[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 35 (Wednesday, March 5, 2003)]
[House]
[Pages H1611-H1614]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      NOMINATION OF MIGUEL ESTRADA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 7, 2003, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Rodriguez) is recognized 
for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. RODRIGUEZ. Mr. Speaker, one of the reasons why we decided to come 
over this afternoon is again to talk a little bit about the Miguel 
Estrada case that is before the Senate. One of the concerns that we had 
was in terms of the fact that he had been nonresponsive in terms of the 
questions.
  Let me first of all start by thanking the Senate for doing the right 
thing and, that is, deciding not to support the nomination of Miguel 
Estrada. We take, at least as elected officials, a very important role 
in making sure that when we are asked to support a letter----


                Announcement by the Speaker Pro Tempore

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair would remind the Member that any 
reference to Senators' positions or statements is not in order.
  Mr. RODRIGUEZ. Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker, I will make every 
attempt not to do that. Thank you.
  One of the things that as elected officials, we take pride in doing, 
letters of support to constituents, letters of support for individuals 
to certain positions, and we want to make sure that, as elected 
officials, when we do a letter of support, that we know the nominee, 
that we know who that person is. We ask for documentation in some 
cases. I do not write letters for anyone unless I know the person 
personally, because I know full well as an elected official, one of the 
first things I was told, Mr. Speaker, and I know you probably have 
experienced this is you do not want to write a letter for someone that 
later on commits a crime. There is nothing worse than doing that. We 
want to make sure we do the right thing. In so doing, also, the Senate 
has a responsibility, and, that is, to look at the candidates that come 
before them and to be able to ask the questions of them, and to be able 
to look and then make a decision based on that.
  Here we have a nominee that has failed to respond to questions. Maybe 
people would say, why not give him a chance? As elected officials, we 
get elected to 2 years. You might say, well, I'm going to vote for Mr. 
Rodriguez this time, I'm not sure, but I'm going to give him a chance. 
With the nominees for the Federal court, we do not have a second 
chance. They are there for life. I would ask you that if you are going 
to be hiring someone in your office, if you are going to be hiring 
someone in a firm, if you are going to be hiring someone and he is 
going to be staying with you for life, you want to make sure that you 
feel comfortable about making that decision. And so I want to thank the 
Senators that have stood there strongly and asked those questions that 
are important. My thanks to all those who are sharing----


                Announcement by the Speaker Pro Tempore

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair is reminding the Member again to 
avoid improper references to the Senate.
  Mr. RODRIGUEZ. I can make reference to the Senate as long as I do not 
tell them what they need to do; is that correct, Mr. Speaker?

[[Page H1612]]

