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“BORDER SECURITY” mentioning the U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security was published in the in the Senate section section on pages S3280-S3284 on July 13.
The Department was built out of more than 20 agencies in 2002. Downsizing the Federal Government, a project aimed at lower taxes and boosting federal efficiency, argued the Department is burdened with "unneeded bureaucracy" which could be handled by other departments or standalone operations.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
BORDER SECURITY
Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I am on the floor today to talk about border security--a humanitarian, a national security, a community safety issue with direct connection to the drug epidemic we see in communities all around the country, including my home State of Ohio.
I am also here to talk about legislation I introduced today with Senator Jim Risch to address this crisis. So we are in the middle right now of what is the biggest border crisis in the history of our country if you measure it by the number of people who are coming to the border unlawfully and, as the Biden administration says, people who are encountering the Border Patrol.
The Biden administration claims that they have the border under control and that they are--and I am quoting--doing a good job. This chart, though, tells a really different story. It shows that as of May, which is the last month that we have records for, we had the highest number of border encounters on record. The second highest, by the way, was the month before: April. So you see this goes back to 2019. There was a surge here--144,000. Here, we have the inauguration of President Biden, and then we have had big increases--again, to the point that over the last couple of months, we have had record numbers of people who have come unlawfully to the border and been stopped by, apprehended by, the Border Patrol.
This includes 239,000 total encounters at the border in the month of May--165,000 of which were single, adult migrants. This does not include those who were not encountered--in other words, those who slipped past the Border Patrol. We haven't been able to find a precise number for these individuals.
The Border Patrol calls this group of people got-aways. But using a conservative estimate from the Border Patrol of 300,000 people who they think got away in the last fiscal year, you would then put the total number of unlawful entries at approximately 286,000 people in 1 month. If you annualize that, that would be 3.4 million people a year. Think about those numbers: almost 3\1/2\ million people a year coming to our border and attempting to gain entry unlawfully.
Today, not all of those who are apprehended are allowed to come into the United States, and that is because under so-called title 42, roughly half of those individuals who are being apprehended, who are being encountered, are turned back. If they live in Mexico, they are sent back across the border. If they live in a country--say Ecuador or Guatemala--they are sent back, flown back to their country of origin. But these are people who are being turned away because of title 42.
So what is title 42? It is a public health authority. It is an attempt by our government to limit migration in order to prevent the spread of communicable diseases--in this case, COVID-19. It allows the Customs and Border Protection officers and agents to tell unlawful migrants: You can't come to the United States for these public health reasons. It only applies, by the way, now to single adults; but, as I said earlier, that is the single biggest group. It comprises about 48 to 52 percent--about half--of the people who are coming up to the border.
So even with the use of title 42, which is acting to discourage people from coming to our border, we are experiencing these record levels. We are also experiencing these record levels in these hot summer months. Normally, when you get into the summertime where it gets really hot--look here at May, June, July, August--the number of people coming to the border goes down, not up. It is over 100 degrees in the desert and at the Rio Grande, at almost all of these border crossings along the U.S.-Mexican border. Yet we have more, not less.
There is anecdotal information that this is because people are realizing that the administration wants to end title 42. They have proposed to do that. That is now in the court system. But the cartels are spreading the message, which is: Now is the time to come because, before, you were turned away by title 42. Now, like everybody else, you can come into the United States and stay. And we will talk in a moment about what that means.
But I think that is probably true. Probably title 42 has something to do with it. But I think, also, it has to do with the fact that more and more people are realizing that if they do come to the border and don't get stopped by title 42, they will have a chance to come into the United States and live in the United States with their families, perhaps; if not, maybe bring in their families later. And everybody wants to come to America. We are a great country.
We have our challenges, as we talk about on the floor here all the time. But, still, we are a country with so many opportunities for people, and folks want to come. And I don't blame them. I don't blame them. But we want them to come legally.
And we currently have the most generous legal immigration system of any country in the world. About 900,000 people a year--almost a million people a year--come legally to the United States, most as legal immigrants, some as refugees. And so we encourage that, and we should.
In fact, I think we should bring more people in legally, particularly to fill some of the jobs that we need filled, the STEM disciplines we talk about a lot. We need people with the kind of training and background to help our economy grow. But we need people at every level of training. But we want them to come legally and through an orderly process that is more humane, that doesn't have all the issues--which we will talk about tonight--the humanitarian issues at the southern border.
