Strengthening America's Security in the Middle East Act of 2019--Motion

Floor Speech

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Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, after a 35-day government shutdown, more than 800,000 Federal workers and their families are finally back at work. Their families have endured unnecessary and needless hardship over the past several weeks because, frankly, the Speaker of the House, Ms. Pelosi, was more determined to try to win the political battle than solve the problem. I could give the same comment to our friend the Democratic leader here in the Senate. I hope now, after we have been through this exercise in futility, that our colleagues will take seriously our responsibility to solve the problem before us, and that is to reach an agreement so we don't end up in the same position 3 weeks hence when this continuing resolution expires.

I tell people that we solve problems like this every single day here in the Congress. You don't read about it, necessarily, or hear about it because when we build consensus and negotiate compromises, it is not news. The only time it is news is when we disagree and when it is broadcast across cable TV or the subject of talk radio or social media.

It is unfortunate that dedicated public servants were caught in the crosshairs over a partisan fight on border security. What we have seen over the last months is that many Members desire to score those political points and win a fight against the President, and that desire is much greater than their desire to build legislation that benefits the American people.

There is a solution to be had. As I said, we do it every day. The only question is, Are we willing to work together to find it? I know I am.

I have been speaking with many Members of the Texas delegation, both Republicans and Democrats, to try to find that common ground for our constituents for border security. We don't consider these to be political footballs or talking points; we consider these matters to be part of their daily lives and part of our responsibility as their elected representatives.

In the last few days, I have had the chance to be in Dallas, TX, and also in Austin, TX. I was in Austin, TX, to talk about the CyberTipline we reauthorized working with Facebook and Microsoft and other social media platforms to talk about how we can work together to combat child pornography and child exploitation, using the authority of the CyberTipline. We were joined by the new U.S. attorney there, John Bash. I asked him whether his prosecutors who were prosecuting these cases or the FBI agents who would investigate them or his support staff who support the U.S. attorney's office--whether any of them were getting paid, and he said no. But everybody showed up at work, doing their job, fighting the scourge of child exploitation, even though they weren't getting paid.

Ditto in the Northern District of Texas, where I visited with the U.S. attorney, who gave me the same story. We were there talking about the scourge of human trafficking. Erin Nealy Cox, the U.S. attorney in Dallas, pointed out that, yes, the prosecutors were there at work, the investigators were there, and the support staff were there, even though they were the ones probably earning the most modest paychecks of anybody in the office. Everybody was there, doing their job, even though during these 35 days they had missed two different Federal paychecks.

Thinking now about the solution to our standoff on border security, I wanted to mention that a couple of weeks ago the President flew to McAllen, TX. Senator Cruz and I joined him in the Rio Grande Valley to hear from the experts. By ``the experts,'' I don't mean folks who run for office here in Washington, DC. I mean the Border Patrol, Customs and Border Protection, and Department of Homeland Security experts who actually work on the ground there along the border.

We also met with mayors and county judges and other folks who live in those communities and are most concerned about safety and security but also the economy of the border region. We discussed with them what sensible border security actually looks like.

We know that physical barriers didn't use to be a partisan issue when the Senator from New York--the Democratic leader--Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton all voted for the Secure Fence Act back in 2006. We called it a fence then and not a wall, but it was a physical barrier, and it was a nonpartisan issue.

That was then and this is now. When we were talking about physical barriers along the border, my friend Cameron County Judge Eddie Trevino said something that stuck with me, and I have repeated it a number of times, and I think it could be a lesson to all of us about how to approach this entire debate. He said that if law enforcement officials say where barriers are needed, he is all in, but if politicians say where they are needed and they are trying to micromanage border security, consider him a skeptic.

I think what people want--and my sense is what my constituents along the border region and across the State of Texas want and, I dare say, across the country--is to come up with effective solutions that will make our border more secure. Since Texas has 1,200 miles of common border with Mexico, of course, I have thought about this a lot, and I have listened and learned a lot about this. What I have been told and I believe is that at any given place along the border, you are going to have some combination of three elements: physical barriers, technology, and personnel. We need a complement of each of those things in this border security bill that hopefully we will be voting on in the coming weeks.

Many areas along the border are subject to high pedestrian traffic. They need physical barriers. That is why they make sense in El Paso and San Diego and Tucson, for examples. All of these saw a massive drop in apprehensions after fencing or physical barriers were put in place, along with a complement of technology and border agents when they were deployed in the 1990s and 2000s. We know that barriers can work. We have seen it proven time and again.

