During remarks on the Senate floor, Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) spoke about the border policies of the Biden-Harris Administration.
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NewsTranscript
00:00It's clear that the November 5th election is prominent on the minds of a Majority Leader
00:11who has used the floor of the United States Senate to make what should be a paid political
00:15announcement by the Harris for President campaign, but let me focus primarily on his remarks
00:25about the Supreme Court.
00:28It's clear that the Majority Leader and our Democratic colleagues don't like the Constitution,
00:34they don't like the separation of powers, they don't like the independence of the judiciary,
00:40which is really the gold standard for courts worldwide based on the rule of law.
00:51What they want is a political branch of government, not one that calls balls and strikes, one
00:56that decides cases based on the law and the facts.
01:02He talks about how the Supreme Court's reputation has been tarnished.
01:08One reason why the Supreme Court's reputation has perhaps been tarnished in the media is
01:15because the Majority Leader stood in front of the Supreme Court and called out two justices
01:21by name and threatened them if they made a decision that he didn't like.
01:29He said, they won't know what hit them.
01:34That kind of irresponsible rhetoric by the Majority Leader and others is perhaps responsible
01:43for people wondering, is the court an impartial institution?
01:47I would point out when the court was maybe constituted a little differently that our
01:53Democratic friends didn't say a peep as long as the court was making decisions that they
01:59liked and they agreed with from a political perspective.
02:05But it is fundamentally irresponsible for the Majority Leader to come here.
02:11I guess he's caught up in the fervor of the November the 5th election.
02:17Having established a political coup and replacing the sitting president with the vice president
02:25without going through the Democratic process of actually holding elections, he's feeling
02:30his oats and perhaps cannot restrain himself.
02:36But it's clear that our Democratic colleagues don't like the Constitution and they want
02:43to change it.
02:46But they know they can't do that because there's not the support across the country or in Congress
02:52to do that.
02:53So he uses this as a political cudgel in the run-up to the election.
02:58It's irresponsible and unfortunately I think it reflects the desperation with which the
03:07Majority Leader views this upcoming election on November the 5th.
03:16Madam President, America's southern border has been in a state of crisis for the last
03:21three and a half years and our country is desperate for a change in direction.
03:27They know that the millions of people coming across, the drugs that have taken the lives
03:31of 108,000 Americans last year alone, the crime, the potential vulnerability to terrorist
03:38attacks, they are not happy with the status quo which is what the Biden and Harris administration
03:45have provided us for the last three and a half years.
03:50Throughout his time in office, President Biden has shown zero interest in stopping the flood
03:55of illegal immigration across our border.
03:59He's only visited the border once and I doubt he will make another trip to the border during
04:04the remainder of his term in office.
04:08But of course I don't think he actually talked to the people who could have better best informed
04:13him of what the problem was created by his very policies.
04:18His policies have made it worse, not better, certainly worse than it was under the Trump
04:25administration.
04:27President Biden is in Texas today, he's in Austin, Texas and then he will go to Houston
04:33but I doubt he will bother to make a quick trip to the border because the message he
04:39has sent loud and clear for the last three and a half years is he does not care.
04:46He doesn't care about the migrants that are swarming into our major cities like New York,
04:52Washington, D.C., Chicago and the burdens those have placed on local taxpayers about
04:58the crime that is associated with the fact that uncontrolled, you don't know who is coming
05:04across the border.
05:06Admittedly, most migrants are coming here for work, for better life, but the criminal
05:12cartels who continue to get rich smuggling people to the border from all around the world
05:19also are the ones that smuggle the drugs to the border only to be distributed to kill
05:24our sons and daughters who inadvertently take fentanyl, presuming it to be some innocuous
05:32drug like a Percocet or a Xanax, only to find out it's a counterfeit pill contaminated by
05:39a powerful opioid, fentanyl.
05:44What does a potential Harris administration look like?
05:49Does it mean more of the same when it comes to the border and immigration policies?
05:53Would it signal a new direction?
05:56And if so, what would that direction be?
05:59Well, the truth is we already know the answers to those questions.
06:05We don't have to wonder about Vice President Harris's policies because she has played a
06:10starring role in the current Biden border crisis.
06:16These are, after all, Biden-Harris policies.
06:21Just a couple of months into President Biden's presidency, illegal border crossings surged
06:26as a direct result of the policies that he and Vice President Harris implemented starting
06:32the first day in office, mainly by dismantling, piece by piece, the effective policies of
06:39the Trump administration.
