The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“Border Security (Executive Session)” mentioning the U.S. Dept of State was published in the Senate section on pages S4036-S4038 on June 10.
The State Department is responsibly for international relations with a budget of more than $50 billion. Tenure at the State Dept. is increasingly tenuous and it's seen as an extension of the President's will, ambitions and flaws.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
Border Security
Mr. LANKFORD. Madam President, I come to the floor today to give an update on what is happening on our southwest border. It seems a lot of the national media has stopped focusing on that area.
I talked to the people in Oklahoma and asked: What is going on on the southwest border? What has changed?
Interestingly enough, just 2 days ago, President Biden and his team released what is the current status of what they call the ``border challenge.'' They talked about it, and here is the update. This comes from the White House itself, their update. They stated this: There is improved processing of unaccompanied children. The administration successfully reduced the number of unaccompanied children in Customs and Border Protection custody.
The second thing they list is that the administration has reduced the average amount of time children are in Customs and Border Protection facilities.
The third thing they list is that the administration has reduced the number of unaccompanied children in the care of Health and Human Services.
Then they move on and say that they removed barriers to unifying children with parents and sponsors in the United States. And they go through and give the details of how much better they are at unifying parents and children here in the United States.
Interestingly enough, when you read through this and just look at the language, you think, gosh, the numbers are going significantly down--
until you slow down and ask the question. What they are really saying in this report is: We are moving people across the border faster than we used to. They don't spend as much time at the border as they used to. They are now in the interior of the country.
Why do I say that? Because the information came out, strikingly enough, the day after this was released, the update of what was happening on the border in May.
In March of this year, with the highest number of interdictions that we have had in 20 years--in March of this year--173,000-plus; only to be beaten in April by the highest in 20 years with 178,000-plus; only to be beaten, now we know, in May with 180,000-plus. The surge continues to accelerate while the administration puts out their notice saying: We are getting so much more efficient at moving people from the border into the interior of the country.
This is why President Giammattei of Guatemala spoke to the administration this week in a public setting, strikingly enough, saying: You are giving mixed signals to the people of Central America. For the Vice President to come to Guatemala and say ``Don't come; don't come'' but then for the administration to say ``But if you do come, we are a lot faster getting you into the country than we used to be,'' this is the mixed-signal problem. It is why coyotes continue to be able to move record numbers of people through Central America into the interior of the country
It is not just from Central America. We have had this year a more than 400 percent increase in migration from nations outside of the Northern Triangle in Mexico because the coyotes are learning--we know how to move people, and the world is seeing that if you want to be able to come to America illegally, now is the time to do it.
So if you go back to March, we had all these individuals who were coming from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. Now there is a 400-
percent increase of people from outside of those areas who are coming into those same trafficking networks moving into the United States.
We have now had this year 23,000, that we know of, individuals who, when they were brought across the border under the new Biden proposal to be more efficient at moving people across the border, that if the line was too long to be processed at the border, they would be released into the United States and told: Whatever city you go to, turn yourself in to ICE and start what is called a notice to appear process to be able to request asylum, literally. This has never happened under any administration. No administration has done this. If the line is too long at the border when you are crossing illegally and it backs up there to be able to check in with the Border Patrol or CBP, then they are released into the country. As we know of, by the end of March--we don't know the numbers yet for April and May, but by the end of March, 23,242 people had been just released and told ``Turn yourself in, whatever city you get to.''
Now, I have asked the question: How many people have actually turned themselves in? How many people have actually done that? The latest number that we have that have actually checked in is about 1,800 people. Quite frankly, I was surprised it was that high. That is almost 8 percent of the people who have actually turned themselves in when they arrived at the city, meaning 92 percent of the people who were released at the border, we have no idea where they are anywhere in the country--92 percent. This is not what Americans expected.
Worse still, I have asked the basic question: What is happening with ICE? Why should I ask that question about interior enforcement in the United States? Because the first week President Biden was in office, he announced a moratorium on any deportations, even deportations that a Federal court has ordered removed. He was going to do no deportations at all. He was going to stop for 100 days.
