Department Of Homeland Security Appropriations Act, 2006

DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2006 -- (Senate - July 13, 2005)

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I will speak for a few minutes and highlight some of the important provisions of this appropriations bill, specifically as they pertain to the issue of border security. The Senator from New Hampshire, the chairman of the Subcommittee on Homeland Security, along with the entire Appropriations Committee, have done much good that should be heralded. But those steps should also be seen as just a first step toward getting us in the right direction, which is to obtain operational security of our Nation's borders, something we do not have now and something which represents a clear threat to our national security.

As the Senate Committee on Appropriations recognized, these resources are just a first step toward true reform of our immigration system. Additional enforcement resources along the border will be needed. In that connection, Senator Kyl, the junior Senator from Arizona, and I will be filing a bill within the next couple of weeks that will authorize additional resources to secure our border.

Our Nation's immigration and border security system is badly broken. It leaves our borders unprotected and threatens our national security. It makes a mockery of the rule of law. This system unfortunately has suffered from years of neglect. But in a post-September 11 world we simply cannot tolerate this situation any longer. We stand here today almost 4 years from that terrible date, and we are reminded as recently as just last week--with the attacks in London--that terrorism is a real and tangible threat to the free world.

National security demands a comprehensive solution to our immigration system. That means both stronger enforcement and reasonable reform of our immigration laws. We have to confess that we have not devoted the funds, the resources, and the manpower necessary to enforce our immigration laws and protect our borders.

Representing a border State with about 1,600 miles of border with Mexico, I can state that for too long Washington has simply taken the attitude that this is a local or State problem. If it is not the duty of the Federal Government to deal with the security of our borders, whose responsibility is it? It is a Federal responsibility, and it is one that has simply been abdicated for far too long.

No discussion of comprehensive immigration reform, however, is possible without a clear commitment to and a substantial and dramatic escalation of our efforts to enforce the law. In my capacity as the chairman of the Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security and Citizenship of the Senate Judiciary Committee, we have held a number of hearings on this issue of border security and immigration enforcement. They have been quite revealing. I will share some of the information with our colleagues because it supports the direction in which this Homeland Security appropriations bill takes us, and puts us one step closer to the final goal: control of our borders and a secure, orderly immigration process.

The Department of Homeland Security has testified recently that they do not have operational control over parts of the southern border. That is obvious to those who live and work along that border and represent those States.

My constituents have told me as recently as last week when I traveled to south Texas, to Laredo, TX, when I traveled to McAllen, TX, and the Rio Grande Valley that the nature of the immigrants coming across our southern border is vastly different from what it has historically been. For example, over the last 3 years, the number of apprehensions of those designated as ``OTM,''--other than Mexican--has doubled from 37,316 in 2002 to 75,000-plus in 2004. This year, it is currently 96,000. It is likely that the number will be twice this year what is was last year.

The vast majority of these individuals who are apprehended as they come across the border are from countries that you would expect: Mexico and countries in Central and South America. However, the Border Patrol chief, Chief Aguilar, has testified at one of our hearings that 400 aliens from special-interest countries had been apprehended last year. Some come from countries that support international terrorism. That ought to be a grave concern to all of us. We need to expend additional resources, both to ensure we are apprehending aliens who are trying to enter our country illegally, and to make sure we detain them and remove them in an expedited fashion.

Let me bring to the attention of our colleagues some of the facts because they may not be aware of them. I think they will be shocked to find out how unsuccessful we are, despite the best efforts of the Department of Homeland Security.

Last year alone, the Border Patrol detained roughly 1.1 million people coming across our borders. Now, my information, from those who are on the ground who deal with this on a day-in-and-day-out basis, is that they think they probably are capturing between one out of every three or one out of every four. Yet last year alone they captured approximately 1.1 million and detained them.

But the concern is that we only have roughly 20,000 detention beds. So what the Border Patrol does is, after doing a background check, after which they run these aliens' names against a terrorist watch list and various criminal justice data bases, they engage in what can only be called a catch-and-release program. In other words, they release them on their own recognizance based on their promise to return for further proceedings later on. It should come as no surprise that the overwhelming number of these detainees do not reappear for their hearing, and they simply melt into the landscape.

As a result of this flawed policy, we know we have approximately 10 million people living in our country outside of our laws. And those numbers are getting bigger, not smaller.

I do not know how we can stand here, particularly in the face of the threat of international terrorism, and tell the American people we are doing the job they sent us here to do. Because we know that organized crime groups, which are only interested in making money, do not care whether they deal with human beings who want to come here to work, whether they engage in human trafficking, whether they engage in illegal drug transactions, illegal arms transactions, or any one of a number of other activities that are designed to generate money. We know in these organized smuggling activities, many of which originate from Asia and the Middle East, people are literally brought across the ocean to South America, or to Mexico, or Central America, and then they take advantage of our porous southern border and potentially threaten our national security.

I hope, and indeed I believe, that most of the people who come to this country across our border outside of our laws are coming here for the same reason they have always come here; and that is, to find work and the ability to support their families because they cannot do so where they live. But we have to acknowledge this porous border we have and our failure to obtain operational security of our borders is a national security threat because the same avenues of entry into the country by which construction workers and others might come are available for exploitation by international terrorists.

We have no idea, and no agency of the Federal Government can tell us, whether or not we have sleeper cells of terrorists who have exploited that border to come here. But we know they continue to come, that vulnerability continues to exist, as long as the Federal Government fails to live up to its responsibility to secure our border.

