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Floor Speech

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Mr. LEE. Our country is in the grips of the worst border security crisis in our history. President Biden's open border policies have caused an unprecedented humanitarian disaster, with grave consequences for public safety, national security, and, indeed, for the rule of law.

For years, Democrats have stood by and watched as President Biden presided over and intentionally exacerbated this historic crisis. They know that President Biden has the authority to secure the border. Yet, instead of taking him to task, they remain silent.

No, instead of calling on the President to fix the problem, we are here attempting to revise the so-called Border Security Act--a bill that has already failed to pass muster in this body and will do nothing to secure the border and, if anything, would likely make it worse if, heaven forbid, it became law. It would certainly make it worse when administered under this administration because of the amount of executive branch discretionary authority this bill creates.

Look, let's be honest here. This is a political exercise, not a serious debate, because that bill is going nowhere, and we all know that.

Since President Biden's inauguration, over 9.5 million undocumented immigrants have entered the United States illegally. Those are just the ones that we know about, just the ones that have been observed, that have been recorded by our border security personnel. It is larger than the population of 36 States. Most of our States are smaller than the number of people who have been observed and recorded as crossing into our country through our southern border unlawfully just since January 20, 2021.

The magnitude of the border security crisis is hard to comprehend. What is not hard to comprehend is that this is a public safety crisis, and it should be treated as such. Our constituents from our various States know this, and we know it from them. They feel strongly about it, and they don't like it.

So let's not pretend that President Biden lacks authority to secure the border and needs new legislation or else he won't be able to do anything about it. That isn't true. That is science fiction fantasy. That is a fraudulently produced statement. It is a truth-free assertion.

President Biden, you have the power right now to secure this border. You have it and you know that you have it and you deceive the American people when you suggest otherwise.

Let's not waste the American people's time by debating a bill that stands to make the crisis even worse--even worse--by giving you, sir, more power to make this worse, which it would do. And we know already how you would utilize that discretionary authority because we know how you utilized the discretionary authority you have already been given.

We should be considering measures that force this administration to actually secure the border, that stay the President's hand, and that force him to do his job, which is to secure the border. We can do just that or at least move in the right direction on that front simply by passing my legislation, known as the VALID Act.

Thanks to the Biden administration, inadmissible aliens are not just entering the United States on foot, they are being flown on commercial flights--often at government expense--into and throughout the country. The CBP One mobile app, which was never intended to be used by migrants seeking entry into the United States, has been repurposed into a tool by the Biden administration to facilitate the entry of even more illegal aliens into the United States.

Today, migrants can download the app, put in whatever identifiable information they would like--no matter the accuracy of the information, regardless of whether they just made it up, just like they walked into a party and wrote their name down on a name tag saying: Hello, my name is thus and such. And then they can use the app as their sole exclusive form of ID necessary to enter the United States.

So the rest of us, if we travel outside the United States, need a passport to come back into the United States. But if you are an illegal alien: No documents, no citizenship, no visa, no problem; we got you covered. All you have got to do is color inside the lines. Just write down whatever information you want to make up. Put it on the app. That is your ticket. You are getting in.

I can't tell you how many times my constituent service operation in my State office back in Utah gets calls from frantic, concerned American citizens. They are somewhere outside the United States. They lose their passport. It is a real crisis. We do our best to help them. We can almost always figure out a way to solve the problem, but it creates real difficulty.

The American citizens don't have access to the CBP One mobile app, but do you know who does? Illegal aliens, and it helps them get into the country.

Now, not only can illegal immigrants use the app to enter the United States by plane, but they can also use it to travel throughout the United States, within the United States, on domestic flights paid for by the U.S. Government. Migrants don't need a legitimate ID or a passport. They can board a plane using Biden's CBP One mobile app, which the TSA now proudly advertises at airports nationwide.

Of course, if you are an American citizen, you will have an entirely different airport experience. You will be expected to wait in long security lines, show proof of valid identification, and then potentially be subjected to an additional invasive security screening. Americans are expected to follow our country's laws. Yet illegal immigrants who are in the United States only because they broke our country's laws that govern how you get into this country are held to a lower standard. It is almost an insult to standards to call it a standard at all. It is a nonstandard.

The Biden administration is rewarding people illegally entering our country with their own personalized form of TSA PreCheck. But it is better than TSA PreCheck; it is free. You don't have to provide any documentation. You don't have to have any real security review.

This backward policy has real consequences. Hundreds of thousands of otherwise inadmissible aliens have entered the United States using the CBP One mobile app as their sole form of identification for travel authorization.

Among those who have entered by using the app include a Haitian migrant who, after entering the United States through the CBP One mobile app, was arrested for committing a double homicide in New York. Cory Alvarez, another man who entered the country through the app, was arrested for sexually assaulting a disabled 15-year-old girl.

