Border Act

Floor Speech

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Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Madam President, I want to join the Senator from Connecticut in thanking Senator Murphy for his leadership, not only in bringing this group together today but also of this very important bill and effort to take on the issues on the border.

As we face global and domestic threats, including a surge at the border, securing our borders and points of entry could not be more important. We had this opportunity to move forward in a bipartisan manner on a broad reform bill that Senators Murphy, Lankford, and Sinema spent months negotiating. For those of us who had bills that were part of that effort, including the Afghan Adjustment Act, I saw firsthand the detailed work they did, the work that they did--that hard work of coming together for what is best for our country.

We have seen these efforts before with immigration every time we have gotten so close. When I first got to the Senate, Senator Graham and Senator Kennedy invited me to be in the group that negotiated legislation supported by President Bush.

We came so close to getting that done in comprehensive reform which, of course, included funding for order at the border.

After that failed, we moved into President Obama's time. Again, this time, it was the Senate Judiciary Committee, on which I served, that came together with Senator Grassley's support and Senator Leahy's, and reached an agreement, passed it through the Senate, and then it failed over in the House of Representatives.

Time three was when Senator Rounds, Senator Kaine, and many of us came together. I remember Senator Collins' office was the place of the meeting. I believe the Presiding Officer was part of that, too, and we reached an agreement. We had enough votes. And then, unfortunately, President Trump gut punched the people in his own party and came out against the bill--again, significant funding for order at the border, significant work that would have been done to allow people to seek citizenship who had been here for years, many of whom know no other country, like the Dreamers.

This bill that was negotiated came with incredible headwinds that they were up against. It would have fixed the asylum system. It would have given the President emergency powers to shut the border down when needed. It also would have invested in hiring more Border Patrol agents and immigration judges, while giving law enforcement the tools and technology they need to secure our borders.

As the Presiding Officer knows, strengthening our border security means investing in both our southern and our northern borders, and I note that Senator Stabenow of Michigan also touched on this very important issue.

America shares the longest border in the world with the country of Canada. It stretches over 5,500 miles, and more than 400,000 people and $2 billion in goods and services cross it every day. A strong northern border is critical for maintaining our trade relationships with Canada and the world.

As I like to say, in Minnesota, we can see Canada from our porch, and they are our closest trading partner. I just met with a number of leaders from the Canadian Parliament today. But that border is also critical for our national security.

We know that more people on the Terrorist Screening Database attempt to enter the United States from Canada than through Mexico, and we have witnessed terrible instances of drug smuggling and human trafficking across this border.

Like so many others, I was horrified and heartbroken when a family of four froze to death in a blizzard at the Minnesota-Canada border, just 2 years ago, in an incident related to human smuggling. That is why we must ensure that Federal, State, and local officials have the information and resources they need to protect our northern border.

And when there are issues at the southern border, they often rely on Customs, as the Presiding Officer knows, and others to come down from northern border offices, and that creates its own set of issues.

That is why these negotiations that Senators Murphy and Lankford and Senator Sinema, with strong support from Senator Schumer, engaged in and this product of a bill were so important, and that is why I supported it.

Beyond addressing the situations at both the northern and southern border, the Border Act would expand legal pathways by including 250,000 new family and employment visas over the next 5 years. These visas would go a long way toward filling worker shortages in my State--and I know in the Presiding Officer's State--that are impacting businesses in my home State, impacting farmers, hospitality, hospitals, clinics, and the like.

This bill also included the Afghan Adjustment Act, with some changes that had been suggested by a number of Republican Senators, which we included. That bill would have been a savior. There are 80,000 Afghans here, so many of whom helped our troops--a major priority for the American Legion, a major priority for the VFW--and they now have a trapdoor under them. They don't know whenever they could be sent back to the Taliban. Yet these are people we made a covenant to. And just like after the Vietnam war, we kept that covenant--we kept that covenant with those that stood with us--we must keep that covenant again.

That is why Senators like Senator Graham was the lead sponsor of that bill with me, along with Senator Moran, the ranking member of Veterans' Affairs. Senator Risch is on the bill from Foreign Relations. We have support from Senator Mullin on that bill. Senator Wicker is on that bill. It is an incredible group of Republican and Democratic cosponsors, and I thank Senator Murphy, Senator Lankford, and Senator Sinema for their work to incorporate it into the bill. It is strongly supported by the Chamber of Commerce as well.

So the bill not only included the work that I just mentioned on the border and on some of these other very important issues; the bill also would have made a major effort in taking on fentanyl by strengthening our borders.

We did make progress on border security legislation that was signed into law last month as part of the national security package, the FEND Off Fentanyl Act. This critical legislation, championed by our colleagues Senators Sherrod Brown and Tim Scott, declares fentanyl trafficking a national emergency and imposes tough new sanctions on fentanyl traffickers, from the chemical suppliers in China to the Mexican cartels that traffic the drugs into our country.

We also recently provided funding for Customs and Border Protection to detect and seize fentanyl and other narcotics at our ports of entry.

These are important steps in the right direction, but there is so much more to do. Law enforcement officers across my State and our country must be very concerned about this every day. One seizure, actually, of fentanyl was enough to kill every single person in Hennepin County, our most populous county.

In Minnesota alone, fentanyl is involved in 92 percent of opioid deaths. Just last month, police in my husband's hometown of Mankato arrested six suspected drug dealers and seized almost 6,000 pills laced with fentanyl. And earlier this year, Minnesota's U.S. attorney, Andy Luger, announced that law enforcement busted a Twin Cities drug ring and seized over 30,000 grams of fentanyl pills. That is enough to kill everyone in our State with over 5 million people more than two times over.

These aren't just numbers. Each of those pills could kill one of our friends and neighbors, mothers and fathers, sons and daughters.

I am thinking about Devin Norring from Hastings, MN. Devin was struggling with dental pain and migraines. So he bought what he thought was Percocet over Snapchat to deal with the pain. But it wasn't really Percocet. It was laced with fentanyl, and it immediately killed him. He was only 19. One pill can kill, and every pill we keep out of our country represents a potential life saved.

That is why we have to pass this legislation. But I join my colleagues and will continue to advocate for the bipartisan Border Act. Why? More funding for cutting-edge technology to intercept fentanyl, more secured border, more order at the border. We need this at the southern border, as well as the northern border.

Next week, I hope we will have an opportunity to take action on this bill. We have worked on this bill for months, making changes from multiple Senators from both parties. At this point, there shouldn't be any controversy about what is in the bill. People have had plenty of time to read it. They have had plenty of time to see the support from groups like the conservative union of the border agents at the border. They have had plenty of time to see the support that the bill has from so many groups across the country.

They have had plenty of time to hear about the horror stories, like the one I just mentioned on fentanyl, and they have had plenty of time to get to the place: That is enough about politics, enough about finger pointing. Let us pass this bipartisan border bill to make our country safer.
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