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Floor Speech
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Mr. MURPHY. He and I have collaborated on a number of really important pieces of legislation, especially in the national security space. So I say all of this with tremendous respect for the Senator from Utah.
First, let's go to the heart of the argument that he is making because he makes an argument that you hear very often on this floor, that tens of thousands of people are entering the country illegally. They are entering the country illegally.
The Senator knows the law, I would probably guess, better than most here, and so he knows that those people who are entering the United States without permission also have a corresponding right to apply for asylum. So, technically, they enter the United States without permission, but then they are allowed to apply for asylum. And that right to asylum is a superseding right.
And so there has been no dispute--whether the President is Joe Biden or the President is Donald Trump--that if you enter the United States and claim asylum and have a valid claim of asylum that you are able to make, thus passing the credible fear screen, you get to stay in the United States to process that claim.
And so this idea that people coming to the United States to apply for asylum are here illegally is obviated by longstanding law that, in fact, requires the United States to allow those people to stay here while that claim is being processed.
I just think it is important for everybody to understand what the law is and that both Democratic and Republican administrations have allowed people with valid claims of asylum to stay here and to process those claims.
As to the specifics of this bill the Senator is asking for unanimous consent on--again, I say this with great respect for my friend--I have no idea what the Senator is talking about. I literally have no concept of the problem that he just described because it doesn't exist. There are not hundreds of thousands of people coming to the United States using CBP One as their only form of identification. That is not true, and I would suggest that the Senator check with his staff.
In order to qualify for CBP One, you have to have a passport. In fact, you have to have another means of identification in order to qualify for the CBP One program.
CBP One papers are not an accepted form of documentation by TSA. Individuals who are showing up at the airports are showing up with a passport or another means of acceptable identification.
The Senator may have examples of exceptions, but there are certainly not hundreds of thousands of people coming to the United States with only CBP One documentation to present to TSA. It is just not true.
CBP One, in fact, is the way by which we assure that individuals who are coming to the United States are, in fact, who they say they are. Many of the programs, through which we use CBP One, include a vetting process--a vetting process, frankly, that, admittedly, often does not take place outside of CBP One. When people come to the border and claim asylum, if you don't have detention capability--as has been the case under both President Trump and President Biden--many of those people are allowed into the country to process their asylum claim without the kind of vetting that is done in the CBP One program.
I just don't recognize the problem that the Senator is trying to solve here today, and I do think it creates a pretty problematic misimpression that you have the idea that there are hundreds of thousands of people showing up at TSA and plopping down a CBP One document, coming to the United States with only that document.
In fact, the only way you get the CBP One document is to have shown and verified your proper documentation.
In addition, this amendment just feels kind of unworkable. And if there is a specific workaround to the existing system that requires documentation, proof of identity in order to get a CBP One document, then I am happy to work with the Senator on it, but this amendment or this bill makes the requirement operative on the airline. The airline is not actually the entity that checks documentation. Those are entities run by the Department of Homeland Security.
So I just don't see the same problem that the Senator does. In fact, I think the CBP One program is an incredibly important way to validate identity to be able to do important vetting. And through certain processes through which we use CBP One documentation, it is a way to control the number of presentations at the border.
Remember, through CBP One and the CHNV Program, we have been able to greatly reduce the number of people who are showing up in an unplanned way at the border, in particular Cubans, Haitians, and Nicaraguans.
I understand Republicans have a policy disagreement with the mechanism by which we use the CBP One Program to fly individuals into the country with a sponsor, with vetting, so they don't show up in an unplanned way at the border, but it is, in fact, greatly reducing the number of people who are stressing our resources at the southwest border.
So I will continue to defend the use of CBP One as a very legitimate way to make sure that we have an ability to vet individuals and we have an ability to relieve pressure on the southwest border.
I just see this bill as attempting to tackle a problem that I have not been able to exist--I am happy to talk to the Senator offline to see if there is a more limited problem that he has identified that we can perhaps discuss and work together on.
But my broader frustration is this: If the Senator would just vote yes on the motion to proceed tomorrow, we could work on this in the context of a bipartisan foundation. If the Senator is upset about the underlying parole program, well, the bipartisan border security bill-- negotiated by Senator Lankford, Senator McConnell, myself, Senator Sinema--it makes significant changes to that parole program. In fact, it eliminates for all intents and purposes the parole program used in between the ports of entry, the 236(a) program. It makes other substantial reforms to the parole programs that limit the use of parole to true humanitarian purposes. That was vigorously negotiated by Senator Lankford and Senator Graham and others.
I understand that the bipartisan bill is not perfect. It is not everything Senator Lee would want, not everything Senator Lankford would want, and not everything I would want. But it is a compromise. The vote tomorrow is just to begin debate, just to get on the bill so that we can see what amendments might be able to get to 60.
Maybe there is a more limited version of this--I would argue--badly crafted bill that could be added on to the bipartisan border bill, but we can't even have that debate, we can't even get to the bipartisan foundation because, almost to a person, Republican Senators are choosing--are choosing--to vote against this bipartisan bill, even considering the bipartisan bill.
Maybe this is not true for the Senator from Utah, but certainly others have been pretty clear about the fact that President Trump has decided that he wants no compromise, no changes in border policy before the election because he wants the border to be a mess. He thinks that is good politics for him. He wants Republicans to vote against everything--everything--in order to preserve this issue for political purposes.
I think we would be better off having a debate next week, getting onto the bipartisan border bill, which does have Republican support and has Democratic support--not all Democratic support because it is a real compromise. There are many of my Members who don't support the bipartisan border bill. But we could choose to get on this bill tomorrow, take the Senator's idea, vet it, work it out between the two parties, and have an old-fashioned Senate debate. But we are not going to do that because Republicans are going to vote almost to a person to reject even taking up the bipartisan border bill. Maybe not for every Republican Senator, but for many, that seems to be because President Trump wants to keep the border a mess for political purposes. And I regret that. I think the American people regret that.
I am looking forward to having a conversation with the Senator I have worked with on a lot of other issues, but this bill seems to attack a problem that I can't yet identify. For that reason, I would object.
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Mr. MURPHY. Madam President, I know my other colleagues are waiting to speak. Very quickly, I know terminology matters a lot to my colleague, so I want just to put a fine point on this.
Republicans may have an objection to the way in which the President uses his parole authority, but the President has always had broad parole authorities. And the individuals who are here under CBP One are not illegal. They have been granted the ability to be in the United States under the President's parole authority. You can have a policy objection to that, and the courts may opine on whether the President has the authority to use parole in the way that he is using it, but those individuals are not here illegally.
That is really important. Again, it is, I think, an unfortunate misimpression to present.
Second, there is a difference between people using CBP One as the legal means to enter the United States versus using CBP One as their documentation to get on an airplane.
It is true. Tens of thousands of people from those four countries have used CBP One as the mechanism to be lawfully in the United States. It is not true that they are not providing documentation in order to use CBP One and in order to board an airplane. They are using passports and other documentation for those two purposes. So those are two different issues.
Yes, tens of thousands of people use CBP One as the means to come into the United States legally. No, hundreds of thousands of people do not use CBP One as their identification mechanism to get on an airplane. I just think it is important to distinguish between the two.
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Mr. MURPHY. Madam President, I have a handful of unanimous consent requests to get out of the way.
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