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Floor Speech

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Mr. JOHNSON. Mr. President, I come to the floor today to speak to the same topic that my distinguished colleague from South Dakota was talking about. He called what was going to happen over the next couple of days here political theater. That is pretty accurate. A political stunt. Political cover. A charade. Instead of actually securing the border, that is what Democrats in Congress, that is what President Biden--that is all they are interested in, because, as my colleague mentioned, President Biden has all the authority he needs to secure the border.

But I want to spend a little bit of time here talking about the bipartisan bill that has been reintroduced that we will be voting on again on Thursday, although it failed very quickly because it literally was worse than doing nothing.

But I think the first point to be made is--so the American public understands--when President Biden and Democrats in Congress talk about securing the border, they are not talking about securing the border the way most Americans think about it, like actually securing the border. What they are talking about is: How do we make it more efficient to encounter, process, and disperse illegal immigrants who are coming to this country with invalid asylum claims? How can we encounter them, process them, and disperse them as efficiently as possible? That is what they are talking about. So don't be fooled when they talk about securing the border.

Proof positive of that is, one of the lead Democrat negotiators in this bipartisan bill--let me give the exact quote. He said the bill requires the President to funnel asylum claims to the land ports of entry when more than 5,000 people cross a day. That is not called securing the border; that is just sending the flow someplace else. Then the Senator went on and said: The border never closes.

So, again, when Democrats talk about securing the border, they are talking about more efficiently encountering, processing, and dispersing people; they are not talking about securing the border.

I want to start--to prove my point that they were never serious in these negotiations other than looking for political cover--with this quote that the majority leader gave to POLITICO a day or two after that border bill failed. The majority leader said:

We were playing chess, they were playing checkers, and we ended up with a Ukraine bill.

He also went on to say:

We also end up in much better shape on the border than we were three months ago.

I will come back to this, but let me hit the points now. If you were really negotiating in good faith, if those negotiations failed, would you literally rub your negotiating partner's nose in the failure by claiming: We were playing chess, those knuckleheads were playing checkers, and we got exactly what we wanted? I would argue that is not the sign of a good-faith negotiation.

Then, if you were really interested in securing the border, you would never make that statement: ``We . . . end[ed] up in . . . better shape on the border than we were three months ago.'' Better shape on the border would have been actually passed enhanced authority for the President to actually secure the border.

The majority leader thinks he is in better shape on the border because he got the political cover he sought, which was his only goal in those negotiations.

Let me spend just a little bit of time describing why that bill was far worse--and I mean far worse--than doing nothing.

This is the border chart I have been producing since I became chairman of Homeland Security in 2015. This shows monthly totals of encounters on the southwest border.

You can see, back here in 2014--I have recreated that right here-- that President Obama, when he hit 2,000 people a day, declared that a humanitarian crisis. And President Obama was correct; it was a humanitarian crisis.

Now, the solution back then was we started detaining people. We started clamping down. We built a new detention facility. President Obama actually had success in reducing the flow until a court reinterpreted the Flores settlement agreement and said that that applied to not only unaccompanied children, forcing their release in 20 days; it also applied to children accompanied by their parents.

That was the one court decision that did weaken a Presidential authority. But the fact of the matter is, even with that weakened Presidential authority, because of DACA, which sparked all this, when President Trump faced his border crisis--almost 5,000 people a day in 1 month--he used the Presidential authority that the Supreme Court, in its 2018 decision talking about the Immigration and Nationality Act, said that current law exudes deference to the President in every clause. It entrusts to the President decisions whether and when to suspend entry, whose entry to suspend, for how long, and on what conditions. It thus vests the President with ample power to impose entry restrictions in addition to those elsewhere enumerated in the Immigration and Nationality Act.

So obviously President Trump was able to use existing authority. He closed the border in 12 months--12 months--not through any help by Congress passing a law; by using that authority where the Supreme Court said the law exudes deference to the Executive.

Well, when President Biden came into office, he blew the border wide open. How? He did it by using that exact same Executive authority that exuded deference to the President. He used that deference, he used that authority, and he blew open the border, and we see the catastrophe that has resulted.

Now, the problem with this bill is it codifies most of President Biden's open border policy. It sets thresholds at 5,000, at 4,000, and I will talk about those in greater detail. But thresholds to do what? Supposedly to secure the border. No, it doesn't really secure the border. Again, it sends those individuals to the ports of entry to have their asylum claims adjudicated in a Rube Goldberg-type situation. It spends almost $20 billion, this bill--$20 billion--primarily, again, to accomplish the Democrats' definition of securing the border, which is to more efficiently encounter, process, and disperse illegal migrants who do not have valid asylum claims. That is what this bill does. It builds more detention facilities. It hires a small number of Border Patrol agents--425--but it hires over 4,000 asylum officers to, again, adjudicate these claims.

And they use a new standard now. It goes from a significant possibility that these claims are valid to a reasonable. I am sorry; I don't see much distinction there. So, again, these asylum officers are going to be given all kinds of discretion. These adjudications are now going to be done by asylum officers, not by immigration judges.

So I see nothing in this bill that in any way, shape, or form forces a higher standard. It is all subjective. And under this administration, the subjectiveness of that I can pretty well guarantee you will continue the catastrophe.

It pays for more detention beds. It pays for alternates to detention, which has never worked effectively. But, again, $20 billion of money we don't have.

