Rob Portman: “I am here on the floor today to talk about the unfolding, urgent situation on our southern border, and I do so as the…”

“I am here on the floor today to talk about the unfolding, urgent situation on our southern border, and I do so as the ranking Republican on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. This unfortunate situation at the border includes a lot of kids coming over the border, UACs, as they call them, unaccompanied alien children. These children are making a long and dangerous journey north, putting themselves at risk and bringing our immigration system and our shelter system along the border to a breaking point. You may have heard that the Biden administration insists this is not a crisis. Here are the facts. You decide. This chart shows the dire situation that we are in. On Tuesday, the most recent confirmed information we have is there were 3,400 of these children in Border Patrol custody. Ten days ago, that number was 1,700. So in 10 days, this number has doubled. To put this in perspective, at the very height of the border crisis in 2019 that we all remember being talked about a lot on the floor of this Senate and around the country, families and children were coming in, in big numbers. At the very height, it was 2,600 unaccompanied kids. Today, based on some information we just received anecdotally from the Customs and Border Protection folks, it is over 3,500. It is a 35-percent increase even from where it was during the crisis, and it is growing.…”