In terms of title 42, we all hope that this public health emergency isn't necessary going forward because COVID-19 ends. But in the meantime, this border crisis means, to me, that we have to keep title 42 in place until we make some changes in policy. Otherwise, it will be not just a crisis. It will be totally overwhelming.
As the Border Patrol says to me, they will lose operational control of the border. Some would argue that has already happened because so many people are coming over at record numbers. Often, the Border Patrol is distracted by one group of migrants, and another group comes in. And I saw this when I was at the border in El Paso. And anybody who has been down at the border has seen this.
They are already in tough shape. But imagine if 48 percent of the people here who are now being turned away by title 42 are not going to be turned away and the number of other people who will come knowing that that avenue is now open to them. This will be overwhelming.
It is very difficult right now, with the laws and the way the laws are being implemented, to keep that from happening. That is why we need a change in policy. It doesn't have to happen here in Congress. I think we should change the laws and introduce legislation today to do that. But the administration itself could make these changes.
By the way, in the last administration, as you can see, the number of people coming across the border unlawfully and the number of encounters was very low. But the same was true in the Obama administration. After they had a surge of unaccompanied minors, they made changes in the law, and they reduced the number of people who were coming unlawfully to the border as well. It can be done, but there has to be the will do it.
I am the ranking Republican on the Senate committee that has oversight responsibility for the Department of Homeland Security. The Presiding Officer is also on that committee. This Department of Homeland Security is preparing, they tell us, for a huge increase in migrants after title 42 has ended. So although they want to end it, they also know that if they do end it, there is going to be a huge surge because they are actually preparing for that.
The way they are doing it is interesting. It is not so much keeping people from coming into the United States as expediting their flow into the United States. Among other things, instead of processing people at the border, their recommendation is go ahead and put people on buses or other forms of transportation and then do the processing later, perhaps on the buses or where they are going in the United States. So it is a way to move people through the process rather than come up with a way to discourage people from coming across the border illegally.
DHS has planned, and then will facilitate, travel throughout the country rather than figuring out how to keep people from coming in the first place by telling them: Come legally, but please don't come to our border illegally.
By the way, I think most Americans are very supportive of legal immigration. It is an important part of who we are. With very few exceptions of Native Americans, we all came from someplace else. All of us have proud stories of our immigrant forebearers--our parents, our grandparents, our great-grandparents. And it has enriched our country. It is part of the fabric of our Nation. It is what makes us special. But that is legal immigration. And it is not what we are talking about here.
Who bears the brunt of this crisis? Well, at the outset, of course, it is the Border Patrol. We have got to provide them with the personnel and resources they need to complete their mission, as difficult as it is.
When you go and meet with these people, the men and women of the Border Patrol, you come away just so proud of what they try to do every day. They are a combination of, you know, border agents trying to enforce the law, social workers trying to help people with their problems, healthcare workers trying to help when people get hurt. Unfortunately, as we have seen, a lot of people are getting hurt in this process. That journey north is a dangerous journey.
And with the cartels so involved and right there at the border, what happens in the desert, what happens on these trains, what happens in these trucks--we just saw this horrible incident of these migrants who were jammed into a semitruck, and more of them died, I think, than any other accident of that kind, incident of that kind, in our history. But this is inhumane, and this is part of what happens when you have these cartels involved in this process.
We also have got to provide the Border Patrol with the ability to help control things at the border by finishing the border fence and putting the technology with the fence that was always intended.
By the way, the technology tends not to be very partisan around here. Democrats and Republicans alike, I believe, mostly think we ought to have cameras. We ought to have sensors. We ought to know what is going on at the border. But when the order came down the first day of the Biden administration to stop the wall and to end what the Trump administration had started with Congress's approval and funding, they also said, Stop the technology.
So in the El Paso sector, as an example, the wall is about 80, 90 percent completed. Unfortunately, there are gaps in the wall where you literally have to have Border Patrol there 24 hours a day or people just come through it, which makes their job really hard. What they want to do is at least have the wall there to slow people down. And the technology there enables them to then go and deal with situations as they occur. But only 20 percent of the technology had been completed. So you have more wall than you have technology. And the wall is not that useful, frankly, without the technology, in my view. I think the technology is the key. But that is what is happening.
