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Floor Speech

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Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, in January, monthly border crossings dropped below 200,000 for the first time since last March. Last month, U.S. Customs and Border Protection logged more than 156,000 illegal border crossings. This was the busiest January in more than two decades. Yet, somehow, the Biden administration is trying to claim victory for this temporary dip in illegal border crossings. If you ask me, the President is popping the cork a little early.

For starters, these numbers are artificially reduced thanks to the administration's new parole program. Now, ``parole'' is not a commonly used word, but what the parole does in this context is it allows up to 30,000 people from specific countries per month into the United States. Basically, they are waved on through. If migrants enter the country on a legal basis, which is exactly what this program creates, they will never be tallied as part of the illegal migration statistics. So how better to make something illegal legal than to simply wave your magic wand and create a new category by which migrants are admitted to the United States?

In short, this new policy has allowed the administration to roll out the welcome mat for tens of thousands of migrants while pretending that the humanitarian and public safety crisis at the border is abating. It is not. It is not abating.

Second, January is a historically slow month for migration. During the previous administration, Customs and Border Protection logged an average of about 43,000 illegal border crossings each January. As a reminder, last month, we encountered 156,000--43,000 during the previous administration; this administration, 156,000 in January.

Now, as we head into spring, those numbers are sure to climb again. Warming temperatures and seasonal work always leads to increased migration, and I don't expect this year to be an exception. The numbers may have dropped temporarily last month, but there is no reason for the President to spike the football or to claim victory.

Every single day, thousands of migrants cross the United States- Mexico border. The overwhelming majority arrive here with only what they can carry on their backs. When they reach the United States, they need food, shelter, clothing, medical care, transportation, and the like.

Since President Biden took office, the pace of illegal border crossings has made this already-tough job of caring for migrants increasingly more challenging just by the sheer volume of humanity coming across the border. So law enforcement, nonprofits, and folks in my State who live and work on the border have begged the Biden administration to take action. It is not even fair to say that they were met with a shrug. Rather, they were just ignored.

In order to ease the burden on border communities in Texas, Governor Greg Abbott began transporting migrants to other States and cities last year. If the Biden administration is going to give them a piece of paper and say, ``Show up for an immigration court hearing at some indefinite date in the future''--perhaps years in the future--then Governor Abbott's theory was that, rather than have them wait there in the border communities, give them a bus ticket and let them go to the place where they have told the U.S. Government they intended to relocate pending their court hearing.

But the moment the challenges spread from these small border towns in Texas to liberal enclaves in the Northeast, the outrage machine fired up big time. President Biden didn't care about the border crisis when it affected the Rio Grande Valley or Laredo or Del Rio or El Paso, but the moment it reached Manhattan and Martha's Vineyard or Chicago or Washington, DC, it was somehow a crisis.

And, of course, we know who the President blamed. He blamed Republicans. Forget the fact that nonprofits have a longstanding practice of using Federal funds to transport migrants all over the country to await their future court hearing. But once the State of Texas or the State of Arizona or the State of Florida began offering transportation to these same migrants, the President and our Democratic colleagues had an absolute meltdown.

Our colleague from Illinois, Senator Durbin, called the practice ``cruel and inhumane.'' The White House Press Secretary said it was ``shameful'' and ``reckless.'' Vice President Kamala Harris went so far as to call this ``the height of irresponsibility'' and ``a dereliction of duty.''

When it hurts my constituents, my border communities, the people I represent here in the Senate, they are simply ignored. But once that problem begins to show up on the doorstep of the Vice President or Mayor Bowser or Mayor Adams or the mayor of Chicago, you would think the roof was falling in.

I don't think Vice President Harris recognized the many layers of irony in the statement that somehow this was ``a dereliction of duty'' and ``the height of irresponsibility.'' What it shows is simply how little she understands the nature of the problem, much less any way to try to fix it.

Now, it is not just the nonprofits and the Republican Governors that are transporting migrants. It is the Democratic mayor of New York City.

Eric Adams is the mayor of the largest city in the United States. New York City is home to roughly 8.5 million people, and its annual budget exceeds $100 billion. That is higher than all but a handful of States. Once busloads of migrants began to arrive in New York City last year, Mayor Adams quickly realized what border mayors had been saying all along: that this is a big problem.

After welcoming a few thousand migrants, Mayor Adams said his city was near the breaking point. Again, this was the reaction when a few thousand migrants arrived into a major city with a $100 billion annual budget.

Can you imagine what it has been like in small towns like Del Rio, TX, of 35,000 people, where they had 15,000 Haitians under a bridge in that small city and, frankly, without the resources to deal with them?

So, frankly, I am not all that sympathetic to Mayor Adams' quandary because of what my constituents have been living with for the entirety of the Biden administration. New York City has vast resources and a long list of folks willing to help, and still it is struggling to care for the migrants arriving on its doorstep.

