Amid an ongoing and worsening migrant crisis, Republican Maine Sen. Susan Collins delivered remarks Tuesday calling for bipartisan solutions to address border security at both the southern and northern borders.
“In the State of Maine, encounters have increased over 450 percent since fiscal year 2021,” Sen. Collins said in her floor remarks. “Just recently, the U.S. Border Patrol encountered a group of 20 Romanians illegally crossing into the United States near Houlton, Maine.”
“Two of these individuals were flagged as Transnational Criminal Organized Crime matches and detained for expedited removal proceedings,” Collins said. “The remaining 18 were released into the local community.”
[RELATED: Border Patrol Apprehends 20 Romanian Nationals Who Illegally Crossed US-Canada Border into Hodgdon…]
Collins noted that on Monday there were a record 12,281 encounters with foreign nationals entering the U.S. along the southwest border without authorization.
“So far this fiscal year, we are averaging nearly 8,500 encounters per day, and this month, the average is nearly 10,000 per day,” Collins explained. “At the current rate, we are on pace for more than three million encounters in fiscal year 2024, which would shatter the previous high set last fiscal year.”
“To put this in perspective, that is more than twice as many encounters at the southwest border as there are people in the entire State of Maine,” she added.
Collins went on to address the impact the migrant crisis is having on Maine — especially in Portland, where more than 1,600 asylum seekers have arrived since January.
[RELATED: King, Collins, Pingree Request DHS Rule Change to Help Fund Shelter and Services for Migrants…]
Sanford –with a population of only 22,000 — has had approximately 400 migrants arrive since May, and has spend $1.3 million providing food, housing, and other services to the migrants and their families.
“Communities in Maine and throughout our country are struggling to absorb this influx of people who are being released into the interior,” Collins said. “The majority of migrants are released pending an adjudication of their claims, but that is a process that can take years.”
Collins also expressed her concern over the flow of fentanyl trafficked across the southern border.
“Mexican drug cartels are using the chaos at the southern border to facilitate their trafficking operations,” Collins said. “They are sending record amounts of fentanyl into this country – enough to kill every American many times over.”
According to the most recent data from the Maine Attorney General’s Office, Maine has seen more than 8,259 drug overdoses and 513 fatal overdoses in 2023 as of October.
About 80 percent of those fatal overdoses were attributable to fentanyl.
“Maine, like so many states, has seen record increases in recent years in the number of overdose deaths, nearly 80 percent of which were fentanyl related,” Collins said. “We lost 513 Mainers in the first 10 months of 2023 to fatal overdoses – 373 of these deaths were fentanyl-related.”
“It is unfortunate that the Administration has been so late to these negotiations,” said Collins.
“But I still have hope that we can put together a package that will address all of these crises: the border crisis in our own country, the border crisis in Ukraine, the border crisis in Israel – with the terrorists attacks from Hamas – and the coming border crisis that we’re going to see, I fear, with China’s increasingly threatening Taiwan,” she said.
All of those issues need to be addressed in the supplemental. Let’s get the job done.
Watch Sen. Collins’ full remarks on the Senate floor below:
<span class="dsq-postid" data-dsqidentifier="24085 https://www.themainewire.com/?p=24085">11 Comments
I emailed all three of my congressional representatives this morning stating “CLOSE THE U.S. SOUTHERN BORDER…NOW!!! Your inaction to this crisis is damning and every politician responsible for this calamity of people breaking the law should be prosecuted.
You can easily contact all your reps by going to WLOB’s website. Also feel free to COPY AND PASTE the statement above.
…save your virtuous bluster, Collins! You practically vote with every Democrat. This border crisis belongs on your shoulders as well! Someone PLEASE primary this swamp creature in ’26! One of her promises when she first ran for Senate was she’d only serve two terms and then go back to her potatoes! We’re still waiting!
Maine is a State run by useless liberal women who have nothing but contempt for America.
Maine— flush these turds before its too late.
Susan Hussein Rodham Collins, like Rip Van Winkle, appears to be awakening after 20 years in the arms of Morpheus.
Well since she along with others has been busy killing Mainers by not securing the border, it kind of surprises me it is all of a sudden a problem for her. There must be money involved. Shame on her and all the others in Congress who have refused to secure our border, while citizens die of overdoses.
Reminds of the arsonist who is also a member of the fire department
sUE SHOW THE WAY BY YOU AND YOUR BUDY TAKing SOME ILLEGALS IN TO YOUR HOME’S.
You can not even keep the Chines from growing grass in your state– At least they do not OD and die on grass. You and the boy friend should step aside and let Trump do the job. Retire with Joe!
Susan Collins = a Republican clone of Joe Biden. Both should’ve been put out to pasture decades ago.
And she offers no solutions.
She is an amnesty proponent.
The illegals and those with the phony asylum claims need to be deported.
If they can be found to give the $65,000 per yr welfare to, they can be found to be deported.
beachmom on December 22, 2023 7:01 AM
And she offers no solutions.
She is an amnesty proponent.
The illegals and those with the phony asylum claims need to be deported.
If they can be found to give the $65,000 per yr welfare to, they can be found to be deported.
AMEN!
S.C. KINDLY SIT DOWN AND SHUT UP! RINO (B)witch.
I thought you said we needed illegal worker bees. Sooooo what is it? no illegals, yes illegals? People’s lives are just chess pieces to this money and power hungry lot. We’ve been holding our nose to vote for her for years. The RNC needs to support a real republican. In the words of the great Marty Feldman, C’mon! Give someone else a chance!
Sue talk to your fellow Senator Angus he votes for the Democratic party which has OPEN BOARDERS.