[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 65 (Wednesday, April 19, 2023)] [Senate] [Page S1257] From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
Date: 2023-04-19
Chamber: SENATE
Mr. HAGERTY: in February, the Biden administration argued to the U.S. Supreme Court that title 42 will terminate in May of 2023 with the expiration of the COVID-19 public health emergency. Removing one of the last tools available to Border Patrol agents during a record-shattering border crisis is intolerable. Congress should not stand by and refuse to address this obvious problem. Title 42 authority was initially based on the pandemic, and while I agree that the pandemic is over, the border crisis and the deadly drug overdose crisis that it fuels are worse than ever. Whether to maintain border security policy should not depend on whether there is a pandemic. That is why I am reintroducing the Stop Fentanyl Border Crossings Act today. This legislation would preserve continued use of title 42 authority to combat drug trafficking at the border. Clearly, the deadly epidemic has not ended. Deadly fentanyl is flooding American communities--deadly fentanyl, produced with the help of the Chinese Communist Party and smuggled by drug cartels across our southern border. More than 100,000 Americans died of drug overdoses in the last 12 months, most of them from synthetic opioids like fentanyl. It is the No. 1 cause of death for Americans between the ages of 18 and 45. The rise in fentanyl overdoses and deaths affects every State and congressional district. It kills the young and the old, the rich and the poor, in cities and in small towns alike. It is not a partisan issue, and finding a solution shouldn't be partisan either. When I talk to Tennessee sheriffs, they tell me that fentanyl is becoming more and more lethal, how a so-called ``bad batch'' can kill dozens of people. Once this deadly substance arrives in American communities, it is too late. We have to stop it before it crosses our borders. That is why I have reintroduced this legislation to combat drug smuggling. When I travel to the border, Border Patrol agents tell me that the cartels use human waves of illegal border crossers as cover to transport fentanyl and other deadly narcotics. While Border Patrol agents are diverted to manage caravans of border crossers, the gap in coverage is then exploited by the smugglers. In many cases, these are well-planned and carefully coordinated occurrences. The agents told me that ``the people don't stay at the border, and the drugs don't either.'' They also told me that title 42 is the last tool the Border Patrol has left to partially slow this ongoing tidal wave of illegal crossings. We can't afford to take away this tool in the midst of a crisis. Letting title 42 end without creating a permanent, new authority to replace it empowers drug cartels. It enables them to send migrants across the border at strategic points, bogging down Border Patrol agents with paperwork and processing that takes five times longer without title 42. This dramatic increase in processing times absent title 42 will significantly decrease the scarce resources available to actually patrol our southern border. Cartels will then use the longer and more frequent enforcement gaps to move more fentanyl across the southern border. We cannot allow this to happen. My legislation simply adds drug smuggling as an additional basis for using title 42 authority. It would help Border Patrol stop drug traffickers. This should not be controversial. Yet, last Congress, Democrats blocked its passage three times on the Senate floor. Now that we are staring down at the end of title 42, it is time to pass this bill. I hope my colleagues across the aisle will not let title 42 expire without action. We must protect the border security tools we have to stop the fentanyl flowing across our southern border before more lives are lost.