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Floor Speech
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Mr. RICKETTS. Madam President, we have a humanitarian and national security crisis at our southern border. Just last month, Customs and Border Protection encountered 241,000 contacts, people coming across that southern border. That is three times the amount that we had in October of 2020.
Since Joe Biden has been President, there have been 6.6 million border contacts and 1.8 million ``got-aways.'' And the ``got-aways''-- those are the folks whom Customs and Border Protection, CBP, saw but couldn't encounter, couldn't get to. That is more than President Obama and President Trump's administration combined.
Children are being trafficked; people are dying; and the cartels are profiting. And my colleague from Iowa just referenced the southern border. In total, we have seen 172 people on the Terrorist Watchlist try to enter our country in the last year--169 at the southern border. And to put that in perspective, that number used to be in the single digits every year. Last month, it was 12. We are encountering more people on the FBI's Terrorist Watchlist in 1 month than we used to get in an entire year.
Border security is national security. Certainly, the events in Israel should bring home to us the danger of a border that is not properly protected. And it is President Biden's policies that have led to this humanitarian and security crisis.
Now, I have been down to the southern border four times, just recently as well, and I have talked to the folks at CBP, and, yes, they need some resources. Things like the aerostat blimps have been hugely successful in being able to counter the cartel's drones to monitor people trying to come across the border. So there are resources that we can provide to our southern border to help strengthen. But you know what the No. 1 thing they told me they needed? It was a change in policy because it is the policy that is driving all these people to take this dangerous journey to illegally cross into our country.
Well, now the Senate is going to take up border security, and President Biden's solution is to ask for more money to help process all the people coming across the border. That is not going to fly. If you are just processing them more efficiently coming across the border, you are not deterring anybody from coming across our border. It is the policies that are sending a message to people to come here illegally. The policy needs to change. So as we consider a bill--perhaps a supplemental bill where we are going to have border security in it--it must contain policy changes. The policy is what caused this. We have to change the policy.
But what are some of those policies? We see that we have an asylum system and a parole system that are broken. We need to address that, and then we must have a first safe country policy. You may say, what is a first safe country? Well, if you are seeking asylum and you are fleeing your home country, what this policy says is you stop in the first safe country and you apply for asylum in the United States from there, not from within our own country.
I know there are people who don't like this idea, but let me tell you, Canada has this policy. So, for example, if you are traveling from Mexico through the United States to get to Canada and you want to seek asylum in Canada, you have to remain in the United States. That is their policy. That is the Canadians' policy.
Do you know who else has that policy? The United Kingdom. In fact, I have a chart right here with all the countries that have that policy-- Italy, France, Spain, Germany, Ireland. In fact, not only does our northern neighbor have this policy, but 29 other countries have this policy that you have to remain in the first safe country. What does that mean? It means that if you are coming to our southern border, you must remain in Mexico. That is a part of the policy changes that we need to have. We must bring back ``Remain in Mexico.''
President Biden has direct responsibility for the humanitarian crisis on our southern border. Children are being trafficked. People are dying. The cartels are profiting off of all of this. He is responsible. If he is not going to act, we in the Senate must act.
My Republican colleagues and I have put forward commonsense solutions on how to address the issues at our southern border. We must have these policy changes if we are going to pass any sort of supplemental that is going to include additional funding for anything else.
The No. 1 issue we have here is addressing the humanitarian and national security crises. That is a priority for the American people, it is a priority for my Republican colleagues, and my Senate Democratic colleagues must make that their priority as well.
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