Executive Calendar

Floor Speech

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Mr. HAGERTY. Mr. President, title 42 will terminate tomorrow with the expiration of the COVID-19 public health emergency. Title 42 is one of the last tools available to Border Patrol agents, and the President is surrendering it during a record-shattering border crisis. It is unconscionable for Congress to stand aside and do nothing to preserve this critical authority.

Title 42 authority was initially based on the pandemic. While I agree that the pandemic is over, the border crisis is worse than ever. Whether to keep effective border security policies in place should not depend on the pandemic.

There is a new epidemic that is plaguing our Nation, one that demands immediate action. Deadly fentanyl--produced with the help of the Chinese Communist Party and smuggled across our southern border by drug cartels--has flooded into our communities. More than 100,000 Americans died of drug overdoses in the last 12 months alone--most from synthetic opioids like fentanyl. It is the No. 1 cause of death for Americans between the ages of 18 and 45.

The rise of fentanyl overdose deaths affects every State and every congressional district. It kills the young, the old, the rich, the poor. It affects cities and small towns alike. It is not a partisan issue, and finding a solution shouldn't be partisan either.

With the end of title 42, even the Biden administration is openly preparing for an already-recordbreaking crisis to get far worse by sending 1,500 Active-Duty troops to the southern border. It is an admission of the impending invasion.

To allow title 42 to end without creating a permanent new authority to replace it only empowers drug cartels. It enables them to illegally send migrants across the border at strategic points, bogging down Border Patrol agents with paperwork and processing that takes five times longer than under title 42. This dramatic increase in processing times will significantly decrease scarce resources available to actually patrol our southern border. Cartels will use the longer and more frequent enforcement gaps to move fentanyl across our border. We cannot allow this to happen.

Title 42 is an effective and important tool for controlling the flow of illegal migration at the southern border, but it is also an effective and important tool for dissuading migrants from making the dangerous journey to the southern border, to ultimately be exploited by drug cartels. But the current administration has no interest in dissuading migrants from coming to the United States. Instead, through Biden's border policies, they entice thousands more migrants per day to illegally cross into the United States, risking their lives as they magnify the humanitarian crisis at our border.

That is why I introduced legislation to add drug smuggling as an additional basis for invoking title 42 authority. It is called the Stop Fentanyl Border Crossings Act. Overdoses have become an epidemic in America, and no one can deny that. My legislation would allow the Secretary of Health and Human Services to use title 42 to combat substantial, dangerous drug trafficking across our southern border. This bill would give Border Patrol a necessary tool to focus on stopping drug traffickers.

It seems like an obvious step to take. Everyone agrees fentanyl trafficking is a dire problem. Yet, in the last Congress, Democrats blocked this legislation three times. Now that title 42 is actually coming to an end, it is time to get past the political posturing, and I hope my colleagues will join me. We cannot sit idly by. Without this authority, the recordbreaking border crisis and deadly drug overdose crisis that will follow will become unimaginably worse.

1192 and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration; further, that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

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Mr. HAGERTY. Mr. President, my Democratic colleague is objecting to legislation that simply gives the Secretary of Health and Human Services the authority to limit border crossings when necessary to combat substantial, dangerous, illicit drug smuggling. It doesn't provide authority to stop all asylum claims. It only applies where substantial illicit drug smuggling is endangering health. More than 100,000 Americans are dying annually of drug overdoses, many of which result from drug smuggling at the southern border.

This legislation isn't a mandate; it is a tool to help save American lives whenever that is possible. Everyone acknowledges that an already recordbreaking crisis will get worse without title 42. American lives and American communities hang in the balance. Yet my colleagues across the aisle are categorically opposed to any commonsense policy that will help us address this problem.

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