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LEGISLATIVE SESSION
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senate will resume legislative session.
The senior Senator from Texas.
Border Security
Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, earlier this week, the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Under Secretary Mayorkas's leadership over these last 2 years, we have seen more than 4.8 million migrants encountered at the southern border. We have seen deadly drugs pouring into our country, killing more than 108,000 Americans in a single year. There is no question but that the transnational criminal organizations, known as the cartels, are fueling the chaos and the destruction.
When Attorney General Merrick Garland testified before the Judiciary Committee just a few weeks earlier, I brought up the role that the cartels were playing in this ongoing crisis. I asked the Attorney General if he was familiar with the business model of the cartels: Flood the border with migrants, overwhelm law enforcement, and then allow the movement of the illegal drugs across the border and into the interior of the United States.
Attorney General Garland said, yes, he was aware--not only that, he highlighted actions that he had taken at the Department of Justice to crack down on these operations.
Earlier this week, when I posed the same question to Secretary Mayorkas--I asked if he was familiar with this tried-and-true strategy of the cartels, and he was clueless. He said: I am not aware of any such strategy.
I don't know how that could possibly be true. This is a well-known tactic that has been used throughout Secretary Mayorkas's tenure. One of the most notable examples was in 2021 when the small town of Del Rio, TX, all of a sudden was flooded with 15,000 migrants from Haiti. Thirty-five thousand people live in that small town, and they were overwhelmed by the huge volume of people from--I know it is hard to imagine but from Haiti.
To state the obvious, the Del Rio Border Patrol Sector doesn't have the capacity to process or care for that many individuals at one time. In an attempt to help, the administration moved agents from other checkpoints to the sector where the surge was happening. But, after all, that is exactly what the cartels had hoped for. As there was a surge of agents to Del Rio, that left other portions of the border unprotected.
Administration officials later told congressional staff that this massive surge of migrants was a coordinated effort by the cartels. They directed Haitian migrants to a single location so that other areas would be left uncovered and clear a path for their illicit trade.
Officials from the Biden administration admitted that this surge was coordinated by the cartels, but yet the Secretary of Homeland Security is unaware? How could that possibly be? Secretary Mayorkas is either trying to deceive the Senate or he is completely unaware of the reality on the ground. I think both of those are fireable offenses. Either you are lying or you are completely oblivious to the threat to public safety posed by the current crisis, which is singularly of the making of the Biden administration and their unwillingness to use the tools they have, the laws that are already on the books, in order to deal with this crisis, this humanitarian crisis and this public health crisis.
Every day, the United States is getting played, and criminal organizations whose illegal businesses are making them a lot of money are getting richer. These groups are what I like to call commodity-
agnostic because they deal in any product or service that makes them money. They really don't care. They certainly don't care about the migrants, who are frequently abused and many of whom unfortunately are left to die on that long and dangerous journey from their home.
We are well aware of their drug trafficking operations, which bring all sorts of illegal drugs into the United States. Over the years, law enforcement has interdicted everything from marijuana to methamphetamine to cocaine and heroin, but recently, we have seen an alarming rise in fentanyl.
When I was in Mexico City just a couple of weeks ago visiting with the Drug Enforcement Administration, they said fentanyl is made from chemicals that are imported from China to Mexico, where the cartels simply mix them up and then put them through an industrial-size pill press and make them look like regular prescription drugs, although these are laced with fentanyl--a deadly drug in very, very small amounts.
We know a lot of communities throughout Texas and throughout the country have experienced waves of deaths caused by unintentional fentanyl poisoning. In other words, the person taking the pill--usually a teenager--thinks they are taking something innocuous that won't kill them certainly. They may think they are taking anything from a painkiller or other sorts of prescription drugs, and then they unknowingly ingest a lethal dose of fentanyl. Of course, the cartels continue to get rich, and the destruction caused by these overdoses and drug abuse continues.
We know that these cartels, again, are commodity-agnostic. They don't just traffic in drugs; they also prey on vulnerable people who want to come to the United States. They spin a web of lies and false promises to convince migrants to make the journey to our border under their care, but, like all the other things the cartel deals in, it comes at a price.