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Remarks in debatee may include statements as 
to the bills they have sponsored, but any other references or 
summations of their positions should be avoided.
  Mr. RODRIGUEZ. I will try to refer to the Constitution. The 
Constitution says that the Senate has an obligation to stand for the 
Constitution and to make sure and consent. That would be appropriate, 
Mr. Speaker, I would presume, since it is in behalf of the 
Constitution. Thank you.
  I want to also take this opportunity to thank all those that have 
shared their message and stress the importance of making sure that this 
debate takes place.
  Throughout this debate, Members from both sides of the aisle have 
continued to accuse those of us who have opposed Miguel Estrada of 
setting a double standard. They have even gone as far as saying that we 
are anti-Hispanic for doing so. I have heard some of these proponents 
of Miguel Estrada profess their great support of the Hispanic 
community. While we welcome them to join our fight on the issues that 
matter to our community, we think that it is important to clarify the 
record.
  I would ask them, where was that support in terms of the Hispanic 
community when it came to bilingual education? Where were these votes 
in behalf of bilingual education? Do they think that they are 
supporting the Hispanic community by voting for the Bush budget that 
eliminates funding for school programs critical to our children's 
academic success? Or when they threaten the school lunch program as we 
are seeing now? And how can they say they are supporting Hispanics when 
they oppose the earned income tax credit program that is so critical 
for our working families?
  And how can they also say that they are supporting Hispanics when 
they failed to extend unemployment insurance benefits at the time when 
Hispanic unemployment is one of the largest in the Nation? And how can 
they touch, in terms of our Hispanic community, when they voted to not 
even allow legal permanent residents the opportunity for basic human 
services but still feel that it is okay to send them to war?
  Some of these Members have also gone to the floor and spoken in 
Spanish. I want to commend them for that effort. But we will not be 
fooled by some nice sound bytes in Spanish or pretty photographs. Your 
voting record will be the determining factor of determining whether the 
community, the Hispanic community, is going to be supportive or not. I 
know as the elections come around, the presidential, as well as the 
Senate, and the House elections, people are going to be reaching out to 
the Hispanic community. There is a great opportunity there to get some 
votes, but that record is going to be determined based on the records 
in responding to the needs of that community.
  We continue, and will continue to oppose Miguel Estrada because we 
know nothing about Mr. Estrada. He is a mute nominee. The Senate 
opponents to Estrada are acting fairly because they are doing their job 
as they move forward as far as I understand. They faced the White House 
strategy of nominating and hiding. They deserve answers. I think in 
response to those questions, we feel that Miguel Estrada deserves 
better treatment, in all honesty, in terms of being advised by the 
administration, I presume, not to answer those questions.
  I ask you once again, would you hire someone who would not be 
responsive to those questions? I think the burden of proof is on Miguel 
Estrada.

                              {time}  1530

  Miguel Estrada has to show that he should be the person nominated, 
especially when he is nominated for life. So when we interviewed Mr. 
Estrada, we asked him basic questions that other nominees have 
answered. He had no response. There were no answers. He was asked about 
judges that he admired. He was asked about people that he looked up to. 
There were no responses. In some cases we asked him about the Lau v. 
Nichols decision, and when the 20 members of the Hispanic Caucus met 
with him he chose not to respond and/or he was either naive about the 
Lau v. Nichols decision, which is a very important decision on 
bilingual education.
  For critical questions, Mr. Estrada provided no answers; and yet 
these are the same questions that the supporters of Mr. Estrada in the 
Senate have asked the other non-Hispanic nominees during the judiciary 
hearings. If there is a double standard, it is seeking questions from 
one nominee but defending the mute nonresponses of another, and I guess 
some of the Members have also forgotten what transpired with Richard 
Paez, who languished on for 4 years in the Senate, and Enrique Moreno 
who also was waiting for nomination. Where were the Hispanic fighting 
individuals out there on behalf of Enrique Moreno? Where were they for 
Jorge Rangel? Where were they for Christina Arguello? Where were they 
for Sonia Sotomayer?
  Where were they for these Hispanic members who had been nominated to 
the courts? All appointees had their nominations stalled for 
extraordinary amounts of time, and I think I speak for all Americans 
when we say that it is time to go back to business. We need to focus on 
our needs of our families. We need to work to get our legislation and 
address their needs. We need to work towards a comprehensive and 
realistic prescription drug plan that addresses our needs. We need to 
keep looking in terms of how are we going to build the economy and the 
importance of creating jobs and raising our country to where we once 
were just a few years ago. We have been entrusted to look out for this 
country, and yet we have failed to move in that direction.
  So we will continue to be in opposition to the Estrada nomination. We 
are going to continue to move forward and at least from the caucus's 
perspective continue to be in opposition to the nomination.
  I also want to take this opportunity to indicate that when we met 
with the nominee, it is not every day that the caucus is unanimous 
about their decisions. We have 20 members of the Hispanic Caucus; and 
we took it very seriously because, after all, here we have a Hispanic 
member before us, and so for us to go against him, it is a hard 
decision. It was not something that we took lightly. It was important 
for us to make sure that we gave him every opportunity that we could.
  So what we did was we had formed a committee, a task force, of which 
the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gonzalez), the gentleman from California 
(Mr. Becerra), and the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Menendez) were 
part of as well as the rest of the delegation. In that we looked at 
various criteria, and I want to take this opportunity to review that 
criteria that we looked at and the evaluation that we utilized.
  One of those areas that we looked at in terms of evaluating Mr. 
Estrada's performance was in the commitment to equal justice for 
Latinos. As we looked at that commitment in terms of equal justice for 
Latinos, we asked questions that revolved around the issue of past 
history to see if he had some sense of history of our Hispanic struggle 
in this country for justice. We inquired about certain cases. What we 
gathered is no record, and the response in that category was no record. 
There was no way. There was no information. So the only thing we could 
gather from Mr. Estrada is that at least in this country he has had no 
commitment to our Hispanic community in this country. He has had no 
contact with our community in this country. He has been involved with 
no organization of Hispanics in this country, and he either failed to 
respond to us or has not had any contact whatsoever. So on the issue of 
commitment to equal justice for Latinos, we had to indicate no record, 
and we have it listed as indicating no record.
  On the commitment to protecting Latinos' interests in the courts, we 
asked him in terms of the importance of the role of a judge if he was 
being looked at as the administration has portrayed as a Latino 
candidate to one of the highest courts, second to the Supreme Court. We 
wanted to make sure that we would have a person that would have an 
understanding of what it means to be Latino in this country; and as I 
recall, the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Menendez) talked about the 
importance of judges having a clear understanding. And he mentioned a 
particular case of a particular court where the judge kept insisting