Meanwhile, communities across Texas--small in comparison to New York--were absorbing thousands of migrants in a single day with only a fraction of the resources.

Over the last several months, the number of migrants arriving in New York City has grown dramatically. It has received more than 40,000 migrants, and the challenges have only grown. I am not surprised by that, but this is a taste of what we have been experiencing for years, thanks to the Biden administration's dereliction of duty.

Mayor Adams started doing what Republican Governors of Texas and the Democratic mayor of El Paso had already done. He offered these migrants free transportation elsewhere.

So they have come to New York City. Mayor Adams said this is terrible. And what does he do? He then offers the migrants a free bus ticket to go somewhere else.

New York City has purchased bus tickets for migrants headed in all directions around the country. Migrants were offered a free ride, and many willingly accepted.

This is exactly what has happened in border States like Texas, but the reaction has been completely different. I haven't heard Vice President Harris, for example, call this ``the height of irresponsibility'' or ``a dereliction of duty.'' Certainly, our Democratic colleagues haven't repeated their claims that this is somehow cruel and inhumane, no matter how erroneous they were in the first place.

When migrants receive free bus tickets from conservative States like Texas, it is framed as a human rights abuse. But when it happens in Manhattan, it is viewed as an act of charity or kindness. The hypocrisy is simply breathtaking.

To be clear, I don't fault Mayor Adams for helping migrants reach other parts of the country. I am sure he is trying to manage with this new phenomenon. But I would hope that he would recognize that this has been something we have been having to cope with as a result of the failure of the Federal Government to deal with this humanitarian and public safety crisis.

The influx of tens of thousands of migrants can certainly place a strain on local health systems and emergency response services. It could put a dent in a city's budget. It can overwhelm the nonprofits and hurt the vulnerable locals who already rely on those services. But that is exactly what we have been seeing in States like mine for years, but to no avail. It is unfair to expect any city or any State to carry the burden of this crisis because it is the Federal Government's responsibility.

We now learn that every community in America is now a border community. This morning, during a Finance Committee hearing, the chairman of the Finance Committee, the Senator from Oregon, Mr. Wyden, and the ranking member from Idaho, Senator Crapo, both were recounting about the influx of fentanyl and synthetic opioids into their States and the impact it is having on crime and overdose deaths of the people they represent and care so much about.

But last year alone, 108,000 Americans died of drug overdoses, and 71,000 of those from synthetic opioids. Virtually all of the 108,000 deaths were caused by drugs that came across the southern border.

So it is not just economic migrants looking for a job and a better way of life. It is people with criminal records, sex offenders. It is people smuggling drugs into the United States. It is the criminal gangs who distribute those drugs in major cities all across the country, including in New Jersey, and who are responsible for much of the violence--particularly the gun violence--as they fight for market share and territory.

So every community in the country now is a border community and a border State.

This is not what successful immigration or border security policy looks like. The number of border crossings may have temporarily dipped, but communities across the country are still being crushed by the weight of President Biden's border crisis.

The one silver lining in all of this is that it appears the President is finally--finally--acknowledging the crisis at the border. With a possible reelection for President just around the corner, it looks like he is finally giving at least lipservice to this major political liability.

In his State of the Union Address last week, President Biden urged Members of Congress:

If you won't pass my comprehensive immigration reform [bill], at least pass my plan to provide the equipment and officers to secure the border.

I was wondering what plan the President was referring to. None of us have seen it, to my knowledge. I have asked many of my Senate colleagues, and they don't know what the President is even talking about because none of them have seen his plan to secure the border.

He hasn't shown a serious interest in using the existing authorities to stop the flow of illegal immigration. But if the President's views have changed and now he is serious about dealing with this crisis, he will find a lot of allies here in Congress, and I would be one of them.

Senators on this side of the aisle want to reform the processes by which migrants are handled to quickly remove unlawful migrants who have invalid asylum claims and ensure that the cartels are not able to overwhelm the Border Patrol by directing migrants to key strategic locations while, then, the drug cartels move illegal drugs into the country that take the lives of innocent Americans.

The experts I listen to--the Border Patrol, mainly--have advocated for a combination of personnel, technology, and infrastructure to ensure that the Border Patrol is capable of stopping dangerous criminals and contraband at the border. And we need to fix the broken asylum system along with its characteristic catch-and-release because if there are no real consequences for people coming into the country, even though they don't qualify for asylum, they are going to continue to come. And that has been the case during the entirety of the Biden administration.

So if the President is serious now, at long last, I encourage him to pick up the phone. Communities across Texas and across the country are suffering because of the Biden administration's failure to simply do the job of the Federal Government.

Mayor Adams said while visiting El Paso last month:

Our cities are being undermined, and we don't deserve this. Migrants don't deserve this and the people who live in the cities don't deserve this.

I agree with Mayor Adams, and I hope President Biden has finally learned that lesson as well.

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