Americans deserve the right to fly without fear, which is impossible when we have a President who allows people without verifiable information to enter our country against our laws.

My bill can end this unacceptable lapse in security and public safety, and it can do it today. All I am asking for is a vote, a vote on legislation that would prohibit individuals from flying from foreign countries into the United States if they are using the CBP One mobile app, a notice to appear order, or a notice to report order as their sole form of identification or travel authorization.

This shouldn't be a hard idea to get behind. This shouldn't be controversial, not remotely. Before you board a plane, you should prove who you are, just like the rest of us have to do. We do it all the time. We have to prove who we are when we go to the doctor's office, the pharmacy, when we check into a hotel, pick out a rental car, if we get pulled over on the highway for speeding. Anytime we do just about anything of significance, it seems we have got to produce identification to show who we are.

Look, this has been a pretty widespread practice that Americans have been required to follow for a long time at airports, certainly since 9/ 11. Everybody just understands it is what you have got to do.

Even for a U.S. citizen to fly from one U.S. city to another, he or she must establish identification, proving identity. President Biden is reversing that standard and importing crime into every community in America. No community in our country should be forced to fear that foreign nationals whose identities we cannot confirm can travel free throughout the United States--freely, often at government expense; freely, without even having to produce so much as identification papers.

Earlier this month, one of our colleagues was quoted as saying: There is only one party that is serious about border security. It is the Democratic Party. We are going to ask Republicans to join us.

Look, I will pose the same question that he asked and impose it now to all my Democratic colleagues. If you are, as you claim, the party that is serious about border security, then, for the love of Pete, prove it. Step up. Go on record and show the American people where you stand on this commonsense border security reform, and let's pass the VALID Act.

(Ms. HASSAN assumed the Chair.)

So to that end, Madam President, notwithstanding rule XXII, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate resume legislative session and that the Senate proceed to S. 4387, which is at the desk.

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Mr. LEE. Madam President, I appreciate the thoughtful analysis-- consistent with his always thoughtful, analytical approach to matters-- that has been offered up by my friend and colleague, the distinguished Senator from Connecticut. Yes, he and I have worked together on a lot of things, including in the national security space. It reminds me, he and I need to talk about one of those things sometime soon.

I do, however, disagree with a number of conclusions that he has reached. I think I see where he is going, and I understand how he gets there, but I think he is mistaken on a couple of points.

No. 1, there have, in fact, been hundreds of thousands of people who have entered the United States using the CBP One mobile app as their basis for entering the country and as their form of identification-- hundreds of thousands.

In fact, my understanding is that between October of 2022 and the end of September of 2023, that calendar year, there were a total of 221,456 such people who did that just from four countries alone--from Venezuela, Haiti, Cuba, and Nicaragua--people being brought in and then paroled. These were people who, as I understand it--the Department of Homeland Security has acknowledged--had no valid basis for entering the country, and that is why they had to be paroled into the country. They were using immigration parole illegally, illegitimately, to bring them in because to actually use immigration parole, the statute requires that it be made on an individualized basis, not a categorical one. These were brought in categorically.

With respect to his assertion regarding entry into the United States followed by an assertion of a right to proceed under our asylum laws, that is a different question altogether. First of all, if you enter the United States unlawfully and then apply for asylum, you still have entered unlawfully.

He describes, then, these individuals as having a right to asylum. Nobody has a right to asylum in the United States. We do have asylum laws. Those laws allow the Department of Homeland Security, through authority that goes through the Secretary of Homeland Security, to extend asylum status on a discretionary basis. There is no statutorily conferred right, certainly no constitutionally conferred right to asylum.

In effect, what we do have is that if you enter the United States without documentation and then you apply for asylum, you have to have your asylum claim adjudicated. That can take years. In fact, a number of people who are entering the United States now, if they apply for asylum after entering, they are often told that their court date may not occur until well into the 2030s.

We know that most asylum applications are denied. Most people who apply for asylum are ultimately deemed not eligible for asylum.

You can't call this a statutorily or a constitutional right--a statutorily conferred or a constitutionally conferred right--nor can you say that they are asylees as of the moment that they apply.

Under our asylum laws, while there is some complexity to them, I think that the most natural reading of them is that they are supposed to be detained while their asylum applications are pending and until they are finally resolved, which, as I just noted, most asylum applicants are ultimately denied that.

So to tell them: OK, fill out this form using the app. That could be your form of identification. You may enter the country using that as your ID. You may fly about the country at will using that ID.

To say that that is based on some sort of lawful immigration status isn't accurate, and it certainly ignores the fact that we are flouting in countless circumstances either immigration parole or asylum in order to get them to that point.

