[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 89 (Tuesday, June 10, 2014)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3521-S3524]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
IMMIGRATION POLICIES
Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, in recent weeks it has become impossible
to deny the fact that we have a full-blown humanitarian crisis along
the U.S.-Mexican border. Sadly, this crisis is directly the result of
President Obama's own policies, and it involves tens of thousands of
young children, some reportedly as young as 3 years old, risking their
lives.
Indeed, young children are traveling through extremely dangerous
territory run by brutal drug cartels that prey on the weak in the form
of human trafficking, rape, and even murder. This year alone tens of
thousands of unaccompanied minor children have been detained while
crossing illegally into the United States. A large percentage has been
found in the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas.
To give the Senate an idea of what has happened and the timeline
here, as recently as 2011 there were 6,560 unaccompanied minors
detained at the border between the United States and Mexico. Then in
2012 the President announced he was taking administrative action to
defer deportation of a certain class of minors, most of whom had come
here as young children but had since grown up, sometimes called the
Dreamers. But this action in 2012 sent a message, apparently, to other
people who were anxious to come to the United States. So you see in
2013, there were 24,000 unaccompanied minors. It is projected, although
the number is not known, that it will rise to 60,000, or the Senator
from Arizona has said he has heard as high as 90,000 potentially of
these unaccompanied minors.
Mr. McCAIN. Will the Senator yield for a question?
Mr. CORNYN. I will.
Mr. McCAIN. I apologize if I am being redundant here, but how does
the Senator from Texas explain to the American people how we have gone
from, in 2011, when we start this chart, from 6,000, to now the
projection, 3 years later, of over 60,000 and some say as many as
90,000? But let's say it is 60,000. Does this not have to be some kind
of orchestrated, organized effort
[[Page S3522]]
to account for this dramatic increase? If it is, who is doing it?
Mr. CORNYN. I would say to the Senator from Arizona, he knows a lot
about this topic, living in Arizona. But I think it is a combination of
factors. It is, 1, the message that was sent by the unilateral deferred
action the President ordered in 2012 saying that even children who come
here meeting certain criteria would be low priorities for deportation.
So the message was: If you can come to America, and you get here, then
you are basically not going to be sent back home.
I think it is also a combination, as the Senator knows, of the
violence in the failed state status, nearly, of some of the Central
American countries where most of these kids come from. But it is
creating, as the Senator knows, a humanitarian crisis because we do not
have the facilities to take care of this many minor children.
Here again, these are just the ones who made it. The Senator knows
how dangerous the trek is from Central America up through Mexico
through areas controlled by the drug cartels. Many of these children,
some reportedly as young as 5 or 3 years old, are obviously very
vulnerable to being preyed upon by unscrupulous characters.
Mr. McCAIN. Additionally, though, these children--when you are saying
especially the very young ones, there has to be some kind of organized
effort that is bringing them. The average 5-year-old or 6-year-old does
not decide to leave home one day and come across the U.S.-Mexican
border.
Mr. CORNYN. The Senator is exactly right. I did not answer his
question. Let me try to do a better job. As the Senator knows, in years
past, the migrants who came across the border typically were people
looking for work. But now with the dominance of large swaths of Mexico
and Central America by drug cartels, they basically are trafficking in
people, in drugs, in guns, and anything that will make them a buck.
Unfortunately, they have no scruples whatsoever and no concern for
these young, vulnerable children. They recognize their parents are
willing to pay money to them to transport them from Central America to
the United States. But the problem is they have no control over what
happens to those children when they are in the hands of the drug
cartels and these transnational gangs as they bring them all the way
from Guatemala, for example, which is 1,200 miles away from McAllen,
TX. Many of these children suffer from exposure, in addition to being
preyed upon by a variety of unscrupulous characters.
Mr. McCAIN. Could I ask again? So these children now, ones because of
the numbers in overwhelming our facilities, are in terrible conditions
for someone, a human being in the United States of America: no
facilities, no bathing, diet, overcrowding, being put on transportation
and taken to Arizona and dropped off at bus stops, and yet not only is
that a terrific problem, at least once they are there, they are not
prey to some of the things they are prey to on the 1,200-mile trip
which are horrible in many circumstances given the nature of these
people who are the drug smugglers and human smugglers at the same time.
So is it true that the dimensions of this humanitarian tragedy/crisis
are something that deserve the attention of all of us? I am surprised
it has not gotten a lot more attention than it has up to now.
