During remarks made on the Senate floor on April 10, 2024, Senator Ted Cruz debated Senator Dick Durbin on the impeachment of Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
Sen. Ted Cruz: Madam President.
Senator from Texas.
Sen. Ted Cruz: Madam President, there are times when the eyes of history are upon the United States Senate. This is one of those times. We are facing today an existential crisis at our southern border. It is qualitatively different than anything we have ever faced at our southern border in the history of our nation. A few moments ago, the senator from Illinois acknowledged the border was broken.
Although, he acknowledged it in a classic Washington way, of using the passive voice, the border is broken, that is designed to hide and obscure, who broke the border?
He is correct that the border is broken, but it was broken deliberately by the President of the United States, Joe Biden, by the Vice President of the United States, Kamala Harris, by the Secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, and by every single Senate Democrat, who repeatedly have rubber stamped and embraced this open border policy.
The senator from Illinois said the border is broken. He is also the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee on which I serve, on which Senator Lee serves on which Senator Kennedy serves. In the past three years, we have held precisely zero hearings on the crisis on our southern border. The Senate Judiciary Committee cannot be bothered to inquire as to the cause of this crisis.
Understand why Alejandro Mayorkas became the second cabinet secretary in the history of the United States to be impeached. The last one was in 1876. The Secretary of War. And now, 148 years later, Alejandro Mayorkas joins him. It is not because Alejandro Mayorkas is incompetent. It is not because he’s negligent. It’s not because he’s bad at his job. Rather, unfortunately, Alejandro Mayorkas is very, very good at his job.
However, he does not view his job as securing the border. He does not view his job as protecting our homeland security. Rather, he views his job as openly and directly violating, flouting federal law and aiding and abetting the criminal invasion of this United States.
He is not trying to secure the border. He is trying to accelerate the invasion that is happening. He wants more illegal aliens and more criminal illegal aliens released into this country. Under the Biden administration, 10.4 million illegal immigrants have been released into this country. And Senate Democrats are desperate to avoid the misery and suffering and death that their radical policies have produced.
In a hearing before the Judiciary Committee, I asked Secretary Mayorkas how many migrants died last year crossing illegally in this country. He said, I don’t know. I have no idea. I said, of course you know the numbers 853. That’s a number from your own department. But you don’t care about the dead bodies that Texas farmers and ranchers are finding nearly three a day.
When I brought 19 senators down to the border to see firsthand what was happening, we went out on a boat on the Rio Grande River. We saw a man floating dead in the river who had drowned that day. By the way, those 19 senators were only Republicans. I’ve invited my Democrat colleagues. I’ve invited the senator from Illinois come to the southern border and see the people that are dying because of the policies you support.
None of them have any interest in seeing firsthand the deaths they are producing. Madam president, I’ve looked in the eyes of children, of little boys and little girls who’ve been brutalized by human traffickers. Day after day after day, none of the Senate Democrats want to take responsibility for the little girls and little boys to whom unspeakable evils are being done.
And a president. I’ve looked in the eyes of women who have been repeatedly and violently raped by human traffickers. None of the Senate Democrats want to take responsibility for the horrific violence and suffering their open border policies have produced.
Madam president, when I asked Secretary Mayorkas about colored wristbands on a poster I displayed at the Senate Judiciary Committee, he responded by saying he had no idea what those wristbands are. Madam president, those colored wristbands are worn by just about every illegal alien coming to this country. The colors correspond to how many thousands of dollars they owe the cartels understand the cartels don’t view them as human beings.
They don’t even view them as livestock. They are cargo. And the colors show how many thousands of dollars they owe. You stand on the banks of the Rio Grande River. You will see hundreds or even thousands of those colored wristbands laying there in the grass. And what Alejandro Mayorkas was saying, as I told him, I said, Mr. Secretary, you just told the American people you’re utterly incompetent at your job and you don’t even give a damn enough to pretend to try.
What? I invited my Democrat colleagues come to the border and see the wristbands. The Democrats don’t take us up on it and understand why those wristbands matter. Thousands upon thousands of teenage boys, they turn themselves in to the Biden administration. They say, where do you want to go? Some will say Chicago, some will say New York. Some will say Los Angeles.
And the Biden administration puts them on an airplane, puts them on a bus and sends them to every city in America. The mayor of Chicago, the hometown of the senator from Illinois, has declared it a crisis. The illegal aliens pouring into his city. And yet, Senate Democrats not only will do nothing about it, they continue the policies in place that make it worse and worse and worse, and understand those teenage boys when they arrive in Chicago or L.A. or New York.