There are a lot of factors that determine how much it costs somebody to make their way to our front doorstep on our southern border. Typically, it is thousands of dollars a head, but really it just depends on where you are coming from.
Recently, in Yuma, AZ, a sleepy agricultural community, the Border Patrol Chief welcomed a bipartisan delegation of Senators there and said: We have encountered people who speak 200 languages from 176 countries in this sleepy little ag community.
Senator Mark Kelly from Arizona said: Well, in all likelihood, people are flying into Mexicali--which is a city in northern Mexico--and then simply calling an Uber and making their way to the border and then claiming asylum, only to be released by the Biden administration into the interior of the country.
Those are the lucky ones. Those who turn themselves over to the coyotes, the human smugglers, frequently end up dead. We all remember last June when a tractor trailer rig smuggled migrants in San Antonio. It was found abandoned in sweltering conditions. Fifty-three people died, trapped in the back of that truck.
Those who survive often arrive malnourished or abused. Many women and men are injured or otherwise abused. Many women and girls are raped along the way. Some arrive pregnant.
As we know, the customers of these criminal organizations aren't limited to Mexican or Central American citizens; these are international criminal networks. Consistent with what the Yuma Border Patrol Chief told us, last year, Customs and Border Protection encountered migrants from 174 countries. People from every corner of the globe are traveling to Mexico and crossing the U.S. southern border, all in the tender care of these transnational criminal organizations.
Of course, given the nature of this business, it is tough to estimate just how much the cartels are making from their human smuggling operations, but last year, Homeland Security investigations estimated that the cartels were making roughly $13 billion a year just from migrant smuggling alone.
There is no question that their success is built on a breakdown of enforcement by the Biden administration. If our border was truly secure, if people knew they would not be able to just enter our country willy-nilly but had to follow legal pathways, the cartels wouldn't be able to flood the zone with migrants to clear the way for their smuggling operations.
Unfortunately, instead of making the cartels' jobs harder, the Biden administration's policy of open borders just keeps making it easier. Rather than secure the border and enforce our laws, the Biden administration continues to send a message loud and clear that our border is open for anyone to come across.
For more than 2 years, the administration has refused to enforce the law, ensuring that the cartels' illicit gateways remain wide open. They have released hundreds of thousands of migrants into the United States, some of whom will wait as long as 10 years before they can even begin the immigration court process--talk about a major pull factor. If someone is on the fence about making the dangerous journey to the United States but sees that virtually anybody who shows up is able to stay in the United States for a decade at least even before facing an immigration judge, their decision to come is far easier.
As though the cartels don't have enough business already, they are about to be given the gift of a lifetime when title 42 ends in 6 weeks on May 11. Title 42, of course, is a public health law which has given the Border Patrol one tool to deter and to return migrants out of the country. It has given the Department of Homeland Security the ability to quickly expel migrants and prevent our border facilities and local communities from becoming even more overwhelmed than they already are. But once it disappears in May, the floodgates will be wide open.
Law enforcement and border communities have been bracing for the migration surge that is sure to come once title 42 goes away. They are worried that they don't have the people, the facilities, or the resources to manage this flood of humanity, and the administration has done zero to inspire confidence.
Just last week, Secretary Mayorkas visited El Paso, which has been at the epicenter of this crisis since late last year. The streets and the shelters have been filled with vulnerable migrants with nowhere else to go, and its leaders are very anxious about what will happen on May 11.
During his visit, Secretary Mayorkas met with Border Patrol agents and Customs and Border Protection Office of Field Operations officers to thank them for their hard work. These men and women have been on the frontlines of this crisis for more than 2 years, and they deserve our unending gratitude for the sacrifices they made. But they deserve more than our thanks; they deserve our help so that they can do the law enforcement and do the job they have pledged to do. But we have designed the system to fail because we have made it impossible for them to do their job the way they are trained to do.
While Secretary Mayorkas couldn't be bothered to meet with other stakeholders in El Paso, he might have actually learned something. When I visited the city in January with a bipartisan group, we took the time to meet with law enforcement, local elected officials, business owners, nongovernmental organizations, and many others. They told us about the strain this crisis has placed on the entire community, and they shared their fears about what might happen once title 42 is lifted if there is no alternative plan put in place.