And, by the way, to the taxpayers listening tonight, which is pretty much all of us, we paid for that wall. We actually paid for the fencing to be put up. Congress appropriated the money. And then the administration stopped it. So you literally see the steel beams and the pieces of concrete for the wall lying on the ground. And as one Border Patrol agent told me when I was in one of the sectors--most recently I was in the Nogales sector where there is a huge gap--he said, this is really bad for morale. And our Border Patrol agents look at this stuff, and they say: We have already paid for this. Can't we just finish the wall and put these fences up, the gates up, to keep these openings from attracting the cartels and the drug smugglers and the people smugglers? But that is where we are. So that is one thing our legislation does, is to correct that problem and help stop this crisis.
It also says that title 42--we talked about earlier--won't be lifted until the COVID-19 emergency is over. Again, I think it ought to be lifted when we have policies in place that make sense. But a lot more is needed. The bill also mandates that the program the Biden administration ended, which said that as you come to ask for asylum, you should wait at the border--it is called the migrant protocols.
There was just an agreement with the President of Mexico and President Biden a couple of days ago about more funding for the border area--and that is good--to provide more humane living conditions. But this was working to tell people, if you want to come for asylum, go ahead and apply. And while you are waiting for asylum, you can remain in Mexico. And if you get asylum, you come across. If you don't, you go home. What happened is, a lot of people just went home.
The asylum process, which we will get into in a minute, is kind of a complicated issue. But in other ways, it is pretty simple, and it is the main reason for this, which is that people know if they come to the border and they claim asylum, which most people do, they have an immediate, what is called, credible fear interview. Sometimes, it is over the telephone now, partly because of COVID. And that is a very low bar. And so people say what their issue is back home where they feel persecuted, and then they come in. And once they are told to come in, then they are told: OK, you can go to wherever you are going in America--let's say Cincinnati, my hometown, or Columbus or Chicago or Denver, wherever it is--and you need to check in with the ICE office--that is the immigration office in the interior of the United States--within 90 days.
Some people do check in. Some people don't check in. But the point is, there is now a wait of somewhere between 6 to 8 years before your case is heard on asylum--6 to 8 years. Why? Because there are 1.5 million--someone told me today 1.6 million; let's say 1.5 million people, that is high enough--waiting in line. That is what the backlog is.
It just makes no sense to anybody, including, by the way, the Secretary of Homeland Security, whom I have talked to about this. And these long waits mean that you are there embedded in a community in America getting to know your community. You are joining your church. You are sending your kids to school. You are having children. You are part of the community. And then you are told after 6 to 8 years, by the way, your asylum application is being denied because you are an economic refugee, not an asylee. In other words, you haven't demonstrated a fear of persecution. You have come to this country, understandably, because there is great opportunity here. Again, we should be encouraging these people to come legally like so many other immigrants have over the years.
Only about 15 to 20 percent of those people who apply for asylum today are getting asylum. So think about it. If you are part of the 80 to 85 percent who are not going to get asylum, there is sometimes not much of an incentive to enter into this process and go through the hearings and so on.
The consequence if you don't go through the hearings is that you are then subject to removal. However, we are just not removing people today. So this past year, the latest numbers we have are that 59,000 people were deported, or removed, from America. About 66 percent of those people had a criminal background. But, remember, this is out of a couple hundred thousand people going through the process. So there is a very small chance that you will ever be removed or deported. Even though you went through the process, you were denied asylum. You stay in the United States. And, you know, the next administration could change that. This administration could change that. But right now, this asylum process, which was created to give lawful presence to people who were unable to be in their home country because of persecution, is not being used properly. It is being exploited by people who know that because of our system and our huge backlog, if they say that they are part of a group that is being persecuted they can come in. And even when they are denied asylum, they can stay. That is the way it is working.
What we have found is that folks who come here are almost entirely focused more on the economic side. There was a survey conducted by the Migration Policy Institute recently, which, by the way, is a pro-
migrant institution. It found that 90 percent of the Central Americans making the journey to our southern border are coming for what? For work. They are coming for work because they come from poor countries. They don't have a lot of opportunity in their country. I don't blame them. If I was a father living in Honduras and couldn't find a job or I was a subsistence farmer just barely making it and I had a few kids and I wanted them to have a better life, I would come, too.
