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Floor Speech

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Mr. MARSHALL. Mr. President, I want to talk today about one of the most disturbing human catastrophes in the world. Now, I have recently visited the Ukraine border, and I have done medical mission work around the world from Haiti to Honduras to Africa. I have seen malnutrition and starvation. I have seen trauma. I have seen the consequences of the lack of potable water and sewage.

I describe this so when I say our southern border--yes, our own southern border--is a humanitarian crisis, you know I am not speaking in ignorance or hyperbole. And this crisis, this humanitarian nightmare, has been created by our own President's policies.

You see, when he was elected, he sent a loud invitation to the whole world; and more recently, when he said he was ending title 42, it was like turning on a stronger magnet. It was like sending a flare, a signal. It was like a giant Times Square billboard telling all the world: Come now, come to the United States. Amnesty is waiting for everyone.

As for the cartels--the people traveling, they paid no mind to the court ruling. Instead, they kept coming. And as we speak, the largest caravan to date is on its way, with more than 15,000 people--bigger than my hometown of Great Bend.

This invitation, this magnet has made an already treacherous, inhumane situation worse. Our President is, indeed, inviting people to their own peril, to their own harrowing, life-threatening journey.

Let me share with you what I saw just 16 days ago on my fourth visit to the border.

Upon our arrival and a short drive to the river, we found the Border Patrol and our National Guard hard at work with some 30 migrants in line waiting to be processed. They had turned themselves in. And within moments, within minutes, that line was over 100 people. And at the front of the line were two beautiful young sisters, ages 7 and 9. They were unaccompanied--no parents and no families. I can only imagine what it would have been like traveling over 1,000 miles from Central America to the Rio Grande River without your parents or without a family member. I can only imagine what might have happened to them on that trek.

From the river, we traveled to a detention center where the migrants were held for 2 to 3 days.

I have to again compliment our Border Patrol; they are doing an incredible job in a humanitarian crisis by providing showers, shelter, clothing, healthcare, and meals. The challenge is 80 percent of our Border Patrol officers are having to function like they are like running a restaurant, like running a hotel, functioning as social workers while our borders are left unguarded.

And the get-aways--we haven't talked about the get-aways. Let me tell you the story of one young lady I met. Let's say she was probably 17 years of age from Central America. She or her family paid the cartel some $3,000 to get from Central America through Mexico across the river and into the United States. Now, I don't know if she was raped or violated, but this certainly is a very common situation--all too common during this trek. We do know that some people in her group were asked to smuggle drugs across the border as part of their thoroughfare.

Now, after crossing this treacherous river, she was abandoned by her coyote. She was already dehydrated, had dysentery. She was malnourished. She hadn't slept for days. And she was no doubt frightened. Eventually she found refuge at a cartel stash house on the Texas side of the border. Yes, now the cartel has cartel members living in America along the river and, as I later found out, all across America.

Next the cartel arranged--of course, for a price--for her to be smuggled via car from a border city to a checkpoint some 60 miles away. Now these journeys, too, are treacherous, as migrants are often placed in containers, in the backs of trucks, or in the trunks of cars. And when they are chased by sheriffs, the drivers recklessly place their own human cargo in peril.

But this person wasn't done yet. About 5 miles short of the checkpoint, the human smugglers let her out of the car. Then she had to walk around the checkpoint--probably a journey of 15 to 20 miles-- through the Texas heat, scrub brush, and rattlesnakes. In fact, many days now Texas Rangers find dead, decayed bodies of migrant workers or migrant folks who had not made the trek successfully.

So this journey around the checkpoint would take 3 to 4 days. She was given 2 days' worth of water--a milk jug full of water.

A couple miles beyond the checkpoint, a new human smuggler, hired and coordinated by the cartel to pick her up, awaits. This is where I met our young lady. We watched as she and four others packed into a small car, and a fifth hopped in the trunk. After a short, high-speed chase, the car finally pulled over and the riders fled on foot. Now, most were apprehended very shortly, including the young lady in this photo.

This is when I met the woman in the story for the first time. Again, she hadn't had water for 2 days. Her left knee was swollen and painful. She had multiple cuts that were infected, multiple bruises, and she was semicomatose, fading in and out. She had certainly heat exhaustion and was bordering on a heatstroke. Now, we were fortunate. With some minor first aid, giving her hydration, cooling her down, she is going to make it and she is going to be fine. But for many making this treacherous journey across the southern border, this story ends much more differently and much more tragically.

I am asking--I am begging our President to turn off the magnet, to turn off the billboards that advertise for these people to risk their lives, to stop inviting them to their peril and perhaps their death.

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