A Federal court actually interceded in that and responded: If a Federal court has ordered what is called a final order of removal, they have to be removed. The Biden administration responded with: OK, we will do that. We will remove people if there is a final order of removal.
So I asked the simple question: What has happened since then? Here is what has happened since then. The Biden administration has changed the policy for ICE into a policy we have never done as a country. If an individual is going to be removed by ICE now, they have to contact regional leadership and ask permission to be able to remove that person. Regional leadership will go through a whole set of the criteria established by the Biden administration, and if they don't qualify, they cannot be removed regardless of their status.
What has happened since then? Last month, there were only 3,000 people in the country removed--3,000. That is the lowest number we have had on our records. To give you an example of this, we have 6,000 ICE agents in the country yet only 3,000 deportations in the country in a month. We are on record to be at a number we have never experienced before as a country for deportations of any President because we are not enforcing the law.
Not only do we have record numbers coming across the border, we have a record low number of deportations that are happening. What do I mean by that? Well, we contacted the ICE Council, and we asked specifically: What does it mean when we learn that people are not being deported? Who is not being deported?
When I talked to ICE leadership 2 weeks ago, I asked very direct, specific questions: Are all criminal aliens being deported? Their answer back to me was, no, we are making a case-by-case decision on criminal aliens.
My next question: Are all sex offenders being deported? The answer was, no, we are making a case-by-case decision on sex offenders on whether they should be deported.
Let me give a few examples. These are direct examples that come from the ICE Council of things that have happened in the last month under the new Biden policy to not deport individuals.
First option. This person was in local custody pending charges for aggravated assault. The detainer was carried over from the previous administration, from the Trump administration. Once the Biden administration took leadership, the ICE detainer was removed. They ordered a reevaluation of the case and said that they have to be actually convicted of aggravated assault charges before you can put a detainer. Now, a detainer doesn't actually remove them. That is just a detainer to say: Don't release them if convicted. That detainer was removed.
Case No. 2. This person had been deported four times before--four times before. They have had convictions for evading arrest, domestic violence, and multiple DUIs. They also have a pending DUI charge right now again. ICE officers requested permission to place a detainer on this person, and they were instructed that they could not put a detainer on this person. Even though they had been deported four times--domestic violence conviction in the past, evading arrest in the past, and multiple DUIs--they were told they could not put a detainer on him.
Case No. 3. This is actually an ICE fugitive who has a court-ordered final order of removal. Remember, I mentioned earlier that a Federal court said you do have to deport these individuals? Well, guess what. That is actually not occurring. ICE officials made a request for someone who had an aggravated assault, and they were told that they could not do it unless they went through a lengthy, long process. They started through the process, and by the time all the paperwork was done, that person had already bonded out, and they are gone. They are at large.
Case No. 4. This individual had illegally entered the country. They had local charges for rape of a child. ICE officers were prohibited from placing a detainer on them, saying that they hadn't been convicted yet, so they couldn't even put a detainer pending their conviction to remove them.
Case No. 5. This person had already been deported before, had a conviction for a sex offense against a child and sexual battery. ICE officers requested permission to make an arrest on this individual, but ICE management denied the request based on the new Biden priorities. That person is on the street right now.
Case No. 6. This person has been deported twice already. There are pending charges right now. Although they had been deported before, they have pending charges on them right now for distribution of heroin, aggravated assault, endangerment of a child, and failure to stop or to respond to a command of police.
