Border Security

Floor Speech

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Mr. TILLIS. Madam President, I want to thank my friend and colleague from Mississippi for her comments on this subject.

I am down here on the floor to also talk about the crisis at the border--the humanitarian crisis, the Homeland Security crisis, and a crisis that is resulting in cartels making $800 million a year in human trafficking.

I joined a bipartisan delegation 2 weeks ago. We visited the border. It was very productive. It was one of the first bipartisan delegations in quite some time. The reason that was important is, if you go down there with a partisan delegation, you are only going to actually talk about one side of the issue. If you go down there with a bipartisan delegation, you can talk about what we need to do on a bipartisan basis to solve the crisis at the border.

I want to start where Senator Hyde-Smith finished--the humanitarian crisis. I am one of the Members who has been trying to negotiate a bipartisan immigration reform bill that has border security and asylum reform in it. I had a lot of my staff ask me: Why would you do that? You know it is going to be unpopular. You are going to get criticized from the left for going too far. You are going to get criticized from the right for having any discussion about immigration reform.

I have been down to the border several times. I told my staff that it is hard for me to forget border security telling me that they just transported an 11-year-old girl who had been repeatedly raped, so much so, she screamed so long she couldn't even speak anymore before she crossed the border.

I told them I can't forget going down the Rio Grande River and seeing a corpse taken out of the river, realtime, while I was down there. It wasn't staged because it is happening repeatedly every year.

When you hear stories of truckloads of people being bused across the border--53 of them dying through suffocation and heat exposure on American soil--I can't forget that. That is a humanitarian crisis that has to be solved.

Then I went to the border last week and I started at the Rio Grande Sector and then I went over to the Yuma sector. At night, at the Rio Grande Sector, we saw two Chinese nationals who had been apprehended.

Chinese nationals pay, on average, about $35,000 to cross the border. In many cases, they don't have the money to do it. They have somebody invest in them, and then they become indentured servants in the United States to pay off that debt.

You have people pay $5,000, $6,000, $10,000 who have an expectation from the cartel that they have a debt to be repaid. That may be an honest job that they could get or that could be an illegal activity that helps the cartels.

Now we go over to the Yuma Sector. The Yuma Sector is in Western Arizona. There is a section of border there that hasn't been completed. It is about 7 miles wide. But the most important part of that 7 miles is about a 12-foot gate. Three years ago, 8,000 people crossed through that gate; 2 years ago, 200,000 people crossed through that same 12- foot gate; and over the last 12 months, 300,000 people have. Five thousand of them were Russian nationals; another 5,000 were Chinese nationals.

Look, I understand why people want to get out of Russia, and I understand why people want to get out of China. What I don't understand is why on Earth in transit to that border--that dangerous crossing that you are paying tens of thousands of dollars to a cartel, a transnational criminal organization--why on Earth wouldn't you stop in a nation that is safe, the first safe country that you can get to out of the country that you are trying to flee from?

That is how international asylum treaties work. You get out of the dangerous country. You go to a country that has international agreements on asylum. You claim asylum. And then you may even want to seek asylum in the United States.

We had reports in the Yuma Sector of people who are flying into Mexicali. They are flying in, not making the trek as many people think of caravans coming from Central America through Mexico--flying into Mexicali with suitcases and bags and taking a cab to the border, making sure their toll is paid and then crossing the border. There is no way on Earth that people coming from many of these nations could not have sought asylum somewhere closer to home and then give us a chance for orderly entry.

In total, it is estimated that the transnational criminal organizations, the cartels, are being paid almost $800 million a year. What are they doing with that? If you go down to the border-- particularly if you go down there around midnight--they play the same play every night, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. They will take innocent people who are going to come across the border, and they tell them: Once you get across the border, present yourself to a Border Patrol agent, and you will be processed, which is exactly what happens.

Under the Biden administration, you are likely to be released within a few days or not more than about a week. The disturbing trend is the one that Senator Hyde-Smith talked about, the disturbing number of people who are evading Border Patrol. Why on Earth would you not opt to go into a facility that is heated in the winter and cooled in the summer and spend a week of being fed three times a day, to have access to facilities, to have changing tables for babies, to have play areas while they are being detained and processed? Why on Earth would you avoid all that and take the dangerous step of evading detection, unless, at least for some of them, there is a nefarious purpose.

Then they are moving into communities where we have already seen--in North Carolina, an illegal immigrant murdered a young lady just a couple of years ago. We have seen this crime, and it tracks back almost invariably to the people who are the so-called got-aways.

Now I want to go to the Yuma Sector and talk about those 300,000 Border Patrol. I am wearing a ``Back the Blue'' flag. But as you all know, if it is Border Patrol, they wear green uniforms, so I say, ``Back Law Enforcement.''

Right now, Border Patrol only has less than half of the people who are sworn to protect the border doing those jobs. They are in processing facilities. They are driving buses. They are providing support for daycare. Literally, I am not exaggerating.

So that means that we have half as many people protecting a border that has wide-open spaces. There are no structures whatsoever. Come across. Walk through the Rio Grande. In most cases, you can. You don't have to swim. But when those 300,000 people get there--this is the most amazing thing about this country--they are going through that 12-foot gate. If Border Patrol goes there, then the rest of the border is open for the got-aways. Our country is so extraordinary that they say: I know that it is only about a 10-minute ride from that 12-foot gate to the processing facility, but they won't transport a child unless they have a car seat for them. If somebody has disabilities, they have to make special accommodations. Imagine 300,000--300,000--people coming across the border in a 12-month period, what Border Patrol has to do to conform to our laws and treat these people humanely and safely.

They need time. Time can only come when Congress recognizes that we have to secure the border. We have to fill the gaps. We have to insist that if you want to come to this country, present yourself at a legal port of entry, present a request for asylum, you will be processed.

We need to send the message: If you want to come to the United States, thank you for the compliment you are willing to risk your life to come to the United States, but respect our laws and don't pay cartels $800 million a year so that they can create a conduit for fentanyl and other drugs that are poisoning almost 100,000 Americans a year.

Now let's talk about immigration reform. I think that one of the ways that we can provide a future flow--a downward pressure on future flow-- is to simply say to people who want to respect our laws and apply for citizenship, for work visas, or other forms of being in this country legally, we need to actually fix the immigration laws that we have on the books to do that.

If we do that, I am not going to have to worry about those memories of that little girl. I am not going to have to worry about the corpses that we are picking up in Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico. I believe we will have fewer people dying from fentanyl because less of it will come here, for a couple reasons: We will have better security at the border, and we will bankrupt the cartels that are making, over the last 2 years, almost $2 billion.

We need people in Congress to recognize that a bipartisan solution is possible. We have a crisis at the border that needs to be solved, and we have to have an administration that spends more than four hours in 2 years at the border recognizing it is on them to help us fix it.

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