National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2020--Motion to

Floor Speech

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Mr. PERDUE. Mr. President, I rise to do something I rarely do. To start, I want to talk about a very special Georgian and a good friend of mine--a man by the name of Billy Payne. Billy is a husband, a father, a grandfather, a great Georgian, and, yes, a great American. Recently, he was one of five individuals to be inducted into the 2019 World Golf Hall of Fame. It is quite an honor. Billy Payne is a riveting storyteller, a creative thinker, and an effective leader.

Golf Magazine once wrote: ``Wherever he goes, Payne is the most interesting person in the room.''

Billy was born in Athens, GA, and he went on to play football for his hometown team, the Georgia Bulldogs. He earned a law degree from the University of Georgia and went on to open a small practice in Atlanta.

After helping to raise money for a new sanctuary at their church, Billy and Martha, his wife, were inspired and started looking for ways to make a difference in their community. The day after the new sanctuary was dedicated, Billy Payne came home from work and said to Martha: I've got it--we're going to bring the Olympics to Atlanta. Billy was undaunted by the magnitude of this decision.

He didn't have many connections at the time, but he called up city and State officials and formed a team to make a bid to host the 1996 Olympic Games. Billy spent the next 3\1/2\ years personally traveling to 110 countries to convince Olympic officials to bring the games to the city of Atlanta. On September 18, 1990, Atlanta won the bid for the 1996 Olympics all because of Billy Payne's leadership and his vision for the city.

The 1996 Olympics put Atlanta on the world map. It transformed the city and allowed us to build infrastructure that later helped Georgia to become the No. 1 State in the country in which to do business. To this very day, my alma mater, Georgia Tech, actually uses dormitories that were built to house the athletes in the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta.

After serving as President and CEO of the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games, Billy was invited to join Augusta National. In a very short period of time--actually, in 2006--he was selected to be the club's chairman, which is a role he served in for 11 years. Billy oversaw the Masters Tournament and turned it into a global brand with worldwide reach. When Billy took over at Augusta National, the club's membership was all male. Under his leadership, Augusta National broke the gender barrier and allowed women to join the club for the very first time.

He also started two major amateur events--the Latin America Amateur and the Asia-Pacific Amateur. The winners of these tournaments are invited to play in the Masters each year. As a result, young people from all over the world now have a chance to actually compete in the Masters every year.

In 2014, Billy launched the Drive, Chip & Putt Championship--a junior golf competition that gives 7- to 15-year-olds the opportunity to develop their golf skills, to compete with their peers, and to earn the opportunity to actually play and compete at the Augusta National on the Sunday before the Masters. I have seen this. It is an exciting event to see these young people compete at the very home of the Masters.

Probably the greatest achievement, however, for amateur golf may have been this year's first Augusta National Women's Amateur tournament. When the final pair walked onto the 18th green arm in arm--one the winner, the other the runner-up, two women, arm in arm, cheering each other--it was a highlight in amateur sports. In my opinion, Bobby Jones, who is the hero of amateur sports in America, was in Heaven and probably stood up and cheered.

Finally, Billy had a hand in naming his alma mater's football field, Sanford Stadium, after his coach at the University of Georgia, Vince Dooley. Last month, the university's athletic board approved the name change, and now the field is officially known as Dooley Field at Sanford Stadium.

I would be remiss if I didn't say ``Go Dogs'' this morning.

Clearly, Billy Payne's impact on Georgia and the entire country is hard to measure, but I want to tell you a story that really tells the true heart of this leader from our State.

After he announced his retirement from being the chairman of Augusta National, he was at a private dinner and was asked by no less than Bret Baier what he was going to miss the most. Without hesitation, Billy said, ``The people.'' Well, those of us at the table thought he might have been talking about the members, but he wasn't. He was talking about the employees at Augusta National. Its employees have been there for their entire careers, and they adore this man because he loves them. He treated them right, and he built their careers there.

His tenacious spirit, his love for humankind, and his steadfast leadership serve as an inspiration to us all. I thank Billy Payne for his lifetime of service to the State of Georgia and to the United States, and I congratulate him, his wife, and their kids on this induction into the World Golf Hall of Fame. Border Security

Mr. President, on another topic, there is a growing crisis at our southern border, and we are told, next week, we are actually going to vote on an appropriations package for humanitarian aid at the southern border.

Recently, I and a colleague of mine, Senator Steve Daines of Montana, traveled down to the McAllen sector of the border in Texas. We went out on patrol overnight with the Customs and Border Patrol agents--we were out all night with them--and then went on patrol in the early morning hours just as dawn broke on the river. We saw firsthand that we don't have just an illegal immigration problem--we have a national security crisis right there at our southern border.

