Border Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, so far this year, 1,624,790 people have illegally crossed our southwest border--1,624,790 so far. We have at least 1.6 million people who have also been designated ``got-aways'' in the last 3 years; that is, they crossed our southwest border, and the Border Patrol could see them, but they couldn't get to them.

Let me give you some context on that. As this body knows well, because we have talked about it over and over and over again, in the first 3 years of this administration, we have had more illegal crossings on our southwest border than in the previous 12 years combined--more in the last 3 years than we had in the previous 12 years combined.

If you want to just drill down, 1 year under President Biden has as many illegal crossings as we had under 4 years of President Trump. Yesterday, we had more than 5,000 people illegally cross our southwest border--yesterday. That has been true every day, I believe, but 3, in the last 3 months, that we have had more than 5,000 people a day.

Now, the national news media has looked away from the southwest border, but those who live on the southwest border can't look away. They are still facing it every single day. And in cities and communities across the entire country, it is still happening every single day, day after day, as this President has looked away from what is happening on our southern border.

As I have said to this Department of Homeland Security multiple times, if they would enforce the border the same as President Obama enforced the border, we would be in a very different place. But they don't enforce the border like President Trump did, and they don't enforce it like President Obama did. They just fail to enforce it.

The same law--the same law--existed under President Obama, when we had less than half a million people cross illegally in a year, that exists under President Biden, where we have had 1.6 million people so far this year, with still quite a few months to go--the same law, the same capacity to be able to enforce the border. But this President has said over and over again that he has nothing that he can do until something is passed.

I have been very clear with this body, and I have been very honest with my own party and with my friends on the other side of the aisle: Congress has a job to do. We need to clarify what asylum means. We need to add the funds that are needed. We need to speed up the process. We need to take away the forever appeals that are built into it that incentivize people coming and gaming the system. That is Congress's job. We should do that.

And I have worked with everyone who is willing to work on that to get us to a place where we can get to 60 votes in this body to pass something to do our job. One party cannot resolve this issue. This has to be both parties sitting down and working on it together. That is the rule of 60 in this body.

But the President also has things that he could do that he has chosen not to do. In fact, this President has taken 94 Executive orders to weaken border security. He has created new parole authorities no President has ever used before to facilitate faster movement into the country. So instead of actually slowing the process down, he has actually sped it up. And they have done so intentionally.

In the past few weeks, the Department of Homeland Security has released a new memo and a new regulatory action that they are getting feedback for that they have admitted to me that will increase screening for, in their words, a handful of additional people--a handful when, yesterday, we had 5,000 people illegally cross.

But, currently, as right now Homeland Security is saying that they don't have enough money to hire more agents, they are spending millions of dollars rebranding Homeland Security Investigation, or HSI. They are rebranding them and changing some of their focus on it. Now, we have yet to be able to find out how much they are spending on it, but we do understand it is in the millions. At the same time, they are saying they don't have enough money to be able to handle greater enforcement.

This administration is focused on the things that don't make a difference when we need them to focus on the things that do. This body is also focused on the things that are not making a difference on this.

Several of us sat down for months to be able to hash out in a bipartisan way: How do we solve this? We felt we had a solution that could pass. We did not.

Now, that same option that everyone in this whole body knows won't pass is now coming back to this body again, exactly as it was. And many of us--including myself, who actually worked on the original language-- are saying: Why? This is not about trying to pass something. This is about a show vote in this body to show: Look, we tried to vote on something, and those mean Republicans blocked it.

Well, I hate to tell you, this vote, when it comes up on Thursday-- because that is when I understand it is coming--I will be interested in how many Democrats vote for this as well because I have already heard quite a few Democrats say: I am not sure I really want to vote for it if it doesn't have Ukraine, if it doesn't have Israel funding in it-- because, originally, it was border security, Ukraine-Israel funding. And so some of my Democratic colleagues were voting for it. But now that it has none of those things, several have said to me: I am not sure I want to vote for that without the other portions of it in there.

Several Republicans are saying the same thing they said before: Hey, I wanted even more in that bill. I know there were a lot of good things in it, but I wanted even more in it.

So they are not willing to vote for it until it has even more.

So what would be the logical thing that should be done in this body? The logical thing would be to say: That vote failed; so what would pass?

You see, we can play the same game because Democrats have blocked the bill from Senator Scott that would fund border security and enforcement of immigration laws at a different level. Democrats blocked that vote.