But that is not what immigration is all about. It is a system where you come legally, yes. But if you come illegally, you have got to be told you have to go back and apply like everybody else. Otherwise, America would be overwhelmed. And it is being overwhelmed and will be even more overwhelmed if title 42 is taken away. There are hundreds of millions of people--maybe billions of people--around the world who would love to come to this country. We take for granted our opportunities, our freedoms; but others don't.
So we have to have a system. We have to have some sort of a border. And, really, that is the question that is before us today in this body: Are we going to have a system that makes sense or one where, again, you have a million and a half people who are waiting to have their hearing. When they have their hearing on asylum and they are denied, they still aren't removed; so they can stay. And, again, meanwhile, they have family and kids and connections to the community. It is really not fair to them. A much better system would be to say, OK, apply for asylum in your country, or if you don't feel comfortable there, apply from a third country. Then you will know, yes or no, before you come up to the border, don't make that dangerous journey north. Don't put yourself in the clutches of these coyotes, these human smugglers, these traffickers, who are heartless. What they are doing is they are going down to Central America or Latin America or really all over the world. People are coming from hundreds of countries now. And they are saying, you know, give me money. Give me 10,000 bucks, and I will get you to the border, and you can just walk across.
People are signing up--sometimes with their life savings. And sometimes as, again, we talked about earlier, there are assaults along the way. There are all kinds of horrible stories of how women, particularly, are mistreated on the way up. It is a dangerous and inhumane process.
At the end of the day, our system is pulling these people to the border. The administration is now implementing a new asylum rule recently to try to deal with this problem because they realize it is just not working. However, the new system that they are putting in place isn't working either, and there is a reason for that. Their theory is we should adjudicate the cases at the border. I agree with that. I would rather adjudicate them outside the border in the country of origin or a third country, but have the adjudication be right at the border; make the decision right there, yes or no. Let people know.
The problem is what they are doing right now is they are putting asylum officers at the border, making a decision, adjudicating as people come across. And if it is a no, people are not being sent home. But rather, people are being told if it is a no, you can appeal it to the regular system, so get back in line with the 1.5 million people.
What we are learning is that, of course, people are smart. They are talking to the asylum officer. They are getting a yes or no. If they are getting a yes, that is great; they are getting in. That is a small percentage. If they are getting a no, they say, That is fine, I am going to appeal it to the regular system.
It really isn't an answer to the problem. If you want an answer to the problem, what you would have is processing centers along the border. It would be expensive because there are so many people coming over now, so many people applying for asylum. But have a process where, quickly, you can adjudicate these cases. In the meantime, you would not have people be released into the interior but have them stay there to find out what the outcome of the case is.
This pull system is bad for everybody except the smugglers. They are the ones who profit. They are the ones who are going to folks in places like Honduras or Ecuador or, again, far-flung places--places in Eastern Europe, places in Asia--and telling people, Give me a bunch of money, and I will get you into the United States.
We recently had this tragedy I mentioned in San Antonio. Fifty-three migrants were left for dead in the Texas heat in the back of a tractor-
trailer. They were just abandoned by their smuggler. They left them locked inside of this tractor-trailer. It is not the first time this has happened. But as I said earlier, 53 is probably the worst smuggling tragedy in our history.
I went to Latin America last year. I met with the Presidents of Mexico and Guatemala, Ecuador, and Colombia. It was interesting. They all said the same thing. You would be surprised to hear what they said. People think they must enjoy this process because so many of their citizens are going to America, they can then send money back to their family and it must be good for everybody. It is not.
They are losing some of the best and brightest in their country, and these people are going through, again, this arduous process to get to the border, and the inhumanity of that troubles these Presidents. They all told me basically the same thing, which is: Why don't you guys fix your laws and stop this pull factor?
We talk about the push factor in poor countries. I mentioned Honduras earlier. That is certainly true. By the way, we spent over the last 5 years about $3.6 billion of American taxpayer money to help in the economics of the so-called Northern Triangle in the Central American countries.
