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Floor Speech
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Mr. MARSHALL. Madam President, ``The border is not open.''
``The border is not open.'' That is what DHS Secretary Mayorkas told the American people repeatedly. I guess that is pretty easy to say when you are sitting in your office in Washington, DC, but I rise to tell the truth to the American people.
Just recently, I led a group of Senators to the epicenter of this crisis in Brownsville, TX, on the eve title 42 was being lifted. Why Brownsville, you might ask, because that is where the cartel had moved the mass migration to. I reckon that was the easiest way to get all the people from Venezuela that they had recruited to come to America; that was the easiest, the most economical route to get them to the border was from Venezuela to Brownsville, TX.
I have to tell you, it is worse than I expected. The scene was bleak; the morale was at an all-time low. And there was no sign of this crisis ending anytime soon. At least that is what was going on, on our side of the border. On the other side of the border, these migrants were celebrating. They were having a party. The worst part of their journey was over.
We toured Camp Monument. Now, Camp Monument was a park just weeks before, but the Border Patrol had come in there and set up an emergency command post.
Now, again, the DHS Secretary is telling us the border isn't open, but this is what the Border Patrol told us: Just the day before, 11,000 illegal migrants had been recorded at this location alone and more than 3,000 ``got-aways'' the same day--3,000 ``got-aways.'' If you put those two together, that is the size of my hometown, Great Bend, America.
Now, we saw this week with the arrest of the Afghani on the Terrorist Watchlist in California, these ``got-aways'' undoubtedly include terrorists, convicted criminals, and the cartels' drug smugglers.
In fact, something, again, new on this trip--this was my fourth trip to the border--something new, they were averaging 90 Chinese military- aged nationalists crossing in the Rio Grande Valley every day, 90 Chinese nationalists every day crossing our border.
Probably the saddest thing I have heard about from the Border Patrol is they shared the horrific situation and the repeated sexual assault young women are enduring to come here. They compared it to a never- ending cycle of ``sex slavery''--that was their term--sex slavery by the cartels. In fact, the cartel had made $13 billion last year in the sex trade industry. And they told us that these young ladies enter a lifetime of debt to their criminal traffickers. So many other people turned into indentured servants.
These smugglers are also bringing in lethal fentanyl that is poisoning our children, 300 young adults dying every day in America from fentanyl poisoning brought across our southern border.
The data we received--and the briefing was given to us by the Border Patrol, by local law enforcement, and the CBP--do not reflect a border that is closed, far, far from being closed. It is a border that has been erased by failed leadership in the White House.
Under the current circumstances, only 10 percent of the Border Patrol agents are actually tasked with securing the border, only 10 percent of them are doing the job they were hired to do. The other officers, they are tasked with running the refugee camp, acting as nurses and social workers.
But it didn't have to be this way; it doesn't have to be this way. On every trip, I have asked the Border Patrol: What do you need? And in past trips, they have talked about, ``We need more doctors; we need more dentists; we need more help, more cooks.''
But this time, they didn't ask for more officers or resources. What they specifically asked for were policy changes from this administration. They asked for policy changes from this administration. These are people on the ground. These are the people who have been doing it--again, multigenerational officers whose fathers and grandparents had patrolled these same borders. They asked for policy changes.
Secretary Mayorkas has stripped them--the Border Patrol--of the tools they need to secure our border. What they asked was to reinstate the ``Remain in Mexico'' policy and end catch-and-release. It is that simple.
This could be all accomplished with the President's pen. He created this crisis. He can end it.
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