It is dangerous.