Bipartisan Sportsmen's Act of 2014 - Motion to Proceed

Floor Speech

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, yesterday I came to the floor and spoke about President Obama's reluctance to see firsthand the ongoing and growing humanitarian crisis occurring on the U.S.-Mexico border.

Today I come to the floor to renew my call--as other elected officials from both sides of the aisle have done--urging President Obama to please come to the border, where this humanitarian crisis is unfolding. It has been reported that the President will be in Texas for 2 days starting tomorrow. He will be there Wednesday and Thursday on a fundraising trip.

I am not suggesting a handshake on the tarmac or a roundtable 500 miles away from the border, but please come and see it with your own eyes, as I have. Talk to the Border Patrol. Learn from not only the migrants who have traversed Mexico at the risk of their own lives to come to the United States, but find out what we need to do to deal with the ongoing crisis and what we need to do to solve it.

I urge him to do so not as a political statement but so he can witness what is a very sad and in many ways tragic situation and one that could have been mitigated if not prevented. Unfortunately, this is a humanitarian crisis that his policies and the perception about his commitment to enforce our laws have helped create.

Given the recent White House announcement that the President refuses to visit the Rio Grande Valley this week, it unfortunately appears that my request today will fall on deaf ears and therefore suggests to the American people that either the President doesn't really understand this border crisis or he simply doesn't care.

To give the President a fair shake, I was with the President after the tragic shootings at Fort Hood in 2009 and last year. I was with the President at the memorial service in West, where first responders were tragically killed as a result of an explosion. Why he is so stubborn and hardheaded that he refuses to visit the Rio Grande Valley and witness this ongoing humanitarian crisis with his own eyes is really mystifying.

Governor Perry has been doing what I have been doing and urging the President to visit the border. He happened to share with the media--Governor Perry, that is--last night a White House letter inviting him to an immigration roundtable in Dallas. This crisis is unfolding on the border and not in Dallas. I brought a map of Texas with me so the President can see this for himself. This is Dallas. This is where the crisis is unfolding in the Rio Grande Valley, which is about 500 miles away.

Thankfully, the President doesn't have to fly commercial; he flies on Air Force One. My guess is that it would probably take him an hour out of his scheduled activities in Texas to go to the border and maybe another hour on the ground to talk to the Border Patrol, as I did last week. If he did that, he would see these children jammed in detention facilities at the Border Patrol detention stations. It would give him an opportunity to talk to some of them, as I did in my visit last week. I think it would be helpful to the President.

I think one of the biggest problems Presidents have is they end up living in a bubble. They only get access to information that is filtered through their advisers and counselors, and sometimes Presidents simply don't understand; they are tone deaf to the problems which confront the country. That is why it would be in the best interests of my constituents in Texas, it would be in the best interests of these children who are part of this humanitarian crisis, and it would be a contribution toward a solution to this crisis if the President would simply travel 500 miles from Dallas, TX, where he invited Governor Perry to a roundtable, down to the Rio Grande Valley.

As I said, the President's trip to Texas will focus on fundraising, and I understand that. But the problem is his policies have had a disproportionate impact upon my constituents who live along the U.S.-Mexico border. In fact, it is my recollection that the President of the United States has not once visited the Rio Grande Valley, where a majority of this ongoing crisis is taking place.

He did come to El Paso back in 2011. When people suggested we had a problem with security at the border, he ridiculed them by saying: Well, maybe we ought to build a moat along the border. That is actually insulting coming from a person who has never actually been to the border, particularly the Rio Grande Valley, where a majority of these children are crossing.

Indeed, over time what has happened is much of the illegal immigration that comes across the border has migrated from Nogales, AZ, to the Rio Grande Valley. You can't see it on this map, but if you understand the geography here, most of these children are coming from Central America. The shortest distance from Guatemala and Honduras to the United States is through the Rio Grande Valley of Texas.

The President should also visit Brooks County, which is a place I have visited. This is where the Falfurrias checkpoint is located. They have found many dead bodies of immigrants who died from exposure while trying to circumvent the checkpoint at Fallfurrias. What happens is coyotes, as they call them--human smugglers--will bring them across the border, put them in stash houses on the border, and many of those conditions are inhumane in and of themselves. What will then happen is that the coyotes--smugglers--will bring them in trucks up the highway, and before they hit the checkpoint in Fallfurrias, they will tell them to get out of the truck, give them a milk jug full of water, and tell them they will see them on the north side of the checkpoint.

So dozens, if not hundreds, if not thousands of immigrants over time try to walk--some in the 100-plus-degree Texas weather--around this checkpoint, and some simply don't make it. If you understand where they have come from--some from Central America--many are terribly dehydrated, already ill from exposure, and for many of them their last steps are in Brooks County while trying to walk around this checkpoint in Fallfurrias.

I think the President would benefit from doing what I have done. He should

visit the residents in Brooks County, talk to the Border Patrol, and learn more about the problem and how we might effect a solution. If he refuses to go out of stubborn pride or whatever the reason is, then he will simply be ignorant of the best ways we can work together to solve this underlying problem.

In recent weeks I have shared only a few of the many horrific stories regarding the dangerous journey countless numbers of children take to get to the United States from Central America. They call the train that many of them ride in the corridors controlled by the cartels who treat human beings as a commodity--like drugs and guns. They treat human beings as a commodity that makes money for them. These immigrants go through the corridors on a train system they call The Beast.

There is a chilling book written by Salvadoran journalist Oscar Martinez about The Beast. In it, you find out that 6 out of 10--maybe more--women who come up along this train system known as The Beast are sexually assaulted. Migrants are routinely kidnapped and held for ransom by the gangs and cartels that patrol this area, and many of them simply don't make it.

