Government Funding

Floor Speech

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Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, I am planning to bring three amendments to this set of appropriations bills that are coming. As we are quickly reading through it and going through the details and the information on the six different sections of our Federal funding, which is incredibly important that we actually get done, there are many amendments that are here and many questions that have been raised.

I am raising a couple of them on two different issues. The first is a very specific issue. It has been a challenge for us on dealing with an entity called special interests aliens. It is a term you and I know, but many other people around the country do not know.

Special interest alien is an actual designation the Department of Homeland Security places on an individual when they cross the border based on where they are traveling from, maybe their connections there, areas of known terrorism, their travel patterns. The definition from the Department of Homeland Security is a special interest alien is a non-U.S. person who, based on an analysis of travel patterns, potentially poses a national security risk to the United States for its interest.

Just to be clear, when they are labeled ``special interest aliens,'' the Department of Homeland Security is declaring this person potentially a national security risk to the United States. When that individual is encountered at our southern border--we asked many questions both of FBI and DHS--what happens next?

In the past 5 months, we had 58 individuals who were on our Terror Watchlist. Those individuals on our Terror Watchlist, we know who they are. They have been identified. They were detained. We cannot get an exact number of the number of special interest aliens. These are individuals we know have terror links or come from an area where there is known terrorism or are traveling in a travel pattern that we know other terrorists have traveled on, so we know that much about them, but we don't know anything else about them.

We asked the simple question: Are they detained? The answer so far has been: Not all of them.

When someone at the southern border is declared a national security risk, we think it is reasonable to have that person detained at our southern border. In the past several days, we had almost 7,000 people a day illegally crossing our border. We don't know how many of those were labeled a national security risk, but we do believe the number in the past few months has been in the thousands.

But DHS has yet to give us the exact number. We have, potentially, in the thousands of people who have been declared by this administration as a potential national security risk, and they cannot tell us if they have been detained, their whereabouts for all of them, how they determined that they were a national security risk, or what happens next.

So the amendment I am bringing is very simple. The amendment I am bringing is to say we do not allow funding to be used to release people who have been designated a potential national security risk and to have them released into the United States so we don't have a situation where we have individuals identified at the border as a potential national security risk and then they were just released on their own recognizance for a future hearing. That needs to be fixed. I wish it was fixed today, but it is not. It is an issue. This is an issue that I have raised for a year now, both with DHS and with the FBI.

I recently met with ICE at a hearing. And when I met with some of the leadership from ICE, I asked them about this on the detention. This was the response I got from ICE, current administration: It is accurate that we are not tracking special interest aliens on a day-to-day basis, not the totality of them. Some are probably on alternatives to detention where we have more tracking on, but we are not tracking all of them.

Those who are on alternative detention means they have been released into the country, given a GPS device to turn themselves in later, after at the border they were declared a potential national security risk.

To this body, I would challenge us to say: What would it take for us to detain those individuals and to make sure that we are not releasing people into the country whom we recognize, literally, at the border are a national security risk?

That is why I am bringing this amendment to this bill to say this is a commonsense approach to be able to deal with a very pragmatic national security risk.

A second set of amendments that I am bringing actually deals with two earmarks. There are lots of earmarks in this bill, and we can have our own debate on earmarks in this body. I don't actually request earmarks on it. I want competitive grants. I want to make sure we are focused on the highest national security priorities and the national priorities that we have--and we have many. My State has several. Many of your States do as well.

We should compete for those to be able to make sure they were reaching the highest priorities. But I do understand there are some in this body who disagree with me on that. I disagree with some of the earmarks that are in this, and I see differences of opinions on some that are here. Some deal, though, with military bases and certain construction, which is totally understandable. Some deal with schools and certain construction--totally understandable. Some deal with a couple of issues that I just have a difference of opinion that is pretty strong.

Two of them deal with hospitals. Two of these earmarks deal with a hospital. One of them is Dartmouth Hitchcock hospital in New Hampshire and the other one is Women & Infants Hospital in Rhode Island.

What would be unique about those hospitals? Well, this is about $2.5 million in earmarks between the two of them. These two hospitals actually do late-term abortions. They are different than other hospitals that are on the earmark list. In fact, not only do these two hospitals actually do late-term abortions, they actually advertise that they do late-term abortions and put the word out. They make statements about that they are. Let me see if I can pull this out. They make statements they have not only supported late-term abortions up to 22 weeks, but they are ready to be able to do that.

As one says, they routinely provide abortions up to 22 weeks. At 22 weeks, we are pushing 5 months of pregnancy. We have children who are alive today who were born premature at 21 weeks. But they are alive today because they were able to get the care when they had a premature delivery at 21 weeks.

To make it clear, this is what we are actually up against and what this looks like compared to other countries and locations: Spain does not allow abortion after 14 weeks. It is not legal because the country of Spain considers late-term abortion after 14 weeks. Germany restricts abortion after 12 weeks. Italy restricts abortion after 12 weeks.

Twenty-two weeks is a late-term abortion. Most locations do not do that. We have a lot of differences of opinion on this issue of life and the value of every single child. I understand that.

We had respectful dialogue in this Chamber multiple times on this issue as I brought this up, but at 22 weeks there is no question that a child feels pain in the womb. There is no question that at 22 weeks, all science shows that a baby in the womb can recognize its own mom's voice and will jump in the womb when there is a loud sound. At 22 weeks, a baby even already has developed taste buds.

Twenty-two weeks is a late-term abortion. And two of these hospitals that have designated earmarks perform this, and I have an objection to that.

I think we, as a body, should talk about not just our standard for this but what does that mean. Can I just say it as simple as this? Even under the standard of Roe v. Wade that the Supreme Court has now turned back to the States, in this body, after the Dobbs decision, even under the standard of Roe v. Wade, 22 weeks is past the time that would be recognized that a child is viable based on previous experience with other children who have been born even before that and have survived and thrived. We, as a body, should recognize that.

And I do object to those earmarks and think that is the wrong direction for Federal dollars to be used to be able to supply a hospital with dollars that is performing this type of late-term abortion.

We have a decision to make as a body. Are we going to stop the release of special interest aliens who have been designated by this administration to be a potential national security risk? And are we going to use Federal dollars to actually provide for late-term abortions through this bill? We will decide that tomorrow.
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