06:42But it became clear that the situation at the border was veering in a dangerous direction,
06:47at least in terms of the politics, to President Biden.
06:52So he tapped the Vice President as the administration's border czar.
06:58That's what the headline from Axios, a political publication, heralded at the time.
07:03It said, quote, Biden puts Harris in charge of the border crisis.
07:10But curiously, it took three months before she made her first, and to my knowledge, only
07:17trip to the southern border as the individual with the administration in charge of the border
07:24crisis.
07:26She steered clear of the Rio Grande Valley, which is ground zero to the crisis, but instead
07:33did, I guess, what can most accurately and fairly be called a drive-by in El Paso in
07:39far west Texas, a very different environment than the Rio Grande Valley.
07:47This was Vice President Harris's first and only trip to the border, and it provided an
07:52early signal about how little she cared.
07:58The Vice President was in Texas last week and will be there again later this week, and
08:03once again, no trip to the border is scheduled.
08:08You know, if she cared, don't you think she'd show up?
08:13Don't you think that's maybe what someone would do to learn about what's not working?
08:19What could we do to make it better?
08:21But the reality is, over the last three and a half years, Vice President Harris has proven
08:26she has no interest, zero interest in stopping the alarming number of people streaming across
08:34the border, and the results speak for themselves.
08:41We've seen a record-shattering number of people flowing across the border because all of the
08:47signals being sent by the Biden administration is, come, by any means you can, come to the
08:53border and we will release you into the interior of the United States.
09:00For the last three and a half years, we've logged more than 8.1 million border crossings,
09:09which is unprecedented.
09:11During the entire 12 years, 12 years of the Obama and Trump administrations, the U.S.
09:18bordered about half of that, well, excuse me, about 6.1 million migrants at the southern border.
09:24So that's 12 years we've experienced less than what we've experienced in three and a
09:31half years under the Biden administration.
09:36So in those three and a half years, President Biden and Vice President Harris have not only
09:40hit that previous total, but significantly exceeded it.
09:48The number of illegal crossings at the border, though, only tells part of the story.
09:54It's only one data point.
09:57Every day, Border Patrol spots migrants on cameras or sensors, but they're unable to
10:01get there to them in time to apprehend them.
10:05These are known as gotaways.
10:09Since President Biden took office, the agencies recorded more than 1.8 million gotaways.
10:16We don't know who these individuals are, where they are now, what their intentions were in
10:23coming to the border, and what kind of dangers that they may pose to the American people.
10:30Are they terrorists?
10:32Are they drug traffickers, convicted rapists, sexual predators?
10:38We have no idea, and neither does President Biden and Vice President Harris.
10:44And they simply don't care.
10:49On top of that, the administration stood up a number of new programs to hoodwink the American
10:56people into thinking that the problem isn't as bad as it really is, while unbelievably
11:04incentivizing even more illegal immigration.
11:10One example is the CBP app.
11:13That's an app for your phone, Customs and Border Protection app is what it stands for.
11:19But this was sold to the American people as a safe and orderly way to manage the border
11:25crisis.
11:26Instead, this system is being exploited by cartels and criminal organizations.
11:34And basically, all you have to do is schedule your appearance at the border, and then the
11:40Border Patrol and Customs and Border Protection will allow you to come into the country and
11:45release you.
11:48But this app requires users located in central or northern Mexico to schedule an appointment.
11:54But the cartels have found a way to circumvent that requirement by using a virtual private
11:59network or VPN.
12:02This has allowed them to boost their sales pitch and sell CBP-1 appointments to migrants
12:08around the world.
12:09They're using it to market their services, to encourage more illegal immigration, to
12:17enrich these criminal organizations more.
12:22Another separate Biden-Harris administration program allows up to 30,000 migrants from
12:29Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela to enter the United States every month.
12:36That's 360,000 a year.
12:41No claim of asylum, no claim of credible fear of persecution.
12:49You show up, and you're allowed to stay.
12:53360,000 a year.
12:56That's another magnet for people to come.
13:01Record number of illegal crossings, grave humanitarian conditions, dishonest accounting.
13:09This has been the reality of the Biden-Harris administration.
13:15And there can be no serious doubt that if elected president, Vice President Harris would
13:20keep these disastrous policies in place.
13:25She's already told us as much.
13:28Before serving as Vice President, or even as a United States Senator, Vice President
13:34Harris was Attorney General of California.
