Endless Frontier Act-- continued

Floor Speech

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Mr. JOHNSON. But it still does not even come close to giving Members time to fully consider what we are voting on here. I don't even have a total score on this. I have been told it is approaching a quarter of a trillion dollars.

The history of this bill is on May 13, about 730 pages were reported out of committee. This wasn't exactly the bill that was voted out of committee, though. Somewhere, somehow, the chair modified at least one amendment that was not particularly recognizable to those that offered the amendment.

On 5/19, on September--or May 19, the bill grew to 1,445 pages, and just today we voted on an amendment, 900 pages. So now here we are at 11 o'clock. We come to the Chamber. For the first time, I see what the amendments are in the managers' package.

I am sorry. I don't know what these amendments are. I know what my amendment is. I don't know what the rest of these are. I haven't seen them. I don't even know how many pages this is. I just have a list. So you can claim this is regular order. You can claim this is a deliberative process, but it is far from it.

So I would just ask that the Senator modify her request; that the Senate stand in recess for 3 hours--only 3 hours--to allow us to review this package of amendments.

Would the Senator modify her request?

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Mr. JOHNSON. Mr. President, I mentioned earlier that there is no doubt this bill did go through more regular order than we have been used to over the last decade. But I think we also demonstrated that the massiveness of this bill, close to a quarter trillion dollars, over 2,300 pages, many of those pages dumped on us today, and now this managers' amendment package--we haven't seen it; a few Members have-- does not represent adequate regular order.

I also did not have much participation in the development of that managers' package. I realize that a couple of my amendments did get in there, certainly not my priority amendments. I will talk later about the one that actually got a vote. I only got one vote on one amendment, and that vote was to simply honor the contracts that we have outstanding, about $2 billion worth to build the additional 250 miles of wall to secure our border. But I will come back to that.

Right now I would like to talk about four of my--I probably had about a dozen amendments but four priority amendments that we tried to get in this managers' package. There was no consultation with me personally, maybe a little bit of back-and-forth with staff.

The first amendment really would have codified something we passed twice out of my committee when I was chair of the Homeland Security Committee. It was called the GOOD Act, Guidance Out of Darkness. President Trump issued an Executive order, which basically ordered the Agencies to publish the guidance that they were creating so that the American public would know what the regulations were expected of them, so they understood the rules of the road were--a good piece of transparency in government. It passed unanimously twice out of my committee. For some reason, President Biden on his first couple of days in office reversed that Executive order.

So now we have, literally, executive Agencies pulling down these websites so the American public doesn't even know what guidances they are expected to follow. So that would have been a very simple amendment. Again, it passed twice out of my committee unanimously. That didn't make it into the managers' package.

One amendment that I had also introduced--actually was voted on during the debate over the Iran Nuclear Agreement--simply stated that any new agreement with Iran that this administration enters into should be deemed a treaty. That is what should have happened in the Obama administration. When the JCPOA was just entered into as an executive agreement but literally was no better than the piece of paper it was written on because the next President could just do away with it, and that is exactly what happened.

So this is a very simple amendment. Quite honestly, this should pass 100 to 0. Every U.S. Senator should demand, when you have an agreement between two nations as significant as the JCPOA, or whatever this administration might enter into with Iran, it should be deemed a treaty, and it should come before this body for ratification by two- thirds of this body. That should have been included in this managers' amendment, but it wasn't.

One threat that this Nation faces--and this relates, I believe, directly to China because China, in their own military doctrine, does not recognize a high-altitude nuclear blast as a nuclear attack. A high-altitude nuclear blast, otherwise known as an EMP, could wipe out our electrical grid. And for as long as I have been serving here, administrations of both parties have not paid adequate attention to this.

So this amendment, vital to our national security, also should have been included in the managers' package, but it wasn't. Why not? This is perfectly suited to this piece of legislation. This is an important national security priority, and this was left out of the managers' packet.

