Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded. Mr. President, we recently learned that fiscal year 2023 set a new record for the number of illegal immigrants apprehended at the southern border--the…
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.
Mr. President, we recently learned that fiscal year 2023 set a new record for the number of illegal immigrants apprehended at the southern border--the third recordbreaking year of illegal immigration under the Biden administration.
First, fiscal year 2021 set an alltime record. Then, fiscal year 2022 broke that record. And, now, fiscal 2023 has broken that record. In other words, we have had 3 straight years of the Biden border crisis getting worse and worse and worse.
Since the President took office, more than 6.2 million individuals have been caught attempting to illegally cross our southern border--6.2 million. If every one of those individuals lived in one city, it would be the second largest in the country.
I don't need to tell anyone that the kind of unchecked illegal immigration we are experiencing represents a serious security threat.
The Department of Homeland Security recently noted in its 2024 threat assessment:
Terrorists and criminal actors may exploit the elevated
flow [of migration] and increasingly complex security
environment to enter the United States.
And by all indications, bad actors are, in fact, taking advantage of the chaos at the border to try and enter the United States. During fiscal year 2023 alone, 169 individuals on the Terrorist Watchlist were caught attempting to illegally cross our southern border--169 on the Terrorist Watchlist. Those are the ones they apprehended. That is more than in the previous 6 years combined.
The head of the Border Patrol recently said that his Agency is arresting an average of more than 47 people per day who have ``serious criminal histories''--more than 47 people per day with serious criminal histories. Those are just the individuals who are being caught.
Since January 2021, when President Biden took office, there have been more than 1.7 million known ``got-aways.'' Those are individuals the Border Patrol saw but was unable to apprehend. We can only imagine the number of unknown ``got-aways'' who have sneaked into the country.
How many of those individuals have ``serious criminal histories'' or hail from hostile countries? We just don't know, but we can be pretty confident that among those ``got-aways'' are dangerous individuals who should not be entering our country.
This is a serious issue, and we need a serious course correction from this administration.
Vice President Harris, who is in charge of overseeing border policies for this administration, recently told ``60 Minutes'' that ``we need a safe, orderly, and humane border policy.'' This has been the purported goal of the Biden administration for almost 3 years now, but the administration has been failing on all three counts.
The current crisis we are experiencing is a predictable result of the Biden administration's decisions. Before the President took office, his team was warned of the possibility of a migrant surge. Yet the moment the President took office, he set about dismantling the immigration policies of his predecessor and weakening our border's security, and the result has been, as I said, 3 successive years of recordbreaking illegal immigration.
While the Biden administration has finally started to, at least halfheartedly, acknowledge our Nation's border crisis and put in place policies attempting to encourage legal migration and penalize illegal border crossings, the changes are insufficient--far too little, far too late--or, as one columnist recently put it in the Washington Post, ``The Biden administration's various efforts have amounted to Band-Aids on a massive, open wound.''
The President's recent supplemental funding request has not left me hopeful that the administration is suddenly going to become more effective. Potentially billions of dollars in reimbursement for blue States struggling to house illegal immigrants won't do a single thing to solve the crisis we are facing at the border.
While the President's proposal does include some funding that would actually go toward security, funding alone is simply not enough. We need meaningful policy changes that will, for starters, end the rampant abuse of our asylum system and sweeping parole designations.
Senators Graham, Lankford, and Cotton, among several others, are working hard to craft a set of changes to our asylum and parole policies that would stem the flow at our southern border. These changes would address obvious flaws in President Biden's immigration policies and make tangible progress toward getting our border crisis under control.
Recent events have underscored the importance of national security, and a porous southern border is a huge--huge--vulnerability when it comes to our national security. We need to use every tool we can to secure the border and keep terrorists and criminals out of the United States.
Senate Republicans are committed to putting policies in place at the border that keep Americans safe, and I hope that, in the days and weeks to come, Senate Democrats will join us to make securing our border a priority.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Utah (Mr. Lee), the Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Scott), and the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Tillis).
The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Utah (Mr. Lee), the Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Scott), and the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Tillis).
Further, if present and voting: the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Tillis) would have voted ``nay.''
The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Utah (Mr. Lee), the Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Scott), and the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Tillis).
Further, if present and voting: the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Tillis) would have voted ``yea.''
The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Utah (Mr. Lee), the Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Scott), and the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Tillis).
Further, if present and voting: the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Tillis) would have voted ``nay'' and the Senator from Utah (Mr. Lee) would have voted ``yea.''
The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Utah (Mr. Lee), the Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Scott), and the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Tillis).
Further, if present and voting: the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Tillis) would have voted ``yea'' and the Senator from Utah (Mr. Lee) would have voted ``nay.''