as a court of impeachment, and senators will be sworn in as jurors. senate president pro tem, patty murray, will preside. as i have said repeatedly, we want to address this issue as expeditiously as possible. impeachment should never be used to settle a policy agreement -- policy disagreement. let me say that again. impeachment should never be used to settle a policy disagreement. talk about awful precedence. this would set an awful precedent for congress. every time there's a policy agreement in the house, they send it over here to tie the senate in knots to do an impeachment trial? that's absurd. that's an abuse of the process. that is more chaos. nevertheless, when the house is ready to send us the a senator: mr. president. the presiding officer: the

senator from kansas. mr. marshall: mr. president, on february 2, 2021, dhs secretary alejandro mayorkas took an oath that haul of us in the chamber have taken, an oath that many of us have taken that have served in the military, an oath to support and defend the constitution of the united states against all enemies, foreign and domestic. yet here we are three years later in the worst border crisis our nation has ever seen. i rise today because we find ourselves at a critical moment in our nation's history, a moment when the integrity of this very chamber and its leadership is being tested, a time when we will see if our colleagues across the aisle are willing to do the right thing and hold alejandro mayorkas accountable for his dereliction of duty that has left our country a shell of what she once was. now, with over 11 million border

crossings, including 2 million unvetted got-aways now living here on united states soil, and monthing those are on un -- and the amongst those areal unknown number of terrorists, violent gang members and drug cartels, mayorkas has broken his oath resulting in this dangerous and deadly invasion of our country. all you have to do is read your hometown news. you're going to find a person in your community that is -- that has decide from fentanyl or been murdered by one of these illegal aliens. from the moment secretary mayorkas took office, he has skirted the constitution and broken the law as outlined in the secure fence act of 2006, which clearly states he must maintain operational control and, to quote that same law, prevent unlawful entries into the united states. in the past three years alone,

we've had nearly 2 million known got-aways successfully evade capture and enter our country, a number that includes numbers of violent gang members and terrorists. the scale of this issue today, over 800 got-aways will illegally cross in this this country. yesterday over 800 unvetted illegal aliens crossed in our country. maybe that's why law enforcement officers recently told me back home that we cannot arrest ourselves out of this crisis. that they are so overwhelmed by crime now related to these illegal crossings, we cannot arrest ourselves out of this predicament. now, secretary mayorkas has given free rein to drug cartels to smuggle in illegal aliens and deadly drugs like fentanyl resulting in the dense of 300 americans every day. ment with a total of over

250,000 fentanyl-related poisoning murders, deaths occurring under his watch, that's three times more than the number of brave soldiers we lost in the vietnam war. three times more. the secretary has turn add blind eye to the exploitation of our borders like terrorists and other high-risk individuals causing the largest influx of terrorist border crossings in our nation's history. let us not forget the abuse and weaponization of parole and asylum. secretary mayorkas has illegally admitted nearly 800,000 aliens per year, 800,000 per year under this parole. compared to just 5,000 per year under president obama or president trump. 800,000 versus 5,000 a year. there's no question that the situation at our borders is dire and that the responsibility of this historic crisis lies squarely at the feet of those who have failed to address it.

instead of fulfilling its obstacles to the american people, secretary mayorkas has unravelled our national security, unleashed our border into chaos and launched an unmitt debated disaster and culture of lawlessness that has left many vulnerable to exploitation. his actions or lack thereof have endangered the safety of every american and there must be consequences. congress must step in and do their job that president biden refuses to do and fire secretary mayorkas. enough is enough. americans deserve better. we're here today because we take our oath seriously. with the house managers deliver the articles of impeachment to the senate chamber today, i hope our colleagues across the aisle, who also took an oath to protect and defend our great nation, will do the right thing. let's bring this to a trial. let's debate his record.

and for the sake of america's safety and security, let's impeach alejandro mayorkas. taking this decisive action will send a clear message to this administration they'll be held accountable for orchestrating this deadly invasion. thank you, mr. president. i yield back. a senator: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from wisconsin. mr. johnson: mr. president, earlier today we heard a very convincing case laid out by the house managers of why the senate should fulfill its constitutional duty and proceed to a trial on the impeachment of

secretary mayorkas. if we were to hold that trial, we should do so, this chart that i've been developing since i became chairman of homeland security in 2015 would basically be the irrefutable dna evidence of the crime. what i've tried to lay out in this chart is the cause and effect of an ongoing set of illegal immigration crises faced by the last three administrations. so what i'd like to do briefly here on the senate floor is go through that history dating back to 2012 and show the impact of certain actions, certain court decisions, certainly the lack of faith to execute the law in this administration has now resulted in invasion in our country. let's go back to 2012. that's where this chart begins.

even before that i had developed a chart just showing on an annual basis the number of unaccompanied children coming to this country average for many years, somewhere between 2,000, 3,000, 4,000 a year. and then in june of 2012, president obama issued his what i would consider lawless, unlawful deferred action on childhood arrivals. this is what has sparked all the succeeding immigration, illegal immigration crises, is that unlawful order which, by the way, was a complete misuse of prosecutorial discretion which is supposed to be meted out or administered on a case-by-case basis. for the first time, president obama and his administration granted prosecutorial discretion to hundreds of thousands of people, and the world took note. what happened over the

intervening years, as people realize, america's law has changed. we had reports, when people would come to this country illegally, they would get their notice to appear before an immigration court. that was used by human traffickers down in central america. they call that the permisso, the permission slip to come to this country. a couple years after that that unlawful order, deferred action on childhood arrivals, president obama faced his border crisis. he actually called it a humanitarian crisis when in may and june of 2014, they averaged about 2,200 encounters per day. 2,200. that seems like the good old days. that's that little bump in comparison to president biden's crisis at the border. so president obama actually took action.

