■o not know if they are dead or alive. we know if they are being labor trafficked, sex trafficked. we do not know what is happening. dna to help save some of these children. we should return to this policy. and, again i will io h.r. 2 tha. homeland security committee has on aye border security bill. they chose not to. a mark-up on securityill. they did not do it.but they're l stunt bill to the floor to push your party.officer: the senator fromokhoma.

a senator: mr. president, three senators started about eight mont now working to try to get some solutions on border f reasons because we have record high n over and over and over again at our southern border. we had a record hhf1umbe october, record high number in november and december. decemb hof illegal crossings eve history of the country in ay, w 5200 people that illegally day year we've had more than 5,000 people illegally crossing day after day after day. this isy issue that the american people want solved. it's a frustrating issuehaeen a resolution on. it is an issue that people have been frustrated with president biden because president biden has not enforced the the same way president trump did or the same way president obama .

have illegally cross the border. with the same law in place under president obama, we had half a million peoplha crossed that year. and as i've raised over and over again with this rati, if they would just enforce the border the same way president obama did, this different. but they've chosen not to enfor it the same way president trump did, and insun with people from literally all over the d.e, in the last three months, we've had more people illegally cross than any f year under president obama. tho do what they can do. but congress needs to do what we ca the definition of asylum. we've got to change the appeal process. we've got to be able to speed up the process. we've got to more clarity so we don't have people waiting around eight years for a hearing. we can't just release people at

the border, as what has happened day after day after day f we can't have a brand new parole program that the biden invented that no other president has ever used to release thousands of people a day. we need to solve this in the administration. we need to solve this in congress. i wish that's what we were doi today. but we're not. when senator murphy and sinema and i started working on this months ago, we were working to solve it. we were not able to get that done. but today is not a bill. today is apr political messagin exercise. today is an opportunity to be t sitting out there so people can send fundraising e-mails out later tonight and said, i tried to get something when no work was actually done to get something done and completed a in fact, i anticipate there will be fewer v tod than there

were two months ago whether this came up -- when this came up on bo because everyone sees this for what it is. it is not an eor it is an effort to do political messaging. country. we still have peohat are illegally present here that need attention. and we're notngit. we can say democrats can bring the bill up and we tried to do republicans can do the same thing. we brought house resolutiontwic. that's passed the house with a broad sweeping piece in the house to come over here to be able to change the way ise entire process. that's been voted twice on a strictly partisan vote. so we could have this votean sa republicans voted against this so it didn't pass. democrats didn't vote for h.r. 2, so it didn't pass. that still doesn't solm.

at the end of the day the people in my state say's illegally crossed the border. why aren't we sitting down and resolving that? // bill that i think should o. pass but there's been no effort to really get this to get us ba. let's actually resolve this issu as get done. with that i yield the floor.ing senator from arizona. a sena m today yet again as the border crisis continues devastate my state. ms. sinema: on february 7 i stoode angry that rank partisanship tanked the single, most important piece of border security and immigration legislation produced in ca as we all remember, last october i senators james lankford of oklahoma and chris murphy of connect craft this legislation.

we worked every single day for over four months difficult policy decisions, workinaret it right. after months of tireless negotiations, we delivered a strong product. we produced a impossible. we ended catch and detention b. we increased deporta quickly de claims. and we put border patrol b belo securing the border, not stucks. yet less than 24 h w released the bill, my republican colleagues blocked it despite the fact that this is the most restrictive migrant legislation in decades. my democratic colleagues blamed republican political t■er for blocking action. so did i. they■right. i spoke here on the senate floor twice in defense o out my repub

colleagues were all talk andv■ action. today, though, my democratic colleagues have chosen morecal real efforts to solve this l tk and no action goes both ways. today the senate willd show vote whose sole purpose is to point the finger back at the other party. yet another cynical political game. these games demonstrate exactly why americans have lost faith in their elected leaders. a congress bickering and fighting for pow instead of solving problems and making progress, any kind of regular p. today's vote is not an attempt toroblem or provide relief to arizona border communities. to -- to send a message. but arizona doesn't needour message. needs action.your help. these gamest for tat

caving to the messaging parties the fringes and further away from real proving what many americans already think about for political games, not to deliver results. today's vote won't deliver lasting results for americans. but the impact of today's vote is actually worse than simply being a useless messageecoes set message. but it's a messa lawmakers. i've often asked my coluesin t o step out of partisan boxes and work with me solutions to real problems. we've don it time and time again. this time it didn't work. nearly four months later, i'm still disappointed that we didn't solve the border crisis for my and for our

country. but to use a political punching bag only punishes those who were courageous enough to do the hard work of findi compromise in the first place. next time? who will stand up and do the wo who will take the risks? who wyes, i'll help solve this big challenge our faces? , i'll help why would anyone we don't leave today with a political victory. no one ns. no one gets the higher ground. instead, we're saying to other, don't step out, don't try to solve your partisan corner, yell somes chosen politicsbut my state is ,

and as i said on the floor back on february 7, if you want to spend the -- spin the bordeitic agendas, go right ahead. if you want to cnn to use the southern border as a backdrop for your politicalmpaik to you, but i have a very clear southern border for staged political come to arizona for political ea my state. in arizona we're don't have tim political gages facing theate and our country, and evidently this is not aterested challenges. americ better. i yield the floor. senator from connecticut. mr. murphy: madam president, i am deeply grateful to senator

sinema, senator lankford, setor mcconnell, senator schumer, and others who worked with us over the course of months to craft this landmark, unprecedented, bipartisan border security bill, that if enacted wouldake the biggest step that we have taken in decades to br our southwest border. it would give a shot of co find even the toughest of issues. i maybe come to a slightly concn the reason that we are here today than my veryoo■friend senator sinema and my great friend senator lankford. i think one the most important enduring values in politics is the valf persi persistence. if you believe something is import first time. we worked verycompromise. it's a good faith it's a

compromise because there will be mo who will vote against it today. we solved some big problems in of time to process an slaument claim from - from ten years to a handful of weeks or months, president new powers to shut down the border when crossin gi rights to migrants, to come to the united states to work or be reunited with families. i think that was so important that we shouldn't give failing once. i think the american people have told us that solving the problem at the border is so important that we shouldn't put away that first time politics won out. maybe i'm naive, but i had some degree of hope, some degree o faith that maybe the second time we could come together and vote to proceed to a debate. because remember, tsote is, not final passage.

a vote to bring this bill befor outstanding issues that have ab reforms in this bill.y apprecia of the work that senator lankford and senator sinema went into this bill. i just come to a slightly differentconclusion. this doesn't make me less eager to engage in bipartisan compromise in the future. this doesn't dissuade me fro re compromises. y, think our decision to not give up when we've reached this think it may frankly put wind behind the wings of who decide something really important on i. we have a chance right now to er, to put politics and campaigns aside, to vote to proceed on this bipartisan border■b