Rob Portman: “I thank the majority leader, and I thank the Presiding Officer for allowing me to speak this evening. I just returned…”

“I thank the majority leader, and I thank the Presiding Officer for allowing me to speak this evening. I just returned from the southern border and want to give a brief report and talk about some potential ways forward to deal with what is happening on the Mexican border. I went with Secretary of Homeland Security Mayorkas and also with the chair of the Homeland Security Committee, my colleague from Michigan, and also with my colleague from West Virginia and my colleague from Connecticut, who are the chairs and ranking members of the Senate Homeland Security Appropriations Committee. We had a bipartisan group and those of us who were involved on the authorizing side and on the appropriations side. You probably heard that the situation is bad, and it is. There is a record number of unaccompanied children coming to our border today, being let in, and ending up in Border Patrol detention facilities. Just yesterday, CBP reported that there were more than 15,500 unaccompanied kids in Federal custody. That is a record. But it is not just children. More than 100,000 migrants were apprehended in February alone. This is a 15-year record, representing a 28-percent increase just since January. All the numbers from March look even higher. We won't know the final numbers for another couple of weeks, but the point is, it is getting worse, not better.…”