And by the way, the Democrat mayor of L.A. has also said it’s a crisis. The Democrat mayor of New York has said it’s a crisis. The Democrat mayor of Boston has said it’s a crisis. The Democrat mayor of Washington, DC has said it’s a crisis when they arrive. They owe the cartels thousands of dollars. If they don’t pay the money back, the cartels will murder their families.
And so they are working for the cartels. There are crimes going on in your home state of California today by illegal immigrants. The Biden administration has released that are working for the cartels. There are Californians who are being robbed right now who are being carjacked, who are being assaulted. There are people in Chicago who are being robbed, who are being assaulted.
You want to understand the misery? Take a look at Lincoln Riley. There’s been a lot of discussion about Lincoln Riley. Others, sadly, only on one side of this chamber. If a Democrat senator has said the words Lincoln Riley, I have not heard it come from their mouths. Lincoln Riley was a beautiful 22 year old woman who was murdered because of the Democrats open border policies.
How can I say that with such certainty? Because her murderer, an illegal immigrant from Venezuela, was apprehended in El Paso. We had him, we had him. He was arrested and all Joe Biden, all Alejandro Mayorkas had to do was follow the law, and we would have put the murderer on a plane and flew him back to Venezuela. And he never would have been in charge of murdering Lincoln Riley.
But Joe Biden and Alejandro Mayorkas made the decision that politics matters more than protecting American citizens. And so they released this violent criminal. He went from El Paso to New York City, where he was arrested again. We had him a second time, this time for endangering the safety of a child. Unfortunately, New York City is a sanctuary city run by Democrat politicians.
So what did they do? They let him go a second time. And he went down to George and Lincoln. Riley, 22 years old, was out jogging, a nursing student. She’s out jogging like millions of people do across America.
And this murderer took a brick and beat her to death.
If either Joe Biden and Alejandro Mayorkas had followed the law, or if New York had kept him in jail, she would still be alive. You know what I also haven’t heard from Senate Democrats. The name Jeremy Casarez. Jeremy Casarez is a beautiful two year old boy murdered in Prince George’s County, Maryland, just miles from where we are right now, murdered by an illegal alien that Joe Biden and Alejandro Mayorkas released.
Just a few weeks ago. News broke of an illegal alien from Haiti that not only did Biden release, but flew from Haiti to the United States. The Biden administration has had over 300,000 secret flights bringing illegal aliens to America. In this case, they brought the Haitian illegal immigrant to Boston, Massachusetts.
And what happened? Just a couple of weeks ago, he was arrested for violently raping a 15 year old girl who was seriously disabled. These are the very real consequences of the Democrats open border policies. And yet, Democrat senators don’t want to confront the people who are dying, who are suffering because of them. Alejandro Mayorkas was not impeached because he’s negligent.
He’s impeached because he’s actively defying the law, by the way, he’s turned the Mexican drug cartels into Deca billionaires. The court of the New York Times in 2018. The revenue from human trafficking the cartels earned was roughly $500 million. Last year, it was $13 billion thanks to Joe Biden and Senate Democrats. The drug cartels profits have gone up 2,600%.
That’s why the House is impeached. Alejandro Mayorkas now, what is the Senate to do when impeachment occurs? Well, fortunately, we have a document that tells us what to do. It’s called the Constitution of the United States. Under the Constitution, it is the sole power of the House to impeach and the sole power and responsibility of the Senate to try 21 times in our nation’s history, more than 200 years.
The House has an impeachment individual and Senate articles of impeachment over to the Senate. Here’s what’s happened in those 21 times in one time, the Senate concluded it had no jurisdiction because the individual impeached was a senator. And impeachment only attaches to members of the executive branch of the judicial branch. So they dismissed that one for lack of jurisdiction.
In three of them, the individuals impeached was no longer in office. And so the Senate didn’t act because it was moot. It was no longer necessary to resolve because the individual impeached was out of office in the remaining 17 times, all of them 100% of the time. The Senate conducted a trial, the Senate heard evidence, and the Senate adjudicated guilt or innocence.
Each senator stood up and said, guilty or not guilty? Well, next week when the articles arrive, we are told that Senator Schumer intends not to proceed to a trial, not to follow the Senate rules of impeachment, not to allow any evidence, but simply to move to table to throw it out at the outset. Why is Senator Schumer doing so?
