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Floor Speech

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Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, August border numbers came out on money, bringing the total number of encounters at our southern border, thus far, for fiscal year 2024 to more than 2 million--2,033,260 to be precise--the third highest total ever recorded, with another month still to go.

The highest total ever recorded was in fiscal year 2023. The second highest total ever recorded was in fiscal year 2022. And the fourth highest total ever recorded was in fiscal year 2021. In other words, President Biden and Vice President Harris have presided over 4 years of recordbreaking illegal immigration at our southern border.

The problem started right away. On the day he took office, President Biden began dismantling the border security policies of his predecessor, and illegal immigration began surging in response--no big surprise there.

For 3-plus years now, President Biden and Vice President Harris essentially just stood around and watched. They watched as recordbreaking numbers of individuals surged across the southern border. They watched as the Border Patrol and border cities struggled under the massive influx. They watched as encounters of individuals on the Terrorist Watchlist nearly quadrupled in fiscal year 2022, and then rose even higher the next year.

Vice President Harris was supposed to be President Biden's border czar. I would be hard-pressed to name anything she did to stop the influx. If she did take any action, it was certainly ineffective, based on the steady increases in border encounters.

I don't have to tell anyone what the problems are with the kind of unchecked illegal immigration that we have been seeing. As I said, U.S. Customs and Border Protection has been stretched thin for pretty much the entirety of the Biden-Harris administration.

Cities at the border and around the United States have struggled with the influx of migrants, and migrants themselves have suffered as they have undertaken the perilous journey to our southern border, spurred on by the Biden-Harris administration's open-border policies.

Worst of all, the Biden-Harris border crisis has left a gaping hole in our national security. The kind of unchecked illegal immigration we have been seeing is an invitation to dangerous individuals to enter our country.

I mentioned that the number of individuals on the Terrorist Watchlist encountered at the southern border has surged, and those are just individuals who were actually apprehended. We have no idea how many terrorists or other dangerous individuals have made their way across our southern border without being apprehended.

We are closing in on 2 million known ``got-aways'' in the Biden- Harris administration's watch. Those are individuals the Border Patrol saw but was unable to apprehend. How many of those were dangerous people who should not be entering our country?

U.S. Border Patrol Chief Jason Owens, in a March interview with CBS News, said the number of known ``got-aways'' is keeping him up at night. This is his quote:

This is a national security threat. Border security is a big piece of national security. And if we don't know who is coming into our country and we don't know what their intent is, that is a threat. And they're exploiting a vulnerability that's on our border right now.

That same month, FBI Director Christopher Wray told the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence:

We are seeing a wide array of very dangerous threats that emanate from the border.

I want to repeat that.

We are seeing a wide array of very dangerous threats that emanate from the border.

That is from the Director of the FBI.

The June arrest of eight men from Tajikistan with suspected ties to ISIS who had illegally entered the country, as well as the identification of over 400 migrants that used an ISIS-affiliated smuggling network to enter our country, are just two examples of the kind of threats that we face and the dangers of the chaos that President Biden and Vice President Harris have allowed to rage at our southern border.

In addition to threats from terrorists and other dangerous individuals, the chaos at our southern border has unquestionably facilitated illegal cross-border activity, including the smuggling of deadly drugs like fentanyl, which then make their way around our country.

My State of South Dakota is about as far from our southern border as you can get, but law enforcement officials consistently tell me that the illegal drugs that they are dealing with have entered the country across our southern border. In 2022, Minnehaha County Sheriff Mike Milstead estimated that 90 percent--90 percent--of the fentanyl and meth in our State comes from Mexico. That is 90 percent, Mr. President.

I could go on. There is a lot more to talk about when it comes to the Biden-Harris border crisis--from the mass amnesty the administration has offered to hundreds of thousands of individuals whose asylum cases have been closed without a decision to the placing of unaccompanied children with possibly dangerous guardians, something that Senator Grassley and Senator Lankford are currently working to rectify and prevent in the future.

But I will stop here. Four recordbreaking years of illegal immigration: the national security legacy of the Biden-Harris administration.

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