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Floor Speech
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Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, there is a difference between a refugee who was fully vetted, that America has welcomed historically and should continue to, and we will. We worked for decades to be able to honor refugees and to be able to do our part in what is happening around the world. That same standard for refugees, where an individual is identified, the family is vetted, they go through the process both at the U.N. and through the United States to be able to identify how to be able to help that family, that same definition for ``refugee'' is also used as a definition for ``asylee.'' It is the same definition, but there is a dramatic difference between the two.
The refugee has been fully vetted. We know who they are; we know the situation; we know the crisis that their family has gone through; and our Nation, like multiple nations around the world, engages to see what we can do to help that family in trauma. That is who we are as Americans. It is whom we will continue to be.
The challenge is when we have thousands of people cross our southern border requesting asylum whom we don't know who they are, who are not vetted, that begin to take advantage of American generosity, and it becomes a challenge for us to be able to filter who really qualifies as a refugee/asylee as they are crossing the border and who is just taking advantage of our system.
That is a challenge. It has been a challenge for us for years, but it has dramatically accelerated in the last 3 years. This year we will have 2\1/2\ million people that will cross our southern border. The vast majority of those will ask for asylum, and they will be released into the United States awaiting a hearing, sometimes 8 to 10 years in advance, to be able to make their case that they qualify. In the meantime, we don't know who they are. They have not been vetted. We don't have background information for those individuals.
Last week, the FBI picked up eight individuals with direct ties to ISIS that were in our country, that in the last 2 years had crossed our southern border--had blended in with the rest of the folks who requested asylum--requested asylum and then disappeared into our country.
Thankfully, our FBI was able to pick up that these eight individuals were in Los Angeles, New York, and Philadelphia, preparing to be able to carry out acts of violence in our country. We are grateful for the work of the FBI to be able to do that, but why aren't we filtering these individuals at the border?
We are not evaluating criminal history even in the country they are coming from. How do I know that? I know that because I work with DHS, and I am fully aware of what their process is. We fingerprint individuals, and we see if they are on the Terror Watchlist; that is, we know them, we have been tracking them internationally, or if they are on the Interpol international criminal list.
But if they are on a list in their own country, we don't know that. Last week, Victor Antonio Martinez was picked up in my State, in Tulsa, OK, sitting in a sports bar in Tulsa, where he had left out from Maryland after murdering Rachel Morin, a mother of five.
Now, he had fled to Maryland because he had carried out acts of violence in Los Angeles in a violent home invasion in Los Angeles. So he carried out an act of violence in Los Angeles, went to Maryland, murdered a mom there, then was headed to Tulsa. What do you think was about to happen in Tulsa?
Oh, by the way, did I mention, he fled from El Salvador because he murdered someone in El Salvador. So he fled El Salvador, came to our southern border, requested asylum, came into the United States, attacked a family in Los Angeles, murdered a mom in Maryland, and then was arrested in my State, in Tulsa.
Please don't tell my folks in Tulsa, there is nothing to worry about on illegal immigration, this is all going fine at the border. We don't believe it because a violent, multiperson murderer was on a national crime spree, and my State was next before he was picked up and arrested, now extradited back to Maryland for the crime there.
In New York, earlier this year, Raul Castro-Mata from Venezuela shot at two New York police officers. He is one of those folks from Venezuela that had come across asking for asylum. Earlier this month in Texas, an illegal immigrant was arrested when he had broken into a private business and had committed a pretty large robbery there. In Florida, a SWAT team got into a shootout with an illegal alien who had killed a police officer just a few months ago.
In Washington State, an illegal alien from Mexico was driving, and he killed a Washington State police officer. The car was going 107 miles an hour. He was under the influence of marijuana at the time.
Listen, I am fully aware that not everyone that crosses the border is going to carry out acts of criminal activities. I am fully aware of that. All I am doing is asking a simple question: Are we checking criminal history at the border for the thousands of people that are coming across the border? And the answer is no.
For the eight people that were picked up last week that were ISIS terrorist connected, those eight are individuals that were listed as special interest aliens. They are 8 of the 53,000 special interest aliens that had entered our country this year across the southern border.
Oh, and if you think that number is big, last year the number was 70,000 special interest aliens were released into our country last year.
These are individuals that this DHS has declared, at the border, a potential national security risk. Yet instead of detaining them, the vast majority of them have been released on their own recognizance around the country somewhere.
Listen, this body knows full well I am willing to work with anyone on either side of the aisle to be able to solve this issue. Between now and the election, we are going to have another million and a half people illegally cross into our country--between now and the end of the year.
We have had 10 million people illegally cross in the last 3\1/2\ years--10 million. If we don't stop this, every day we have folks that are coming in to find work, to connect with families, and folks that are also coming in to commit criminal acts. They are not fleeing from poverty. They are fleeing from the law in their own country, and they are carrying out acts of violence in ours.
When we can't tell the difference between the two, why are we defaulting to open rather than defaulting to closed? Why are we literally telling the people in my State: That guy sitting next to you at the sports bar--we didn't know if he was a criminal or not, so we just let him in. We didn't know if he had committed murder in his own country, so we just let him in.
Why are we doing that? Why is that happening today on our southern border, and what are we going to do to stop it? I am going to continue to come to this floor to bring this up because it is not getting better.
The Executive action the President took 2 weeks ago to declare they are going to put new limits in place--everybody here should check the facts on it. We had the same number of crossings yesterday that we had 4 weeks ago before that Executive action went into place. That Executive action hasn't changed the numbers. What has changed is the way they are counting the numbers. They are now not including in the count the people who come to a port of entry who are not legally present. They are now not being included, so the numbers look smaller, but look at the asterisk and the fine print of who now is no longer being counted in the publicly released numbers. The numbers haven't changed; the way they are publishing the numbers has changed.
Then this week, the President announced a new amnesty program for folks who are here in the country. That is now his 95th Executive action announcing to the world that if you get across our border, you can stay. It is inviting people to be able to come into our country illegally. That is the wrong message to the world. It is a message we need to address, and we shouldn't just wait around until it gets better on its own.
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