Mr. CORNYN. I would say to the Senator from Arizona that I am a
little surprised it has not gotten more attention either. That is one
reason that motivated me to come to the floor today to highlight this.
Tomorrow, before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Secretary Jeh Johnson
of the Department of Homeland Security will be testifying. I hope he
can provide us some answers, because what we need is a comprehensive
look at what are the incentives that would convince parents to send
their unaccompanied children up through this horrific trip through
Mexico, some 1,200 miles from Central America, to such an uncertain
fate here in the United States, much less along the way. We need to
know what the President's plan is to deal with this.
I know the Senator has spent a lot of time in places such as Jordan
and Turkey that I have had the occasion to visit. One of our colleagues
pointed out, this is like having refugee camps here in the United
States, something nobody ever thought we would have.
Mr. McCAIN. I would ask one more question. Does the Senator know of
any plan or any idea of what our Department of Homeland Security and
our Border Patrol and people have to deal with this? Do you have any
idea what they have to address this issue besides transporting children
from Texas to Tucson, AZ, and dropping them off at a bus stop?
Mr. CORNYN. I would say to the Senator, I know some of it entails
warehousing children at places such as Lackland Air Force Base, and the
last report I saw, about 1,000 of them are located there. I am not sure
what the plan is going forward. I assume some of it will be to try to
reunite them with family members here in the United States. But if they
do not have family members, then they are going to basically become
wards of the State. I am not aware of any plan.
The reason why I came to the floor today is to express the very
concerns the Senator from Arizona has expressed about the causes and
the effects of such a poorly thought out policy, which basically sends
the message that anybody who can make it here, particularly minors, can
come into the United States and we are totally unprepared, in my view,
to deal with this humanitarian crisis. We need to be prepared.
Mr. McCAIN. In other words, by making the decision the President of
the United States made on deferred action, if you believe those numbers
and they are accurate, that triggered a mass movement into the United
States of America. So it is not an accident that these numbers have
gone from 13,000 up to 60,000 or 90,000, depending on who you talk to.
It is not an accident. So if it is a matter of policy, then that policy
needs to be reviewed. Rather than cure the symptom, which we have to do
because it is a humanitarian crisis, the humanitarian crisis is not
going to be over until we address the root of the problem. Is that
correct?
Mr. CORNYN. I agree with the Senator from Arizona. I think this is
not a coincidence. There is, in my view, very much of a cause-and-
effect relationship between this poorly thought out unilateral action
by the President, without much knowledge of or thought given to the
consequences.
As the Senator from Arizona knows, because he has certainly fought
the fight to fix our broken immigration laws, and I have been involved
in many of those myself, this is a direct result of the President
basically trying to go it alone and basically trying to send a message,
a political message, but one that gives very little thought to the very
real-world human consequences of his political actions.
The Senator from Arizona was talking a little bit about this trip
from Central America. I would show my colleagues, as we know, Mexico
has had a lot of security issues that have been dealt with by the last
administration, President Calderon's administration, and now are
continuing to be dealt with by the current administration in Mexico.
But the Zetas, some of the hardest core of the drug cartels,
essentially control large portions of this region of eastern Mexico. If
you look from Guatemala, from Central America right at the bottom of
Mexico here, the pathway these children would have to make all of the
way up through Mexico into South Texas, into the Rio Grande Valley,
essentially is through territory controlled by the Zetas, the drug
cartel.
One question that is horrible to contemplate is how many of the
children who started this long 1,200 mile or so trek actually made it
to the end of their journey, and how many fell out along the way as a
result of illness, as a result of criminal activity, such as
kidnapping, how many were assaulted along the way. This is a crisis
that needs to be addressed.
I would point out to my colleagues, I have in my hand--and I ask
unanimous consent that this document be printed in the Record following
my remarks. I would read from it. This is a release from the U.S.
Customs and Border Protection dated May 12, 2014. As of May 12, 2014,
nearly 180 sex offenders were arrested in the Rio Grande Valley sector
alone. That is so far in 2014. Can you imagine that amidst the 47,000
children who have been detained since October of last year coming
across the
[[Page S3523]]
border, that mixed into this pot of people were we know at least 180
convicted sex offenders.
This article continues to point out that:
Additionally, agents have arrested more than 50 members of the Mara
Salvatrucha gang, or MS-13, a notorious transnational criminal gang
that started in Los Angeles, and about 14 members of the 18th Street
gang.
For my colleagues' information, many of them have heard about a train
that goes up through Mexico that many of the migrants from Central
America take in order to help them make their journey. This train is
called the Beast, sometimes called the Beast of Death.