My biggest takeaway was that the drug trafficking down there has now risen to being a full-blown crisis. Between fiscal year 1997 and fiscal year 2018, the CBP saw a 22-percent increase in heroin, a 38-percent increase in meth, and a 73-percent increase in fentanyl seizures. In that year alone, fiscal year 2018, enough fentanyl was brought into the country illegally to kill every woman, man, and child in America. The Border Patrol agents we spoke to estimated that they are only able to interdict between 7 and 10 percent, however, of the drugs that actually cross the border in the McAllen sector. That is a crisis. If for no other reason, we have a crisis.

In addition, the amount of human trafficking we are seeing at the border is unprecedented. Last month alone, 144,000 individuals were apprehended at our southern border. This is the highest number of apprehensions in over 13 years.

In just the first 8 months of the fiscal year, 411,000 unaccompanied children and family units were apprehended at our southern border, including 84,000 family units and 11,000 unaccompanied children, just last month--11,000 unaccompanied children. How does an unaccompanied child get all the way from Honduras or Guatemala to our border?

This is a conspiracy led by the cartels. I have seen it firsthand. We heard the gunfire across the river the night we were on patrol. It is real.

If this trend continues, 800,000 children and families could be apprehended at the southern border by the end of this fiscal year alone. To put that in perspective, we issue 1.1 million legal green cards a year that are a pathway to citizenship. This year alone, just the family units alone could be 800,000 people apprehended at the southern border. Clearly, our Border Patrol agents are overwhelmed.

When an unaccompanied child arrives at the border, they are cared for by Border Patrol agents until they can be placed in the care of the Department of Health and Human Services. However, the number of children arriving today greatly exceeds HHS's capacity to deal with them.

As of last week, 1,900 unaccompanied children were in CBP custody awaiting placement in HHS's care. But Health and Human Services had less than 700 beds in which to place them.

Now, according to the Department of Homeland Security, Border Patrol agents are spending more than half of their time caring for families and children, providing medical assistance, driving buses, and acting as food service workers instead of performing law enforcement duties.

Pulling Border Patrol agents away from their law enforcement duties only exacerbates the crisis at the border. We saw that firsthand on our overnight patrols.

The Acting Commissioner of CBP said recently: ``We are in a full- blown emergency, and I cannot say this any stronger: the system is broken.''

On May 1, the Trump administration requested $4.5 billion in funds to help address the growing crisis at the border. At the time, we were debating disaster relief for my home State of Georgia and a dozen other States across the country.

On May 23, President Trump broke the logjam and agreed to separate border humanitarian aid from the disaster relief question and it allowed us, then, within hours on this floor, to pass the disaster relief bill. Now we have to do the same thing for this humanitarian aid to the border.

Meanwhile, the humanitarian crisis at the southern border has only continued to escalate, and we have to do something about it right now.

This week, Health and Human Services and the Department of Homeland Security sent a letter to every Member of Congress. It said: ``Absent an emergency appropriation, we anticipate running out of funding as soon as later this month.''

The Department of Homeland Security has already started pulling resources away from critical missions in order to try and keep up with this surge of human traffic. Without additional funds by August, the Department of Homeland Security says they will have to redirect manpower and funding from TSA, FEMA, and the Coast Guard in order to address the crisis at the border.

The Acting Director of ICE just recently said: ``We are begging. We are asking Congress to please help us.''

This should not be a political issue. I am hoping that it will not be. This is about giving Federal agents the resources they need to care for children and families in their custody and respond to this crisis situation.

Even the New York Times editorial board said this: ``Congress, give Trump his border money.'' That is the New York Times, not a big fan of our President.

The Senate will vote on this emergency funding next week, and I hope it will receive bipartisan support. It absolutely should. Going forward, we have to address the underlying cause of this crisis, however.

Since 2014, the number of unaccompanied children and family units arriving at the southern border has skyrocketed because of loopholes in our asylum and immigration laws. Minors and family units can easily assert broad and unspecific asylum claims. Then, they are released into the United States while they await formal removal proceedings, which could be months or years down the road.

These loopholes, combined with programs like the DACA Program, have led to a staggering increase in the number of unaccompanied children and family units arriving at our border.

Oftentimes, these kids and families are exploited by cartels on their journey to the United States and are in dire need of human services by the time they get here. It is truly heartbreaking what some of these people go through. These cartels profit off the most vulnerable. They fuel the drug trade and endanger communities across our country-- indeed, the world, for that matter. We have to put the cartels out of business. We have to close these loopholes that encourage illegal immigration into our country.

Finally, we have to give the Border Patrol officers the tools they need to do their jobs and protect our country. This means more technology, more personnel, and more barriers.

In conclusion, I want to say thank you to the women and men who protect our border. Their job isn't easy, but I will say this today: The best--and I mean the very best--are in our military uniforms around the world and doing our business, they are our Border Patrol people, who are protecting our border every day and night on our southern border here in the United States. We appreciate what you all do. God bless you.

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