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Floor Speech

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Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, since President Biden took office 3 years ago, Customs and Border Protection has encountered 6.7 million--6.7 million--migrants at the southern border. Just to give you an idea of how that compares to the Obama administration and President Trump's administration, this is more than those two administrations combined. And that was for a period of 12 years, where President Biden has been in office for 3 years.

The administration still hasn't released the number of illegal border crossings for December, but multiple news outlets have reported that more than 300,000 migrants have crossed the border last month, which would be a new record.

What I have a hard time comprehending is why President Biden thinks that is a good idea. It is his policies that are responsible, because they are like a magnet. They attract people from, literally, around the world, who show up at our border and either claim asylum, only to be put on a docket and wait 10 years before they get heard by an immigration judge--and, in the meantime, they get released into the interior--or they are simply released into the interior of the country, using something called parole.

Now, I think it is a little confusing because, most of the time, we think about parole in the context of criminal law, that if somebody is tried and convicted and goes to prison, they can then be paroled out of prison. But this simply means that, in the immigration context, people come to the border, and they are just released--just released. In other words, there is no consequences associated with people entering the country illegally.

So it should be no surprise to any of us that people still come. And that is why we are seeing higher and higher levels of people coming to the border under President Biden's policies.

The problem isn't just that more migrants than ever are crossing into the United States; it is also that more migrants than ever are being released into the United States.

The Biden administration has gone to great lengths to ensure that people who cross the border illegally can remain in the United States, regardless of whether they have a legitimate reason to be here or not.

To do that, the President and his administration have abused an authority known as parole to facilitate catch-and-release at an unprecedented rate. Parole, in the immigration context, was designed to grant temporary entry to foreign nationals in a rare and dire circumstance such as someone donating a kidney or being a witness in a trial. It was never meant to be categorical or a large-scale immigration authority. It was meant to be used on a case-by-case basis.

The Biden administration has completely abused the parole authority, and it is not just at the southern border. The President's administration has stood up a program that allows individuals from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela to enter or remain in the United States--all under the guise of parole. In other words, these are not individual case-by-case determinations; this is categorical. In other words, you come from a country; we are going to release you into the United States--to the number of 30,000 a month. That is 360,000 a year.

When the administration does so for these four countries, it provides a 2-year legal status and a work authorization. And so, again, it is no surprise people continue to come.

This is also big business for criminal organizations that smuggle people into the United States. And it is as a result of overwhelming the capacity of the Border Patrol and Federal officials on the border that the opportunity to smuggle drugs into the United States becomes so relatively easy--thus, again, enriching the cartels that deal in the poison that took the lives of 108,000 Americans last year alone.

The administration is using--or I should say ``abusing''--parole authority to try to legalize illegal immigration. And they do that so they can cook the books; so they don't have to include these numbers in a total tally of illegal border crossings each month. In other words, that is not even on the list of the 300,000 because they are exempted from that because they are released using--or abusing--this other authority.

This policy allows the administration to roll out the welcome mat for tens of thousands of migrants while making it seem like the numbers have gone down. It is really a shell game.

Thanks to the leadership of my friend Senator Graham, from South Carolina, the American people now have a much better idea about the degree to which parole is being abused by the Biden administration, both at the southern border and beyond.

To provide some comparison, during the two previous administrations-- that was 12 years--an average of 5,600 migrants were paroled into the country each year--5,600 each year. When President Biden took office, that number skyrocketed.

For fiscal year 2022 alone, the Biden administration paroled almost 800,000 migrants. In other words, an average of 5,600 became 800,000 under President Biden.

We still don't have full data for fiscal year 2023, but it is already clear that the administration has passed the previous year's total. The Biden administration has paroled more than 802,000 migrants into the United States in only 9 months. In other words, it is going to set a new record.

In total, the administration granted parole to nearly 1.6 million migrants in only 21 months. Is it any wonder that people continue to come to the border outside the legal process if they know they are going to be released, while the human smugglers continue to get richer and richer and the drug cartels continue to get richer each day?

Well, these numbers are hard to get your head around because they are so large as to be incomprehensible. But 1.6 million migrants released into the country in 21 months?

When this many migrants are being released into the country, it creates serious challenges. Migrants arrived at our border with no money and no place to go. They need to be fed. They need clothing. They need a safe place to sleep. They need medical care. And none of these things are cheap or easy to provide. But they are a feature of illegal immigration.