We all agree that we don't need barriers across the entire 2,000-mile southwestern border. We don't need a great wall from sea to shining sea across the border. One example comes readily to mind. Big Bend National Park, for example, is home to massive canyons, and some of the cliffs reach more than 3,000 feet high along the Rio Grande River. It is a spectacular and beautiful place. It would not only be impractical but completely wasteful to build a physical barrier on top of a towering cliff. That is just one example of where you might want to use some other parts of that triad of technology and personnel because a physical barrier wouldn't make much sense.

There are others who have suggested that we use the natural barrier of the Rio Grande River. Right now, much of that river is filled with something called carrizo cane, which makes it harder for the Border Patrol to actually locate people trying to enter the United States illegally. It reduces the effectiveness of that natural physical barrier of the Rio Grande River. We need to find a way to eradicate that in a way that will not only allow that river to be more of a natural barrier but also provide greater visibility for the Border Patrol.

In some areas, as I said, physical barriers, either new, repaired, or replaced are desperately needed. In others, surveillance technology, such as sensors or drones, will do the trick. Many additional personnel are needed to improve efficiency or alleviate staffing shortages. It doesn't make sense to have a physical barrier if there is no Border Patrol agent to detain somebody entering the country illegally or to interdict the drugs that come across the border.

As my friend Judge Trevino said, politicians shouldn't be the ones deciding exactly where along the border each of these three elements is applied. That is why we have asked and will continue to ask Customs and Border Protection--the experts--what we need and provide funding to implement the changes they have asked for.

I think it is a statement of the obvious to say that, in addition to improving the physical security across our border, we need to make changes in our border security approach and immigration system as a whole. Unfortunately, we are not even dealing with the larger problem of our broken immigration system.

Several years ago, I introduced legislation to the so-called Gang of 8 immigration bill that we were debating at the time. The legislation I introduced was called the RESULTS amendment. I believe the foundation of that legislation should be incorporated in any future legislation we come up with here in the next few weeks. One of the main requirements was for the Department of Homeland Security to come up with a plan to achieve operational control of every single border sector, meaning a 90-percent border apprehension rate. Requiring this sort of metric or apprehension rate will provide a clear, objective way to measure border security. Ironically, the way we measure border security now is that we know how many people are detained, but we don't know how many get away. It is a strange way to count effectiveness by counting the ones we detain but not the ones who get away--which obviously we can't do. If we come up with a better way to measure border security with a clear- cut metric like a 90-percent operational control requirement, I think it would provide a better way for us to determine how to efficiently spend the tax dollars we are talking about, which we are stewards of here in the Congress, and ensure that we are focusing our resources on the highest priority areas. This requirement would allow us to do that.

That particular legislation, the RESULTS amendment, would also require increased surveillance and provide solutions to commonsense problems. For example, it would have prevented violent criminals from acquiring legal status, provided law enforcement with critical national security and public safety information, and mitigated the problem of visa overstays. This RESULTS amendment would have strengthened biometric requirements.

It is ironic, as we talk about border security and immigration, that we turn a blind eye to the 40 percent of illegal immigration that occurs when people enter the country legally and overstay their visas. Unless they commit some other crime in the course of their time here, they are largely not located. So we need to find a better way to enforce all of our immigration laws, including visa overstays.

We can't ignore the fact that our border is not only a place that needs security but that is important to the economic vitality of not only my State but of our country. The financial impact of legitimate trade and travel is enormous. As a matter of fact, $300 billion worth of goods flow back and forth through Texas's ports of entry alone in a given year. That is why this type of legislation is so important--because it provides resources to significantly reduce wait times at border crossings, which makes the movement of people and goods faster but no less secure.

Finally, this legislation took a stand against the brutal human rights violations we see along the southern border by stiffening penalties on abusive human smugglers and transnational criminal organizations. There may have been a time when the so-called coyotes were a mom-and-pop operation. ``Coyotes'' is just the name for human smugglers. Now it is big business, and the same criminal organizations that move drugs and economic migrants also traffic in human beings for sex and other involuntary servitude. It is no longer a mom-and-pop operation, to be sure, and we need to make sure the penalties for this illegal activity are increased and stiffened to meet the challenge of transnational criminal organizations.

I believe that all of these points still deserve a place in our debate today. I look forward to working with our colleagues in the coming weeks to create meaningful and lasting change to strengthen our border security as well as to fix longstanding problems with our immigration system. I believe we can find common ground, and I hope our Democratic colleagues will follow through in their commitment to negotiating in good faith so that we do.

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