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Floor Speech

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Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, we both know that there are people in Washington who like to muddy the water to make it look deep. They don't want the American people to know the truth because, for these people to which I am referring, truth is a concept that does not interest them. Politics does.

Now, there has been a lot of controversy in and around the U.S. Senate for the last 2 weeks. If we are honest with ourselves, we have to admit that the Senate has been functioning like a broken arm with the bone sticking out. That is not anybody's fault, in my judgment, on my side of the aisle. It is certainly not the majority leader's fault.

So I want to try to refocus us on the issue. I don't really want to talk about the ballroom or the Anti-Weaponization Fund or any of the myriad of issues that my Democratic friends tried to inject into our discussion.

I want to talk about the issue, and the issue is this: Are we going to fund the Department of Homeland Security, or are we not?

Part of DHS, as we call it, as you know, Mr. President, is funded. But a very important part is not: the Border Patrol and ICE. We are paying them as best we can out of another pool of funds that is about to run out of money. Why are they not funded? Because my Democratic colleagues have refused.

At one point my Democratic friends agreed to fund Border Patrol and ICE. And then they changed their minds, and they said: No, we are not going to do it, which forced Republicans, if we want to see that portion of DHS funded, to proceed under what we call reconciliation where we don't need Democratic votes. I regret that that is the case, but we are doing what we have to do.

Why are we having this controversy? I don't get it completely. I don't. Unless you are industrial-strength stupid, you know that illegal immigration is illegal. And that is what our Border Patrol agents and ICE agents do--they enforce the law. And we have a problem with respect to immigration.

During the Biden administration, with the encouragement of some--not all, but with the encouragement of some but not all Democrats, open the borders. They said: Come on in. And about 8 to 12 million--some say 20 million--people did.

Some of them were good people and are good people. They are still breaking the law. Some of them who are here are not. They are rapists and they are murderers and they are sex traffickers and they are drug dealers and they are pedophiles.

We don't know which is which. We don't know where they are. And it falls to the responsibility of the Department of Homeland Security, in part through Border Patrol and ICE, to find out.

Now, why did this happen? Why do we now need Border Patrol and ICE more than ever? You know, I have thought about that a lot. It could be just pure, plain vanilla incompetence. It could be that the people that President Biden put in charge of immigration and securing the border were not qualified to play dead in a western movie. It also could be, and could have been, intentional.

I think some of my Democratic friends--not all of them. I am talking the Platner wing of the Democratic Party, the Mayor Mamdani wing of the Democratic Party, the Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez wing of the Democratic Party, the wing of the Democratic Party that is in control-- some of them believe that vetting people at the border is racist. They do.

It doesn't matter that every other country in the world vets people at their border. These members of the--whatever you want to call it-- progressive wing, loon wing, woketopus wing--whatever you want to call that wing of the Democratic Party, they think that vetting people at the border is racist.

There are other folks who support open borders for political reasons. I think they honestly think that if they admit a bunch of people into America in violation of the immigration laws or not, that it is a rich source of potential voters. We are not supposed to say that, but I really do believe that. Not much happens around here that doesn't have a political bent to it.

But regardless, we have a problem, and that is what we have to deal with. And that is what we are going to be voting on, I hope, in the next couple of days.

If you disagree with the law--this is America. You are entitled to disagree with it. I get it. Try to change it. Go change it. But you can't just ignore our immigration laws. They are not some second-tier statutes that you can ignore without consequence, that you can ignore when you think it is convenient. They are the law, and we have to enforce the law.

And more to the point, we have to clean up the mess that President Biden and some of my Democratic colleagues in the Platner wing, the Ocasio-Cortez wing, the Mamdani wing--whatever you want to call those Democrats who created it.

And more even to that point, we have to have Border Patrol and ICE officers to do it. We have to.

The other point I would make: We see the pushback by this wing of my Democratic friends' party. We see what is going on in New Jersey. It is despicable.

Look, you have the right to protest. That is as American as the NFL or baseball. You have the right to protest. You don't have the right to protest violently. And what we have seen at the Delaney Hall detention center: We have seen ICE officers and some Border Patrol officers; we have seen the protestors cursing at them and spitting at them and threatening their families and hitting them and scratching them and biting them and blocking ingress and egress in and out of the detention center. They are breaking the law, and they have been arrested.

I think the Border Patrol and ICE and the State law enforcement officials in New Jersey have shown a lot of restraint.

But what the protestors did--not all of them--was illegal. It was illegal. You can't hit a cop just because you don't like him.

And here is a free tip. I know you know this, Mr. President. Most Border Patrol agents, most ICE agents, most cops, they will leave you alone unless you do illegal stuff. But if you do illegal stuff, they are going to enforce the law.

So let me end as I began. We need to vote to fund Border Patrol and ICE. These men and women are running out of money. I am sorry that my Democratic colleagues have taken the position that they want to defund ICE. They have every right to believe that. I am sorry that they have taken the position they want to defund the Border Patrol. My Democratic friends have every right to believe that, but they are wrong.

I have the right to my opinion. And if they don't want to fund them, they need to go change the immigration laws. Until then, we have got to enforce them, and we are going to have the chance here in the next couple days.

And all we are going to be voting on--you are going to see all kinds of amendments and talking about everything in the world. All we will be voting on: Do we or do we not want to fund Border Patrol and ICE? Do we or do we not want to enforce America's immigration laws in accordance with due process and the rule of law? And that is the issue that is going to be before us.

And I am ready to saddle up and ride. I am ready to get to it. I am tired of all the rhetoric and the tangential issues. I am tired of all that. Let's get after it. Let's do the right thing.

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