Source: United States Senator for Indiana Todd Young
March 22, 2023
**Click here or above to watch Senator Young’s floor speech.**
WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Todd Young (R-Ind.) today spoke on the Senate floor about the ongoing crisis at our southern border and how the fentanyl epidemic is affecting Hoosier communities.
Young discussed a recent meeting he held with law enforcement officials in Warsaw.
“Americans in places like Warsaw, Indiana, are looking at the chaos on our southern border in anger. And they are looking to us for help,” said Young.
The senator called on the Biden Administration to change course and pursue policies that secure the border.
To watch Senator Young’s full remarks, click here.
Senator Young’s full remarks, as prepared for delivery:
Thousands of miles separate Warsaw, Indiana from America’s southern border.
That distance doesn’t mean events on our southern border don’t affect Hoosiers in Warsaw and communities across our state.
Last month, I met with local law enforcement officials in the Warsaw area, and they shared heart-wrenching stories:
I heard about police arriving at a family’s home. Both parents had overdosed, one was unconscious – all right in front of their kids.
They told me about emergency calls, the voice on the other end crying that a child had gone into cardiac arrest.
In these situations, and too many others, they suspected the same source: fentanyl.
The fentanyl entering the United States through our southern border is hitting this northern Indiana community hard. It’s hitting all of our communities.
The opioid epidemic is the worst drug crisis in America’s history; in the decades between 1999 and 2020, it killed over 564,000 of our countrymen and women.
The number of lives lost is so great it brought America’s life expectancy down to a 25-year low.
And now, because of fentanyl, this crisis is growing worse.
Two milligrams of this synthetic opioid are enough to kill, and it is killing more young Americans than cancer, car accidents or COVID.
There is enough of it reaching our country to kill every single American many times over.
Its point of origin is Mexico.
And its point of entry into America is our southern border – the same border that 4.9 million illegal immigrants have crossed since President Biden took office.
His administration argues that because large quantities of fentanyl have been seized at our official ports of entry, that the overdose epidemic is unrelated to the broken border.
But if we don’t know who is crossing our border, how do we know what they are bringing across it?
And the tragedy is not just taking place on our side of that border.
President Biden’s lax immigration policies send out a deadly welcome sign to migrants in search of opportunity.
Drawn to it, they fall in with or place their children in the hands of merciless human smugglers.
They are packed into and suffocate in trucks.
They attempt a treacherous crossing of the Rio Grande and end up swept away by its currents.
The bodies of 890 migrants were discovered last year along the southern border.
Police on the American side are diverted from law enforcement while recovering them.
Funeral homes in Mexico don’t have enough refrigerators to store them in.
America is a welcoming country. It is also a country of laws. The two are not incompatible.
And what good is a country without a border? It’s been said many times by many people, but I will say it again: A nation that cannot control its borders is not a nation.
We can secure our border, demand to know who and what is crossing it while also welcoming those who seek to start better lives in America – legally.
Americans in places like Warsaw, Indiana are looking at the chaos on our southern border in anger. And they are looking to us for help.
They are asking us to stop the flow of drugs poisoning our people.
To enforce our immigration laws.
To build a border barrier.
To reinstate the Remain in Mexico policy.
To do whatever it takes to end this crisis.
To do what the President and his party won’t.
Too much time and too many lives have been lost.
Let’s not let them down.
Let’s secure the border.