Cloture Motion

Floor Speech

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Mrs. BLACKBURN. Mr. President, nothing is more important than our national security and this Nation's sovereignty, and that means we must control our borders. That is why, in November, the American people gave President Trump an overwhelming mandate to finally go secure these borders. It was a major issue. They were tired of 4 years of Biden- Harris failures.

Thankfully, in just his first week in office, the President has already taken steps to do just this. On Inauguration Day, for example, President Trump restored many of the successful policies from his first administration that former President Biden had ended, including the ``Remain in Mexico'' policy, border wall construction, and enhanced vetting of all aliens trying to come into this country.

At the same time that President Trump did those reinstatements, he terminated Biden's disastrous open border measures, including ending catch-and-release, thank goodness. That CBP One app, where he was trying to make illegal entry legal, the Trump administration ended that. They ended migrant flights that brought more than 500,000 illegal aliens to cities all across the country--ended those flights. He also took new action to strengthen our border and end illegal immigration, including Executive orders to prohibit birth tourism.

This is a practice where you have companies or cartels and they sell you passage to the United States to come here for the express purpose of having a child on U.S. soil. It is a practice called ``birth tourism.'' President Trump ended that.

He designated cartels as foreign terrorist organizations, and he chose to send troops to the border. And among these troops are Tennessee soldiers from Fort Campbell's 101st Airborne Division who are doing incredible work to help make this Nation safe.

Perhaps, most importantly, the President ordered mass deportations, something the American people have demanded after the Biden administration allowed more than 10 million illegal aliens to enter this country. And that does not count the ``got-aways''--the ``got- aways''--known and unknown ``got-aways'' that are here--the worst of the worst, most likely, people that were trying to evade detection and people that have seeped into our communities.

To no one's surprise, these strong Executive actions are already yielding positive results for our Nation, our Nation's sovereignty and security, and the safety and security of communities all across this country, because on Joe Biden's watch, what did we see happen? We saw every town become a border town and every State become a border State.

People went to the polls in November and voted saying: Enough is enough. We have to restore law and order.

And in the last week--I want you to think about these numbers. I encourage all of our colleagues: Look at these numbers from the last week.

In this last week, ICE, or Immigration and Customs Enforcement, arrested more than 2,600 illegal aliens. Now, these are criminal illegal aliens. They are including gang members, convicted sex offenders, and murder suspects--2,600 in 1 week. This tells you they knew where these people were. It is just that their hands were tied by the Biden administration. They could not go get these people that were making our communities less safe.

Just on Thursday alone, ICE arrested two people in Nashville, TN. What we found out is they were both members of the gang Tren de Aragua, right in Nashville. Both of these illegal aliens have a criminal history of promoting prostitution and entered the country last year after being processed by the Biden administration.

While migrant encounters at the border have plummeted over the past week, the Trump administration has also conducted deportation flights to send illegal aliens back to their home countries.

Make no mistake, if any country refuses to take in their own citizens, President Trump has made clear that there will be consequences brought to bear. In just the last 24 hours, the Government of Colombia learned that lesson, completely reversing its blockade of deportation flights after the President said he would impose tariffs and sanctions.

For so many in Tennessee and across the country, this is welcome news. This is what they wanted to see. They were tired of talk. They were tired of appeasement. What they wanted was action to get these criminals out of their communities, to get them behind bars.

We can only have national security and know that this country is safe if we have border security. And for too long, Tennesseans and, I think, all Americans have suffered the consequences of this open border--the migrant crime, the fentanyl overdoses, human trafficking, strained public resources, and the list goes on and on.

While President Trump will continue to lead the way in securing our border, Congress should play a crucial role in supporting his efforts and make certain that no President can surrender our national sovereignty ever again. That is why, in the Senate, I have introduced a slate of bills that promote securing our border.

Here is an example, the CONTAINER Act. This is something that I have had for a while. This would empower communities along our border to construct barriers that would prohibit illegal aliens from crossing into their communities and stop the flow of traffickers and drugs and criminals that have been coming through these communities.

When you are on the southern border, you visit ranchers and farmers and communities where they say: If we could just put a barrier up.

The CONTAINER Act would give them that opportunity to put up a barrier and protect their areas.

The CLEAR Act, meanwhile, would reaffirm the authority of State and local governments to enforce Federal immigration laws by apprehending, detaining, and transferring illegal aliens to Federal custody. It also says that the Federal Government has to reimburse that local law enforcement agency for the money that they have spent.

And while President Trump reinstated by Executive order ``Remain in Mexico,'' which requires asylum seekers to remain in Mexico while awaiting their court date, I also introduced legislation that would make this crucial policy the law of the land, requiring future administrations to support it.

You see, that is the importance of Congress taking action on what the President has done by Executive order. It is putting it in law, putting it in Federal statute so that future administrations have to abide by the law and implement it.

In addition, I have recently introduced the Preventing Violence Against Women by Illegal Aliens Act, which allows the deportation of illegal aliens convicted of sexual offenses or domestic abuse. What we have learned is that under the Biden administration, hundreds of criminal illegal aliens convicted of sexual offenses entered our country. This legislation would ensure that every single one of them can be removed from this country.

To end the surge of human trafficking at the border and bring this modern-day slavery to an end, I also have brought forward a comprehensive package of bills.

The PRINTS Act would give Border Patrol the authority to fingerprint noncitizens under the age of 14 so that we can combat this horrific practice of child recycling. This is something that the cartels do. They take a child, they place them with an adult, they bring them to the border, and then, once they are across, they turn the child loose. Many of these children have a name, address, and phone number written in indelible ink on their backs, on their arms. This needs to stop. So the PRINTS Act would give the Border Patrol the authority to use these fingerprints.

And we have the End Child Trafficking Now Act, which would require a DNA test to determine the relationship between illegal aliens coming across the border with children with them.

Both bills are crucial for ending child trafficking. And we know that between 30 and 40 percent of the children that presented at that border when we were doing DNA testing were found to be children being trafficked. Think about that.

The Biden administration ended the practice of DNA testing. When I inquired as to why they did it, the answer I got was because of the amount of time it took to do the DNA test. Well, it took 45 minutes--45 minutes. But to the Biden administration, pushing people across the border and into the country was more important.

And now we know that HHS has lost track of over 300,000 children. It is imperative that we find these children. It is imperative that we end this cross-border human trafficking of children.

I also have the SAVE Girls Act. It is bipartisan. Senator Klobuchar has joined me on that bill. It would provide States and local governments and nonprofits with the vital resources they need in order to help combat this trafficking of girls and women.

I also have a bipartisan bill, the National Human Trafficking Database Act. It would establish a national human trafficking database at the Department of Justice and incentivize State law enforcement agencies to report crucial data.

You know, as we fight human trafficking, one of the things that we have learned from local and State law enforcement--by the way, this is a job that landed in their lap, to do this because there was not Federal enforcement. What we learned is there was no single repository for information about the traffickers, individuals that were being apprehended. So this would establish that database.

So we have had a busy week. The President has had a busy week, and we are grateful to President Trump and Vice President Vance for how quickly they have moved on these issues of national security and the response they have given to the American people that, yes, they have been heard, and they are taking action that the American people have wanted to see.

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