Border Security

Floor Speech

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Mr. LANKFORD. Madam President, the pain of this, though, is also something that we should pay attention to. We, as a nation, not only remember 9/11 and our response, but we also remember 9/11 was instituted by 20 people that were illegally present in the United States. We should not fail to remember that fact as well.

Recent statistics coming across our southern border identified in the last 2 years--just the last 2 years--we have had 70,000 individuals that have been identified as what they call special interest aliens. These are individuals that came between the ports of entry, that were running through to try to evade being captured. They are identified as special interest aliens because they have this designation: They potentially possess a national security risk to the United States or its interests. So they are identified as a special interest alien.

As I mentioned, we have had more than 70,000 of those that have crossed between our ports of entry just in the last 2 years. These are individuals from Syria, from Iran, from Iraq, from Pakistan, from west Africa, from locations where terrorism is known to exist, and we don't have any criminal history of those individuals.

If you are thinking, I am glad we picked them up between ports of entry, well, let me finish the story for you. Most of those 70,000 special interest aliens were identified between the ports of entry and then were released into the country under Biden's policy on how he handles immigration currently. Those 70,000 individuals that were identified as potentially possessing a national security risk to the United States or its interests are in the United States right now.

Just in the past week, four individuals from Iran were picked up, multiple Syrians were picked up between our ports of entry and then released, awaiting a hearing in the future. And in current status right now, that hearing will be 8 to 10 years in the future. They are unmonitored. They are wandering around within our borders awaiting a hearing 8 to 10 years from now in the future, after being identified as a special interest alien.

We grieve for Israel, but for some reason, there are some in this body and in the White House that will not pay attention to our own national security issues and the obvious exposure that literally everyone in the country can see.

I can raise this issue with 100 people on the street outside this building, and all 100 would say, Oh, yeah, that is a risk. But for some reason, we can't get serious in this body to be able to take on the same thing, just to identify what are we going to do with individuals that are considered special interest aliens. Are we really going to just process them at the border and release them into the country? Or are we going to enforce our own sovereignty as just about every other nation does in the world? What are we planning to do on this?

I would just say, for the basic function of our national security, we should enforce our borders, and we should not just release special interest aliens out into the country, as has been done for now the last 2 years by the numbers of 70,000-plus.

So I would hope this body would get serious about dealing with issues like asylum, parole, and all the different features that have been used to release these individuals into the country, that we could fix that before we have the next 9/11 in our country.

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