Here is what happened. A criminal informant advised police that this individual had arranged to sell him a quarter-pound of heroin. By the way, that is a lot. When the subject appeared at the designated location, the police attempted to arrest this individual, but instead the person, illegally present in the country, attempted to ram the police with his car. He almost hit a police officer who was standing outside of his vehicle. The person was arrested. The subject did have a quarter-pound of heroin in their possession. They admitted also to selling heroin just moments before, and they had a child and an adult in the back seat of the car during the heroin sale and when that person had rammed the police vehicle. ICE officers requested permission to place an ICE detainer on this individual, and ICE management denied that request--denied that request. Though they had been deported twice, though they had attempted to ram a police officer's vehicle, though they were currently in the act of selling a quarter pound of heroin, they said:
Police work is inherently dangerous. Officers know the risk. No detainer is warranted.
What are we doing? Three thousand people have been deported in our country in a month, and individuals literally selling heroin and attacking our police officers, ICE is not allowed to deport. Individuals in this country who are currently pending charges of sexual abuse of a child are not being deported, not even a detainer to be able to hold them.
Is this what America wanted? It is certainly not what the people of Oklahoma want. It certainly does not strengthen the morale of our ICE agents who currently cannot make an arrest or our Border Patrol and our Customs and Border Protection individuals who function more like hotel check-in staff at our border than they are law enforcement.
This is not creating a stable environment in America. It is unstable. This has got to stop.
This is not a radical request of the administration; it is a simple statement: Follow the law.
Article II of the Constitution, the President of the United States is the individual who is given the responsibility to enforce the law of the United States. The law is clear in all of these areas, and he can't just say: I have prosecutorial discretion. I am not going to deport sex offenders and people who try to ram their car into police officers and people with multiple DUIs. What in the world?
These are not possible cases. These are recent cases that are real cases happening in the country right now. And it is why our ICE agents are so incredibly frustrated because they want to enforce the law and protect our country. They have kids as well, and they don't want someone with multiple DUIs driving on the street.
This needs to be addressed by this administration--and stop just making brief statements in Guatemala, saying don't come but having doublespeak here at the border, saying but if you do, we will move you through quickly. And if you get into the country, we will not deport you, even for sexual battery.
Now, in the ``haven't I seen this movie before'' category, I noticed a couple other things this week that came up. There is a new leaked document that came out that was released by the press of tax documents that had been leaked out of the IRS that somehow miraculously got to individuals in the press who ran an extensive story about tax documents.
Now, we can all have our different perspectives on how people pay taxes and how much taxes they pay, but one thing should be clear for every person in this body; it is against the law to release tax documents. It is against the law to do that. But somehow, mysteriously, tax documents started getting released in the last couple of weeks.
This reminds me so much of a few years ago, when the IRS was weaponized for political purposes and Lois Lerner was actively shutting down conservative nonprofits, getting access to nonprofit status, but left-leaning nonprofits were expedited through. And we all expressed our frustration that the IRS was being politicized. The IRS, of all places that have all documents, should not be politicized. And now, suddenly, at the beginning of this administration, just as we saw in the Obama-Biden administration, now we see in the Biden-Harris administration the politicization of the IRS again.
Interestingly enough, in the President's budget that he released this week, he wants to give an additional authority to the IRS that has not been talked about much. He wants every bank transaction in America--
credit union or bank--of $600 or more to be sent to the IRS. So the IRS would have--every time you go to your bank or credit union, deposit or withdraw $600 or more, that transaction and all the details of it would have to be sent to the IRS not by you but by the bank or the credit union.
When I asked the IRS Commissioner about that earlier this week in my conversation with him, he said they literally do not have the capacity to handle that much information. They don't have the technology to do it. They don't have the manpower to do it.
But the Biden administration wants every bank transaction that you do of $600 or more of any type to be able to go to the IRS and to be kept there. Interestingly, that proposal comes out the same week that information comes out that the IRS is now suddenly leaking tax information to the press. I have seen that movie before.
I have seen the movie before on the Keystone Pipeline. That was news again this week. We saw that during the Obama-Biden administration as well, and now we are seeing it in the Biden-Harris administration; that suddenly pipelines are bad news.
