The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“Border Security (Executive Calendar)” mentioning Bill Cassidy was published in the Senate section on page S5010 on July 21.
Of the 100 senators in 117th Congress, 24 percent were women, and 76 percent were men, according to the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.
Senators' salaries are historically higher than the median US income.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
Border Security
Mr. CASSIDY. Madam President, we are seeing record numbers of people coming to the U.S. Mexican border. I am told 63 different countries have folks that have arrived at our border.
In the latest numbers released by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, CBP, they encountered almost 190,000 people coming to the United States illegally through the southern border last month. That is the highest monthly number of encounters by CBP in two decades.
This is where we are now. That number is up 471 percent from June 2020. Across the board, every category of CBP encounter at the southwest land border--single adults, unaccompanied children, individuals in a family unit--they are surging in 2021, including in the hot summer months, when it has traditionally been that is when it falls. It is important because these people coming across in the hot summer months are at increased risk for death from dehydration and heat exhaustion.
With June's tally, CBP's migrant encounters surpassed 1 million for the fiscal year.
Now, in context, the last fiscal year had 460,000 encounters; fiscal year 2019, 980,000. That year was labeled a humanitarian catastrophe. That was for the entire year. Now, we are speaking of 1 million, and we have 3 months left to go in this fiscal year.
On Monday, Texas and the national media broadcast videos of migrants trying to force their way past Texas border guards. Eight Federal agents and police officers pushed back on the gate to prevent a rush of about 300 people just breaking through, coming across the border from Mexico.
By any definition, this is a crisis--for the individual, who is at risk of dying of dehydration in the desert; for our country, which cannot control the border crisis; for the infection of the COVID and coronavirus situation in our country, because, obviously, coronavirus could be rampant among these folks.
The Biden-Harris administration could not be doing worse if they intentionally set out to mismanage the situation. This past weekend, it became clear that it is not just a situation on the border, but it is also a situation in Louisiana.
On Friday, KTBS, a Shreveport news outlet, reported that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement--ICE--dropped off approximately 80 Haitian immigrants with little or no warning to local government and law enforcement officials.
And, again, this is multiple levels. I presume that these folks are dropped off because we are out of capacity, but let's think about the individual being dropped off. A source told KTBS that the men had money, but some of the women had little or no money--no contacts, no money, they don't speak the language, dropped off in a strange city.
Multiple Louisiana outlets are reporting approximately 400 immigrants from 42 countries have been dropped off by ICE in Shreveport since the end of March, but this is the first we heard. In Baton Rouge, WBRZ, the ABC affiliate, had photos and video of a similar dropoff in Baton Rouge on Friday, July 16. Monroe, LA, had a similar situation; Natchez, MS, similar as well.
We called ICE over the weekend, and yesterday, they--we actually spoke to the acting director. He told me the dropoffs are ``not our common practice.'' I would argue that releasing migrants without notifying local officials--at least the NGOs that can give them help, particularly when there isn't--when some of them have no money, no contacts, no place to go, is not good. And he acknowledged that. In fairness, he acknowledged that that was a mistake and that the number of 70 was too large a number.
He denied that it was a problem of capacity, but, frankly, when we see what is happening at the southern border and then we see a whole group of 70 being dropped off without the organization required to make sure there is seamless entry into our society, that tells me that there probably is a capacity problem.
Again, you cannot imagine a worse immigration policy and execution of what we have seen in the first 6 months of this administration. It is incoherence; it is dysfunction. It appears that Washington told ICE: Just send them someplace with, again, little or no notice to State and local officials.
We have to ask: Does the President, does the Vice President care about controlling the border? Do they care about communities? Do they care about these immigrants? It is almost as if they are wishing that the issue be swept under the rug
Unfortunately, the crisis continues to worsen. I don't know if there is a plan. I say that because if there is a plan, we have not yet seen it executed. What we have seen is that record numbers of people are now coming into our country. It is more as if hands are being thrown up in the air.
I will also say there was a lot of criticism of what President Trump did, but it is my observation, whatever the last thing the last President did was the first thing that worked because it is not as if they tried the immediate solution first off. It is like they worked through some things that didn't work and they finally got to where they were able to stem the tide.
So if it is the era of ``let's do the opposite of what President Trump did, even if it is the only thing that has ever worked,'' we are in trouble.
I do think it is time for the Biden administration to admit they were wrong and to begin going back to that which appeared to work.
I want to thank the people of Shreveport. They have been kinder than the Federal Government in terms of helping people out--the churches, the NGOs that came out to help folks. As one of them said, the Scripture teaches us to help those who are aliens in our land.
They have been willing to handle the situation when the administration failed. But the charity of the American people is not a substitute for a coherent policy, and this is an issue for the executive branch, specifically President Biden and Vice President Harris, who was personally put in charge.
We need to get it right. We need answers. We need accountability. We need sound immigration and border policies, and it starts with securing our southern border and enforcing our laws.
Again, the current situation is unfair to everyone--the migrants, the community, our country. The situation in Shreveport, Monroe, and Baton Rouge shows the failure of the policies. I don't think they are the only communities dealing with this, and we will continue to deal with it even more so until we have a controlled border.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Ms. SMITH. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Ossoff). Without objection, it is so ordered.
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