I would like to have a little bit more time working on this legislation to insist that this at least gets an up-or-down vote because I pretty well assumed that this would be accepted by both sides and not objected to, but it wasn't. Again, EMP, or geomagnetic disturbance, could represent an existential threat to this Nation, but it was simply ignored. It wasn't included.

And then the final amendment that was a priority of mine was the SOFA Act. We are all fully aware of the fact that in this Nation, we have a crisis of overdoses--of things like heroin and fentanyl. It is plaguing all of our communities, large and small, every State. No Member of Congress is unaware of this. We have all heard the tragic stories from our constituents.

One of the problems with fentanyl is the way it is scheduled to be illegal. And the problem with that is there are analogs. You can change the molecular makeup of fentanyl very easily, and then all of a sudden it is not scheduled as being an illegal substance.

All this amendment would have done is codified what the DEA has been doing for a number of years, but the DEA regulation has run out

So one more time--this is completely bipartisan. There is no controversy to this amendment whatsoever--completely, directly related to this piece of legislation. It is trying to protect this Nation against China's malign actions. This amendment was left out of this package.

You might get some measure of sense of why I am not happy with the managers' package, why I think this body should take a little bit more time to deliberate; take a few more votes on amendments like this that, again, should be passed unanimously but were overlooked because, I guess, the only people really consulted, in terms of amendments, were those that they felt they could figure out how to get their vote.

And I was pretty solid from the standpoint that I didn't want to vote for a quarter of a trillion dollars to government Agencies that I don't think are going to spend that money particularly effectively.

I would like to talk about one amendment that I did get a vote on. Unfortunately, it was voted down on a largely party-line vote. The Senator from West Virginia--both Senators from West Virginia, but the one who does not caucus with us was the only Senator from the other side of the aisle that supported this piece of legislation.

When I introduced this amendment, I came down to the floor and I talked about there was a time--and that time wasn't very long ago--when border security was actually bipartisan. Securing our border, an imperative to national security, was a bipartisan goal.

Evidence of that was in 2006, the Senate passed a piece of legislation called the Secure Fence Act of 2006. What that piece of legislation would do--was supposed to do--was build 700 miles of double-layer fencing, 700 miles. Now, in the end, only 36 miles of double-layer fencing was built. The other 613 miles was built, but 299 miles of that was just a vehicle fencing. In other words, pedestrians can easily walk right through. Another 314 miles was a single-layer pedestrian fence that, unfortunately, pedestrians can almost hop over, but they can scale and defeat that fence very easily.

Now, again, proving the bipartisan nature of the Secure Fence Act of 2006, it passed the Senate overwhelmingly with a vote of 80 to 19. Twenty-six Democrats joined 54 Republicans in voting yes. In the House, the Secure Fence Act passed by a vote of 283 to 138, with 64 Democrats voting yes.

So, in total, the Secure Fence Act of 2006 passed Congress with a combined total vote of 363 votes for and 157 votes against. In other words, 70 percent of Members of Congress back then voted yes, and 90 Democrat ensured that it was bipartisan support.

By the way, notable Democrats who voted for it were the majority leader of this body today, the Senator from New York. President Obama voted for it. President Biden voted for it. Secretary of State Clinton voted for it. The chairman of Homeland Security, and then my ranking member when I was chairman, Senator Tom Carper, voted for it, Senator Feinstein, Senator Wyden. And Senator Sherrod Brown voted for it as a House Member back in 2006.

We need a fence. Walls work. I think we admitted that fact after January 6, when we put a double layer of 7- or 8-foot-high fencing, concertina-tipped wire, and left it up for way longer than it needed to be left up.

So here in Congress, we are happy to put up a fence, put up walls, as long as it is protecting us. I mean, it is about time that we build a wall to protect the rest of America.

Now, what my amendment did is it simply required the administration to complete construction on the part of the wall that has already been contracted. We build about 450 miles; 250 has been contracted. We are going to have to pay for it whether we build it or not, and that is all my amendment is. Don't waste American taxpayer money, which, if we don't pass my amendment, that is exactly what is going to happen.

