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Floor Speech

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Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, if everyone here in this Chamber is watching the news of late, in the last 24 hours, the FBI scooped up eight citizens from Tajikistan that were in the United States and arrested them on immigration violations, but they were also suspected terrorists that were in the United States. They were in Philadelphia; they were in Los Angeles; they were in New York City; and they were individuals that had direct connections to terrorism. And they were here because they illegally crossed our southern border and were waved in.

This is an issue that I have been on this floor at this desk speaking about for 2 years now. The population that is crossing our southern border has dramatically changed in the last 2 years.

No longer it is just about everyone from the Western Hemisphere. Now we have very large numbers of people from places like Tajikistan, from West Africa, from China, from Russia, from Pakistan, from other specific places that are known areas of terrorism, and we have people in the thousands that are crossing our borders that we don't know who they are, from places that we typically don't have people illegally crossing.

This group of individuals are called special interest aliens; that is, they are not on our Terror Watchlist, but we don't know why they are here or how they got here or the process that they came to come to the United States across our southern border illegally is unusual, different, or is directed by a crime organization outside of Mexico-- special interest aliens.

Last year, we had 70,000 people that fell into the category of special interest aliens. This year, so far, we have had 53,000 people that were special interest aliens. These eight individuals that were arrested yesterday were part of that group of special interest aliens: illegally present here, not vetted on our southern border but released on their own recognizance, and now, with an announcement yesterday from the FBI, a connection to terrorism, specifically ISIS terrorism.

In the past several months, the FBI has also picked up al-Shabaab terrorists in the United States that had crossed on our southern border, that were listed as special interest aliens, and that have now been picked up.

We are literally living on borrowed time. This is the issue that I have brought up over and over again to this body to say we need to pay attention to this issue of what is happening on our southern border.

Now, currently the administration has put in place a new Executive order to try to lower somewhat the number of people that are coming across, but the way they are doing it is by turning around people from the Western Hemisphere, but folks from other areas like Tajikistan, those folks are still coming through. Some are being detained, but a large number are actually being released on their own recognizance as special interest aliens. We don't have information on a direct tie to terrorism at the time they are at the border so they are being released.

The bill that I brought to this body would have changed the way we did screening dramatically, would have taken all of these issues about terrorism from the end of the process and moved it to the beginning so that we are not releasing people and then trying to figure out if we can chase them.

Right now, what is really happening day-to-day is that individuals that are crossing our border, we are hoping that the FBI can pick up any information on them after they are already released into the country.

Remember, there were 70,000 individuals like this last year, 53,000 so far this year, and we are hoping the FBI is able to discern they are a terror threat before they carry out an act of terrorism. That is exactly the wrong way to do this.

We need to enforce our southern border with more than just some action to be able to reduce what is happening. We should not be living on borrowed time every day awaiting the next terrorist attack in the United States because our border was open.

What have we done in the past? Well, last year we deported four Tajiks--last year, four. Now we are in the process of deporting another eight. We don't know what the numbers are here. And at the end of the day, that is a very bad spot for us to be in as a country.

I don't want the United States of America living on borrowed time, awaiting the next terrorist attack because we were not paying attention and enforcing our own southern border.

We need to be able to wake up on this.

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