Well, when the Colonial Pipeline went down a couple of days, the whole East Coast panicked because they couldn't get fuel when one pipeline went down. We shouldn't be talking about how to not build pipelines; we should be talking about how to build pipeline redundancy to make sure that if a pipeline goes down, we are not trapped, as Americans, with no fuel in the situation that we are in right now.
But in the middle of this, to be able to please the environmental left, the President of the United States shut down the Keystone Pipeline, and the company finally gave up and said: We are not going to invest any more money on something that we can't finish.
Now, will that change America's use of oil by one drop? No, it won't. America will use the exact same amount of oil that it used before. But what it will do is make it more expensive to be able to move oil from the northern part of the United States to the southern part of the United States to raise prices on all consumers.
We will still have a use of oil; it will just raise prices. And the oil that moves will now move on a train or on a truck, which uses more carbon, which is more dangerous than using a pipeline. I have seen this movie before.
In the middle of canceling out the Keystone Pipeline, the President lifted sanctions on a Russian pipeline, the Nord Stream 2, which will cut off the United States from selling natural gas to Western Europe because that was Western Europe's alternative. They can either buy natural gas from us or buy gas from Russia.
The Trump administration had put sanctions on that pipeline, and so the pipeline had stopped construction. President Biden lifted sanctions on that so now we won't sell American natural gas; now Western Europe will be dependent on Russian natural gas.
How does that help the stability of Europe? How does that help American jobs? How does that help our future? I have no idea.
In the ``I have seen this movie before,'' I was fascinated this week to be able to see President Zelensky of Ukraine, when he found out about this pipeline shift, which, by the way, dramatically affects Ukraine, when he read about it in the press because the State Department and the administration didn't notify him that the pipeline that skips Ukraine and cuts them off, our administration--the Biden administration--approved.
President Zelensky stated to the press he has reached out over and over to President Biden to get a meeting with him and can't get a meeting with him.
When I read that, I had to laugh. I sat in this seat during an impeachment proceeding on President Trump because he wouldn't give a meeting to President Zelensky. President Zelensky is screaming in the media: I am trying to get ahold of President Biden, and he won't meet with me, and he is benefiting Russia and cutting off Ukraine--and everybody just yawns.
It is quite remarkable to see the difference in how our media and how individuals treat everyone.
And in the category of ``I have never seen this movie before,'' let me give you one. Today, I had the opportunity to be able to meet with our Secretary of HHS, Xavier Becerra. We were talking about the budget that he has presented for HHS, which is enormous. In fact, the President's budget is larger than any budget any President has ever given--not even close--in the overspending. The deficit total in it is epic, almost $2 trillion in deficit just from the budget, not including everything else this year.
But in my conversation with Xavier Becerra, I asked him a simple question: I noticed in your budget proposal you have changed the term that I am not familiar with. You have added a term, and the term that you put in your budget is you refer to some people as a ``birthing person.'' I said: I have to tell you, I don't know that term ``birthing person.'' What does that mean?
And he said: Well, I think it describes itself, is what he said.
I said: What is that? Is that a mom?
And he said: Well, yes, that describes itself. It describes the function.
I thought, the function? That is a woman. That is a mom. That is not a birthing person.
My simple question was: It sounds like you are trying to be politically correct here to be able to appease someone, but do you think it might possibly be offensive to some women and some moms to not be referred to as a woman or as a mom but to be referred to as a
``birthing person'' instead?
And he just said: I will look into it.
Just when I think it can't get weirder around this town and the terms can't get stranger, that is a new one on me.
I look forward to next May, when I walk down the aisle at a Hallmark store to look for the ``Happy Birthing Person Day'' card that I can send to my mom. What an odd statement to make.
What a demeaning statement to make to moms, to refer to them as a
``birthing person.'' What is wrong with just calling a mom a mom? It is a pretty great term that Americans are most certainly used to. And if it is the intent of Xavier Becerra to retrain Americans to stop calling their mom a mom, to call them a birthing person, I hope that he loses that one big time.
With that, I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas.
