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Floor Speech

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Mr. SCHMITT. Thank you, Mr. President, and thank you, Senator.

Secretary Mayorkas has utterly failed to secure the border, and we are less safe because of it. Every State is now a border State, and crime and deadly drugs are flowing into our communities. There is a humanitarian crisis at the border, there is a fentanyl crisis at the border, there is a national security crisis at the border, all because Secretary Mayorkas has refused to enforce the law, refused to build a border wall, and has abused the parole process illegally.

I am joining my colleagues on the floor today to express the very sincere sense of the Senate that Secretary of Homeland Security Mayorkas does not have the confidence of the Senate and, more importantly, does not have the confidence of the American people to faithfully carry out his duties.

I am sure we have all heard the statistics, but I will reiterate a few just to illustrate how horrible the situation is right now at our southern border.

Since Joe Biden took office, there have been over 7.5 million encounters nationwide and 6.2 million encounters at the southern border, in addition to 1.7 million ``got-aways.'' To put that in perspective, and it is hard to put those numbers in perspective--I am a St. Louis Cardinals fan--that is 160 Busch Stadiums. So for the folks who watched the national championship game last night, with a capacity of over 70,000, that is 116 of those stadiums.

In fiscal year 2023, 169 individuals whose names appear on the Terrorist Watchlist were stopped trying to cross the U.S.-Mexico border ports of entry.

In fiscal year 2023, CBP arrested over 35,000 aliens with criminal convictions or outstanding warrants nationwide, including 598 known gang members, 178 of those being MS-13 members. Those are the people we know of.

In fiscal year 2023, the air and marine operations seized over 27,000 pounds of fentanyl coming across the southern border, enough to kill more than 6 billion--billion--people.

What gets lost in the numbers, however, is that Mayorkas hasn't just presided over the worst crisis at our southern border in our history, he is directly responsible for it.

First, Secretary Mayorkas has refused to enforce real immigration laws, the ones that we have right now--not proposed language, the stuff that we have right now. He rescinded the migrant protection protocols, ``Remain in Mexico,'' which would require illegal immigrants to wait out their asylum claims in Mexico.

This policy was working. When I was attorney general--my previous job--we took the Biden administration to court over this, and we won, just to keep that policy in place. It was a temporary injunction. We sued the administration, obtained that injunction to reinstate the program, which was upheld at the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals and the U.S. Supreme Court. But because of the lawlessness of this administration, we actually had to go back to the district court to force them to abide by the law they were ordered to abide by.

Two, Secretary Mayorkas has similarly refused to build the border wall. Again, I sued the Biden administration and Mayorkas to force them to build the wall, as the money had already been appropriated for that purpose. While that case was still pending at the district court level, Secretary Mayorkas and the Biden administration refused to do it and at the same time were selling the very materials to build that wall that were already bought. This should tell you all you need to know about how seriously they take the crisis and about their willingness to follow the law.

Secretary Mayorkas and Joe Biden have illegally paroled thousands of illegal immigrants into the interior of the United States. Parole authority requires that the Federal Government give immigrants parole on a case-by-case basis, but Secretary Mayorkas and this President have mass-paroled thousands and thousands of illegal immigrants in groups from Cuba, Haiti, Venezuela, and Nicaragua. That is illegal. Right now--existing law--to do that is illegal, but they don't care. They would rather break the law than enforce it.

While Secretary Mayorkas is refusing to enforce the law and build the wall, he is outright lying to Congress in the process and thumbing his nose at those who would dare to suggest there is actually a crisis at the southern border.

In an April 2022 House Judiciary Committee hearing, Secretary Mayorkas testified that the country had operational control of the border. That is a lie.

In November of 2022, in a House Homeland Security hearing, Secretary Mayorkas testified that the border is secure. That is a lie.

Secretary Mayorkas's record as DHS Secretary has been shameful. In his refusal to build a wall despite being directed to do so and enforce the law of the land, he alone, in his duty, where he had the responsibility to do so, has created a crisis at the southern border and proves he is not fit for the job he currently has.

He has been derelict in his duty to secure our southern border and to protect our citizens--the people we represent, the people in this country--and has completely lost the faith of the U.S. Senate and the American people.

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