Lankford Calls Out Rewrite of History on Border Bill Negotiation

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WASHINGTON, DC - Senator James Lankford (R-OK) delivered remarks on the Senate Floor calling out the rewrite of history on the border bill negotiations and stressed the national security crisis at the southern border. Lankford serves as the lead Republican on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Subcommittee on Government Operations and Border Management.

Last month, Lankford joined NewsNation to challenge the notion that Vice President Kamala Harris wants to secure the southern border, and has called attention to the deliberate actions the Biden Administration is taking to open the southern border.

Transcript

I ended up being a topic of conversation for the past month and a half or so, in a lot of political conversations about immigration and the border. So I want to be able to come to this body and to say the immigration issues are still unresolved. But there's been a lot of rewriting of what actually has happened in the past year, and all the negotiations. Vice President Harris made a comment publicly just a few weeks ago when she said, 'Let me be clear: after decades in law enforcement, I know the importance of safety and security, especially at our border. Last year, Joe and I brought together Democrats and conservative Republicans to write the strongest border bill in decades.' I mean no disrespect to the Vice President, but we had four months of negotiations, and she neither initiated those negotiations nor participated in a single second of those negotiations-not one second.

The Vice President's staff was never involved in any of the negotiations. The negotiations took four months because the people that sat down at the table all determined we're in a very bad place. We need to resolve the chaos that's happening at our southern border.

For the first six weeks of those negotiations, the White House refused to participate at all in the negotiation, either from the President's staff, the President or the Vice President, or Vice President's Staff.

So for the first six weeks of the four months of negotiations, the White House didn't want to discuss it. After six weeks, the White House then got involved in the negotiations. So it was three Senators and the White House to be able to walk through that and then again, for the next three months of our negotiations, it was a constant fight to get anything agreed to, to secure our southern border.

What we came up with and was the final agreement wasn't everything that I wanted, but it was enough to at least begin to make a change in what was happening at our southern border. It was a pretty straightforward process. Asylum is very difficult to achieve. Only about three percent of the people that actually go through the hearings actually achieve asylum. But you don't find out that until usually six or eight years after you've already been here and have already gone through this long process. So now we have thousands of people crossing our border asking for asylum. Not because they believe they qualify, but because they know they'll stay here somewhere between six and ten years while they wait for the hearing. And they at least get a decade in America. And then many of them then disappear.

So what we could get to agreement was, when you cross the border, you would cross the border, first person each day, they would have a much faster screening that would take hours or days and they'd be screened at the standard that was at the end. So instead of waiting six or eight years or ten years to get that final decision, you would get it rapidly.

So the first person that would cross each day would cross, would be quickly screened under a brand new process, and then 97 percent of them would be deported immediately because they don't qualify for asylum and everyone knows the joke. So first day, first person, you cross, quickly screened under a new process, deported immediately. But if we got 5,000 people crossing, we don't have enough staff to screen that many people. So we created a Border Emergency Authority that if you cross the border and you've got 5,000 people flooding the border and we don't have the staffing to do it, no one gets screened. You just get arrested and deported. So first person cross, screened, deported. If we're overwhelmed by the cartels with high numbers, you just are deported immediately and no one is screened.

That's what we could finally come up with an agreement. Now, I have to tell you, I felt like that would dramatically slow the flow at our southern border, and it would deal with the core issue that is the abuse of asylum. But there were a lot of issues I couldn't get agreement on that quite frankly, many of my colleagues on the Republican side were very frustrated that we couldn't make progress on. Some of those very common sense things. For instance, if you're going to request asylum, you have to request asylum at a port of entry.

You can't come across the border between the ports of entry in the open desert, or swim in the river, and then say, when you get caught, 'Oh, I want asylum'. It was obvious you were trying to sneak into the country. And you're saying, if you're a true asylum seeker and you believe you're requesting asylum, come to a port of entry. We thought that was a pretty common sense thing to say. We'll expedite your process to asylum, if you come to a port, not if we have to chase you in the desert. I couldn't get that agreement. My Democratic colleagues would not agree to that. That was a great frustration on the Republican side.

We wanted to be able to require the Remain in Mexico program. The Supreme Court had already spoken and said that had to be done. It was not being done, so that if we were flooded with people they're not waiting for eight or ten years here, they're actually waiting in another country to be able to come through the process. They'd still get their appointment. My Democratic colleagues would have none of that.

