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Floor Speech

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Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, April border numbers came out last week, bringing us up to more than 1\1/2\ million migrant encounters at the southern border so far in fiscal year 2024--1\1/2\ million in just 7 months.

Between official U.S. Customs and Border Protection encounters and known ``got-aways''--which are individuals the Border Patrol saw but were unable to apprehend--we are closing in on a staggering 10 million migrant encounters at our southern border under President Biden. That is substantially more than the population of New York City. In fact, it is more than the population of all but the largest U.S. States, if you can believe that. And there are still 8 more months in the President's term.

After 3 years of half measures, deflections, and outright ignoring the raging crisis at our Nation's border, the President and Democrats appear to have finally woken up to the fact that their border crisis might be a major political liability for them in the upcoming election.

Fear for their election prospects is doing what 3 years of chaos at the southern border could not, and that is get them focused on illegal immigration--sort of, because the vote on border legislation the Democrat leaders announced for this week isn't really about addressing illegal immigration; it is about giving the American people the impression that Democrats care about illegal immigration.

If the Democrat leader were serious about addressing the crisis at our southern border, he would be bringing up legislation that actually stood a chance of making it out of both Houses of Congress and to the President's desk, but he is not. Instead he is bringing up a vote that he knows will fail in the hope of giving political cover to vulnerable Democrats and with the side benefit, he hopes, of putting Republicans in a difficult spot--political theater at its finest.

If the Democrat leader goes through with this vote this week, he should expect some difficult conversations. Perhaps he would like to explain why, if Democrats are so concerned about illegal immigration and securing the border, they have repeatedly banded together this year to oppose--to oppose--commonsense amendments that came to the floor.

You would think that if Democrats were really worried about addressing the illegal immigration crisis, they might have supported Senator Blackburn's motion to allow State and local law enforcement to detain criminal illegal aliens for ICE to deport them. Or Senator Lankford's amendment to prohibit funding from being used to release special-interest aliens--those are individuals who may pose a threat to the United States--during legal proceedings. Or Senator Hagerty's amendments to prevent taxpayer dollars from being used to fly illegal immigrants into the United States or to have them count in the census. The list goes on.

It is hard to understand why anyone would oppose such commonsense measures, and yet all Democrats did. So it is just a little hard to swallow their newfound enthusiasm for border security.

Needless to say, it is not just Democrats in Congress scrambling for political cover. The President is also desperately trying to make himself appear serious on the border. Two weeks ago, the Department of Homeland Security proposed a rule to expedite the deportation of criminals and terrorists. But if the President thought this would make him look serious on border security, he was wrong because the President's new order is a reversal of his own policy, which was established earlier in his administration. That is right. The only reason the President had to finally allow for the immediate deportation of criminals and terrorists is because his administration had created a situation that allowed these individuals to stay in the country in the first place.

Look, I am glad President Biden is making a small attempt to clear up part of the mess he has made, but I am afraid the ``Vote for me; I am cleaning up the historic disaster I have created'' may not be the most convincing election slogan.

Let's be very clear. We are here today with 3 successive years of recordbreaking illegal immigration at our southern border because of President Biden. On the day he took office, the President began dismantling the border security policies of his predecessor that, I might add, had been working. Illegal immigration began surging in response, and it has never stopped.

So while I appreciate that my Democratic colleagues would like to make it seem like this is a congressional matter in order to take the President off the hook and put Republicans on it, the truth is, we don't need congressional action to fix the crisis at our southern border. President Biden created this border crisis, and he can end it today using the very same authority he used to dismantle so many border security policies when he became President.

We have 5 more months until election day, and I suspect this won't be the last attempt by Democrats to try to convince people that they want to address illegal immigration. But after 3-plus years of a Democrat- created border crisis, will the American people really believe--really believe--that the arsonists who started the fire are really serious about putting it out?

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