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Floor Speech

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Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I would like to continue along the theme that our majority whip has talked about, particularly the hand-wringing that we are seeing and fearmongering we are hearing from some of our Democratic colleagues over President Trump's promise to secure the border and the actions that he has taken already early in his administration to do exactly that, including enforcing our existing laws by repatriating, or deporting, people who have no legal right to be here in the first place.

So, instead of the fearmongering of mass deportations, you might just call this enforcing the law--something that is long overdue and that the Biden administration did not do--because the fearmongering is not based on reality. Our Democratic colleagues would have the American people believe that an elderly grandma down the street--a peaceful neighbor who would never hurt a fly and who poses no threat to anyone-- will have ICE banging on her door tomorrow morning. Well, that is the picture that the left wants the American people to imagine when they hear the words ``mass deportation.''

Last December, in a Judiciary Committee hearing, then-Chairman Durbin, the Senator from Illinois, went so far as to say the President's repatriation program would ``weaken our Armed Forces'' and ``devastate our economy.'' That is a lot of hyperbole there. If that is what enforcing our law means, it certainly sounds disturbing.

But the American people can see right through what our Democratic colleagues are trying to do here. They are trying to sow fear into the hearts of the American people that this President, whom a majority of the voters elected, is going to tear their communities and their families apart. But the image could not be farther from the truth. We know that the Biden administration's own policies and failure to enforce the law have been doing just that--tearing families and communities apart.

Start with the fentanyl epidemic in our country, which is among the leading causes of death--the leading cause of death--for young people between the ages of 18 and 45 and which took the lives of more than 70,000 people last year alone in this country. Then there are the 400,000 or more unaccompanied children who have been trafficked across our open borders, and tens of thousands of these children have simply been lost because of the Biden administration's carelessness.

The New York Times ran a couple of investigative stories, saying they tried to contact the sponsors for 85,000 of these unaccompanied children who had been placed with sponsors during the Biden administration. There was no answer and no follow-up because the Biden administration took the responsibility that it was no longer their job; it was the job of the child welfare agencies in the various States.

These tragedies are the result of the policies of the Biden administration, not the Trump administration, and it is one reason President Trump was elected decisively on November 5, but there is more to the story.

Untold misery and heartache have been caused by criminals who have entered our country illegally. By our best estimate, roughly 1.7 million ``got-aways'' came across the open borders during the Biden administration. These were people who, if they were here for, let's say, benign reasons, could have just turned themselves in to the Border Patrol and claimed asylum, knowing they would be released or would have been paroled by the Biden administration and given a work permit; but at least 1.7 million ``got-aways'' were evading law enforcement, frankly, because they were up to no good.

We have now learned what the toll of this invasion of criminality has caused. Last summer in Houston, TX, a 12-year-old girl named Jocelyn Nungaray disappeared on her way to the grocery store. She was found dead in a creek, having been strangled and killed by two men from Venezuela who had entered the country illegally. Both of these men had been apprehended by Customs and Border Protection months earlier, but they had been given a court date and then were released.

Last month, an illegal migrant from Mexico was caught with a blowtorch near the side of the Kenneth fire--one of the deadly fires that was ravaging Los Angeles. This is a man who was already on probation and had violated that probation.

If it is proven that he had started the fire, this would be a slap in the face to everyone whose world has been rocked by the devastation we have seen from these terrible fires out in California. If it turns out that he was one of the ones who started the fire, that would be another indictment of the policies of the Biden administration for the last 4 years.

Then 2 weeks ago, Boston ICE officials arrested multiple MS-13 gang members and criminals on a worldwide law enforcement ``wanted'' list for serious crimes. They arrested murder and rape suspects, including a member of the Haitian gang who had 18 convictions. These were the types of people that the Biden administration allowed loose in our country.

We know that ICE--Immigration and Customs Enforcement--has now arrested criminals who have committed sexual assault, domestic violence, and drug- and weapon-related crimes, but these are just a few examples of the hundreds of criminal arrests made just in the few short weeks since President Trump took office.

To the Democrats who would decry these arrests, would you want these criminals to be your neighbor? I am going to guess the answer is no.

With criminal illegal migrants running rampant throughout the country, it is no surprise that Americans voted overwhelmingly for a President who pledged to reverse the course from the reckless open border policies of the Biden administration.

We know last week President Trump signed the Laken Riley Act. I was honored to be present at the White House with our friend and colleague Senator Katie Britt to watch him sign this legislation into law.

Laken Riley, for whom this law was named, was a 22-year-old woman who went missing after going on a run. She was killed by a Venezuelan national who was also a gang member. He should have never been running loose in our country in the first place. It was President Biden's open border policies that led to this horrific murder of Laken Riley.

The Laken Riley Act will now, having been signed into law, require the Department of Homeland Security to detain noncitizens charged with or convicted of theft-related crimes or any crime that results in death or serious bodily injury. I introduced an amendment during the deliberations on the bill that would add assaulting a law enforcement officer to that list.

As we know here in the Senate, there is a 60-vote threshold to be able to close off debate and to actually move on to pass legislation. It ensures that we have bipartisan consensus. I am glad to say that the Laken Riley Act passed the Senate with bipartisan support. I appreciate the recognition that the status quo during the previous administration could no longer exist.

The Laken Riley Act is not an example of some extremism, but it is an issue that affects the day-to-day safety and livelihoods of regular Americans.

I think it is perfectly fair to say that the deportations or repatriations that the Trump administration has already begun are very much in the spirit of the Laken Riley Act.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem made clear over the weekend that the Trump administration's first priority will be to detain and deport what she called the ``worst of the worst''; that is, bad actors with warrants out for arrest for murder, rape, assault, and drug trafficking.

After the criminal aliens are deported, she said the next priority will be individuals under final orders of deportation; in other words, those who have exhausted all possible legal recourse to be able to stay in the United States, having lost their claim for asylum.

There are more than 1\1/2\ million--1\1/2\ million--immigrants who have exhausted their legal remedies in a court of law and are under final orders of deportation, but the Biden administration simply did nothing about it. So removing these individuals who have no legal right to remain in the United States and who have been given due process and have lost their case--deporting them is a commonsense next step and one that is long overdue.

So when the mainstream media and our Democratic colleagues engage in fearmongering about these so-called mass deportations, I hope people remember we are talking primarily about criminals, and we are talking about people who have no legal right to remain in the United States, having exhausted all of their legal remedies in order to do so. I hope we can all agree that these are not people who deserve to remain in America.

America naturalizes about 1 million people a year. I personally believe and I think Americans generally agree that legal immigration has been the secret sauce for America. It is what helped make us the great country we are today, prosperous and strong. But it is illegal immigration that has been a scourge and has created much heartache and misery and, frankly, makes us a laughing stock when we talk about the rule of law.

Removing and deporting en masse the criminals and gangs who have entered our country illegally over the last 4 years and faced no consequences means that Americans will have less to fear, and they will be safer in their communities and in their homes. They will no longer have to fear that one of their children will accidentally take a fentanyl-laced pill--make it less likely. We still have work to do there, obviously. They no longer will have to fear that their daughter will go on a run around her college campus or walk to the grocery store and never return home because she has been abducted and murdered by somebody who had no legal right to be here in the first place.

By ending President Biden's open border policies and deporting criminals and gang members and people under final orders of deportation, President Trump is making our Nation safe again. That is not something we should fear; it is something we should welcome.

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