We also wanted an end to the two big parole programs that the Biden Administration has created. One of them is called CBP One. That is, if you come to a port of entry and tell DHS ahead of time, 'I'm coming,' then DHS, when you arrive at the port of entry, will quickly give you paperwork, will give you a work permit that day, and will release you into the country for a decade as you await your hearing. It was a fast-tracked process into the country that was actually inviting more people to illegally cross into the country.

We now have 1,500 people a day that are coming through that process. We have no idea if they qualify for asylum because they're not being screened for asylum. We wanted an end to that process because we felt like it's actually inviting more illegal immigration rather than trying to deter it. And it's not just us that's saying that. The Inspector General for the Department of Homeland Security made this statement. They felt that CBP did not gather intelligence or conduct sufficient analysis of data generated by CBP One appointments to protect against fraudulent applications, and misuse and public safety threats. That's not us saying that. That's the Inspector General saying that. We wanted an end to that program. Through the negotiations that were long and hard, I got agreement that program would end, that we would put a stop to that program.

But there was a second program called the CHNV Program. This is 30,000 people a month that are coming in. These are folks from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, Venezuela-30,000 a month. This was another program that was wholly created out of the Biden Administration that's never existed in any other administration. It was a parole authority to say, if you'll contact us before you come from one of these countries and someone here in the United States will 'sponsor' you or at least say 'I know them,' then you can get into the country and be paroled into the country. This is not even an asylum request. This is just, you're just released into the country. We wanted to have a stop to that program as well, because there's all kinds of issues with that program. But at that one, my Democratic colleagues would not agree and said, 'No, we'll stop the CBP One Parole program. We won't stop the slowdown of Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, Venezuelans coming in in very high numbers.' By the way, the deal was supposedly that we would take in 30,000 of those folks, and Mexico would take in 30,000 of those folks. The problem is, we've asked for the numbers that Mexico has taken in, and so far, our State Department won't give us an answer. DHS won't give us an answer. As far as we can tell, the Mexican side has been zero while we have 30,000.

Now, we felt there was a problem in the way the program was being run. And by the way, again, we're not the only ones that think that. DHS itself shut down that program for part of this summer because they found what they called 'egregious fraud problems.' That is some sponsor was sponsoring dozens of people to be able to come in and [we had] an overflow of individuals not being properly screened. There are major problems with the program. Unfortunately, the program has restarted again.

Now, why do I walk through this? I keep hearing this rewrite of history that it was President Trump himself that told all Republicans, 'It's a great deal, but don't do it.' Now, there's no doubt President Trump made a statement that it's not enough. He wanted everything in it, and he said, 'Don't do it.' No question that statement was made. But no question, that belief was already shared by several folks on my side of the aisle saying, 'We wanted an end to all these parole programs. We also want to stop applying between ports of entry, and if you're going to apply, only at ports of entry.' And several of my colleagues said the House bill, that was HR2, it was that or nothing. They wanted everything or nothing. And suddenly this whole system falls apart.

I stood here at this exact same spot saying to my colleagues on my side of the aisle, 'We should do as much as we can do. This is as much as we can get right now with a Democrat Senate with a Democrat White House. Let's do all we can to be able to stop it.' Obviously, I didn't win that part of the debate, but I also don't want people rewriting history and what actually occurred in the debate, because there were serious issues that were unresolved in the bill that are still out there. My frustration is, all of it is still out there. We still have the same issue with asylum that this bill would have fixed. We still have the same issue between ports of entry that's still unfixed, and we still have not one of those parole programs but both of those programs happening.

Interestingly enough, in the last couple of months, the numbers at the border have started slowing down. It's been very interesting. I don't know if you noticed, even during the presidential debate that happened earlier this week, ABC news asked Vice President Harris, 'The numbers in border crossings for illegal immigration was very high during your first three years, but they seem to have slowed down to the closer we're getting to the election, why?' She actually didn't answer that question at all. She totally skipped it, and ABC News didn't follow up with her, shockingly, to be able to do a follow up question to say, 'You didn't answer the initial question. You said everything else but why.'

Well, I can give you a couple things on that. Two things have occurred in this past few months. Mexico's had their elections, and we're having ours. And so suddenly Mexico is starting to enforce their border a little better, and this Administration's enforcing the border a little better with the authorities they already have.

Now, when I say a little better, it's gone from 5,000 people illegally crossing a day to about 3,400 people illegally crossing a day. That number is still five times what was crossing during the Obama Administration. My request has been the same for President Biden all along. If you won't enforce the border the same way President Trump enforced it, at least enforce it the same way President Obama enforced it. Under President Obama, we had half a million people illegally crossing a year. Now we have 2.5 million people illegally crossing in a year. Same law, same exact law. Enforced completely different.