Unfortunately, during his most recent trip, Secretary Mayorkas didn't take the time to hear from a full range of stakeholders who were on the frontlines. He didn't sit down with those elected officials to discuss the caravans of migrants that are forming just across the border in Juarez, across from El Paso. He didn't offer advice about how the communities should prepare for what happens when title 42 is eliminated or what the Federal Government was prepared to do to help.
So, once again, our border communities in Texas are doing the backbreaking work of managing this crisis with little or no support from the Biden administration. With the end of title 42 in sight, the administration needs to prepare for what is to come, and they need to help get ready to deter this huge flood of humanity. They simply can't ignore the problem and hope it goes away. That hasn't worked for the last 2 years, and it certainly won't work now.
March is quickly coming to a close, and the challenges are only going to grow from there, as the spring months are typically some of the busiest for migration. That is because mild temperatures make the journey a little less dangerous and folks want to come to the United States, many to work during the summertime.
Our border communities are bracing for this perfect storm of policies and circumstances that will hurt everybody except the cartels. Their drug trafficking and human smuggling operations have never been more profitable, and they are gearing up for an even bigger windfall thanks to the Biden administration and the end of title 42.
These criminal organizations will continue to extort and profit off the backs of vulnerable migrants. They will coordinate migration surges to distract and overwhelm law enforcement, and they will smuggle fentanyl and other dangerous drugs into every corner of this country. And they will get richer while migrants and communities throughout America suffer.
The administration has 6 weeks to come up with a plan. They know the clock is ticking, and they had better get to work. And, even more significantly, they ought to work with us on a bipartisan basis to come up with a solution.
Senator Sinema from Arizona and I; Henry Cuellar, a Democrat from Laredo; and Tony Gonzales, a Republican from the largest border district in the country--the four of us--introduced a bill called the Bipartisan Border Solutions Act. We did that almost 2 years ago. Yet our Democratic colleagues, even though they have had the majority for 2 years preceding this last election, did nothing to have hearings on that proposed legislation or to offer a markup or a vote on the bill. And, certainly, we were happy, if somebody had a better idea, for them to come forward. But all we heard were crickets.
Well, the clock is ticking, and we know what is going to happen in May unless something changes, and I hope it will.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Virginia.
School Safety
Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I take the floor because of a letter that I received in my office a few days ago. This was a letter that was mailed to our office via email on March 23, and I just want to read it.
Hello Senator. My name is--
I am going to omit the name.
My name is . . . and I am terrified to go to school. I have lived in your district for almost six years, and never have I been more scared than I am when I go to school every day. My father was in the army, my mother works with wear blue run to remember (a military non-profit for gold star families). I am no stranger to death, and yet I am scared that one day that may be waiting for me at school. I lived in Lakewood Washington, I went to Saint Francis Cabrini, and we once had a lockdown because a car ran down our fence while children were at recess. I was present during the shooting at Fort Hood in 2013, my sister can't remember, but she was so close to the perpetrator. I still have nightmares from both of these incidents. I am supposed to be safe at school, but today when it was rumored that someone was planning to target our school out of revenge on an ex-partner, I was reminded of that day I spent huddled under a desk in art class,
[feverishly] reciting the Hail Mary. Something needs to change, I'm not the only kid who feels this way. Why should I be scared to go to school?
This letter came to my office on March 23. A few days later, this student and all of America woke up to the story of the shooting in Nashville.
Why should I be scared to go to school?
In January of this year, just a few months ago, there was an incident that also attracted significant attention in Virginia and around the country where a first grade teacher, Abby Zwerner, at the Richneck Elementary School in Newport News, VA, saw a 6-year-old pointing a gun at her, and she acted heroically to come toward the student to try to take the gun. And she was shot and badly, badly wounded, but she was able to protect the lives of her students and others in the school building. She is recovering slowly from that and just starting to talk about that experience.