I do want to take a little bit of time, seeing as we have a lot of time here tonight--and we intend to take that time tonight--I want to lay out the history of the current problem. So my first chart here is detailing unaccompanied minors that are apprehended at the southern border. And these minors are from Central America, from Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador.

Now, I want my colleagues to notice that in 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, we never had more than 4,431 unaccompanied children cross our border illegally and be apprehended. As a matter of fact, in 2007, there is less than 2,000 people. In 2008, 4,380; in 2009, 3,288; in 2010, 4,431; and then in 2011, 3,038. So we average under 4,000 unaccompanied children crossing the border illegally and being apprehended in those 5 years.

Then something happened. And what happened was the Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals memorandum. When President Obama got frustrated that the deliberative process wasn't delivering him the border security or the immigration reform that he wanted, he used his pen. And he did what I certainly did not believe was constitutional. As a matter of fact, a couple of years before that, he said he didn't have the constitutional authority to do this, but he did it anyway. It has been challenged in the courts ever since.

But the most significant thing about the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, other than its unconstitutionality, is what it sparked, what it was a catalyst for. You notice those who passed in June 2012 and, lo and behold--and it is not a coincidence--in 2012, all of a sudden that less than 4,000 annual average became 10,000. The following year, 2013, 20,805 unaccompanied children entered the country illegally and were apprehended. And 2014 was the crisis year. That is when President Obama even admitted that this was a humanitarian crisis. We had 51,726 unaccompanied children exploiting our immigration laws, our asylum laws, all because of DACA.

By the way, what happened in Central America with the passage of DACA was the coyotes--human traffickers, some of the most evil people on the planet--I will talk about that later. They talked about the fact that America changed their policy. Now, as an unaccompanied child, you can get into America. You get a piece of paper. It is called ``permiso,'' permission to enter the country. That is not what it was at all. It was a ``notice to appear.'' Do you know what? Coyotes lie. They lied to Central Americans. So vulnerable children put themselves in the hands of, again, some of the most evil people on the planet. That sparked that crisis.

Now, the Obama Administration reacted. I remember going down, when I became chairman of the committee, on a bipartisan trip to the border, down to McAllen, TX. At that point in time, Customs and Border Patrol were overwhelmed, but they did what Customs and Border Patrol often do. They rose to the challenge. They dealt with this humanitarian crisis as humanely as they possibly could. They built a facility. They put up chain-link fences to keep the children safe--the young ones from the older ones or from the adults. On a bipartisan basis, we sung Customs and Border Patrol's praises.

Fast forward to the crisis of 2018-2019, and, all of a sudden, that exact same facility, it was actually upgraded. It was better than it was. It was more humane. All of a sudden, my Democratic colleagues started calling that facility one that housed children in cages. What hypocrisy.

You can see through 2019, once the Obama Administration started detaining families together, they stemmed the tide. But that didn't last for long, as I will demonstrate on my next chart.

On a quick explanation of this chart, the gold bars are single adults. It has been an ongoing problem we are always going to have in some way, shape, or form--single adults coming to this country illegally through the southwestern border. What we never had in the past was this surge, this crisis level of illegal immigration by children and families.

By the way, some are real families; many are not. Many are families of one adult and one child. Sometimes they are a child who has been sold to them. In my committee, we heard testimony of a child being sold for $84. We heard of children being recycled to be used by multiple adults so they can come as a family and exploit our laws.

Let me explain how they exploit them. This chart starts in 2012 with the passage of DACA. Again, single adults are gold, red are unaccompanied children, blue are family units. You can see the humanitarian crisis in 2014. It doesn't look like much of a crisis compared to 2018 and our current crisis, which this administration is completely denying--completely denying.

We had Secretary Mayorkas in front of our committee 2 weeks ago. I can't tell you how surreal it was as he blamed the previous administration for the crisis he created. He talked about how it is getting better: It is improving because we are getting more efficient. We are getting more efficient at processing and dispersing.

