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Floor Speech

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Mr. TUBERVILLE. Mr. President, I am proud today to join my colleague Dr. Marshall on the floor to support the State of Texas in their efforts to secure the disaster at the southern border.

I have been there many times. I would challenge my Democratic colleagues: How many times have you been to the southern border in Texas to see this disaster?

Right now, the Biden administration is actively trying to stop the State of Texas from protecting their and our border. Meanwhile, Democrats are telling the press that they want to fix the border crisis that President Biden has created. It has taken 3 years. But they say that the Republicans won't let them. That is not true.

The Biden administration is suing Texas and destroying barriers at the border actively, every day. The taxpayers have already paid for the wall--the extension of the wall that was stopped after President Trump stepped down a few years ago. President Biden refuses to build a wall.

He is pushing a bill on us that actually sets aside money it already appropriated for the wall and allows him to postpone new construction indefinitely. There is no plan. This is what they call a border bill. I call it a border giveaway.

Joe Biden is selling off the border for pennies on the dollar that the taxpayers have already paid for. It is online. You can go online and buy, in an auction, the wall and razor wire that is sitting on the ground mostly in Arizona, and you can buy it for 10 cents on the dollar.

He is actively destroying our southern border. This is something from the worst nightmares of our Founding Fathers: a President who is more concerned about other people's borders and not ours.

Now, about half of the American southern border is also the southern border of Texas. There is an old saying that the Constitution is not a suicide pact. The Federal Government cannot--I repeat, cannot--force Texas to let itself be invaded and destroyed.

Article IV, section 4 of the Constitution promises that the Federal Government shall protect every State from invasion. In fact, the Declaration of Independence accused King George of exposing the colonies ``to all the Dangers of Invasion.''

Article I, section 10 of the Constitution explicitly says that a State may engage in war without the consent of Congress if ``actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay.''

Now, let's look at the facts. At least 10,000 people a day, on several months, have been coming across our border, averaging 7,500 a day. The Biden administration admits to releasing 85 percent of that 7,500 a day into our country--85 percent are released into the country. This is in addition to the 2 million illegal immigrants that we have lost track of in the past 3 years.

More than 100,000 Americans are dying every year because of drugs, which a lot have come across our southern border--and getting worse. That is more than we lost in the Vietnam war, and that was a very long war.

Drugs, gangs, and even terrorists are flooding--are flooding--our border. We don't know who they are. Can there be any doubt that the Founding Fathers would consider this an invasion?

The population of our country at the founding was about 4 million people, at the beginning, 248 years ago. The population has grown, obviously. We have had more than 8 million illegal crossings since Joe Biden took office--8 million. The sheer scale of this is unlike anything that any of us have ever seen.

So it should be clear. The facts and the Constitution are both on the State of Texas's side, and Texas has every right to protect the people in its State and our country.

I am confident that the Supreme Court will uphold the Constitution on this ruling, but the real solution is not relying on a court ruling. The real solution is for President Joe Biden to stop destroying the border and put a stop to what is happening.

Stop cutting the wire. Stop suing our border States. Stop selling off the wall. Stop pretending to want a border bill that we know won't work. Stop encouraging. Stop encouraging the invasion. He is personally doing that from the White House. Stop encouraging the invasion of our country, which is costing American lives every single day.

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