Mr. President, I went to Newport News about a month after that incident, in early February, to meet with a number of the parents and teachers. And they wanted it off the record, no press--just let's sit down and talk. And I am going to respect their privacy by not talking about their names, the names of their kids, or particulars of their story. But I can summarize it.
These parents are afraid when they drop their kids off at school, and they are afraid that, when they come at the end of the day, something might have happened to their children. They are afraid that they may get a call in the middle of the day that something has happened to their kids.
And the teachers who were with me that day, they have that same fear. They go into these classrooms every day because they love children, but they are afraid now to do that job. Lord knows, we have got teacher shortages all over this country, and we are working our best to try to attract people to the profession. But these teachers, many of whom have been in the profession for decades, they are now afraid, for the first time in their lives, to go to school every day.
Emergency room visits for gun-related injuries in Virginia increased by 72 percent from 2018 through 2021. In an average year, about 1,020 people die in Virginia and another 2,050 or so are wounded by guns. And among young people, guns are the leading cause of death among children and teens in Virginia. An average of 85 children and teens die by guns every year. Fifty-five percent of these deaths are homicides. Others are accidental shootings or deaths by suicide.
I don't know what to do with this. I don't know what to do with this. I react negatively when, in the aftermath of shootings, it sometimes seems like all Members of Congress can say is that they are heartbroken and they send thoughts and prayers to the family. That starts to sound very hollow. Of course, thoughts and prayers are meaningful, but it starts to sound very hollow to those who are victimized by gun violence when that is the response and nothing more.
But let me be self-critical. I am not into offering hollow thoughts and prayers. I tend to say I am heartbroken for the families and I think we need to do things in the Senate, like do an assault weapons ban or other meaningful legislation that would keep kids safe.
Some of the things we ought to do in Congress are things we have done in Virginia in recent years, and that has made our State safer, but there is nothing you can do that is going to completely eliminate this problem.
But I was challenging my staff the other day. If we think thoughts and prayers and nothing else is hollow, then saying we should do an assault weapons ban when we know that is not going to get 60 votes on the floor of the Senate--I do think we should do an assault weapons ban. When we had one in the nineties, it worked. But I also know with certainty that, in the near future, there is zero chance that this body is going to get the 60 votes for an assault weapons ban or other kinds of gun safety regulations that would take a student and make her less afraid to go to school or a parent and teacher and reduce their fear.
So what I am challenging people around me, including my own staff and challenging myself on is: Have we allowed this tough issue--the debate about this tough issue--to get a little stale?
Thoughts and prayers, assault weapons ban--thoughts and prayers don't do anything to help people. An assault weapons ban might, but we are not going to pass it.
Have we allowed it to get stale, and are there solutions and strategies that we are not talking about that we might be able to find common ground on?
Because, if anything should cry out to us and demand that we find common ground, it is that we not do nothing; that we not listen to the fears of students and parents and teachers and just say: Well, that is just the way life is in America, right? That is just American life.
We can't be complacent about it. And, Mr. President, I am just thinking about our differences in age. My children are out of high school now. My youngest is 10 years out of high school. You still have school-aged kids. So you are still grappling with the reality of safety in schools at the pickup and the dropoff.
This has gotten so much worse just in the last 10 years. My children all went to the Richmond public schools, which are an urban public school setting in a community that had some significant problems with violent crime. But my wife and I were never nervous when we took them to school, and we never worried about getting a text or something in the middle of the day; and we never were afraid that, when we got there at the end of the day, something would happen. And that was just a little bit over 10 years ago.
My children finished high school right before--my youngest--right before the Sandy Hook shooting. So they were not in the K-12 system in Virginia when there has just been this steady drumbeat of one school shooting after the next. They weren't terrorized or afraid. Their teachers weren't. My wife and I weren't. And that was just 10 years ago.
How much more devastating the problem of school shootings has become in the last 10 years.
So I just take the floor to say: I need to write something back to this youngster. Her question:
Why should I be scared to go to school?