That is not solving the problem.

Let me go back because what this chart does is it has the cause and effect. DACA is the catalyst of all of this. It sparked it all. It made citizens of Central America realize that the immigration system was broken and easily exploitable. You can see where President Obama declares the 2014 crisis a ``humanitarian crisis.''

Then President Obama instituted a family detention policy, a consequence. You couldn't just cross into America and get dispersed throughout the country, never to show up for your immigration hearing, move into the shadows, potentially be exploited by human traffickers and their agents here in America. And that actually helped stem the problem. It pretty well solved the problem until a court reinterpreted the Flores decision.

The Flores decision dates back many years, about one little girl who came to this country. It established standards--humanitarian standards--which I don't disagree with. America is a humane nation. We are a nation of immigrants, but it has to be a legal process. The Flores decision dealt with unaccompanied minors and made sure that they could always stay in CBP's, Customs Border Protection's, custody and ICE's custody for only so long before they had to be turned over to Health and Human Services to then find sponsors or parents. But there is a time limit on it.

What the Flores reinterpretation did--and I think incorrectly, as did President Obama's DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson, who completely disagreed with the decision--that court--that unelected court--pretty much out of plain cloth or whole cloth said: Oh, no, the Flores decision or agreement applies to accompanied children, as well. It didn't, but all of a sudden it did by court order.

That created some real problems for the Obama Administration. They had to choose: Do they continue to detain families as a deterrent, as a consequence to fix this problem, or do they separate them so they could detain the adult while they complied with the law under the court decision? Well, what they decided to do--and I can't fault them for this--is they kept the families together and they dispersed the all. That really instituted the process, the policy--the horrible policy of catch and release, almost open borders.

Now, it took a while for people to understand what was happening. It took a couple of years, but by the summer of 2019, citizens of Central America were well aware of how exploitable our laws were. And guess what. They exploited them.

I certainly learned from the experience of Michael Chertoff back in-- I believe it was--2008. It might have been an earlier year, when we had a surge of Brazilians coming into Mexico and then coming illegally into this country through the southern border. I don't have the exact numbers, but I think it is something like 30,000 in a short period of time. What Secretary Chertoff did at that point in time is he instituted a program called ``Texas Hold'Em.'' Basically, it was a consequence, to apprehend Brazilians and send them right back to Brazil.

Within a month, the flow of illegal Brazilians was cut by about 90 percent. Problem solved. There was a consequence. We didn't have catch and release of Brazilians like we now had, and we have again catch and release of Central Americans coming into this Country.

Based on that experience working with the senior Senator of Arizona, who was on my committee, we proposed something called ``Operation Safe Return.'' The basic premise of that program would be, once apprehended, we would quickly adjudicate that initial asylum claim to see whether there really was a valid, credible fear.

Understand, if adjudicated, most of the people coming into this country do not have a valid asylum claim. As generous as our asylum system is, coming here for economic reasons is not a valid asylum claim. That is the majority of why people come here. What became of Operation Safe Return, to a certain extent, is the Trump administration's policy of migrant protection program, also known as ``Return to Mexico''--a consequence.

Again, I called my program Operation Safe Return: Quickly adjudicate those who don't have a valid asylum claim and safely return them to Central America.

I would have been happy to expend funds to make sure there were centers to accept people so they could be accepted safely. The Trump administration, instead, instituted the migrant protection program, return to Mexico. I realize there are people who don't particularly like that program, but it worked. It is undeniable that it worked. They instituted it right here.

Mexico wasn't particularly cooperating. So President Trump threatened them with tariffs. All of a sudden it got Mexico's attention. Mexico started cooperating, and you can see how the numbers dropped precipitously. We basically stopped the flow of children and children being used to create family units, and we had the problem solved before COVID hit. This is how you solve the problem.

Unfortunately, during the 2020 election, every Democratic Presidential candidate vowed to stop deportations and also vowed to provide free healthcare.