This bill, to the great credit of the subcommittee and its chairman, the Senator from New Hampshire, recommends a total of about $6 billion for securing the Nation's borders, including $1.7 billion for border staffing between the ports of entry.

Separately, the bill includes $81 million for construction requirements associated with 1,000 new Border Patrol agents. I mentioned the issue of detention beds. There are only 20,000 beds right now, which is woefully inadequate. Given our failure to implement nationwide expedited removal processes for people who come to our country illegally, the Border Patrol and the Federal agencies are simply left with this unworkable and inexcusable system of catch-and-release, which merely exacerbates the problem we have in this country with illegal immigration.

This bill moves us in the right direction by funding an additional 2,240 detention beds, with a $77 million increase, bringing the total up to almost 23,000 beds. It is still not enough, but clearly this moves us in the right direction.

The Intelligence Reform Act authorizes 8,000 beds per year, and the Iraq war supplemental funded almost 2,000 beds.

The bill I alluded to earlier that Senator Kyl and I intend to file shortly calls for an additional 10,000 detention beds to be constructed each year, at an estimated cost of $330 million, which is an increase of 2,000 beds per year over what was authorized in the Intelligence Reform Act.

The recent surge of people coming illegally into our country outside of just our immediate neighbor of Mexico demonstrates this catch-and-release policy must be changed. It is only through the commitment of resources, such as being done in this bill, that we are going to get to where we need to be.

I am pleased to see the recommendations that are made as to additional resources in this bill, but I remind my colleagues there is still much that needs to be done when it comes to ensuring our security and our safety by enforcement of our laws.

I hope at another time to be able to come back and address my colleagues on the details of the bill Senator Kyl and I intend to introduce which is composed of four main provisions.

One provision has to do with enhanced border security, which I have already alluded to here. The second provision has to do with interior enforcement. In other words, once people get past the border, then they are simply lost to our Federal law enforcement agencies. We simply, as the Federal Government, do not provide them the additional resources they need in order to be partners in our law enforcement effort when it comes to border security and immigration law enforcement.

Last week, I visited with a group of sheriffs in Victoria and Goliad Counties. They are about 200 miles inland. But you may recall, Mr. President, and my colleagues may recall, it was about 2 years ago when 19 immigrants, who had been smuggled illegally into the country, were left to die in a trailer because the human smuggler--a coyote, as they are called in our part of the country--cared nothing about them and left them to die in over 100-degree temperatures inside a cattle trailer.

These local law enforcement officials are willing to help and willing to be of assistance, but they want the training and they need additional resources so they can hire the personnel. We must meet our obligations to provide the additional resources they need so we can work as partners with local law enforcement and State law enforcement to enforce the law.

So the first component is enhanced border security, and the second component is enhanced interior enforcement.

The third component of the bill Senator Kyl and I will file has to do with employer accountability. It may come as a shock to the people of America to know we currently do not have in place an effective way for employers to authoritatively determine whether the person standing in front of them, who wants to be hired, is in fact authorized to work in the United States of America or whether they happen to be an illegal immigrant who cannot legally be hired by American employers.

What our bill will do is remedy that deficiency and provide employers with a reliable means to document the fact that indeed this perspective employee is authorized to work in the United States, and to do so in a reliable fashion.

We will also at the same time insist that employers, once we give them the tools they need, enforce the law and make sure they document that, in fact, this perspective employee is authorized to work in the United States.

The fourth and last component has to do with a temporary worker program. The President talked about this a couple of years ago. I think he is exactly right. But the problem is, it has to be combined with enhanced border security, enhanced interior enforcement, and tools that employers need in order to determine the legal status of the perspective employees that stand in front of them. But we also have to acknowledge the facts: America's economy is strong, and we have a demand for the labor many immigrants provide, but we simply need to provide a legal means for people to work and perform those jobs that American citizens do not want or are not available to do.

Then we need to provide a means to return those individuals who come here on a temporary basis and work in the United States under this legal regime, to return them to their home, with the skills and the savings they have acquired working in the United States. Because unless we deal also with the economic aspects of this problem that affects our national security, we will never have any hope of solving it.

I will speak more on that later. But I did want to give our colleagues a preview of what is being worked on as a comprehensive solution. And I did want to come to the floor and express my great appreciation to the Senator from New Hampshire, the chairman of the subcommittee, and all of those who have made it possible for us to focus our efforts on enhanced border security, and to explain why I believe it is absolutely critical to the safety and security of the American people that we obtain operational security of our border. It is something we cannot claim now and which, indeed, law enforcement officials of the U.S. Government admit we do not currently have.

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Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I would like to take about a minute more of our colleagues' time. I neglected to make some additional brief comments that I would like to make on the space shuttle launch that is occurring today.

It was my very first speech on the Senate floor, sadly, when I paid tribute to the astronauts who lost their lives in the Columbia disaster in February of 2003. The thoughts and admiration of the Nation are with the brave astronauts aboard Discovery today as they make their journey into space. It is the first one this Nation has attempted since that terrible tragedy in February 2003.

I believe the robust manned space program is critical to both America's proud tradition of exploration and its commercial and military preeminence in space.

NASA's missions foster technological and scientific advances and help ensure our national security as well as create jobs for thousands of Texans and thousands of Americans.

I believe the mission of NASA, together with the President's vision for future space exploration, will also encourage young people to study math and science and prepare for space-related careers. As so many young children have done in the past, they are inspired by the feats of daring and accomplishment by these brave astronauts who are launching into space again today. These goals are set not just for our current benefit, but also for future generations of leaders and innovators in Texas and across America.

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