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Floor Speech

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Mr. MORAN. Madam President, I appreciate what I heard from the Senator from West Virginia, Senator Capito, and I am pleased to follow her and precede a number of my colleagues as we address the issue of the crisis at our southern border.

I want to highlight something I heard her say and reiterate myself, this is a national security threat. There are many reasons to care about what is going on at our borders, and certainly you can take a look at the issue of sovereignty and the nature of our country. We need to enforce our laws, fentanyl and drugs, human trafficking, but sometimes overlooked is the reality of what a security threat a border like we have between the United States and Mexico is--but really all of our borders. They create a threat to the safety and well-being of the American people, the citizens of our country.

And, yes, we have to deal with the growing drug and crime emergency. It is exacerbated. I have been talking to a number of law enforcement officers in Kansas--sheriff departments and police officers--and there is no question but what they see in Kansas, the challenges are exacerbated by the lack of security, the lack of law enforcement at our borders, and they see the consequences of that activity in human trafficking and drugs.

It is important for us to talk about and focus on all of the things related to our national security. In my view, it is the primary responsibility of the Federal Government to make certain that Americans are safe. And I was on the Senate floor several weeks ago highlighting something I think is hugely important to our national security: the passage of the emergency supplemental.

The consequences of the lack of passing that legislation has consequences to the people of Ukraine and the people of Israel and the Middle East, the safety and security of other countries in the South Pacific, but I highlighted then and would highlight now the passage of that emergency supplemental has a consequence, a negative consequence if it is not passed, on the safety and security of the American people.

And so when I was here to highlight the importance of that legislation and the need to proceed, I also highlighted the consequences of ignoring our border. And I want to say, once again, that our border is a national security issue.

So while we focus on the things that we normally think about national security, sometimes we forget this dangerous circumstance that has been created.

I have been to the border a number of times, numerous times. On my last visit, I watched as Border Patrol agents apprehended Chinese nationals attempting to come into our country illegally. That, in and of itself, ought to cause us to have great concern.

Under Secretary Mayorkas's watch, the U.S. Border Patrol has apprehended 336 individuals on the Terrorist Watchlist. Remember the Terrorist Watchlist and the people who came here on 9/11 and the consequences of us failing to exclude them? But 336 have been apprehended from that Terrorist Watchlist, and that doesn't include the ones whom we have not caught.

It suggests to us, suggests to me and I hope to us, that there is a real serious issue about our national security as a result of our country's failures, this administration's failures, on the border.

In fiscal year 2023--a year ago fiscal year--in that year alone, the men and women of U.S. Customs and Border Protection had approximately 2.5 million encounters along that southern border. These historic levels of crossings at the southern border have put an astronomical-- just a tremendous strain on our immigration system and seriously compromised, as I say, compromised our national security.

Not every immigrant is a criminal, but the sheer number of migrants at the border enables those with evil and malicious intentions to enter our country undetected and to harm Americans.

This historic failure is not an accident. Migrants making their way to the United States, often through the assistance of organized criminal organizations, know our laws and the current lack of enforcement of those laws. This administration has created these conditions and has done little, if not--really nothing to dissuade migrants from making that dangerous journey to our borders.

Migrants know that the administration has resisted detaining those who crossed the border illegally. They know that this administration has resisted hardening border infrastructure, and they know that the administration's abuse of the parole system will increase the chance of remaining in the United States if they can get across. All of those factors lead us to where we are today.

Last fall, I questioned the Department of Homeland Security Secretary, Secretary Mayorkas. We had a joint Appropriations Committee. The hearing was on our national security, and the topic was the supplemental I referenced in my remarks several weeks ago on the Senate floor and just a moment ago. And when I asked Secretary Mayorkas if he was willing to work on areas of immigration reform where there is bipartisan consensus--certain issues I believe in regard to border security would receive 60 votes on the Senate floor and be signed into law--the Secretary told me that he wanted comprehensive reform.

I have been in this body, the Senate. I have been in the House before then. We have talked about immigration changes. We have talked about border security. Those two things go hand in hand, in my view, and we know where this insistence that we have comprehensive immigration reform ends.

No evidence in my time in the Senate and no evidence in my time in the House that if we have to do everything--the evidence is that we do nothing, and that is what I told the Secretary. I would tell him that again.

If you are unwilling to work with us to find the things we can agree on, then nothing is going to happen to protect our borders, and our immigration system remains so flawed.

There is value, of course, in comprehensive reform--things that deal with all issues top to bottom--to ensure the needs of safety for the American people and the importance of that to our economy. But, again, my experience and my time in Congress is that if we keep waiting for comprehensive reform, the result is we do nothing.

Secretary Mayorkas has an obligation to use the tools Congress has already provided to enforce legislation that has already passed. Waiting for comprehensive reform is an excuse for the Secretary and for the President, President Biden, to do nothing.

Mayorkas's inaction on the border and his leniency toward enforcing the law has resulted in what we see, the crisis we face today. We keep waiting to reach the tipping point in that crisis, but that, I think, has long passed. Migrants are living on the streets of New York. We have lost thousands of Americans to fentanyl poisoning, and our borders have been exploited by our enemies.

My point is that America is in jeopardy in many ways. We face tremendous challenges around the globe, and our adversaries and enemies are aligned to do us harm. And one of the places that we cannot look the other way is our border and our border security. It is too great a risk and too much of an opportunity for death and destruction to come to the United States of America.

The Biden administration has made it clear, over the last 3 years, that securing our border is not a priority; it is not a priority of theirs. And now it is up to the Senate to hold the administration accountable for those failures, the failures at our southern border, again, that affect our national security, the No. 1 priority of the Federal Government.

Every State is a border State, and the American people deserve a secure border.

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