I don't deny the push factor out of Central America. I don't deny the violence, the corruption. When I went down there on a bipartisan codel, I was surprised talking to the Presidents of Guatemala and Honduras. They talked about corruption and impunity.

I understand corruption. But what do you mean by impunity?

Well, impunity is pervasive in their society because of the drug cartels. Why do we have drug cartels down in Central America? It is because of America's insatiable demand for drugs. That is the root cause. The root cause of this problem, the push factor, isn't the violence. The root cause is our insatiable demand for drugs, which puts billions of dollars in the pockets of the other most evil people on the planet, the drug cartels, the drug traffickers.

By the way, what we did in our drug interdiction, relatively successfully, is we shut down the drug flow from Colombia up to the Caribbean into Florida, and we just redirected it into Central America and destroyed those nations because those drug cartels are untouchable--they are untouchable.

One story I heard is about a new police chief and first day on the job. He gets a DVD, and the DVD is of his wife and children going to church, going into school--a pretty powerful message: Don't mess with us. And they don't.

So that level of impunity from drug cartels becomes pervasive through society. Then you have the extortionists. If you are a cab driver, you had better pay the fee or they will shoot you and burn you in your cab. That is what impunity means. That level of violence is facilitated by our insatiable demand for drugs.

If you are going to fix that root cause, if you are going to solve the problem of violence in Central America, you have to actually fix the root cause, which is our insatiable demand for drugs. I wish we could. I wish it was easy to do. It is not. We want to stop illegal immigration so that we can fix the problem of the DACA kids and so we can establish a legal immigration system that works for all of us.

I mentioned my codel down to Central America. The Presidents of Central America tell me--they beg me: Please, fix your laws. This isn't good for our countries. We are losing our future. We need these people.

The vast majority, I would argue, are hard-working and are coming here to improve their lives. I can't blame them for that, but it has to be a legal process.

That is not working for Central America. It is going to further impoverish Central America. It is not an economic model that works.

It is certainly not good for migrants who come to this country to live in the shadows and who are still under the control of the drug cartels and human traffickers or are in gangs, especially the young men. The 15-, 16-, and 17-year-olds are used by the drug traffickers to traffic drugs. The sex trade is the other involuntary servitude.

This is not a good process. We need to solve the problem of illegal immigration and control our borders so we can have a functioning legal immigration system.

What happened? What caused this? Isn't it obvious?

You could see the increase in adults coming into this country illegally during the Presidential debates when the Democratic Presidential candidates were going: Hey, if I get elected President, no more deportations. I am going to give you free healthcare. We will take care of you.

That was a huge incentive, and they came.

Then I think it was the first day, maybe the second day--maybe he waited that long--when President Biden dismantled the successful migrant protection program, ``Remain in Mexico,'' and the rest is a very, very, very sad history.

I will leave that up.

Now, I mentioned that 2 weeks ago we had Secretary Mayorkas come before our committee, and it was surreal the way they denied that they had anything to do with this, that this was an inherited problem. I mean, if it were inherited, yes, it was inherited by the Obama administration in DACA and in an incorrect court decision in the Flores reinterpretation. I will admit it was inherited there. It wasn't inherited here. The problem had been solved. It had been fixed.

What is so tragic about this is that we had pretty well taken the first step to solving the problem, to having immigration reform, to controlling the border. Keep these successful policies in place, and build the fence. Then you can address DACA. Then you can set up a functioning legal immigration system.

Unfortunately, I only had one round of questions--only 7 minutes-- with Secretary Mayorkas. Again, as he was dodging responsibility, I didn't get to ask a lot of questions. Here is the list of questions that I wanted to ask Secretary Mayorkas in a second round that I didn't get.

I wanted to ask Secretary Mayorkas whether or not he was aware that human traffickers sell children to adults so they can exploit our asylum laws as posing as a family unit. I wanted to know whether he was aware of that. I am quite sure the Vice President is, because the Vice President was on my committee. She heard this testimony. She should be aware of it. She should go down to the border.

