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Floor Speech

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Mrs. CAPITO. Madam President, I rise today to once again speak about a subject that President Biden and his administration are refusing to address, and that is this crisis on our southern border.

I have been extremely outspoken about this topic--many of us have-- especially when it comes to the need for deterrence along our southern border, the alarming drug epidemic that continues to harm my State and the entire country, and the desperate need to make changes to our immigration policy and the laws that define our homeland security.

The American people see the numbers, but it is not just numbers; they see the actual human effects within their own cities and States of this rampant illegal immigration. It can no longer be ignored. In just the past year, there have been more than 2.4 million illegal encounters on our southern border--we have all seen them on our television sets--and that is more than a 180-percent increase since fiscal year 2019. There have been 169 encounters with individuals on our country's Terror Watchlist--six times the number of the past year; and fentanyl seizures along the U.S.-Mexico border have hit record highs.

I see my fellow Senator from Kansas. He has spent a lot of time on this fentanyl issue because it is so devastating to our States.

More than 26,000 pounds of illicit fentanyl were seized along the country's southern border this past year, and this is just the data we know. It is hard to fathom that there are 600,000 ``got-aways''--those are people who were not even disrupted in their journeys--drugs and threats to our national security that are streaming across our border that we might have missed.

This is truly and simply an unmitigated crisis. There is no doubt that this is leading to and sometimes already has created an unsustainable situation across this country. But don't just take my word for it. I will offer some quotes:

The federal government's lack of intervention and coordination at the border has created an untenable situation.

This issue will destroy New York City.

A federal crisis of inaction that is many years in the making.

These are all direct quotes from Democratic Governors and mayors across the country.

Across the aisle and across the country, we know that President Biden's rhetoric and lack of action on the southern border has created a historic problem. In fact, this is a 50-State problem. I hear about this topic from West Virginians frequently. Constituents have expressed border security concerns to me, things like the catastrophic, flawed, and failed Biden-Harris approach to immigration and the loss of control of our southern border; the vulnerable state that our communities are left in by the flow of human trafficking and illicit drugs currently coming across our border; and the need to bolster our national security with the increase in crossings by those on the Terror Watchlist.

My home State of West Virginia is not a border State, so to speak, but we are all border States now. We are no stranger to the strife and grief created by the flow of harmful narcotics into our communities.

From June 2022 to June 2023, West Virginia's provisional State data shows that an estimated 1,415 West Virginians died from overdoses. These are husbands, brothers, sisters, moms, and dads. It is indescribably sad.

Drug overdoses caused over 5,200 emergency room visits, and our EMS teams responded to over 6,300 calls of a suspected drug overdose. These numbers are staggering, especially for a State as small as mine.

Fentanyl overdose in this country has become the leading cause of death for Americans age 18 to 45. Something has to be done, and it has to be done now and fast.

This crisis on our southern border raises grave questions about the national security of our own country. In addition to the 279 individuals on the Terror Watchlist who have been encountered at the southern border since President Biden took office, U.S. Customs and Border Protection has arrested over 35,000 migrants with criminal convictions in just this past year.

Nearly half of the migrants encountered on our southern border are coming from countries other than Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, or El Salvador, with more than 24,000 Chinese citizens apprehended crossing into the United States from Mexico in the past year.

Who are these people? We don't know. Yet many of them are living in all of our States.

My point is, the immigration crisis on our southern border is now more multifaceted than ever, and the open-border virtual signaling from this administration has allowed that to happen. We truly have no idea who is entering our country illegally.

At a time of heightened national security risk, this is a chance that we cannot be willing to take. There is currently a large-scale ground war in Europe, our ally and friend Israel is facing historic and unprecedented attacks of terror, and tensions in the Indo-Pacific remain on high alert.

As Leader McConnell stated on this same floor yesterday, national security begins with border security. We can and should take needed action to mitigate the threats that we face. This starts by securing our southern border and making the policy changes necessary to defend our homeland from nefarious forces abroad.

I keep saying ``policy changes'' because there are some who think if we just keep putting money into the situation, it is going to help the problem. All the money does is turn the asylum cases around faster. It makes more people have parole into the United States, and, there, again, is a cycle of unknown people throughout the United States.

Time and again, Republicans have asked the tough questions and put forward the solutions necessary to stop the crisis that we have seen unfold. Nearly every elected official--Democrat and Republican--both in the executive branch and in Congress, has acknowledged that there are top-to-bottom changes that need to be done to our asylum system.

That is what is being offered, and that is what needs to be delivered: changes to our asylum system--meaningful changes--meaningful changes to our parole system, and safe third country agreements. This will have meaningful effect on the problems that I have described.

Now is the time to come to the table. Republicans stand for solutions that enforce and enhance not just the immigration laws that we have on the books but the policy changes that we are advocating for.

We back our hard-working CBP agents and guards on the ground who are overwhelmed and undersupported, and we need to finish the border wall and provide the necessary level of deterrence that we desperately need.

I have been encouraged by my colleagues' bipartisan efforts for their ongoing talks to deliver the immigration policy changes that are increasingly needed, but any agreement will need to find consensus by the entire body. I implore my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to recognize the importance of the effort and of this moment.

We simply do not have time to waste. We need to come together, secure our southern border, and fulfill the other national security obligations that are demanded of a nation as powerful as ours.

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