The stories, and indeed the books, that have been written about this
chronicle how horrendous this trip is. We can see in this picture there
are young people and older people sitting on top of this train, riding
it as far as they can, helping them make their journey up that eastern
coast of Mexico from Central America, the 1,200 miles they would take
to get from Guatemala City to South Texas. Many of them travel on this
train known as the Beast.
The stories of what has happened here, of people who have lost their
lives, people who have been decapitated when the train has gone through
tunnels, people who tried to jump on a moving train only to lose limbs
after a fall under the train, will chill your blood.
But the fact is the administration, and indeed the entire Federal
Government, needs to deal with this crisis and needs to deal not only
with the causes of it but what the effects are and particularly the
humanitarian crisis involving this growing number of unaccompanied
children.
Federal, State, and local authorities along the border have
completely been overwhelmed by the influx. You can imagine that the
Border Patrol, which is in the business of processing these children as
they are detained and handing them off to Health and Human Services and
other agencies, their attention has been diverted from their primary
mission of border security because they have had to lend a hand to deal
with the humanitarian crisis.
With so many children arriving day after day and with so many of them
lacking any identification documents, it has been tremendously
difficult to figure out exactly who they are, why they left home, where
they have family, and where they should be sent while their case is
being processed.
We don't know how many of them have been victims of human
trafficking, for example, how many of them might qualify as refugees
under U.S. law, how many of them are actually over the age of 18, and
how many of them might have a criminal record.
Can anyone at the White House or in the administration say with
certainty the children being released from U.S. custody are leaving
with an actual family member?
The Senator from Arizona alluded to children being shipped from Texas
to Arizona where they were left at bus stops and elsewhere, basically
with a request that they reappear at a given time. But, of course, 90
percent, I am told, never show up back at their court appointment.
For that matter, can the administration say with certainty that none
of these children have been handed over to an adult with a criminal
record? The answer to both of these questions is no.
In short, this is a complete mess, and the use of resources available
to Texas and U.S. officials are under enormous strain. The
administration estimates that roughly 60,000 of these unaccompanied
children will be apprehended this fiscal year. Perhaps twice that many
may be apprehended next year.
We can see the trend here and, of course, all we know from this chart
is what it was before the President's deferred action announcement, and
we know what it is now. But the trendline is undeniable and appears to
be growing at an exponential rate. The crisis we are facing now
represents a tragic and painful example of the law of unintended
consequences.
Two years ago when the President stood in the Rose Garden and
announced a unilateral administrative change in U.S. immigration
policy, he probably thought he was doing a good thing. But between that
policy change and his broader failure to uphold our immigration laws--
indeed his statement that he essentially will not enforce broad swaths
of those laws--the President has created an extremely dangerous
incentive for children and their parents to cross into the United
States under these sorts of treacherous and horrific circumstances.
In other words, the policies that were supposed to be adopted for
humanitarian purposes to help these children have created a genuine
humanitarian disaster for these same supposed beneficiaries of this
unilateral policy. While there is widespread violence and poverty in
Central America, sadly, that is not something entirely new, and it is
not the cause of our current crisis.
President Obama's immigration policies, primarily his policy of
nonenforcement, have encouraged untold numbers of parents and children
to make a shockingly dangerous journey through the interior of Mexico
riding the Beast, some of whom have been subjected to unknown horrors
and treatment at the hands of the very same people who were paid to
transport them.
The stories I have read indicate that at stops along the way people
are held up at gunpoint. If they don't turn over money to their would-
be assailant, then they are threatened with being shot and even killed.
While we may have a rough idea of how many children are actually
crossing into America, we will never know with certainty how many
actually start that journey and never make it, how many die along the
way, are kidnapped or perhaps sexually abused or otherwise mistreated
because of the lawless conditions under which this takes place. But we
do know the massive surge in unaccompanied minors is directly
attributable to actions taken or not taken by the administration.
Therefore, I would implore President Obama to immediately do five
things:
No. 1, he should immediately declare that the so-called deferred
action program--which I referred to earlier that he unilaterally
ordered in 2012--does not apply to the children currently arriving at
the border. One aspect of enforcement is deterrence, and so deterring
the children from ever starting that long, dangerous trek has to be
part of the solution.
No. 2, the President should immediately discourage people in Central
America and elsewhere from sending their children on such a dangerous
journey.
No. 3, the President should immediately begin to enforce all U.S.
immigration laws and engage with the Congress in any changes he thinks
are warranted and not simply ignore the ones he finds convenient or
politically expedient.