13:38In 2015, then Attorney General Harris claimed in an interview that an undocumented immigrant
13:47is really not a criminal.
13:50Well, she knows better.
13:54Our immigration statutes explicitly establish that illegally entering the United States
13:59can be a crime.
14:01Even though she served as the top law enforcement officer for a border state, she refused to
14:07acknowledge even this basic fact.
14:12Then when campaigning for president in 2019, then Senator Harris affirmed that she still
14:17held that belief.
14:20The moderator of a debate asked the candidates to raise your hand if they supported decriminalizing
14:27illegal border crossings.
14:29And of course, her hand shot up into the air.
14:34It's hard to decriminalize something that you don't think is a crime.
14:39But we get her drift.
14:43Of course, that's only the beginning of Vice President Harris' views concerning the border
14:49and immigration.
14:51Back in 2018, then Senator Harris was asked if she supported the Abolish ICE movement.
14:57You may recall this was back when our colleagues on the left, the Democratic Party, supported
15:04Defund the Police.
15:09She went even farther and said we ought to abolish ICE, that's Immigration and Customs
15:15Enforcement.
15:16Those are the folks who enforce our immigration laws.
15:23She said we need to start thinking about that from scratch.
15:28I guess that means when you start from scratch, eliminating all the laws that currently exist
15:34and replacing them with something new, but she was certainly willing to abolish ICE while
15:41she created something unspecified different.
15:47That same year in a Senate hearing, she compared U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to
15:52the Ku Klux Klan.
15:56How outrageous and irresponsible is that?
15:59These are law enforcement officers who serve the nation, put themselves in peril, in harm's
16:06way, and she said they are like the Ku Klux Klan?
16:14That says everything you need to know about how a potential Biden-Harris administration
16:20would approach illegal immigration and border security, including dismantling the very enforcement
16:28agency responsible for enforcing our immigration laws.
16:34Beyond that, Vice President Harris has advocated for a pathway to citizenship for the 11 million
16:39or so people in the country illegally.
16:43I also heard this weekend one of our colleagues, a senator from Massachusetts, say one of the
16:49things that she would anticipate from a future Harris administration would be establishing
16:55a pathway to citizenship for people here illegally in the United States.
17:03We also know she supports federal health coverage for undocumented immigrants.
17:08In other words, she wants all of us as taxpayers to pay for the health care of people who won't
17:15even respect our laws and who enter the country illegally.
17:20And she's demonstrated that she is all too quick to judge and vilify law enforcement.
17:27Three years ago, mounted Border Patrol agents were trying to control a crowd of about 15,000
17:33migrants near Del Rio, Texas.
17:36Del Rio, Texas is about 35,000 people.
17:42Can you imagine the chaos and the challenge associated with 15,000 migrants from Haiti
17:48showing up in this town of 35,000 people?
17:52One photographer captured an image that went viral for all of the wrong reasons.
17:59The image showed an agent grabbing the back of a man's shirt while on horseback while
18:07the horse's reins dangle on the side.
18:13At first glance, people like then Vice President Harris assumed the worst and accused the agent
18:18of whipping the man to the ground.
18:23But before the agency could even investigate the matter, she had attacked, disparaging
18:30the very law enforcement officials that are responsible for enforcing security at the
18:35border.
18:36She said, these images evoke those of slavery and describe the agent's behavior as horrible
18:47and deeply troubling.
18:51Had she waited to actually investigate the incident, she would have learned the facts,
18:59that there was no whip and there was no whipping.
19:02If she'd bothered to speak to the head of Border Patrol, she would have been told the
19:07same thing.
19:08But as reports indicate, the Vice President of the United States, who was appointed the
19:13Border Czar by President Biden, has never spoken to the head of the Border Patrol, neither
19:23the current one or his predecessor.
19:27Think about that for a minute.
19:29If your job is to be the Border Czar, wouldn't that be the first person you'd talk to as
19:37the head of Border Patrol, maybe to learn what you could about the problem and what
19:42you could do to help fix it?
19:44But she hasn't even bothered to talk to either the current or the previous Border Patrol
19:49chief.
19:52The fact is that Vice President Harris has played a key role in fueling the largest immigration
19:58crisis our country has ever seen.
20:03If she was able to accomplish that much as the Vice President and Border Czar, I hate
20:08to know what kind of damage she could inflict from the Oval Office.