I am for spending money in these countries to try to help with their economy, but with the corruption, with all the issues they have, it is very difficult to imagine those countries in a short period of time having any kind of economic opportunity that equals what we have right here in this country, so there is going to continue to be that push. We should try to alleviate it. It will continue to happen.
But the pull, this policy we have is just pulling people north. What they said to me, these Presidents of these countries, was: You have a legal immigration system where people know they can just get into your country. Why don't you change that? Why don't you change that?
Again, it is not just people from Mexico and Central America. It is people from all over the world.
By the way, for some of these people, the Border Patrol is increasingly concerned because they come from countries where a lot of people want to do us harm. So, increasingly, we are seeing people coming to our country who are, as an example, on the terror watch list.
Back in 2017, 2 people; 6 people in 2018; none in 2019; 2020, there were 3; 15 in 2021. This fiscal year, 2022, there are already 50 individuals on the terror watch list. Why? They know if they come to the U.S. border, they can get across. I am sure this number is higher--
that is what we know--because, again, a lot of people are so-called got aways. Let's say 20 percent.
Who are these people? Well, some of them are probably pretty smart individuals who know how to get away from Border Patrol, do the distraction and sneak in. That worries me and it worries me because we are allowing people to come into our country who we would not otherwise allow.
We have seen this increase of people coming into the country who are on the terror watch list, but we have also seen, again, a lot of people coming in who we just don't know anything about because they don't count them at the Border Patrol. We have seen more caravans and we see more migrants are on the way. Why? I think it is because of this general pull factor. The fact is people know, if they come here, they know they are going to be able to get in.
I think it is also because of title 42 because the smugglers are using that--cartels are spreading the word: Title 42 is on its way out.
Read about it in the front page of your paper because that is where it is because this administration wants to end it, so they are saying now you can go to the border and you will be let in under the policies like the asylum policy and the single adults--48 percent of whom roughly have been turned away. Forty-eight percent of the total by title 42 would no longer be turned away. I think that is why we are seeing this. It is giving the coyotes, traffickers, and smugglers opportunity to make lots of money.
By the way, that is hurting all these countries, too. If you talk to the Presidents of these countries, including President Obrador of Mexico, what he will tell you is the cartels are taking over more and more of his country because they are making more and more money because of this--and, significantly, because of the drug issue we are going to talk about in a second. We know that the cartels are involved in human trafficking. We know they are involved in drug smuggling. We know they are involved in smuggling people.
I was with the Border Patrol in El Paso last year. We were out at night. We saw a group of migrants coming, and the Border Patrol was going to that location to stop them and question them. Meanwhile, we heard on the radio the drug smugglers had come across. They could see it. They knew it. They could tell by the backpacks they were wearing, I guess, and clothes they were wearing--dark clothes, young men--that they were smuggling. But they couldn't do anything about it because Border Patrol were processing the migrants who had come in.
So I am watching the migrants coming in--actually talking to some of them and Border Patrol--and meanwhile, on the radio, they are saying, You have to go to this other sector, this other area to stop these drug smugglers. We can't; we are distracted. The processing takes some time.
The other big issue, in addition to the unlawful entry into the United States--smuggling, all the inhumanity that surrounds that--is this drug issue. I have spent a lot of time working on this issue on the prevention side--helping on treatment and recovery options and doing more on prevention. We were making some progress until, unfortunately, we were hit with this pandemic. And during that time and since, drug use has gone up again. But we were making progress, in part, because we were helping on the demand side of the equation.
But also on the supply side, we were keeping some of these drugs out of the country. We did it primarily through stopping the deadliest of all, which is the fentanyl--which is a synthetic opioid--from coming in through the U.S. mail system. We passed a law called the STOP Act. It kept China from poisoning our communities by sending this stuff through the mail system, which was happening. That was the primary way it was coming in.
What has happened? During the pandemic--kind of coincidental with the pandemic--we had more people isolated, more people losing their jobs, more people turning to drugs. You had Mexico begin to take the central role in terms of fentanyl. A lot of it is precursors from China, so China sends the precursors to Mexico, but Mexico is now making the fentanyl--often into pills--Xanax or Adderall or Percocet.
