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Floor Speech

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Mr. LEE. Madam President, an invasion is taking place on American soil. Over 8 million people have crossed our border illegally since Mayorkas became Secretary, and the numbers just keep rising. They are not going away. This unprecedented, lawless influx includes gang members. It includes drug traffickers and dangerous individuals from every country in the world, including many thousands of military-age males from China. What could go wrong? In December alone, the Department of Homeland Security reported 302,000 encounters--in 1 month. This is the highest month ever on record.

To be clear, Secretary Mayorkas has the tools to stop the invasion today. He could do it right now if he wanted to. It is almost turnkey. It is abracadabra. If he decided to do it, we could have a secure border, and we would. Not only does he have the tools, but he has an obligation and a responsibility, an affirmative duty under the laws of the United States--laws that he agreed he would faithfully enforce.

Let me say that again just to be very clear. Just by enforcing the laws currently on the books, he could bring our state of utter lawlessness on the border to a state of order.

Secretary Mayorkas could bring a complete stop to the crisis. He doesn't need legislative action from Congress. This isn't a policy disagreement. No, it is a blatant defiance of the laws that are already on the books and have been for years.

So to my colleagues: If you are so confident that the charges against Secretary Mayorkas are baseless, then why not hold a trial? Why try to just sweep this under the rug? You realize, don't you, that when you do that, all that does is just make you look more conscious of what is going on, of what is being done that is so very, very wrong--especially where, as here, it is such a departure from nearly two and a half centuries of this institution operating faithfully as a Court of Impeachment, nearly two and a half centuries in which we have had 21 Articles of Impeachment destined for the Senate; at least 20 of those arrived. In 18 of those total of 21 cases during the Senate's existence, 18 of those 21 culminated in a trial resulting in a verdict of guilty or not guilty. Those other three involved cases that were rendered moot in between the time the House of Representatives adopted the Articles of Impeachment and the time they were presented over here. They were rendered moot because of the death or departure--a new vacancy in the office that had been occupied by the impeached official.

So this isn't just an ordinary act of sweeping it under the rug. It is an act of sweeping it under the rug under the circumstances where sweeping it under the rug was never an option. It never has been. We haven't done it.

This isn't just some invisible ``Casper the Friendly Ghost'' coming in to get rid of it. They are actively doing it, and they are doing it under the full view of the American people.

The American people should be really upset by this, because Article I of the Constitution gives the House of Representatives the power to impeach and the Senate the power to try all impeachments.

Remember, the Senate has only three states of being--exactly three states of being: the legislative calendar, where we do a lot of our work, where we consider law; Executive Calendar, where we do things like confirm Presidential nominees and consider treaties for ratification; and the third state of being for the Senate is as a Court of Impeachment. We are always in one of those three states of being, and yet we have never operated in that third state of being unless the case has been rendered moot where the Senate doesn't hold a trial, as it is required to do under the Constitution, culminating in a verdict of guilty or not guilty.

Now, if you trust that Secretary Mayorkas didn't authorize millions of individuals to enter illegally into our country for swift and precursory release, then let's hold a trial.

If you are certain that Secretary Mayorkas hasn't increased the pull factors incentivizing parents across the globe to send 430,000 unaccompanied children illegally into the United States, in many cases to have them end up in the hands of traffickers--drug traffickers and human sex traffickers and otherwise--then let's hold a trial.

If you are confident that Secretary Mayorkas hasn't created at least 13 illegal immigration parole programs designed to increase the flow of people into this country by the hundreds of thousands, then let's hold a trial.

If you are so sure that Secretary Mayorkas--under Secretary Mayorkas' leadership, Customs and Border Protection hasn't dramatically decreased its vetting process for allowing Chinese immigrants to cross our border, including military-aged Chinese males, then let's hold a trial.

If you believe that we haven't seen a dramatic increase in the known terrorist encounters at our border, then let's hold a trial.

If you are confident that Secretary Mayorkas hasn't allowed enough fentanyl to flow across the southern border to kill every man, woman, and child in this country, then let's hold a freaking trial.

These are not victimless crimes.

The tragic case of Laken Riley, a life cut short by an illegal alien, one of the millions whom Secretary Mayorkas has recklessly, intentionally, deliberately, and maliciously allowed to enter our country unchecked, unvetted, is a reminder of the human cost of this abdication of duty. Laken isn't alone. Her case represents hundreds of thousands of families across this Nation whose lives have been upended by the invasion that our leaders allowed to happen.

Think about that for a minute. They allowed it to happen not by negligence, oversight, carelessness, inattentiveness. No, no, no. They encouraged it to happen.

Should Secretary Mayorkas be found guilty, these are crimes of the highest order. This sort of thing doesn't happen very often in this country--the sort of thing that I hope we will never have to experience again; the sort of thing that otherwise would result in a Toby Keith song, may he rest in peace; the sort of thing that unites Americans in surprising ways. The American people understand something is terribly wrong, and they expect us to act.

In all previous impeachments sent to the Senate, we held a trial, save those rare circumstances where the case was rendered moot by death or vacancy of the office--not facts present here. We held a trial, and that trial culminated, in each and every instance, in a verdict of guilty or not guilty.

But the majority leader Chuck Schumer now seems to want to take the radical step, the unprecedented step, the lawless step, the counter- and anti-constitutional step of trying to table these Articles of Impeachment without even letting us examine the evidence.

This begs the question: What would he do--what would he do--if he were confident, if the majority leader were confident that Secretary Mayorkas had acted lawfully, honorably, in this office?

What would he do if he were confident the American people wouldn't turn on his party because of this act of lawlessness, this interminable succession of absurdities imposed by the myopic logic of their own border nonenforcement strategy? This is exactly what it looks like when someone is aware that there is a problem and wants to sweep the problem under the rug.

There is no rug here. You can't hide this. There is no rug big enough to accommodate that. And shame on us if we play into that strategy.

To colleagues on my side of the aisle and on the other, I implore you. I know many of us are institutionalists. Whether you are a Democrat or a Republican, no matter how far to the leftwing or rightwing or somewhere in between you are, I appeal to your sense that we have an obligation to take seriously our oath to the Constitution. We have an obligation that must be honored to look out for the institutional interests of the Senate and the role that it plays in the sacred order created by the U.S. Constitution.

When the Articles of Impeachment arrive, we have a job to do. The Constitution and our rules and our precedents make that abundantly clear. To ignore the evidence before us is to betray the trust of those who sent us here.

There is no doubt, at this point, that the invasion at the southern border has inflicted indescribable, incalculable, intolerable pain and suffering on the part of the American people. We are obligated to figure out who is responsible and hold them accountable, beginning with Secretary Mayorkas. I urge each of my colleagues to oppose this shameless effort to sidestep our constitutional duty and, by so doing, subvert the constitutional order.

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