WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) delivered the following remarks today on the Senate floor regarding the southern border crisis:
“As my colleagues and I on this side of the aisle have made abundantly clear, national security begins with border security. And any serious supplemental legislation with a shot of passing the Senate in the coming weeks will have to take meaningful steps toward fixing the Biden Administration’s border crisis.
“On President Biden’s watch, record-setting illegal migration has strained border protection facilities and personnel to their breaking point.
“On this President’s watch, ‘catch-and-release’ has gone from a short-sighted policy option to a dangerous first resort for a profoundly broken asylum and parole system.
“Right now, immigration courts are facing over 2 million pending asylum cases. That backlog has grown by 50% just since President Biden took office.
“The average asylum case waits more than four years for judgment. Talk about sending the wrong signals – to legitimate asylum-seekers and to bad actors, alike.
“A wide, bipartisan consensus continues to acknowledge that this broken system is the central problem driving the border crisis.
“Even the Administration’s border czar, Secretary Mayorkas, has acknowledged the way the United States handles asylum claims needs to be, ‘reformed from top to bottom.’
“Well Mr. President, that’s exactly what Senate Republicans have been working on for weeks. Senators Lankford, Graham, Cotton, and Cornyn are trying in good faith to help DHS solve its problem by identifying policy changes that restore a measure of common sense to the way we process asylum claims and grant parole.
“But at the same time, the Democratic Leader has called border security measures ‘the biggest holdup’ for passing a national security supplemental.
“Well, he’s right about one thing. The single largest obstacle in the way of urgent resources to help Israel, Ukraine, and Taiwan is Democrats’ refusal to address the crisis at the southern border.
“National security begins here at home. And the sooner our colleagues admit it, the sooner the Senate can move forward on the urgent business before us.”
