Cindy Hyde-Smith: “I rise today to once again call attention to the crisis at our southern border--the very crisis the Biden administration…”

“I rise today to once again call attention to the crisis at our southern border--the very crisis the Biden administration refuses to acknowledge and in not doing so, fails the American people. It is a simple fact: There is no national security without border security; and everyone knows our border is anything but secure. We have the numbers to back it up. For starters, more than 8.2 million illegal immigrants have crossed the border since Biden took office. To kick off fiscal year 2024, there were over 240,000 illegal immigrant encounters in October, the highest monthly total ever recorded. This comes after a record-setting fiscal year 2023, which saw more than 2.4 million encounters. Of the 2.4 million, at least 169 individuals are on the Terror Watchlist. But what is really frightening is that these numbers only reflect the known encounters and doesn't even include all of those who evaded law enforcement--the ``got-aways.'' Border officials estimate that there were 1.7 million ``got-aways,'' any number of which could be on the Terror Watchlist living in our country with who knows what intentions. Even with all of this information available, the administration continues to break all the wrong records. In the last several weeks, daily records have been smashed time and again with known daily encounters ranging from 10,000 to 12,000.…”