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Floor Speech

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Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, for 3\1/2\ years, President Biden's border policies have resulted in a crisis that has endangered the safety and security of the American people. When law enforcement is forced to spend their days pushing paper, processing, transporting, caring for migrants, it creates an opening for dangerous people and drugs to slip across the border and into our communities.

And, of course, this isn't a coincidence or accidental; it is actually part of the business model of the cartels to whom President Biden has outsourced our immigration policy. They control it--not the Border Patrol, not the Biden administration--criminal cartels that get richer every day smuggling people and drugs across the border. It is a booming business, thanks to President Biden's policies.

But last week, we got a striking reminder of the dangers that lurk in the shadows of this border crisis, one that, maybe, isn't being sufficiently paid attention to. One of these men used the CBP--that is Customs and Border Protection--app, which the Biden administration has been touting as a way for migrants to schedule their hearing before Border Patrol at the port of entry.

So one of the men last week used this app that was sold as a safe and orderly way to manage the crisis. But, clearly, this is not the case.

So this episode--which I will tell you more about in a second--this individual using this CBP app, it took nearly a year for the Biden administration to finally arrest the man in Baltimore, just 40 miles from the U.S. Capital. Once again, this was not an isolated incident.

But we know this is a recurring theme due to intentional policies. This isn't an accident. It is not just negligent. This is on purpose.

Here is a recent headline: Eight suspected terrorists with possible ties to ISIS arrested in New York, Los Angeles, and Philadelphia.

It is worrisome enough if individuals who are on the Terrorist Watchlist are detained at the border, but these eight men were arrested in major American cities far away from the border. All eight were from Tajikistan and entered the United States through the southern border, courtesy of the Biden administration's open border policies.

According to reports, at least two of these men crossed the border in the spring of 2023, more than a year ago.

Again, this was the one who used the CBP app, which was touted as a way to manage the flow of migrants across the border by the Biden administration as if this was an unqualifiedly good thing.

What we know in addition to these 8, just 2 months ago, ICE officers--that is Immigration and Customs Enforcement--in Baltimore, just down the road here from the Nation's Capital, arrested another man--this time from Uzbekistan--with ties to ISIS.

And just to remind everybody, ISIS is a successor organization to al- Qaida. This is a radical terrorist organization that is determined to kill as many innocent Americans and Europeans and non-Muslim believers as possible. But this individual in Baltimore with ties to ISIS was released by the Biden administration in February of 2022.

Now, a little more than a year later, Uzbekistan put out a global notice that this man was, indeed, wanted in his home country for terrorist ties.

Well, just as a reminder: It doesn't take an army to carry out a devastating attack here in America. Twenty-three years ago, on September 11, 19 terrorists killed 3,000 Americans.

And then there is another incident in February where a member of the Somalia-based terror group al-Shabaab--that is another Islamic terrorist organization, this time headquartered in Africa--but a member of the Somalia-based terrorist organization al-Shabaab was arrested, this time in Minnesota. He had initially been released into the country by the Biden administration and allowed to roam freely for about a year.

This has become all too common under President Biden's leadership. Thank goodness, since 9/11, our country has become more sophisticated at identifying and stopping potential terrorist attacks. But the Biden border crisis--again, not accidental, not just negligent but intentional--has created a pathway for terrorists to slip into the United States undetected.

I appreciate, as always, the brave men and women of ICE and Customs and Border Protection and other law enforcement partners who have put these suspected terrorists behind bars. But the reality of the situation is, they never should have been roaming freely in our country in the first place.

This has been part of a conscious policy of President Biden. We have laws that are designed to prevent this exact situation from happening. But if you don't enforce the law, which the Biden administration refuses to do, this is what happens. Terrorists should not be able to cross the southern border. People who are not legally in the United States should not be allowed to cross the southern border. They shouldn't be released by law enforcement, and they absolutely shouldn't be able to move freely across the United States for more than a year.

So this is another case of multiple points of failure. And the Biden administration is responsible for all of them. As the American people know, President Biden has now issued 95 executive orders, 94 of which were specifically designed to dismantle the border security protections that President Trump had put in place.

President Biden purposefully eliminated the most effective measures to maintain a safe and orderly southern border. On day one, he stopped building the physical infrastructure, known as the wall; halted deportations; and ended the ``Remain in Mexico'' policy--this was just on day one.

In his first 100 days in office, as I said, President Biden has issued 94 executive orders, laying the groundwork for the security crisis that we find ourselves in today. This is the direct result of President Biden's intentional policies. He has dismantled policies that are designed to eliminate illegal border crossings, and he has actually crafted policies that serve as a magnet for additional illegal immigration.

I was just reading on social media that the President is supposedly going to issue another Executive order, this time providing additional work permits and a pathway to a green card and potential citizenship to people who entered the country illegally. This is what the Border Patrol calls a pull factor. It is like a magnet attracting people into the United States who know that if they wait long enough, President Biden will find some way to allow them to stay in the United States, even though they circumvent legal means of coming into the country under our immigration laws.

Now, I don't think anybody is fooled by President Biden's sudden interest in what is happening at the southern border. This is a last- ditch attempt to turn down the heat on the border crisis in the lead up to the election.

And the American people aren't buying it because they are smart. No matter how much spin our Democratic colleagues try to put on the situation, the American people know who is responsible. As this crisis was ramping up during the early days of the Biden administration, the President and his allies went to great lengths to avoid even talking about the border, even as he was dismantling the prior protections.

They essentially placed a ban on the use of the term ``crisis'' and came up with creative phrases to describe what is happening: a challenge, a situation, a mess--anything to deceive the American people into thinking it really wasn't that bad of a problem.

President Biden waited for 2 years to even visit the border. And it wasn't until January this year he finally admitted that the border isn't secure--something we have all known for 3\1/2\ years. He finally admitted it last January. He went on to add--this was a curiosity. He went on to say that he believed the border hadn't been secure during the last 10 years. Very strange.

So it took President Biden 3 years to even acknowledge the security crisis that has been raging since he took office.

I say all this to remind President Biden, Senate Democrats, and our friends in the media how we got here, because memories appear to be short around this town. For 3\1/2\ years, President Biden and Senate Democrats were silent about the crisis at the border because they liked the result--9, maybe 10 million people coming across, the drugs that killed 108,000 Americans last year alone, 500,000 unaccompanied children who have been placed with sponsors and lost track of by the Biden administration--these were all the direct result of President Biden's border policies.

So rather than just sitting by and watching this happen, they actually made it worse. They fomented this crisis with open border policies they started implementing on day one.

And after that, they didn't want to acknowledge the existence of a crisis, let alone work with this side of the aisle to try to craft solutions to address it. But because of their malfeasance, the border crisis has grown and grown and grown. And it continues to put the American people at risk.

I believe that a terrorist attack on American soil again is not a matter of ``if'' but a matter of ``when'' as a result of the fact that terrorist organizations have facilitated the entry of their allies and supporters across the border into the United States.

President Biden's policies are responsible for these terrorists crossing the border and slipping into our communities. They are responsible for the fentanyl that has taken the lives of 74,000 Americans last year alone, the leading cause of death of young people between the ages of 18 and 45. And they are responsible for the humanitarian crisis that is burdening communities thousands of miles from the southern border.

Thanks to President Biden and his policies, every community is now a border community. But the threats that come across the border don't just stay at the border or even border States, like mine. They fan out across the country.

Regardless of how many executive actions that the President takes today or how forceful his rhetoric is when he talks about the border, the American people see this 11th-hour conversion for what it is: an election year stunt.

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