I have got to write her and respond in some way, and I don't really know now what to say. But I have challenged my team and I challenge my colleagues. We are in a recess period where we are back in our States. We are talking to people. We are, hopefully, getting ideas from them and listening to them. Let's ask some young people who go to school, let's ask some teachers, let's ask some parents of schoolkids if they have ideas for us that are new or different. Let's ask them whether our political debate about solutions has grown stale and whether there are solutions that we haven't yet contemplated that could respond to the question that this student has raised.
With that, Mr. President, I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Booker). Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I am standing next to a woman from New Jersey who is our communications director and who handles Delaware and somehow manages to handle New Jersey and raise a family at the same time. She is amazing. We are delighted that we could have the two of you on the floor at the same time. It is a wonderful coincidence.
Fire Grants and Safety Act
Mr. President, I rise today to highlight something that I believe unites all of us; that is, support for our local firefighters across the country. I don't care if you are in New Jersey or Delaware or Oregon or New Mexico. There is a great affection and appreciation for our firefighters.
Our firefighters throughout America are everyday people who every day do extraordinary things with their lives. They put their lives on the line to protect us. They have to lay down their lives to save ours and the lives of our families.
For that, we owe it to them to make sure that they are fully equipped with the lifesaving protection, with the equipment, the education and training they need to get their job done.
That is why I am very proud to colead the Fire Grants and Safety Act with my colleagues on the Congressional Fire Services Caucus. And one of them would be our chairman--that would be Gary Peters of Michigan; Susan Collins of Maine, a longtime supporter of firefighters and a leader in the Congressional Fire Services Caucus; and Lisa Murkowski, also a leader in the Congressional Fire Services Caucus, from Alaska. And I was pleased that the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, on which I am privileged to serve and used to be chair, passed this important bill out of committee just earlier this month.
The Fire Grants and Safety Act reauthorizes critical Federal programs that support local fire departments; namely, among those, FEMA's Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response, also known as the SAFER Grant Program, and the Assistance to Firefighters Grant Program.
These programs are not just incidental. They are vital. They are critical. They are essential to local firefighting departments to help recruit staff, to purchase lifesaving equipment like firetrucks and protective gear, provide fire training and education to current firefighters and also to new firefighters and improve medical services to our communities.
In Delaware, our fire departments rely on these programs to protect our community. In fact, in 2021, and, I think, in 2022, the SAFER Program and the so-called AFG Program provided almost $3 million in funding to Delaware fire departments. That may not sound like a lot of money in New Jersey or California or some other places; $3 million is real money in a State the size of Delaware, and it is put to very good use every year.
We know these threats from fire are in our homes, but those threats are in our businesses, and there are wildfires. We know they are not going away. We know they are not going away.
In Alaska last year, 3 million acres burned in a wildfire--a wildfire. Three million acres burned in one wildfire. That is nearly half of the acreage burned in the entire United States of America. Just think about that--one wildfire in Alaska. Just 3 weeks ago, I am told high winds spread a fire in my home State of Delaware that engulfed about a half dozen homes and left some 16 people homeless and caused over $1 million in damage.
We have to make sure that our firefighters have what they need when they wake up each morning to bravely respond to the calls that come their way. Without action, authorization of both the SAFER and AFG Programs would expire later this year.
As I said at the beginning of my remarks, support for our local firefighters is an issue that brings us together. There are a lot of issues that divide us, as the Presiding Officer knows. There are some issues that unite us, and this is one of those issues.
The Senate voted yesterday to begin consideration of the Fire Grants and Safety Act. That vote passed by 96 to 0. That doesn't happen every day, as the Presiding Officer knows. Let me repeat that: 96 to 0.
And we were happy to see that kind of unanimity, and I think it bodes well for when we return after the recess in the next week or two to take up this legislation.
I look forward to the Senate coming back in 2 weeks. I look forward to finishing the job that we have begun. And we look forward to passing, again, this important legislation.
I strongly encourage our friends over in the House of Representatives to do their part and to send the Fire Grants and Safety Act to the President's desk. We owe that to our first responders.
Mr. President, with that, I thank you for a chance to speak on the floor today. And I wish you and your family a safe recess and see you in 2 weeks.
With that, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
____________________
SOURCE: Congressional Record Vol. 169, No. 58
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