If you buy any drugs on the street, know that those drugs could kill you. Don't be fooled. There are so many counterfeit drugs out there now. That is one of the preferred ways that the Mexican cartels are bringing these drugs in.
Again, fentanyl is, of course, the deadliest of the drugs. About two thirds of the overdose deaths in America are currently because of fentanyl. We now have a record level of overdose deaths every year in America, over 100,000 last year. There is no reason to believe that it will be less than that this year based on early data we have, sadly. In my home State of Ohio, it is the No. 1 killer by far.
Look at what has happened with the seizures of fentanyl. This is the fentanyl that has been seized. Here are projections for the rest of this year if they continue as they are--obviously, record levels. When you have this huge surge of fentanyl coming in, what happens is you have a lower cost in the drug--supply and demand, right? So there is a huge supply, and the demand for these drugs continues.
On the streets of Columbus or Cleveland or Cincinnati or Dayton or your town, wherever it is, it is likely that this cheap but really deadly fentanyl is something that people are being exposed to. Some people are falling prey to it, again, often thinking they are taking another drug.
There are a couple of students at Ohio State University who overdosed and died just before I gave a talk there at graduation earlier this spring. They were taking what they thought were study drugs, apparently: Adderall. A third student lived, but was in critical condition. This is the deadliest of drugs.
In 2021, we seized double the fentanyl from the previous year, four times from the year before that. Again, so far this year, we are on track to match the most fentanyl seized ever. In May--just 1 month, in May--there was enough fentanyl seized at the border to kill 200 million Americans, more than half of our population in 1 month. People say: Well, gosh, why are you so worried about the border? Let people come across--open border--whatever.
Here is the consequence.
Again, it is hurting Mexico, too, and it is hurting lots of other countries. But in terms of Mexico, this gives the cartels enormous power and money. And, yes, ultimately, I think the most important thing to do is to reduce demand. I do.
Again, we are making progress now. We had about a 20-percent reduction in 2018. We need to get back to that. This Congress took the lead on much of this.
But we also have to deal with the supply side and stop this enormous surge of drugs that is coming over and poisoning our communities. That is part of what is happening on the border. A few months ago, I was in Nogales, south of Tucson, to ride with the Border Patrol and go to the port of entry there. They are doing a very good job with what they have, but they need better equipment.
This is one thing Congress can do. They need help. They need more resources. They need better technology. They need to be able to scan cars and trucks that are coming in, particularly for these drugs that we talked about. A relatively small package of fentanyl this size can kill 1,000 people. A few specks could kill you. It is easy to hide it in a car or a truck.
We now know that less than 2 percent of passenger vehicles and less than 20 percent of commercial vehicles coming into the United States are scanned for these illegal drugs like fentanyl. This is just unacceptable. Congress has appropriated more funding for this. That is good. Let's get it moving. We should be scanning all vehicles, in my view. A smuggler with multiple pounds of fentanyl concealed in a hidden compartment might be worth hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars. They know they have a good chance of getting across without a search. They take the risk.
It is not just a gap in our security; it is a gaping hole. And, again, it leads to this flood of cheap fentanyl and other dangerous drugs. The southern border has faced the worst unlawful crisis that we have ever had, going back to the first chart. This tells the story, in red.
The men and women of the Customs and Border Protection whom I have met over the years are doing the best they can. They are doing their best at the ports of entry. They are doing their best as Border Patrol between the ports of entry, but they need help. That is what legislation does. It provides them with the help they need to be able to respond to this crisis.
We welcome legal immigration. We always should. They enrich our country. And we are a nation of immigrants, and we are proud of that. But we are also a nation of laws, and we are also a nation that cares about the inhumanity of the current system and the flood of cheap, deadly drugs coming through our border.
I urge the Biden administration to change course, to fix this broken system, to follow the law, including the law on detaining people, to reform the asylum process so it stops acting like a pull factor and is used for what it is intended for, to truly help those who are seeking asylum for the right reasons, to stop these policies that send a green light to the smugglers, to the cartels, to the drug traffickers, and that is causing so much human suffering along our southern border.
I urge the administration to act. In the meantime, again, we are introducing legislation. I urge my colleagues to help us with that. There is no reason that we can't work in a bipartisan way to deal with what everybody has to acknowledge is a huge crisis at our southern border.
I yield the floor.
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