Directing the Removal of United States Armed Forces From Hostilities in the Republic of Yemen That Have Not Been Authorized By Congress--Veto

Floor Speech

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Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, with the 2-week hiatus we have had here in Washington, DC, so we could be back home visiting with our constituents, some things have not changed; they are just the way they were when we left, and that would include the heart-breaking stories that illustrate the situation along our southwest border.

I have talked, as you might imagine coming from Texas, with a lot of Border Patrol personnel who found migrants crammed in parts of cars that you didn't even know exist. I visited the unmarked graves of those who have been abandoned by their human smugglers in essentially desert conditions and left to die. I have seen the disgusting stash houses, where dozens of migrants are held at a time to avoid being caught before they are transported up through the Interstate Highway System to distant locations.

I could fill a book with all of the sights I have seen and the stories I have heard over the years, and I am sure, with the stories compiled by the Border Patrol agents and officers, we could fill an entire library.

The story, though, really is about how ruthless and inhumane and completely reckless and thoughtless with regard to human life these criminal organizations truly are.

One headline, though, during this recess period, stopped me in my tracks. Even this, I thought, could not be the case. It read:

A 3-year-old was found alone in a field by Border Patrol agents. His name and phone numbers were [written] on his shoes.

A toddler, not even old enough to talk to the agents who found him, was abandoned.

Customs and Border Protection believes the boy was part of a larger group trying to enter the United States with their human smugglers. When the group encountered Border Patrol agents, the adults ran into the Rio Grande River and back to Mexico, leaving the little boy all by himself.

He was, as the Border Patrol does in every instance, taken into custody and treated well. He was taken to a hospital for a medical evaluation, and, miraculously, he was found to be in good condition.

While the agents tried to track down the boy's family, one supervisory patrol agent purchased clothing for him out of his own pocket; other personnel entertained the little boy, watching movies and playing games.

These agents aren't just patrolling the border to catch illegal crossers; they are now being forced, because of the crisis at the border, to act as caregivers for some of the most vulnerable individuals they come across. Unfortunately, what that means is, they are also diverted from their No. 1 job, which is law enforcement and to protect the security and safety of the American people along our borders. They are now diverted from that mission, as well as their counterdrug mission, essentially handing out diapers and juice boxes for little boys and little girls.

I think this should be a reminder for some of our colleagues who seem to think that the status quo along the border is just hunky-dory that it is far from humane. Many of our colleagues have said: Well, we need to abolish ICE because somehow that is inhumane; enforcing the laws passed by Congress and signed into law by the President, that somehow is beyond the pale.

Enforcing the law isn't inhumane. Apprehending people who try to illegally enter into the United States or import their poison so it can be used by Americans who then overdose and lose their lives due to consuming those drugs, that is inhumane. What is inhumane and lacks simple compassion is doing nothing to stop this practice. Leaving security gaps that are exploited by smugglers, traffickers, and criminal organizations who have zero regard for human life is inhumane. These people, the drugs, the contraband are mere commodities to these criminal organizations. They don't care anything about them.

Giving people an opportunity to smuggle an innocent child across our border alone and leaving him to die in the desert is not humane. Making criminal cartels rich by exploiting our porous border is inexcusable.

To be clear, the criminal organizations perpetuating this cycle are the bad guys, not our law enforcement personnel who work to protect our border at substantial risk to themselves and who take compassionate care of those in their custody.

I think one of the reasons this story garnered so much attention is because that is not what the average person imagines the Border Patrol encounters at the border, but increasingly it is. The Border Patrol encounters unaccompanied children and families consisting of one adult and one or more children along the border because the criminal organizations that smuggle them to the border are exploiting gaps and vulnerabilities in our asylum laws.

Many people believe the typical migrant is an adult traveling alone, but more likely than not, that is not the case, and, in fact, it is becoming less and less common.

In fact, according to the most recent statics, there is no new net migration from Mexico. Almost all of the migration into the United States, either by people who illegally enter or asylum seekers, is from countries other than Mexico, most notably Central America, but, literally, those could be merely the transit points for people coming from all over the world, up through Mexico, into the United States.

From October 2018 to March 2019, a 6-month period, more than 360,000 people--360,000 people--were apprehended along the southwest border. That is a remarkably high number for this point in the year, based on historical statistics. Only about one-third of them were single adults, more than half were traveling as a family unit, and the rest were unaccompanied children, like this 3-year-old little boy. He was found by agents in the Rio Grande Valley, far and away the busiest Border Patrol sector in the country. In fact, more than 40 percent of all unaccompanied children are apprehended in the Rio Grande Valley sector.

These numbers are far from normal. Unsurprisingly, our Border Patrol and Customs and Border Protection agents, our local communities, the nongovernmental organizations, the churches, and others who try to lend a helping hand to these migrants coming across the border are not equipped to handle this huge surge of humanity.

Customs agents are being pulled off inspection duty to help process the apprehended migrants. Security checkpoints are being shut down. The flow of legitimate trade and travel is being impacted. Individuals are then being released because there is simply not enough space to hold them, even though they violated our laws or have not yet proven their right to an immigration benefit under our asylum system.