Three reasons. Number one, he desperately, desperately wants to stop the House managers representing their evidence. Senator from Illinois says he knows there’s no evidence. It’s like an ostrich putting his head in the sand. One way to know there’s no evidence is look at no evidence here. No evidence. Consider no evidence and do everything you can to prevent the American people from hearing evidence.
Number two, the Senate Democrats want to stop a trial. They don’t want the American people to know the suffering and misery and dead bodies their policies are producing. But number three, the Senate Democrats desperately want to prevent Democrats who are on the ballot right now from casting a vote. Guilty or not guilty, they want to avoid an adjudication.
Because you know what? Senate Democrats are back in their home states saying, gosh, I’m really concerned about illegal immigration. If they were really concerned, we can decide that next week by voting to fulfill our constitutional obligation to hold trial. Now, let me say something. I look and see the senator from Illinois. I see the senator from West Virginia, all three of us who are on the Senate floor.
And another momentous time in 2013, when then Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid exercised the nuclear option and blew up the filibuster for nominations that did enormous damage to the institution of the Senate. I remember standing in the well of the Senate ten feet from where I am now, and turning to Senator Amy Klobuchar that day, and I told her, I said, you are going to regret this day.
This is a catastrophic mistake. And I told her then the result of this decision from Harry Reid and the Democrats will be more justices and judges on the court in the mold of Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. Madam president, if you want to know why Roe versus Wade has been overturned, it is because Harry Reid and the Democrats exercised the nuclear option in 2013.
Had they not done so, there’s no way this court, this Senate, would have confirmed. All three of the nominees put forward. It was the direct consequence of the utter disregard for this institution Senate Democrats have. Now, I bring that up because we are at a second moment that is equally consequential, except instead of nuking the Senate rules, as they did in 2013, Senate Democrats are preparing to nuke the Constitution of the United States itself.
The impeachment clause, which every single time that the Senate has had jurisdiction and the person has been in office, the Senate has held a trial. If Senate Democrats proceed next week to table that, they will blow up that precedent. And I’m here to make a prediction. Senate Democrats sometimes behave like small children with no ability to look to the future and anticipate the consequences of their actions.
Everyone can recognize right now. We’ve got a presidential election coming up in November. None of us knows the outcome. I’m going to posit to you right now, there is a significant chance Donald Trump will be reelected as president. I’m also going to posit to you that’s an outcome no one on the Democrat side wants to see happen. There is also a significant chance Republicans will retake the Senate, but there is a possibility that Democrats will retake the House.
That is a very likely scenario in this election. If that happens, I turn to my friend from from West Virginia because I want you to contemplate what will happen if that happens. I’m going to make a prediction one year from today, we’re going to be on the Senate floor. And if Democrats control the House, they will have impeach Donald Trump again, impeach him a third time, and maybe a fourth time and maybe a fifth time.
If they have the House, that’s what they’re going to do. And if and when those impeachment articles come over to the Senate, if Senate Democrats next week dismiss this impeachment, I’m telling you right now, Senate Republicans will do the same thing to any impeachment that comes over from the House. And what Senate Democrats will have done is effectively eliminated the Senate’s power of impeachment.
Any time the Senate is the same party as the president. Madam president, many of us were here the last time this scenario happened. It was the first Trump impeachment, the first Trump impeachment. You got a Democratic House, a Republican Senate and a Republican president. The Democrats in the House impeach Donald Trump. They sent articles of impeachment over the Senate.
Republicans could have played these games and tried to table the impeachment, said, we’re going to shirk our constitutional duty. We’re not going to have a trial. But we didn’t. We follow the Constitution. My question for my colleagues here is, is there even one Democrat who cares about the institution of the Senate? Who cares about the Constitution? Who cares about democracy?
Democrats love to pound their chest and say they are defending democracy while they are engaging in a relentless assault on democracy. I have an organizing resolution that would follow the precedent and simply appoint an impeachment committee to hear the trial, so the trial doesn’t have to be on the Senate floor. That’s typically done for presidents. Instead, the impeachment committee could hear hear the evidence, which is what the Senate is done over and over and over again.
By the way, every Democrat who says we’ve got other things to focus on, FISA and other matters. The impeachment committee would proceed parallel with the Senate floor, considering other business, so it would delay nothing on the Senate floor to follow our Constitution and have an impeachment committee. But it would avoid destroying the impeachment power of the Senate, destroying the Constitution.
And it would also give the American people a chance to hear the evidence and to to to hear the presentation to the House managers. Therefore, Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Rules and Administration be discharged from further consideration, and the Senate now proceed to raise 6 to 2. Further, that the resolution be agreed to, and that the motion to reconsider be considered, made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.
