On the recordNovember 29, 2023
Madam President, I appreciate the words of my colleague from South Carolina. I fully support everything he said. And I want to come up and speak again to the challenge that we have at the border and why we need to take action now and why that action needs to be taken as part of a supplemental that includes funding for Israel and Ukraine. The situation at the border simply has gotten out of control. But I think it bears repeating; it has been said by some of the folks who spoke before: We are talking about a fourfold increase. Donald Trump was President for 4 years. President Biden has been President for 3 years. And in 3 years, we have nearly four times the crossings that we did in the Trump administration. Now, let's say some of that is because we had title 42 and COVID. That is fine. We can argue that. But we can still recognize this is a two- or three-time increase in illegal crossings. Now, we have lost operational control of the border. We don't have situational awareness at the border. Let me explain what that means. When you have 1.5 million people who we know came into this country illegally--they paid money to a cartel-- $5 to $50,000, depending upon what country they came from--to get into this country illegally. But some of them specifically want to go through a sector that the cartels specialize in making sure that you never have to encounter a border agent. They are called ``got-aways.'' Over the last 3 years, 1.5 million ``got-aways'' have entered this country.…