[[Page H1613]]

that the client, in this case a Hispanic, look at the judge. And 
finally the attorney at that point told him it is due respect to a 
person of authority that sometimes Hispanics would not necessarily look 
one straight in the eyes because it means defiance instead of respect 
versus what the judge was looking at; and yet in that category of 
commitment to protecting Latinos' interests in the courts, we found 
Miguel Estrada failing in that category.

  On the third category that we had in terms of support for Congress's 
right to pass civil rights laws, there is no record and no response. We 
asked him in terms of the history some of the cases that have been 
important for the Hispanic community in this effort, for example, the 
Plyler case out of Rhode Island where it gave the Hispanic immigrants 
the opportunity to go to public schools. We asked him about, as I 
mentioned earlier, the Lau v. Nichols decision regarding bilingual 
education, and in those he either had no knowledge of those cases and/
or he chose not to respond. So we had to indicate no record on behalf 
of Mr. Estrada.
  On the forth category where it talked about support for individuals' 
access to the courts, there we talked about in past history in terms of 
his support, what has he done to try to help people to come forward and 
move forward, Latinos, if he had provided any kind of assistance in 
that area, any kind of internships or any kind of effort. It was very 
unclear in terms of any of his comments.
  On the fifth category, the support for Latino organizations or causes 
through pro bono legal expertise, we asked him if he ever provided any 
kind of help or assistance or if he ever volunteered in any way to help 
clients. The response was no. So we had to give him a failing grade in 
that category. When we asked him support for Latino organizations or 
causes through volunteerism and we went a little bit beyond the other 
one in terms of pro bono, any kind of volunteerism, still no form of 
volunteer efforts. We had to give him a failing grade. When we asked 
him for support for Latino law students or young legal professionals 
through mentoring or any internship programs and we went a little more 
in-depth in that area, again we found that Mr. Miguel Estrada failed in 
that category.
  And, finally, on the commitment to increase Latino access to 
clerkships once on the bench, there was no response and very little 
history in the past, and he failed. We went a little bit beyond that 
also in some discussions on specifics about other writings that he 
might have done; and when it comes to Miguel Estrada, we know very 
little about this candidate. Here is a person that we are scheduled to 
nominate to the second highest court of this Nation, and yet he has 
never been a judge, a municipal judge, never been a district judge, 
never been any form of a judge; and yet we have him before us.
  So we question the rationale and the approach. I am sure that when he 
went before the administration that he responded to the questions that 
the administration posed before him; and if nothing else, we would ask 
Miguel Estrada that he would respond maybe to those same questions the 
administration had posed to him, but that has not happened. There is no 
opinion on any Supreme Court case that we could gather from him.
  There is a list of questions that we have gotten that he has failed 
to respond to; and it is a series of questions both in committee and 
the Senate and from us, and when he was asked, Do you have any opinion 
on the Rowe v. Wade decision and do you believe that Rowe was correctly 
decided?, no response whatsoever at all to that specific question. When 
he was asked specifically on questions that most Members are asked, and 
that is regarding, for example, a very simple question that is usually 
brought up to Members is the basic question of Which three cases do you 
think have been very important cases in this country or that you are 
supportive of and which three cases do you disagree with?, he has 
failed to respond.
  I am not an attorney, but I know I would have picked up a couple of 
them, if nothing else, those cases that discriminate against African 
Americans, the Plessy v. Ferguson case, and all those cases that 
discriminated; and I would presume that it would have been easy for him 
