{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.thune.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ID=652DE060-45DB-487C-96C9-BE06C2A5ABD8", "Thune: Biden\u2019s Border Crisis Makes Americans Less Safe", "2024-07-11", "2024", "2024-07", "Republican", "Senate", "SD", "John Thune", "T000250", "www.thune.senate.gov", "thune", "https://www.thune.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases", "scraper", "Click here to watch the video.\n\nWASHINGTON \u2014 U.S. Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) today spoke on the Senate floor about the serious risks that President Biden\u2019s open-border policies pose to the safety of the American people, both today and into the future. Thune noted that 10 million illegal immigrants have crossed the border during the Biden administration, including suspected terrorists and criminals.\n\nThune\u2019s remarks below (as prepared for delivery):\n\n\u201cMr. President, last month\u2019s arrest of eight men from Tajikistan with suspected ties to ISIS further underscored what we have known for a long time \u2013 that President Biden\u2019s three-year-plus border crisis is a threat to our national security.\n\n\u201cAll eight of these individuals had made their way into our country across our overrun southern border.\n\n\u201cAnd they are hardly the only dangerous individuals to have made their way into our country on President Biden\u2019s watch.\n\n\u201cAn illegal immigrant who had successfully evaded the Border Patrol to enter the United States has been arrested for the murder of a mother in Maryland.\n\n\u201cAn illegal immigrant released into the country on parole has been charged with the murder of a nursing student in Georgia.\n\n\u201cTwo illegal immigrants are charged with the killing of a 12-year-old girl in Texas.\n\n\u201cAnd unfortunately, Mr. President, I could go on.\n\n\u201cIn another alarming case, 50 out of 400 illegal immigrants who entered the United States through an ISIS-linked smuggling network are still unaccounted for.\n\n\u201cMr. President, it is of course impossible to predict \u2013 or stop \u2013 every crime.\n\n\u201cBut the chaos at the southern border that President Biden has allowed to rage for three-plus years has unquestionably created an environment that facilitates the entry of dangerous individuals into our country.\n\n\u201cSince President Biden took office, approximately 10 million individuals \u2013 that we know of \u2013 have made their way illegally into our country.\n\n\u201c10 million.\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s larger than the population of the vast majority of U.S. states.\n\n\u201cWe have had three successive years of record-breaking illegal immigration on President Biden\u2019s watch.\n\n\u201cThree.\n\n\u201cAnd we can only hope that we will manage to avoid a fourth.\n\n\u201cThe situation is so bad that President Biden finally realized that if he didn\u2019t do something, his disastrous record on the border might tank his reelection prospects.\n\n\u201cAnd while it would be nice if the executive action he took last month had been motivated by the clear national security dangers the situation presents and not by fear of losing an election, at least he finally conceded that he had to do something \u2013 inadequate and full of exemptions as it might be.\n\n\u201cBut while this might \u2013 might \u2013 be a case of better late than never, I\u2019m afraid it\u2019s also a case of too little, too late.\n\n\u201cBecause a tremendous amount of damage has been done that President Biden can\u2019t fix even if he should succeed in restricting future flows.\n\n\u201cAs I said, roughly 10 million illegal immigrants have entered our country on President Biden\u2019s watch.\n\n\u201cAnd while I am sure that many of these individuals were simply in search of a better life, we can be pretty confident that there are others \u2013 like the recently arrested individuals with suspected ties to ISIS \u2013 who have more malign intentions.\n\n\u201cOf particular concern are the roughly 1.8 million known gotaways \u2013 individuals the Border Patrol saw but was unable to apprehend \u2013 who have made their way into the country over the course of this administration.\n\n\u201cU.S. Border Patrol Chief Jason Owens, speaking earlier this year about the number of gotaways at the border, said, and I quote, \u2018\u2026 those are the numbers that really keep us up at night, because if you know that all you need to do is turn yourself in to the Border Patrol and go through the process, what possible reason would you have for wanting to evade capture? Could it be that those are the folks that probably have criminal intent?\u2019\n\n\u201cChief Owens was referring to the fact that under the Biden administration\u2019s lax asylum system, individuals who show up at the border claiming asylum have frequently been released into the country with court dates as much as a decade into the future.\n\n\u201cAnd his point, of course, is that when turning yourself in to the Border Patrol with a claim for asylum is likely to result in years of essentially legal permanent residence, it\u2019s especially concerning that we have had hundreds of thousands of individuals choosing not to turn themselves in and escaping into the interior of our country.\n\n\u201cSo again, Mr. President, even if President Biden\u2019s executive action from last month does do something to help reduce the flow of illegal immigration \u2013 which very much remains to be seen \u2013 we will still be left with the effects of the chaos he has allowed to rage at our southern border for three-plus years.\n\n\u201cAnd we\u2019ll still be left with the effects of his other disastrous border and immigration policies, from offering mass amnesty to hundreds of thousands of individuals whose asylum cases have been closed without a decision, to fast-tracking mass parole through the CBP One app, to placing unaccompanied children with possibly dangerous guardians in the U.S. (something Senator Grassley is currently working to prevent in the future).\n\n\u201cAnd I expect we\u2019ll still be dealing with the consequences of the president\u2019s dangerous policies for a long time to come.\n\n\u201cMr. President, I yield the floor.\u201d", 1, "2026-03-30T01:40:41Z", "2026-04-06T18:32:29Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.thune.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ID=652DE060-45DB-487C-96C9-BE06C2A5ABD8"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 1.8014709930866957, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}