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Floor Speech
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Mr. GRAHAM. Madam President, I will just pick up where my colleague left off.
There are four parts to the supplemental appropriations sent over by President Biden. One deals with Ukraine. And count me in for Ukraine. Robust aid to Ukraine really helps us here at home. Helping Israel--no- brainer--count me in. Beefing up Taiwan makes perfect sense. There was money in the supplemental for border security, but it really didn't address the problem we have.
And here is what I want the body to understand. Here is what happened yesterday. The FBI Director testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee about the level of threats we face as a nation. And he said:
[W]hile there may have been times over the years where individual threats could have been higher here or there than where they might be right now, I've never seen a time where all the threats or so many of the threats are all elevated, all at exactly the same time.
This was yesterday.
What did he say?
Post October 7--
The horrible attack on our friends in Israel--
[Y]ou've seen a veritable rogues' gallery of terrorist organizations calling for attacks against us.
He said that yesterday.
[T]he threat level has gone to a whole other level since October 7.
This was what the FBI Director said yesterday. Are any of us listening?
I see blinking lights everywhere I turn.
I asked him about blinking lights regarding 9/11. Apparently, they were blinking, and we missed them.
Do you see any blinking lights?
And he said:
I see blinking lights everywhere I turn.
He said that yesterday. Now, why are Republicans, apparently, more than anybody else, insisting that the supplemental package not only help Ukraine, not only help Israel and Taiwan but actually help us? We have got to change the policy because what we have got is not working.
Yesterday--yesterday--12,000 encounters at the border. The highest ever, yesterday. Two days before, 10,000 were marching in the wrong direction.
As these numbers go to new levels and historic levels, the FBI Director yesterday told us he has never seen more threats against our homeland than he does today.
And since October 7, every terrorist group in the world is calling for an attack on America.
I asked him about the border. He is very concerned about the status of the border.
So we are on track, if this continues, to have 3.6 million illegal encounters that we know of at the border. That is like beyond unsustainable. All-time highs every day.
From 2023 to 2020, the encounters at the border are up 368 percent. Why? Because the policies of the Biden administration make people believe that if they get to our border, they stay in America and never leave. And if you don't change that, you are never going to fix the problem.
Six million people have already come to our border in the first 3 years of the Biden administration. We are on track to do 3.6 million in fiscal year `24.
The day that people think Trump is going to be the nominee and could win the White House, you are going to see a run on the border like you have never seen because people want to get the last good deal under the Biden administration. Because when Trump wins, if he does, all this is going to change.
There are two problems that have to be fixed. You make an asylum claim in America at the border; you pass the initial credible fear standard, which needs to be elevated; you are released into the country to go to your hearing regarding your asylum claim 3 to 5 years later-- that makes people believe they are released, and they will never show up. Once you are here, you are never going to leave. We have to change that.
While you are waiting for your hearing that may be 3 to 5 years away, you need to wait outside the country. That would stop a lot of the illegal immigrant flow because when people realize you can't wait in America, you are home free once you make your asylum claim, they will be less likely to pay $10,000 or more to wait in Mexico or some other country for 4 or 5 years.
The second thing is that this administration is abusing the law. The Secretary of DHS has the ability on a case-by-case basis to allow urgent humanitarian parole for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit. This is meant to be an individual case-by- case analysis. They are using this concept--the Biden administration-- to have blanket humanitarian parole for 240,000 people from four different countries. That is an abuse of the law. This law is being used to just flow people through, and that needs to change.
So if you put a cap on how many people could come into the country through humanitarian parole, getting back to the original intent of the law, and you told people if you apply for asylum, you have to wait outside the country before your hearing is held, then you will have a dramatic reduction in illegal immigration. I know that works. That doesn't fix a broken immigration system, but it does give us control over an out-of-control border at a time of elevated threats.
To my Democratic colleagues, I have been negotiating with you for 20 years on how to fix an immigration system that is broken. You need more legal immigration. You need border security. You have to have a pathway to citizenship for those who are deserving. I get all that. This is not all about an immigration reform negotiation; this is about securing the border at a time of heightened threat to our country.
One hundred seventy-two people on the Terrorist Watchlist we know of have been caught. Only God knows how many we missed. This run on the border is locking the Border Patrol down just processing people, fentanyl poisoning of Americans is at an alltime high, 100,000 people have died because fentanyl is coming through a broken border. So to my Democratic colleagues, this is not about immigration; it is about national security. There are ways to fix this problem if you choose to do it. I want to help Ukraine. I want to help Taiwan. I want to help Israel. But we have got to help ourselves.
There will never be a bill I will vote for to help other countries that are very deserving until we control our own border that is completely broken. You need to understand that, and the public is with us. Most Americans would like to have their border more controlled, not less, and what you are doing is not working.
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