to be able to pick some of these cases, at least outline and say that 
they were unjust, even if it was at that time, and that they needed to 
be corrected; but he chose not to respond.
  So the only thing I can gather is that here is a nominee who I think 
has been misguided by the administration maybe not to say anything and 
assume that because he was Hispanic and that if anyone went against him 
or decided to go against him, they were going to label him anti-
Hispanic. As the Hispanic Caucus in this country, we have an obligation 
and a responsibility, and one of those responsibilities is to make sure 
that we have good nominees; and whether he is Hispanic or not Hispanic, 
I think it is important that they need to respond to the questions that 
are before them.
  So it becomes really important that we look at these nominees in a 
very careful way, and I have to admit it was not an easy decision, but 
it was a unanimous decision on behalf of the 20 congressional Members 
that are Hispanic, the Hispanic Congressional Caucus; and all of us 
felt that he did not deserve the nomination, and he does not deserve to 
be a Federal judge unless he chooses to answer the questions that are 
before him like everyone else. Because he is Hispanic, that does not 
make him qualified; and because he is Hispanic, that does not give him 
any special treatment. We expect him to answer the questions like 
anyone else.
  So we also want to take this opportunity to thank LULAC of 
California, the State LULAC that has gone in favor of not accepting the 
nomination. We want to personally also take this opportunity to ask and 
thank MALDEF, Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, that 
has come forward on this issue and has taken a pretty good stand on 
that.
  And with me tonight also is a Congresswoman out of California; and 
before I ask her to say a few words, I want to also indicate that I am 
really pleased that today we had Linda Chavez-Thompson with the AFL-CIO 
and a lot of the unions that are also concerned with the nomination of 
Miguel Estrada come forward in a press conference against the 
nomination of Miguel Estrada.

                              {time}  1545

  I wanted to thank those groups that were before us, and I also want 
to thank some of the past presidents of LULAC that have gone against 
the nomination of Miguel Estrada, in addition to various other Members 
of the legal profession.
  We have the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Solis) here, and I want 
to ask her to join me in dialoguing a little bit and personally thank 
her for the efforts she has taken in this area. And I want to ask her, 
because I know we as a caucus took it very seriously, and we know after 
we decided to go after and not to accept the nomination of Miguel 
Estrada, it was not an easy decision for us as Latinos in this country, 
because we are there to push and get as many Latinos as we can into the 
courts, but we want to make sure that they are also responsive, because 
they are appointed for life, and that they are also qualified as we 
move forward, and not having the responses, not having the comments and 
not answering the questions is not meeting that particular objective.
  Ms. SOLIS. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate this opportunity to be here 
tonight also to speak on behalf of this very important issue that I am 
also lending my support to not go with the nomination that has been put 
forward by the President, and that is Mr. Estrada. The reason I say 
that is because as someone who grew up in a humble community, whose 
parents immigrated to this country over 50 years ago to strive for 
opportunities for their children, they taught me some very valued 
principles. Those very valued principles are to be a part of the 
community, to value and support your traditions and to always remember 
where you came from. Remembering where you came from means that you do 
not ignore your ancestry and who you are.
  One of the questions that was posed to Mr. Estrada when he came to 
visit with us as Hispanic Caucus members were interviewing him, he made 
it very clear that it was irrelevant to be associated as a Hispanic, 
that he felt very proud because of his qualifications, and that he did 
not want to be considered for this position because he was Hispanic. No 
doubt, that is an issue that

