Border Security
Floor Speech
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Mr. McCONNELL. Yesterday, Secretary Mayorkas testified the ``border is secure and the border is not open.''
Yet the situation on our southern border has required FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, to be called in. So either this is the first time FEMA has been deployed just to admire a situation that is going smoothly or the administration is not being straight with the American people.
Here are the facts. Customs and Border Protection recorded more than 100,000 migrant encounters in February--100,000. That was up 28 percent from January. DHS projects the March totals will keep 2021 on pace for the most border encounters in 20 years. Unaccompanied child arrivals have jumped 63 percent, on pace to shatter all-time records.
This would be a humanitarian crisis under any circumstances, but it is even worse during a global pandemic. These thousands of unaccompanied kids are being housed in three-high bunk beds in facilities now stuffed at more than triple capacity. During the pandemic that is keeping kids out of schools and small businesses from fully reopening, these failing policies have us crowding these kids together down at the border.
And, don't forget, the Biden administration policy directs CBP to release migrants on U.S. soil while they await asylum rulings. That is without--without--a negative COVID test. So good luck to the communities on the border.
This isn't just a health and humanitarian crisis, though. It is a security crisis as well. New reporting suggests that multiple people arrested at the border in recent months have been matched to names on the FBI's terrorist watch list.
Democrats claim this overall influx is not because of their new administration. Well, that would be news to the migrants themselves. Some of these people have told reporters it was Democrats' rhetoric that led them to come. Some have shown up wearing T-shirts with the Biden campaign's logo on them.
Administration officials keep sending mixed messages, repeating phrases from the White House podium like ``now is not the time to come.'' So there will be an appropriate time sometime later for people to enter our country illegally?
Speaking of mixed signals, this week, the House is voting on immigration bills. Are they leaping into action to repair the crisis? No, that is not what they have in mind. They are taking up an amnesty plan that would create a special new pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants working in certain industries.
So to summarize, the administration can't admit they have caused the crisis. They have yet to address the crisis. And House Democrats are backing policies that would only exacerbate the wrong incentive.
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