When Marco Rubio and Senator Graham brought bills to enforce the ``Remain in Mexico'' program that President Biden walked away from, Democrats blocked that vote.

When Senator Cotton brought up a vote to stop aid for sanctuary cities that incentivize more people coming into the country and disappearing, Democrats blocked that vote.

When Senator Grassley brought up a bill to deport criminal illegal aliens, Democrats blocked that bill.

When Senator Hagerty brought up a bill to deal with increasing funding for ICE and to deport more criminal aliens that have already been designated criminal aliens in the United States, Democrats blocked that bill.

When I brought up a bill to be able to implement and fund the title 42 authority and to extend that, Democrats blocked that bill.

When Senator Marshall brought a bill to bring up H.R. 2 and Senator Cruz brought up the bill for H.R. 2--the House bill that has a broad spectrum for border enforcement--Democrats blocked that bill.

When Senator Hagerty again brought up a bill to ban Federal funds from being used to fly illegal aliens from other countries to be able to give them parole authority into our country, Democrats blocked that bill.

When Republicans--Senator Budd--bring up the Laken Riley Act, Democrats blocked that bill.

When I brought up a bill dealing with special interest aliens, those the Department of Homeland Security designated as a potential national security risk--when I brought up a bill to say all those folks could not be released into the country, they had to be detained if they were declared a national security risk--Democrats blocked that bill.

We can play this game all day long. Somehow, this belief that if we bring up a bill that has failed before that is somehow a strong movement to be able to solve the issue doesn't. It plays a political game, and we all know it.

So what should we do? Actually be grownups, sit down, and actually try to figure out what we can pass rather than bringing things up that we all know won't.

Now, I don't know if there is a belief that somehow, on Memorial Day week, Americans across the country can't wait for the Senate to vote again on a bill that has already failed before that could come up again, as if something is going to be different. I have a message to all of my colleagues: The people of America are not, on Memorial Day week, focused on what the Senate is doing this week. They are just not. They are thinking about their family member that was lost defending the country, or they are thinking about a sale at an appliance store. They are not thinking about this and this drama.

We should take seriously, though, the national security risk that all of us know about and do something about it.

Just as a side note that all of us know full well, the number of people designated by this administration as special interest aliens, those that are a national security risk by definition, who are coming across our border and being released into the country, is in the thousands.

We all know it. We should take that seriously. If we want to just deal with the people who are on the higher list, who are on the Terror Watchlist, if I go back to, let's say, 2017, there were two people who were apprehended on the Terror Watchlist in 2017. There were six people apprehended in 2018. There were three people in 2019. But if I take that to this past year, 2023, there were 172. We have people crossing our border who we know are a national security risk while we are playing political messaging games here.

Let's sit down and solve this. Let's not just vote on things that we know are going to fail. Let's not just do political messaging. Let's actually sit down and solve this.

Over the past 2 years, something has shifted on our southern border. It is not just people from the Western Hemisphere who are crossing illegally; it is people from all over the world. We went from having a handful of Chinese citizens who crossed the border to last year and this year--tens of thousands of Chinese nationals crossing our border.

I asked DHS: Are any of these Chinese nationals being deported?

They responded to me: Yes, we have started deporting Chinese nationals who are here illegally.

I said: Terrific. How many?

Their response: Fourteen so far.

Fourteen of the tens of thousands who have crossed in the last 2 years. We have deported 14 Chinese nationals.

Can I tell you, in Oklahoma, there are thousands of Chinese nationals who have come into my State who are working in illegal marijuana operations. Our Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics has done a tremendous job of trying to be able to shut down all these illegal grow operations, but they continue to spring up. Over and over again, when they do a bust, it is Chinese nationals working, individuals who were trafficked over our southern border and individuals who are in our country illegally--over and over and over.

We know this is going on. We know we have a terror risk. We all see it. We know there are individuals by the thousands being released who are declared by this administration as special-interest aliens. We understand full well criminal activities that are happening. And we are doing messaging bills that everyone knows will fail.

Why don't we sit down and actually talk about it and work it out? Why don't we figure out how to solve this? That is what the American people expect us to do.

My friends in Oklahoma look at me and say ``You guys go figure this out'' because they feel the problem is there, and what they feel is correct. So let's sit down and figure this out.

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