No. 4, he should immediately take steps to ensure that Texas and
other U.S. border States have the resources they need to address this
ongoing humanitarian crisis.
No. 5, he should immediately start working with the Mexican
Government to improve security at Mexico's southern border. This is a
500-mile border between Mexico and Guatemala that, if it were better
secured, would deter many of these children and other migrants from
coming through Mexico and subjecting themselves to these dangerous
conditions in the first place.
If the President did all five of those, not only would it help us
resolve the current crisis, but it would also help us prevent similar
crises from erupting in the future.
These children are being preyed on by drug cartels and human
traffickers, and they are at high risk of being kidnapped, raped or
even killed while traveling this long dangerous journey to the United
States. But sadly, when they arrive here, we still have no way of
guaranteeing their safety because of the lack of an adequate plan to
deal with this humanitarian crisis.
President Obama effectively created this problem and now he has an
opportunity to work with us to fix it. I can only hope he does the
right thing.
I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the U.S.
Customs and Border Protection document I referred to earlier.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
[[Page S3524]]
[From the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, May 12, 2014]
Nearly 180 Sex Offenders Arrested by RGV Sector Agents so far in FY14
Edinburg, TX.--U.S. Border Patrol agents from the Rio
Grande Valley Sector have arrested nearly 180 illegal
immigrants with prior convictions for sex offenses so far for
fiscal year 2014, which began Oct. 1, 2013, and goes through
Sept. 31, 2014.
The majority of the sex offenders have convictions for
sexual assault crimes involving children. Some of the more
heinous offenses include: sexual assault of a child; sodomy,
lewd or lascivious acts with a child under 14; aggravated
sexual assault of a child; and aggravated indecent assault
and corruption of a minor. The sex offenders have convictions
for crimes that occurred in states from coast to coast as
well as in the Rio Grande Valley.
In addition to the arrests of convicted sex offenders,
agents apprehended three illegal immigrants over the weekend
who have arrest warrants for sex-related crimes. They include
a Mexican national wanted in FortWorth on a continuous child
sex abuse charge; a Salvadoran wanted by the Loudan County
Sheriff's Office in Virginia on a charge of adultery/
fornication: incest with a child between 13-17 years of age;
and another Mexican national wanted by the Travis County
Sheriff's Office on a charge of indecency with a child/sexual
contact The three men were turned over to the Hidalgo County
Sheriff's Office pending extradition.
Additionally, agents have arrested more than 50 members of
the Mara Salvatrucha gang, or MS-13, a notorious
transnational criminal gang that started in Los Angeles, and
about 14 members of the 18th Street gang.
The Rio Grande Valley Sector is part of the South Texas
Campaign, which leverages federal, state and local resources
to combat transnational criminal organizations. To report
suspicious activity, call the sector's toll-free telephone
number at 800-863-9382.
Mr. CORNYN. I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from California.
Mrs. BOXER. As a Senator from a Western State, as is my friend from
Texas, I hope the American people understand the only thing the
Republicans can do for whatever happens is blame President Obama: Oh,
it rained today--it is President Obama.
How about the most obvious point--that the Republican House has
failed to take up an immigration bill. The Senate did it in a
bipartisan way. I applaud that bipartisanship. We did it a long time
ago. The fact that the Republican House refuses to do it never passes
the lips of my Republican friends in the Senate.
If we want to correct our immigration system, we have to sit down and
do the hard work, as we did in the Senate. There is no question that we
are facing a crisis with children from Central America running away
from gangs, violence, rape, and deprivation. There is no doubt about
it. The fact is we can deal with that, but we have to look at the laws,
and that is why we want to set the rules in a bill.
There is lawlessness because we haven't updated our laws. For
example, we have to make sure these short-term holding facilities have
humane conditions. We can do that by law.
I want to say to my friends on the other side of the aisle, because
it is cloudy one day, don't blame the President. Because it rains the
next day, don't blame the President. If you wake up with a sore throat,
don't blame the President. When you have trouble at the border, look at
your own party, which has held up immigration reform. If we can do it
over here, they can do it over there. The whole world is watching.
It is the same way with the veterans. I am hoping and praying that
this new effort by Senator Sanders and Senator McCain will bear fruit
in the Senate on a VA bill. But remember that the Republicans
filibustered the last Bernie Sanders bill, which would have added
clinics, which would have addressed the problems. They filibustered it.
Keep your ear open here. We have a chance to address so many issues.
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