[[Page H1614]]

many people will look at very seriously.
  But one of the criteria that I think we take to heart very seriously 
is not only that an individual who comes forward to us seeking our 
support from our caucus, 20 members, if I am correct, it is very 
important for them to outline what they believe what their intentions 
are.
  It is just like a job interview. If I were an employer and an 
prospective employee comes to me and asks me to give them a job, I 
certainly want them to answer very important questions, like where they 
stand on very important issues that as an employer I need to know. This 
gentleman did not answer those questions for us appropriately, and my 
understanding is he did not do that as well with the other House.
  My concern is that I am being somehow evaluated because I am viewed 
as being non-Hispanic or un-American because I refuse to support 
someone who is of Hispanic ancestry, but yet does not believe, in my 
opinion, in the principles that I and other members of the Hispanic 
Caucus espouse, and that is communities, that is tradition and values, 
to support members of our community, but to give back, to demonstrate a 
willingness to give back. And we have not seen any of those points at 
least reflected in any information that we have received from Mr. 
Estrada.
  I want to say that the Hispanic Caucus has, on occasion, supported 
Republican nominees, and we have done that with the full enforcement of 
our caucus. In fact, two nominees that came before us, Republican 
Hispanics, were Jose Martinez of Florida and Jose Luis Linarez of New 
Jersey. They were supported by the Hispanic Caucus proudly and were 
able to reflect on their background and the things they have done to 
give back to the communities. Those are noble things to talk about. We 
did not hear that from Mr. Estrada.
  One of the things I am concerned about, too, is there are some 
accusations we do not have the support of other Hispanic members or 
traditional organizations out there in the community. Nothing could be 
farther from the truth. I would like to just give you an indication of 
who those individuals and organizations are.
  The United Farm Workers of America has come out strongly against the 
nomination of Miguel Estrada; 15 past presidents of the Hispanic Bar 
Association, which many of us are affiliated with; the United States 
Hispanic Leadership Institute; the Southwest Voter Registration and 
Education Project; the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement, 
known as LCLAA, one of the largest union representative groups in the 
country; the California Chapter of the League of United Latin American 
Citizens. In fact, my own chapter came out opposing this nomination. We 
received a letter a few days ago from Rosemary Lopez.
  Mr. Estrada is opposed by the Farm Labor Organizing Committee; the 
Farmworker Association of Florida; La Raza Lawyers Association of 
California; the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund; the 
Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Educational Fund; the National Farm 
Workers Ministry; the National Latino Institute for Reproductive 
Health; and the Willie C. Velasquez Institute. These groups all oppose 
the nomination of Miguel Estrada.
  I would ask people when they consider what position we took as a 
caucus, that they recognize what we had to go through. This is a very 
elaborate process that we took into consideration. We take very, very 
seriously the decisions that we make.
  I can tell you today that I am still not convinced that this is the 
best nominee to represent us, who be there for a lifetime appointment, 
and then possibly move on to a higher position.
  I have some serious questions. If I were an employer and the 
prospective employee did not respond to any questions I asked, I would 
say that person may not be the best qualified for that position.
  Mr. RODRIGUEZ. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentlewoman, and want 
to take this opportunity to also indicate that as a caucus we have 
stuck strong, all 20 of us, and, once again, it does not happen that 
often, but we did and we continue to be in opposition to the nomination 
of Miguel Estrada.

                          ____________________