Why is this an issue? It's not just an issue in our economy. It's not just an issue in our schools. It's not just an issue in crime in our communities. It's also a national security issue. In June, the FBI picked up eight ISIS affiliated individuals that were in our country that had come across our southern border and had asked for asylum. They were from Tajikistan, and they had gotten a quick review at the border and had been released like hundreds of thousands of others had that same month. But these eight were different. They're ISIS affiliated, and they scattered around the country to Philadelphia, New York and Los Angeles and began their plotting. Thankfully, our FBI picked them up, but of the 2.5 million people that have crossed just last year, how many did we miss?

I've been very outspoken on this issue. We moved from the border issue being just an issue about how do we manage our own border and legal immigration to a national security issue-3,400 people a day illegally crossing our border is still an epic high number. And while the media has looked away because now it's no longer 5,000 a day, 3,400 a day is still way too high. Our system is still overwhelmed, and we still have tens of thousands of people coming in of what this Administration calls 'Special Interest Aliens.' That is folks that by their own definition are considered a national security threat. But there's so many we don't have the opportunity to be able to follow all of them. That was those eight that were picked up that were ISIS affiliated, they had been designated as 'Special Interest Aliens.' Thankfully, we were later able to find them and pick them up. But there are thousands of them currently in the country. Hopefully they mean us no harm, but currently we have no idea. That's something that needs to change.

National security should not be a partisan issue. I understand it's an election year. This should not be a partisan issue. This should be a 'How do we fix this' issue. This should be 'How do we resolve this' issue. And if the numbers are going down after I was told that the numbers were sky high because of climate change-that was really what I was told by DHS. In fact, the White House in 2021 put out a report on climate change and migration saying that we have dramatically increased numbers because of climate change, not because of lack of border enforcement. My response to them now is well, if the numbers are going down at the border, apparently the climate is getting better worldwide because the numbers are coming down. It's not an issue of 'climate migration.' It's an issue of enforcement at our southern border. If that occurs, the numbers go down. If it doesn't, the numbers skyrocket because we're the United States of America, and people want to be able to be in the greatest country in the world. And I don't blame them.

We as Americans, though, also have the right to be able to know we live in security and the people that are coming into our country, we know who they are, we know where they're from, and we verified any kind of criminal background that may or may not be there. That's not an unfair request to be able to make.

One last thing. Currently, the House has passed what they call the SAVE Act, and there's an ongoing debate in the House right now on how this will fit. The SAVE Act as a pretty simple thing. The SAVE Act just says 'If you're not legally present in the United States, you can't vote.' Now, it's already federal law that no one who's a non-citizen can vote in federal elections. That's already the law. That's the trust part, though. There is no verify portion of this. It is the basic principle of trust but verify. Right now we're all trust. It's against the law, but there is no verification. The SAVE Act just says we're not going to just trust that people that are not legally present here don't vote. We're going to verify that. You can't register to vote until you can show that you're actually a citizen in the United States. That shouldn't be a radical concept. That should be straightforward. I've been one of the folks that have asked the current Attorney General, 'Can you show us any prosecutions or even any attempts to be able to prosecute individuals that were not legally present in the United States that attempted to vote?'

Because we know some stories. There's some newspaper stories scattered around the country of a few of those stories. We just asked the simple question, 'Can you tell us any prosecutions?' In Oklahoma, we have about 40 people every election across our state, about 40 people, vote twice. They'll do absentee voting, and then they'll show up and they'll vote again. You know what they get? They get a knock on the door from law enforcement a couple of months later saying, 'You violated state law. You voted twice.' We actually enforce our law. That discourages people in the future from then coming and trying that again because they know they're being enforced. So we thought it's a reasonable question to ask the Attorney General, 'How are you enforcing federal law in this area?' It's not that they're asking for something new, it's how we enforcing what's existing. So far, the Attorney General, after months of asking the question, has given us no answer.

I look forward to the day that this body can sit down with each other and to say, 'Let's solve the national security issues,' because we all know they're there. We all see it. We all go through the same briefings. Let's solve those. And let's have an immigration system where we honor illegal immigration and deter illegal immigration. That's what most countries do. But for some reason, our politics has gotten in the way of us solving this. So let's find a way to be able to solve this in the days ahead. I have no delusion it's going to get solved in the next two weeks, but we do need to sit down and resolve this in the days ahead.

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