I shudder to think of how many of the young children--some as young as 5 have been detained at the border region--never make it to the border because they die in the process. That is not humanitarian. That is not friendly. That is cruel. We ought to be telling the truth about this horrific journey and discouraging parents from sending their children from Central America up through Mexico on the back of The Beast only to die in the process or to be assaulted, kidnapped, or horribly injured and maimed.

Well, this is one of the many reasons why I think the President would benefit from a visit. It is hard to ignore the facts, especially when you see them with your own eyes and you get a chance to talk to our hard-working professional Border Patrol, doing an incredible job with limited resources.

When you have 52,000 children coming across the southwestern border at the Rio Grande sector since October and 39,000 women with minor children detained in the Rio Grande sector, unless you go and talk to the Border Patrol and learn about this with your own ears and eyes, you may not realize that drug interdictions are depressed because our Border Patrol is basically trying to change diapers and deal with the humanitarian crisis. They are overwhelmed and are unable to do one of their principal jobs, which is to interdict illegal drug importations into the United States.

So I hope the President will reconsider. He is not going to Texas until tomorrow. My understanding is he will be there for 2 days, and certainly he has an hour or 2 hours out of his schedule that he could dedicate to seeing the crisis for himself and learning more about it, and then coming back and working with us to try to stop it.

Of course, we all feel nothing but sympathy for the children and families who sacrifice their lives trying to make it to the United States but fail because of the impression that our immigration laws simply will not be enforced. Many of my colleagues have come to the floor and said, If we would pass the comprehensive immigration bill the Senate passed last year, that would do it. Well, I would say, with all respect, that is demonstrably false, because even the President and Secretary Johnson of the Department of Homeland Security have conceded that none of these children would be eligible, under the President's deferred action Executive order--none of them would be eligible for entry and to stay in the United States. So passing that law would have nothing to do with this current crisis.

Between President Obama's failure to enforce our immigration laws and his ever-shifting explanations, it is no wonder he has lost credibility on this issue. Many Americans simply don't have confidence that the President is willing to faithfully execute the laws of the United States, including our immigration laws. No wonder Speaker Boehner and so many of our House colleagues have gotten so frustrated they have decided maybe the only alternative is to take the President to court. We know the President has had a pretty bad couple of weeks when it comes to overreach, and he has been rebuked several times recently for unconstitutional acts such as trying to determine when the Senate is in recess and evade the confirmation process in the Senate.

If the President wants to know why we haven't been able to pass immigration reform, all he has to do is look in the mirror. All he has to do is look at his own policies which have created an enormous amount of distrust between not only Congress and the executive branch but in his agencies so that they will actually do what they are supposed to do, such as the Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement--ICE--and the other components of the Department of Homeland Security.

Given all the differing narratives coming out of the White House concerning this surge of unaccompanied minors, it is time for the President to directly address the problem.

I know the President has sent over today a $3.7 billion request for more money. I have no doubt that some pieces of it are justified. For example, we need enhanced detention facilities. We need more immigration judges and other people as part of that process so hearings can be conducted on a timely basis and a legal determination made according to existing law whether people can stay or whether they have to be returned to their country of origin.

Visiting the border is just one in a series of steps the President could take to regain some of his own credibility but also to help address this crisis.

This is not just a humanitarian crisis; this is also a national security crisis, as recently testified to by the head of Southern Command, General Kelly, a Marine general who is head of that combatant command. He is in charge of that area of the globe from Mexico south known as Southern Command, and he says because of inadequate resources and equipment and manpower to deal with the drug cartels moving illegal drugs from South America up through Central America through Mexico to the United States, 75 percent of the time, General Kelly said, they simply have to sit and watch because they don't have the resources. I would hope that some of the money included in this $3.7 billion request would be dedicated to making sure that General Kelly and our law enforcement agencies have the resources and equipment necessary to stop the drug cartels from moving drugs from South America through Central America and up through Mexico.

As General Kelly said, we have this intersection of criminal conduct and terrorism that sometimes takes place with organizations such as Hezbollah, for example, that has established a presence in South America, historically, and it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out this vulnerability can be exploited by other people and not just the drug cartels.

The question remains, if one has enough money, can one make it into the United States? Unfortunately, I think we have to answer that question in the affirmative. Last year alone, 414,000 people were detained on our southwestern border from 100 different countries--100 different countries. So this isn't just about people who have no hope and no opportunity trying to come to the United States from Mexico and trying to get a job; this is about uncontrolled immigration through our southwestern border from all over the world. Admittedly, most of them come from Mexico and Central America, but this is a vulnerability where people can come from Pakistan, they can come from Afghanistan, they can even come from Iran--countries of special interest, countries that are state sponsors of international terrorism. So this is worthy of the President's attention and worthy of a Presidential visit, and I hope he will change his mind and do that.

I think President Obama needs a wakeup call. He needs to realize that the situation along the border is not as rosy as perhaps he is under the impression it is. Only by visiting the border and visiting firsthand and seeing with his own eyes and listening with his own ears to the professionals who are working there so hard and are simply overwhelmed will he be able to get a good idea of not only what the problem is but what the solutions are. Then and only then, I believe, will he be ready and will we be ready to sit down and work together through this request the President has sent us and figure out how we can solve the problem.

Once again, I hope the President will reconsider his decision, since he is going to be in Texas anyway on Wednesday and Thursday, and go to the border, just 500 miles away. On Air Force One it is easy to get there. It won't take much time. He could spend an hour on the ground, and then I think he will come away glad he has taken advantage and accepted this invitation by Governor Perry and me and other Texans to come see the problem for himself.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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