For more than 3 years, communities along Texas's southern border have carried the weight of the President's border crisis. Local governments and nongovernmental organizations provide migrants with basic needs like shelter, food, and clothing. They deliver lifesaving medical care. They provide transportation. In short, they prevent this humanitarian crisis from becoming a humanitarian catastrophe.

It is expensive; it is burdensome; it is extremely time-consuming; and these men and women don't receive nearly enough recognition or gratitude for the work they do each day.

The border crisis continues to have a major impact on border communities in my State. But the scale of the crisis means the burden is now shared by communities across the country.

Given the unprecedented number of migrants released, every State in America is now a border State in terms of the direct impact of the Biden border crisis.

As this crisis has grown and expanded, it has prompted an interesting shift in rhetoric among leaders in blue States and cities.

Liberal enclaves like New York and Chicago are long-time supporters of open border policies. They proudly identify themselves as sanctuary cities and have criticized commonsense measures to enforce our immigration laws.

Until President Biden took office, these and other liberal cities across America could say what they wanted because they didn't have to bear any of the burden. With the U.S.-Mexico border a thousand miles or more away, immigration levels didn't impact their daily lives.

Residents did not see hundreds of migrants sleeping on city sidewalks. Their children's schools weren't used as emergency shelters. Their local ambulances weren't delayed because of a high influx of migrants who needed medical care. So it is easy to weigh in on an issue that has absolutely zero impact on your daily life.

But as more and more migrants have poured into blue States and blue cities in the past few years, the story has changed. One example is Phil Murphy, the Democratic Governor of New Jersey. He campaigned on the promise of making his State a safe place for illegal immigrants and once vowed to turn New Jersey into a sanctuary State.

When it became clear that more States needed to help carry the weight of this national crisis, he quickly changed his tune. When given the opportunity to take care of migrants with nowhere to go, Governor Murphy said the State didn't have any room for these migrants.

We have seen a similar shift--you might even call it a flip-flop-- from leaders in Chicago, which has been a self-proclaimed sanctuary city for decades. The city's mayor, Brandon Johnson, was just sworn in last May and ran on the promise of embracing migrants who arrived in the city. Last spring, he said: Sanctuary means that everyone is welcome here--everyone--whether you come legally or illegally.

When you make that kind of declaration, it is tough to be mad when people take you up on it and show up. But that is exactly what he has done.

As migrants have arrived in Chicago via bus and plane, he has lashed out at Texas Governor Greg Abbott for providing migrants with the transportation to actually take him up on his offer.

At one point, he even accused the Texas Governor of attacking Chicago and other cities that received migrants. Pretty unhinged, if you ask me.

This would be like sending an invitation out to a party that says: Everybody is welcome, and then berating the person who actually shows up with a carload of people.

I think there is a lesson there: Don't say everybody is welcome unless you mean it.

President Biden's border crisis has grown to such a magnitude that even the sanctuary cities and States are turning off or flipping over the welcome sign. The crisis just keeps growing and growing, and the pressure on President Biden is mounting.

And, oh, by the way, he is going to be a candidate for reelection in November 2024. That may have something to do with his newfound attention and concern about the problem. He didn't care about the border crisis when it was just hurting Texas or the communities along the border. He didn't flinch when frontline law enforcement pleaded for more support. He didn't bat an eye when we broke the record for the most border crossings in a single day, month, and year. But now that Democratic voters--voters he is going to need to get reelected in places like New York and Chicago--are sounding the alarm over the border crisis, so it looks like President Biden is finally starting to pay attention.

When asked by a reporter last week if the border was secure, President Biden said: No, it is not.

It is welcome candor.

But given the magnitude of the crisis, it is sad that that statement was actually newsworthy because it marked a much needed change from the President to recognize we have a problem on our hand.

The fact is--and we all know the answer--that the status quo was unsustainable. We have reached a breaking point. And the only way to restore some sense or order is by addressing the current failed policies of the Biden administration--particularly this abuse of parole, which is just simply releasing people, giving them a work permit, even to those who aren't claiming a credible fear of persecution or grounds for asylum.

Now, we all know several of our colleagues are trying to negotiate an agreement on legislation that would create meaningful policy changes to address the crisis. And I appreciate their efforts. I sincerely do. But so far, all we have seen are statements about what is being negotiated. None of us have seen the text of the actual negotiated product. And I, for one, am anxious to see that so we can have a real discussion and maybe a debate and, hopefully, make some significant progress on what has come to be known as the Biden border crisis.

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