As to the suggestion that those entering the country with the CBP One mobile app--if I understand my colleague's assertion correctly, I think he is saying you have to have other forms of ID, perhaps a foreign passport or something akin to that, in order to use the CBP One mobile app to enter the United States. That is not my understanding at all. I have had countless conversations--I as well as my staff--with officials within the Department of Homeland Security when we have raised these concerns. I have never heard any suggestion anywhere that the ability to use the app in that fashion is conditioned upon the ability to show, to produce a foreign passport or other official form of foreign identification.

I would add here, I am quite certain that that is not the case for the additional reason--not only because that would have come up by now in the countless conversations we had about this but also for an additional reason. You see along our southern border people ditching their identification papers--their identification cards, passports, driver's licenses, whatever they are--from their home jurisdictions at the moment they cross the border. They ditch them. They ditch them because they don't need them. They ditch them because that way, they can fill out the CBP One mobile app and make their name or their date of birth or whatever it is whatever they want. This is a very known phenomenon. These are varied widely observed facts along the southern border.

He said that these are not hundreds of thousands who have been here. Look, this is not my understanding. Madam President, 221,000-some-odd people flew in just from the four countries I mentioned alone and just for the 12-month interval I mentioned. We have many hundreds of thousands who have come in using the CBP One mobile app.

Look, at the end of the day, we do have a problem. We have a problem because we have so many people coming in here who don't have a visa to be here, who don't have citizenship, don't have status as lawful permanent residents or otherwise, and they are entering without documentation, without any other legal right.

The fact that this administration has chosen to paper over the fact that in any other administration, in any other era of American history or at least modern American history since these things started happening, those would be regarded as illegal aliens, which, of course, they are.

In this administration, they do their best to try to paper over that by either declaring them eligible for immigration parole even though they are not because you are not allowed to use immigration parole that way--you use immigration parole in two instances, both of which are specific, neither of which may be categorical.

There is the humanitarian use. For example, your mother is in the United States. You are outside the United States. You don't have a visa. You are not a citizen. You are a citizen of another country. You want to come in because your mother is sick. She is about to pass away. For humanitarian purposes, they will let you in for a brief period of time, understanding that it is momentary. The other is a public use purpose--public use. Let's say you speak a language that is needed in the United States--I don't know, interpret at somebody's trial, translation services or something like that. Either way, it has to be a specific individualized determination.

This administration is using these things by the hundreds of thousands to say: Come on in. If you are from Venezuela, Haiti, Cuba, Nicaragua, one of the other favorite countries on this, just come on in.

So papering over them doesn't make them legal. They are still illegal aliens, and we are still facilitating the process by which they enter the United States and making it easier for them to enter the United States without proper identification. This would fix that. This bill would fix that.

Now, I ask today not that we pass it by unanimous consent; I asked only that we turn to it, that we get on to it. Even that drew an objection. That is most unfortunate.

Finally, I want to make the point with reference to the 45th President of the United States. I, like many--I believe like most of my Republican colleagues, have grave concerns with the so-called border security measure--it is really more of an immigration bill than a border security measure--that Democrats want us to turn to next, that they want us to get onto. I have grave concerns with that, and most of my Republican colleagues do.

I will say this: Most of us had real concerns with this long before the 45th President of the United States weighed in on it.

My objections, though, had nothing do and still have nothing to do with the preferences of the 45th President of the United States with regard to that bill. They have everything to do with what that bill actually said.

Now, I understand a number of people put a lot of time into that bill. I get it. But that bill didn't do what most of us as Republicans asked that it do, which is that it remove the President's vast discretion to make it easier to paper over and document illegal aliens to make them appear legal when, in fact, they are not.

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Mr. LEE. Madam President, I will be brief, and I appreciate my friend and colleague for indulging me on this as I have just a couple of points.

Look, they are entering unlawfully. Again, this administration is using other laws to paper over their illegality. The fact that President Biden is unlawfully using immigration parole to make them appear legal still doesn't make it legal.

I believe it was Mark Twain who asked rhetorically: If you count the tail of a dog as a leg, how many legs does the dog have? I would respond that it is still just four legs. It is still a tail and not a leg.

Somebody who enters unlawfully isn't made lawful in the United States just because the President of the United States is unlawfully using an authority that doesn't allow him to make them legal to do that.

As to the suggestion that those who enter using the CBP One app have uniformly provided a passport, it just isn't true. In fact, I had it confirmed right now with the person who helps me with these things, who helps constituents--the people in my State--who confirmed just now that it is not a requirement. They are not required to provide a passport in order to do this, and we know that this has been used over and over and over again by people who do not have documentation.

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