Susan Collins: “our colleagues are aware that there is a group of Senators who are meeting with the administration officials to try to…”

“our colleagues are aware that there is a group of Senators who are meeting with the administration officials to try to carefully craft an urgently needed solution to the border security crisis. I rise today to discuss the urgent need for bipartisan solutions to address that crisis. Yesterday set a new record that demonstrates the magnitude of our border security crisis. U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers encountered a record 12,381 foreign nationals who were entering the United States along our southwest border without authorization. So far this fiscal year, we are averaging nearly 8,500 encounters per day, and, this month, the average is nearly 10,000 per day. That means that for the month of December, we are likely to reach a record of more than 300,000 people crossing the southwest border without legal authorization. At the current rate, we are on pace for more than 3 million encounters in fiscal year 2024, which would shatter the previous high set last fiscal year. To put this in perspective, that is more than twice as many encounters at the southwest border as there are people in the entire State of Maine, and these enormous numbers do not include what Border Patrol agents describe as the ``got-aways''--in other words, those who do not turn themselves in and, instead, elude capture. These numbers have grown dramatically in the past 3 years.…”