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Floor Speech

It was October. We faced some ominous challenges around the world. Our allies and friends were in conflict, and the United States wanted to stand by them.

President Biden made a request for a defense supplemental and said: We need to move on this quickly. For example, our friends in Ukraine, who are fighting off the barbaric tactics of Vladimir Putin, need our continued help. We shouldn't waste any time.

At the time, several Members of the Senate on the other side of the aisle said: No, you cannot even consider helping Ukraine fight this war against Putin unless you do something about our border. There has got to be a change in our border policy.

So there eventually emerged a group that took on the task of writing a bipartisan bill.

Make no mistake, legislation on a subject as serious as this will never pass as a partisan piece of legislation. It has to be bipartisan. Both sides of the aisle decided to enlist our colleagues to sit down in a deliberative effort to write a bipartisan border bill to address the crisis we face at the border.

The Republicans chose as their spokesperson, as their negotiator, James Lankford of Oklahoma. James Lankford is a certifiable conservative Republican who is respected on both sides of the aisle. I join in that chorus of respect for him.

The Republicans said to us: None of these freewheeling efforts. James Lankford is our man. He will negotiate this, and we will stand by him.

At that point, Chris Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut, was enlisted to be part of that negotiating effort, along with the Senator from Arizona. They sat down and started a three-way effort to find a bipartisan bill. They worked on it not just for weeks but for months.

During that period of time, I met with them from time to time, not to interject my efforts or any ideas I had, but just to measure their progress. They were not happy about the course of business and how quickly they could reach a conclusion, but the fact of the matter is they did. They reached a bipartisan agreement, one which I don't agree with in many aspects, but it is a good one--a heartfelt, serious effort; a bipartisan Democratic and Republican effort.

We were prepared and did call on the floor of the U.S. Senate this bipartisan bill that Senator Lankford had led the Republicans into establishing. I believe it ended up with four votes--four votes.

The Republicans were told: Keep your hands off, Democrats, when it comes to Lankford's efforts. Let him do the work.

When he finally produced an effort, a good-faith effort, they rejected it, walked away from it.

The Senator from Alabama just explained that they didn't have time to read it. If I recall, several days had passed where that bill was available for our staffs to analyze and others to look at. Most of us who wanted to knew the contents of it. I thought it was a step in the right direction moving forward. But it was rejected by the same Republicans who initiated the process by saying that there will be no supplemental for defense until there is a bipartisan bill, and the bipartisan bill is to be put together by the Senator from Oklahoma. When it finally appeared before us, they walked away from it. They walked away from this bipartisan bill.

I would just tell the Senator from Alabama, I have worked on this issue for a number of years. The only effort I have seen that finally resulted in comprehensive immigration reform that came to the floor was totally bipartisan. A gang of eight Senators, which I was part of, led by Senator McCain on the Republican side, produced a good bill that received over 65 votes. It wasn't taken up by the Republicans in the House, but it was a good-faith, bipartisan effort. That is the only way we can pass legislation that is meaningful when it comes to immigration.

The bill that the Senator from Alabama produces here today will not secure our border. It will not prevent the flow of illicit drugs through ports of entry or improve public safety. It would allow the Secretary of Homeland Security to suspend the entry of all asylum seekers at the border anytime the Secretary deems it necessary to achieve ``operational control'' of the border--whatever that phrase means.

Let's be clear. No Secretary of Homeland Security, including the Secretary under President Trump, has ever achieved operational control of the border.

The bill also requires the suspension of entry at the border of all asylum seekers if all asylum seekers cannot be detained and placed in expedited removal. One again, no administration, Republican or Democratic, has ever been able to detain and place in expedited removal all or even most asylum seekers--not even President Trump. It couldn't be done. No Congress has been willing to provide the funding that would be necessary to do it.

This bill would indefinitely end asylum protection without additional resources for the Department of Homeland Security, without any alternatives for desperate women and children fleeing persecution, and without any additional consequences for those who violate our laws.

We have learned from past experience that attempting to shut down the border is inhumane and simply doesn't work. To assume that this is one big wall that we could close the gate on is just wrong. It is not the reality. Our experience with title 42 emergency health authorities demonstrated this. Repeated attempts at unlawful crossings soared despite title 42, as did the number of noncitizens who successfully evaded Border Patrol, often referred to as ``got-aways.''

Recent data from CBP shows that in fiscal year 2024, the daily number of ``got-aways'' was 70 percent lower than the period immediately before the end of the use of title 42.

The reality is that our current laws for processing asylum seekers at the border are fundamentally broken, and measures like this bill will not fix them.

The bottom line is, the buck stops here. The buck stops here in the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives.

The last time we passed meaningful immigration reform was over 30 years ago, and we wonder why this broken system continues to be broken. It is because of our dereliction.

In contrast, we have the opportunity to vote on a bipartisan border bill, which will be offered tomorrow. It was written by Senator Lankford, a Republican of Oklahoma, Senator Murphy, and Senator Sinema.

This legislation would actually help secure the border and provide essential national security funding. It would reform broken laws that are not working to process asylum seekers at our border, and it would provide desperately needed resources to our Agencies to allow them to implement these new provisions.

While these new processes are being implemented, the bipartisan border bill would provide for a temporary suspension of asylum in between ports of entry if the number of asylum seekers arriving at the border exceeds the capacity of DHS to process.

I have some concerns about the bill, but it reflects a genuine, bipartisan effort to create solutions to outdated laws and underfunding that have plagued our immigration system for years.

I was really disappointed, as I am sure Senator Lankford was, to see most of my Republican colleagues vote against that bipartisan bill. Although the bill was written by Senate Republicans' designated negotiator, Senator Lankford, and endorsed by the National Border Patrol Council--the union that represents Border Patrol agents--the Speaker of the House declared it ``dead on arrival'' in the House before the text was even released. To think that the Border Patrol agents said that this will improve the situation--the Lankford bill-- and the Republicans still voted against it tells us the whole story.

I hope my colleagues will work with me to pass immigration legislation that the American people deserve, one that supports our frontline law enforcement, addresses the needs of our economy, provides a path to citizenship for Dreamers and immigrant farmer workers, and lives up to our Nation's legacy of providing safe harbor to refugees fleeing for their lives.

The American people are tired of partisan posturing and bickering over immigration. That is why this bipartisan bill, which was encouraged by the Republicans and the Democrats, needs to be the starting point of our negotiation. They want us to work together to secure the border, support our economy, and stand by America's fundamental values.

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