I had a group of manufacturers come see me before the latest break. They told me that from Juarez to El Paso, which is right across the Rio Grande River--that because commerce was backed up, the truck traffic that was transporting car parts as part of a just-in-time inventory program to manufacturers on the American side, they literally had to hire an airplane to fly 11 minutes from Juarez to El Paso. Car manufacturers that operate in Texas, Missouri, and other parts of the country, depend on this cross-border supply chain for their products. Eventually, if we don't do something about this flood of humanity and the blockage it is creating to legitimate trade and commerce across our ports of entry, we are going to see Americans lose their jobs because it simply was uncontemplated by anybody in that business that they would have to suffer those kinds of delays. Instead of a 1-hour delay coming across the ports of entry carrying manufactured goods that can be assembled in the United States or otherwise used in products made here, some are taking as much as 24 hours to get across. People are literally sleeping in their truck because they can't get through the ports of entry, in part, because the Customs and Border agents are being diverted, like I said earlier, handing out juice boxes, handing out diapers, taking care of this huge flood of humanity coming across our border.

Don't just take my word for it. I remember when President Obama made comments talking about a humanitarian crisis. He called it a humanitarian and security crisis back in June of 2014. At that time, we saw as many as 135,000 during the month of May and June 2014 apprehended at the border. Just to put that in context, in February and March of this year, 180,000 people were detained at the border--back when President Obama called it a humanitarian and security crisis, 135,000; February and March 2019, 180,000.

Simply put, this is a manmade disaster, and the only one that can fix it is the U.S. Congress, and it is going to get nothing but worse.

All of the pull factors, the things that attract people to come across the border to take advantage of these gaps in our asylum laws, are going to do nothing but attract more and more and more people.

Certainly, we all understand, as a matter of simple human compassion, why people would want to leave if they can't get a job, if they can't provide for their families where they live, but we simply cannot continue to accept the tens of thousands. Now, indeed, in a 2-month period of time, 180,000 new people have been coming into the country essentially jumping in line ahead of others who are trying to legally immigrate to the United States. It is overwhelming for our communities and our Border Patrol and our Customs agents.

We know many of these migrants pay smugglers to lead them on this dangerous journey north or have to pay others a tax to pass through territories along the way, including the so-called plazas which are adjacent to the U.S.-Mexico border. So while migrants and vulnerable children are being left for dead in the desert, and we are struggling to manage a devastating humanitarian crisis, these criminal organizations are getting richer and richer. This is part of how they do business.

While it is hard to know exactly how much money these groups are making, a recent study by RAND estimated that revenues to smugglers moving migrants from Northern Triangle countries--that is in Central America--range from about $200 million to about $2.3 billion in 2017 alone. These are the same people, again, who are commodity agnostic, who care nothing about human life. They will move migrants for economic purposes. They will move people who are being sex trafficked, and they will move drugs, some of which contributed to the 70,000 Americans who died of drug overdoses last year, since Mexico is responsible for about 90 percent of the heroin and much of the fentanyl that comes across our southwestern border.

Of course, all of this is tax-free. You better believe these networks and their operations will only continue to get richer and richer and more and more ruthless and more and more dangerous.

If you think these problems are going to go away on their own, you are wrong. The number of children and family units found along our border is already climbing at an appalling pace, and we need to take action to alleviate the strain on our personnel on the southern border and to eliminate the clogs and delays in legitimate trading commerce that is the lifeblood of our Nation, as well as our counterparts in Mexico.

Unfortunately, rather than trying to put out the fire, many folks here in Washington would rather fan the flames. The topic of border security has become a hot button, a zero-sum game that people seem to be willing to talk about more than look for solutions.

As we all know, that is not how to get things done around here. We need to work together to try to come up with solutions to change our asylum laws in a way that is both compassionate and one that respects the rule of law and allows us to control this vast flood of humanity seeking to enter our country and take advantage of our asylum laws.

I have been speaking with our colleagues here in the Senate, as well as those in the House, on both sides of the aisle, about commonsense reforms, what they might look like, and where we might find common ground. We can't wait to do comprehensive immigration reform in order to fix this particular problem where children and families turn themselves in at the border because of these flaws in our asylum laws. We need to address that and to do what we can, but once we accomplish that, we need to move on to do other things that we know we need to do in the best interest of our country and in the best interest of the rule of law.

I think it is amazing what you can accomplish when you talk to other Members of Congress instead of just the news cameras, but that seems to be solely where the conversation is occurring--for the benefit of news cameras. We have had some productive discussions about how we can provide our frontline officers and agents with the resources they need--staffing, authorities, infrastructure, and technology.

I, for one, am here and ready to talk to anyone who is willing to work in good faith to provide relief for the humanitarian crisis occurring on our southern border. That is what President Obama called it, and it has gotten much worse. It doesn't help to be labeling this some sort of fake emergency, as some of our colleagues on the other side of the Capitol have. To deny reality is a pretty big impediment to trying to solve the problem.

I hope our colleagues on both sides of the aisle can take stock of the situation, accept the facts, and muster the courage to put politics aside and work together to create a much needed and long-overdue reform of our immigration policies because this problem is not going away. There were 76,000 people detained at the border in February and 103,000 detained at the border in March. There is no good reason why the 103,000 will not grow to 150,000, to 200,000, or to 250,000.

All of the same pieces are in place and all of the same flaws are being exploited by these transnational criminal organizations to move people into the country, where they can essentially circumvent our immigration enforcement and border security measures. It is going to do nothing but get worse when it comes to impediments getting in place of lawful commerce and trade, which are so important to our economy and the economy of Mexico and our common border.

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