Now, when President Trump secured the border, he didn't have additional funding for that. He didn't have additional Customs and Border Protection agents. He used his policies. He used his Executive authority--``Remain in Mexico.'' You can't come to this country and claim asylum; you have to do it from your home country or stay in Mexico to do it. That was a huge deterrent, and the flow stopped with safe third country agreements. There were other things. Again, using that Executive authority, he secured the border. We didn't need an immigration bill--certainly not this Rube Goldberg bill that spends $20 billion that we don't have.

Rather than spending all that money to encourage more illegal immigrants to come to this country, we ought to stop the flow, and then we wouldn't have to spend the money. Doesn't that make a whole lot more sense? Do what President Trump did: Actually stop the flow. But, again, that is not what this bill does.

I think the worst aspect of this bill--and this is why I always talk about it is worse than doing nothing--is not the 5,000 average migrants a day, which was--I mean, that is what this would look like if we just normalized 5,000 or 4,000. You are just codifying the open border. The 5,000 threshold makes it mandatory that the President supposedly secure the border. Again, it doesn't really define that. I would argue that doesn't even secure the border. But it is the 4,000 discretionary threshold--that, when average migration, I think, over 7 days reaches 4,000 a day--a massive number--now the President, it says, has discretion to stop processing asylum claims and supposedly secure the border.

Well, why is that problematic? Well, again, the Supreme Court said the current law exudes deference. President Trump had the authority. By Congress passing a law basically implying the President doesn't have the authority to stop processing asylum claims, you are weakening that authority. And even worse, that discretionary authority ends after 3 years. So that bipartisan bill would actually dramatically weaken the authority of a President who is actually serious about securing the border.

That is why that bill had to be defeated and must be defeated now. It is not a serious attempt. It is a bill that was negotiated in bad faith, with the Democrats supposedly playing chess and, unfortunately, our side playing checkers.

Again, it doesn't have to be this complex. Use current authority. Take a look at what Trump did. Do that. Don't spend additional money. Stop the flow. That ought to be our goal.

So, again, most Republicans in the Senate conference, we weren't looking for an immigration bill. We certainly weren't looking for one that weakened the President's authority. We would have been happy to strengthen the President's authority. We would have been happy to clarify--by the way, Obama's Secretary of Homeland Security, Jeh Johnson, completely disagreed with the court decision on the Flores settlement. We would be happy to clarify that, no, Flores only applies to unaccompanied children. We have that deterrence. We could follow the law to detain people who came to this country illegally. We would be happy to strengthen authority.

What we were looking for in a border bill was to have an enforcement mechanism that would force President Biden to use the authority he has to actually secure the border based on our definition of securing the border, the way most Americans view securing the border. Stop the flow of illegal migrants that has caused a clear and present danger to this Nation. I could go through the list of horribles--the drug traffickers, the human traffickers, the sex traffickers, the members of some of the most brutal gangs in Mexico, South and Central America, the military- age men coming into this country. We are going to be dealing with this catastrophe for decades--for decades; the rapes, the murders that are being committed by people in this country who shouldn't be here that have been facilitated by this open border policy.

Again, Republicans would be happy to strengthen the President's authority to actually secure the border. What we are not happy to do is engage in this charade.

Let me end on this note again: Is this the quote of someone who has entered into good faith negotiations to develop a bill to actually secure the border? This is the majority leader of the Senate, the one who is going to engage in political theater again this week, bringing up the exact same bill that has already failed. It failed in the eyes of the public within 24 hours after the introduction, it was so bad. It was worse than doing nothing. But the majority leader seemed to be pretty happy with that failed bill:

We were playing chess, they were playing checkers, and we ended up with a Ukraine bill.

That is what they wanted. Their primary focus, their priority, was providing $60 billion to a bloody stalemate, which, by the way, a couple of days after that thing passed, the administration was already indicating, well, that is probably not going to be enough. Even though the majority leader came out of the White House and said: This is simple. Ukraine gets $60 billion, they win. If they don't get $60 billion, they lose.

This is a disingenuous quote of a bad-faith negotiating partner. But it is also the quote--if you look at the last sentence there--of somebody who is not looking to secure the border but was looking for political cover. That is all he wanted. That is all the Democrats wanted. That is all President Biden wants: political cover.

We also end up in much better shape on the border than we were 3 months ago.

Again, the bill didn't pass. I am glad it didn't. It would have been worse than doing nothing. But they didn't get a bill to supposedly secure the border. And he is happy about it? He has a big old Cheshire Cat grin on his face: We were playing chess, they were playing checkers, we got exactly what we wanted. And $60 billion to secure another country's border, and we can keep our border wide open. We can allow this flood of illegal migrants coming to this country. We don't care. We want an open border. We know it causes problems. All we want is political cover, and we got it.

We are in a lot better shape passing nothing; not strengthening the President's authority to close the border; not having enforcement mechanisms to force President Biden, who wants an open border, to use the authority to secure the border. No. They got a bill that they are going to bring up again. It will fail. They are going to play political theater. They are going to use political cover. And they are just happy as a lark. They think they have political cover.

I am hoping that the American public is paying attention to this charade, to this political theater, and recognizes that President Biden and his colleagues in the Democratic Congress want an open border. They caused this problem, and they will do nothing to secure it.

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