Volume 167, No. 88, covering the 1st Session of the 117th Congress (2021 – 2022), was published by the Congressional Record.
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” mentioning Mitch McConnell was published in the Senate section on pages S3174-S3175 on May 20.
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. McCONNELL. Mr. President, on another matter, our Nation’s southern border is still in crisis. The Biden administration still won’t admit it. Much of the media would prefer not to cover it, but the facts are clear, and they are unacceptable.
A few days ago, Customs and Border Protection issued its report on the month of April. The number of encounters with illegal entrants was 3 percent higher in April than it was in March. The crisis is still growing. Encounters with single adults on the border were 613 percent higher last month versus April of last year, when the Trump administration put emergency measures in place. Encounters with unaccompanied children were up 2,217 percent year over year. Let me say that one more time: 2,217 percent more kids, without parents, at our border on President Biden’s watch.
The administration has tried to boast that the number of unaccompanied kids in the custody of the Department of Homeland Security has gone down. It has. It is because they have transferred large numbers of kids from DHS to HHS. There are now more than 19,000 children in the custody of Health and Human Services, and hundreds more are arriving every single day.
We know why all of this is happening. When Washington Democrats spent years reciting the mantra “Abolish ICE; abolish ICE,” people listened. When our new President spent his campaign signaling he would support a weaker border when he expressed that he supported providing government healthcare to people here illegally, people actually took note. Now the Democrats cannot get control of the crisis that they have stoked.
The Vice President–supposedly, the point person to fix illegal immigration–has yet to even visit the southern border.
Apparently, Secretary Becerra’s operation at HHS has, in some instances, left migrant children stranded on buses for multiple days–
exactly the kind of unacceptable mismanagement that Senate Republicans feared we might see under an HHS Secretary without relevant healthcare or management experience. Last week, HHS announced it would be taking money that was meant to replenish the Strategic National Stockpile–
money to fight this pandemic and future pandemics–to help with the migrant crisis.
Well, today, the Senate will consider another amendment from the senior Senator from Wisconsin. It would stop the Biden administration from canceling contracts that are already in place to build a wall on our southern border. Perhaps our Democratic colleagues will help us begin to address the border crisis this administration has caused.
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