I wanted to ask him: Are you aware that we heard testimony, under my chairmanship, that a child was sold for $84?

I wanted to ask Secretary Mayorkas: Are you aware that children are recycled--that they are sent back over the border to be used by another adult to pose as a family unit and exploit our asylum laws?

I wanted to ask him: How are you verifying that a child belongs to an adult?

In one of my trips down to the border and in having heard that children were being sold, that they were being recycled, that many of these family units weren't real family units, I saw about a 50-year-old man. He was holding, probably, about a 2-year-old little girl. Now, I can't be sure as I don't speak Spanish, and I don't think he would have admitted it, but my assessment was that she was not his little girl.

On that same trip, we heard about a little 3-year-old boy having been abandoned in a hot cornfield, with a telephone number written on his shoe, because the adult for whom he was posing as that person's child didn't need him anymore and just abandoned him.

I wanted to ask the Secretary: Are they doing DNA tests, and, if so, what percentage of family units are being tested?

I wanted to ask the Secretary: Is he aware that human traffickers throw children out of their rafts when they are interdicted by law enforcement?

When we were down at the border with 18 of my colleagues, we saw a floating body in the Rio Grande. The next day, a 9-year-old girl drowned in the Rio Grande. During one of my hearings, I showed a picture--it wasn't a fun picture to show, but I thought it was something we should see--of Oscar Alberto Martinez Ramirez and his 2- year-old daughter, Valeria, face down. They had drowned in the Rio Grande.

I wanted to ask Secretary Mayorkas: Is he aware of the fact that migrant girls are given birth control because they know such a large percentage is going to be raped during the dangerous journey that President Biden's policies are incentivizing?

I wanted to know whether Secretary Mayorkas was aware of the kidnappings, the beatings, the abuse, and the additional ransoms demanded by the human traffickers.

I wanted to know whether he knows how much the human traffickers charge for their human prey and if he is knowledgeable in how they pay off their debt. Some pay in advance. Some don't have the money. Some pay later. How do you think a pretty, young girl pays off her human trafficking debt? How do you think a young minor--a 15-, 16-, 17-year- old boy--who can traffic drugs pays off his debt? I think it is pretty obvious

I wanted to know: Does he know how many young girls are forced into the sex trade and how many young men are forced into involuntary servitude or used to traffic drugs or are gang members? I wanted to know.

I wanted to know if he was fully aware of how President Biden's policies created this crisis and how those policies are facilitating the multibillion-dollar business model of some of the most evil people on the planet. I wanted to know. I still want to know.

I think this administration and I think Secretary Mayorkas need to be held accountable for this human tragedy. Apparently, these policies are meant to be more humane. They are the exact opposite. The degradations and the inhumanity are untold. They are only growing, and they are continuing.

Again, what is so tragic about all of this, in addition to the human tragedy, is the fact that we were so close. We had pretty well taken that first step in any immigration reform. We had stopped the flow or had dramatically reduced it, and we were building the fence. There are only 250 miles yet to build that we have already paid for. What a waste of the American taxpayers' money if we don't even complete that fence and what a waste of an opportunity that we can't take that first step-- complete that first step--for true immigration reform.

This amendment was voted on and defeated, largely, on a party-line vote. Only the senior Senator from West Virginia joined us, and it is just such a shame.

You know, America hungers for comity. America hungers for bipartisanship. This is the kind of bipartisanship they would appreciate that doesn't mortgage our future and that actually fixes a problem as opposed to the bill we are considering right now. The bipartisanship that always concerns me is a mad spending spree--deficit spending--wherein, over the last 18 months, we have already spent about $7 trillion that we don't have. I am shocked, by the way, by the reports that the President's budget is going to be $6 trillion, to be announced tomorrow, and another $7 trillion in other types of--it boggles your mind. That is not the right kind of bipartisanship. That is the type of bipartisanship that mortgages our children's future and bankrupts this Nation.

I think I have probably had enough time here, and I see that a number of my colleagues would also like to make a few points.

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