Is there objection reserving the right to object, Senator. Majority whip, madam president, the date was June the 27th, 2013, and on the floor of the United States Senate. We have done something that no one believe can be achieved. We had, through the Gang of Eight, established a comprehensive immigration reform bill. I was part of that gang of eight eight senators for Democrats and for Republicans who labored for months to create that legislation.
It was comprehensive, as I noted, covered every aspect from border all the way through the immigration process. We brought it to the floor in the hopes of, for the first time in decades, we would finally reach an agreement, a bipartisan agreement. The people who were involved in it, John McCain on the Republican side, Senator Flake from Arizona, Senator Graham from South Carolina.
And four report Democrats worked hard to bring this to the floor. It was an opportunity for us to finally do something together. It got 68 votes. We needed 60. We got 68 votes. There was a lot of celebration because business and labor and others were supporting us, and I’m so happy that we got it done. We know what happened to that bill.
It went over and died in the House of Representatives. The Republican leadership over there refused to even call it for consideration of the Republican senators currently on the floor. Two of them were on the floor. On June 27th, 2013, they both voted no. I listened to the speeches and ask yourself the question, if the border and immigration policy need to be fixed in America, why weren’t you there when we had a chance for a bipartisan approach to comprehensive immigration reform?
And to make it even worse, there was an argument made that we would not provide defense supplemental spending asked for by the administration around the world unless we came up with a border reform bill within the last several months. And the Republicans said, we have a leader on our side of the aisle that we want to head up our effort to come up with a bipartisan bill to deal with the border.
We do believe it needs to be fix. It is in crisis, they proffered. James Lankford, a conservative Republican senator from Oklahoma, a highly respected senator. I may disagree with him on many issues, but I respect him as a member of the Senate. He was to be their lead negotiator, and we respected that request. The Democrats had Chris Murphy and Kyrsten Sinema joining in the effort and brought to the floor were prepared to bring to the floor a measure that was a bipartisan approach to solve this problem.
Why is that necessary? Because in this party, you need 60 votes. You don’t have 60 votes. You’re wasting your time. We needed something bipartisan. And so this measure was headed to the floor. And at the last minute, former President Donald Trump announced that he wanted to stop the process. He did not want to even attempt to solve the problem with bipartisan legislation.
He said, you can blame me if you want to. And I blame him again. Yes, he did that. And unfortunately, the Republican senators were complicit, most of them in that effort. Instead of respecting what James Lankford had achieved and what a bipartisan bill would have made. So you can say what you want and make all the speeches about bodies and suffering.
And I’m sure most of them that’s true. But the bottom line is when you have a chance to do something about it with the bipartisan Gang of Eight bill, you voted no. And when you had a chance to support James Lankford, bipartisan approach to fixing the border, you were not there to be seen. You were loyal to Donald Trump and not loyal to the situation that we face in the Senate.
I object, Madam President. Objection is heard. Senator from Texas. Madam president, I ask unanimous consent that I have two minutes to respond. Senator Everett, without objection, madam president, nowhere in Senator Durbin’s remarks did we hear any mention of the children being brutalized by traffickers. Nowhere did we hear of the women trapped in sex slavery. Nowhere did we hear the words Lake Lincoln.
Riley. No. Where did we hear Jeremy? Cancerous? No. Where did we hear a word about the dead bodies? Three a day. Nearly that are that are being found on Texas properties? No. Where did we hear a word about the suffering instead, what did he do? He pointed to the Democrats long standing objection to grant amnesty to as many people as possible so they get more Democrat voters.
The Gang of Eight bill was a terrible bill, and Senator Durbin is unhappy that democracy operated and the House of Representatives made the decision not to pass it. That’s the way our system works. That’s what led Senate Democrats and Joe Biden to decide to just open the border flawlessly, because they couldn’t actually get the votes to pass their bill.
The Schumer bill is talking about would have made the situation worse. And understand what Senator Durbin is saying. It is the policy of Senate Democrats to support these open borders. They don’t have any arguments on the merits. And by the way, Joe Biden inherited the lowest rate of illegal immigration in 45 years. All he had to do was nothing, because we had success in securing the border.
And Joe Biden and Alejandro Mayorkas deliberately broke the border, and they continue the policies in place that ensure tomorrow more children are going to be brutalized, more women are going to be raped. They know that, and they’re not willing to do anything to stop it. That is, I believe, immoral and wrong. And the Senate should hold a trial as the Constitution requires.
We owe that to the American people.