he started detaining family units with children when they came across the border, and it worked. he brought down the number of people crossing this, into our country illegally, because there was a consequence to it. unfortunately, in february of 2015 proimmigration groups, proillegal immigration groups took the obama administration to court under the flores settlement which is basically in the 1990's there is a case of a young innocent girl called flores. the result of that settlement said dhs cannot hold an unaccompanied twield for more than 20 days. the obama administration said we can hold a child when detained with their family. pro-illegal immigration groups took the obama administration to court and took secretary jeh

johnson to court and reinterpreted the flores settlement and said, no, you can't detain a child even if they're accompanied by their parents. so the obama administration faced a real decision. should we detain the parents and release the child into hhs custody. they chose not to do that except in some situations where they felt that was a real family unit and those parents may be a danger to that child. you can see that the result of that basically, catch and release is what that resulted in. you can see the numbers started increasing prior it to president trump taking office. if you remember, president trump during his election made the open border, that catch and release a huge issue in the campaign. and so when he got elected, again, the world noticed. they felt there was going to be a real crackdown on illegal immigration, and they stopped

coming. there was a huge reduction from the end of the obama administration to when president trump first took office. but unfortunately, the law didn't change. that flores reinterpretation stood. so president trump was faced with trying to figure out how can he utilize what laws exist and what authority he had, with no help from congress, to address this situation. he wasn't able to address it immediately. and as a result, you can see the increase of not only single adults, but family units exploiting that provision, and unaccompanied children, to the point where in may of 2019, he hit his high point, almost 5,000 people per day. but you'll notice president trump did something about it. he enacted migrant protection program. he instituted safe third country agreements with countries in central america. he had to threaten the president

of mexico with tariffs so the president of mexico would cooperate with us in securing our border. and over the next 12 months, president trump by and large secured the border. to hit a low point in april of 2020, with a little more than 500 people per day were trying to come into this country illegally. now, what president trump also had starting in march of 2020 during the pandemic -- remember, all of this reduction in illegal immigration occurred before the pandemic. but once the pandemic was in full swing in march and april of 2020, president trump used his authority under title 42 and used that health emergency to start deporting people coming into this country illegal lichlt you can see the very small, the purple bar are the people

expelled using title 42 authority. even though the number of single adults was rising -- by the way, the reason they were riding was during the -- were rising was during the presidential debate of 2020, every presidential candidate said they were going to end deportations and offer free health care. the world listens to what elected officials or potentially elected officials say and they believe them. they also believe their eyes that once people start coming in here, they're either detained and expelled or they're not detained. but anyway, people started coming into this country again, assuming that president biden was going to win the election and the border would be opened up. of course that's exactly what happened, because once president biden took office, he used the exact same executive authority that president trump used. let me just quick cover that. even after the flores reinterpretation, the supreme court in a ruling in 2018 said that existing law, even though

it was weakened by that reinterpreted flores decision, or settlement, that the current law exudes deference to the executive branch. president trump used that deference. president trump used that executive authority and pretty well closed the border. president biden came into office, and with literally hundreds of executive actions completely reversed president trump's successful border security measures using that exact same presidential auth authority. all that deference. the point that's important to understand is president biden wanted an open border. he caused this crisis. he could end it if he wanted to. he still has the authority. republicans in the senate would be happy to strengthen that authority to overturn this flores reinterpretation, which,

by the way, secretary jeh johnson opposed that reinterpretation. he didn't like that court decision. so we would have been happy to strengthen president biden's authority, but he doesn't really need us to to secure the border. that's the point. and again, here's the dna, the irrefutable dna evidence of the crime. this didn't have to happen. president biden didn't have to reverse president trump's successful border security executive orders. but he reversed them and he opened up the border. and the result now is probably more than 6 million people have come into this country illegally and stayed. that's a number greater than the population of 31 states. that's the order of magnitude of the problem. the impact of this open border policy is devastating. it is a catastrophe. not only does this open border

policy facilitate the million billion-dollar business model of some of the most evil people on the planet -- the human traffickers, sex traffickers, the drug traffickers. how many hundreds of thousands of americans have died of fentanyl overdoses? president biden and secretary mayorkas said that they're reversing all of trump's border security provisions because they said it was inhumane. there's nothing humane about facilitating human and sex and drug trafficking. and of course the migrants coming into this country, it is true venezuela is emptying their jails, their mental institutions. there are some bad people, there are some criminals coming into this country. and of course we be see evidence with these migrant crimes, horrific crimes. people who no longer are alive because of president biden's open border policies, because of

secretary mayorkas executing president biden's open border policies. now i'm not a lawyer, i'm not a prosecutor, but i believe it's a crime to aid and abet other crimes. so from my standpoint, i think the house managers ought to be allowed to make their case. again, they laid out a very compelling, a very compelling articles of impeachment today. it's a pretty simple case. it probably won't take that long of time for them to make their case, to present it for the senate. why won't, why won't majority leader schumer allow the house managers to make their case? why won't he allow the senate to fulfill its constitutional duty to try impeachments? impeachments are not that regular. the least we can do is fulfill that constitutional duty and

listen to the evidence, allow the house managers to make their case. i think their case is overwhelmingly convincing. the repercussions of president biden and secretary mayorkas's open border policy will be felt by americans for years, if not decades to come. about the only thing congress can do when a president or a member of the executive branch is not faithfully executing the law, when they're completely derelict in their duty, when their dereliction of duty or the lack of faithfully executing the laws is resulting in the deaths of americans. again, the open border policy is resulting in the deaths of american citizens. it's resulting in young women being forced into sex trafficking trade. it's resulting in h