On the recordMay 19, 2021
Since our last couple of floor periods, I had a chance to visit our southern border one more time, and I would like to point out what is going on there because I think it is the most important issue in America today. So that our listeners understand, there are two classes of people who come to our border. There are people who are caught or deal with the Border Patrol--and a lot of people want to be found by the Border Patrol because they think they can come into this country through an asylum process--and there are other people who sneak across the border. In April, our Border Patrol touched--or dealt with about 178,000 individuals. A year ago, that number was 17,000. So we have voluntarily gone up from having the Border Patrol deal with about 17,000 to 178,000. As we deal with more people who are touched by the Border Patrol, the Border Patrol has to spend more time doing paperwork, particularly with the children. We have another group of people coming across the border called get- aways. Because they are get-aways, nobody knows exactly how many there are. We do have drones. We do have our new wall together with sensors. And we are guessing right now that the number of get-aways has gone from about 10,000 a month a year ago to 30,000 a month. We feel when you combine the two totals, we are going from about 10,000 a month people coming across our border to--just guessing--70- to 80,000 people a month crossing our border.…
