[Congressional Record Volume 161, Number 173 (Tuesday, December 1, 2015)]
[Senate]
[Pages S8201-S8202]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
HUMANE ACT
Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, there is another subject I want to raise
because it is a matter of great concern. It is not only because I come
from Texas and we see thousands and thousands of unaccompanied minor
children continuing to cross our border, but you will recall in the
summer of 2014, I believe the President himself talked about the
humanitarian crisis as a result of the thousands and thousands of
unaccompanied children--some with a single parent--who were streaming
across the border in an overload of the capacity of local communities
in the Rio Grande Valley and elsewhere to be able to deal with these
children in a humane and acceptable sort of way.
While the memory here in Washington, DC, may have faded about this
humanitarian crisis, I can tell you that most Texans remember it
vividly. The picture was stark: tens of thousands of unaccompanied
children coming from Central American countries that had set out to
cross Mexico and to cross the border into the United States. Virtually
all of these children had seen their lives placed in the hands of
violent criminals to get here. To say the journey was a perilous one is
a gross understatement.
We recently had a hearing of the international drug enforcement
caucus in the Senate. I asked one of the witnesses: Isn't it the case
that the same criminal organizations that smuggle people into the
United States for economic reasons are the same people who smuggle
children for human trafficking purposes, that these are the same people
and the same organizations that smuggle illegal drugs and perhaps
dangerous and other hazardous materials into the United States? Without
hesitation, the witness said yes.
It may have been some bygone era when an individual coyote, as we
call them in South Texas, smuggled people in for the fee they could
charge, but now this is big business. This is a business model that is
being exploited day in and day out by the transnational criminal
organizations, but that all seems to be lost on the administration.
I saw how this tragedy was unfolding firsthand in McAllen where I
visited these children who made the journey--sometimes alone--only to
end up here in this country by themselves, looking for a friendly face
or somebody who might help them. It was heartbreaking to see young
children without their parents and extremely heartbreaking to hear the
horrific stories about the trips they made. Again, coming from Central
America, across Mexico, perhaps on the back of a train they called The
Beast, physically assaulted, some murdered and many robbed and
otherwise mistreated.
The pressing question in that summer of 2014 was, Why now and why
here? Why was all of this happening? How could we stem the tide of this
seemingly endless migration of unaccompanied children from Central
America?
You don't have to look much further than the President's own
Department of Homeland Security. One internal memo analyzing the surge
of child and female migrants flooding the southwest border stated:
``The main reason the subjects chose this particular time to migrate to
the United States was to take advantage of the `new' U.S. `Law' that
grants a `free pass' or permit.'' I think they call them permisos in
Spanish. In other words, they came here because of the widespread
perception that these unaccompanied children and women traveling with
children would be allowed to stay here in defiance of our immigration
laws, even after they crossed the border illegally.
A similar study by the Department of Homeland Security's Office of
Science and Technology Directorate concluded that the unaccompanied
minors ``are aware of the relative lack of consequences they will
receive when apprehended at the U.S. border.'' Apparently, at the time,
these minors and their parents believed there would be no or little
consequence to illegally
[[Page S8202]]
coming into the United States, and tragically, sadly, they were right.
In the wake of that crisis last summer, it became clear that the
President's failed immigration policies, including his deferred action
program and his overall lack of seriousness when it came to immigration
enforcement, played a role in inducing thousands of families to risk
their lives to travel to the United States.
Until recently, we had perhaps been lulled into the misconception
that this flood of migrants had stopped. But over the weekend, I was
startled by news reports--perhaps I shouldn't have been surprised but I
was--that suggest this downward trend has started to reverse and in a
big way. According to these reports, smugglers were again bringing
hundreds of women and children into the United States across the Rio
Grande.
One from the New York Times noted that according to official data,
``border Patrol apprehensions of migrant families . . . have increased
150 percent'' from last year. The number of unaccompanied children has
more than doubled.
The bottom line is that, clearly, there is virtually nothing being
done to deter these children and their families from illegally crossing
the border and little or no consequences when they do.
I have to point out that the administration has done virtually
nothing to make sure these children are not exposed to the same
criminal organizations operating in this country. In fact, current law
requires these children to be released by the Department of Health and
Human Services to sponsors without any assurance or systemic
protections that they are being sent to a safe environment. There are
no criminal background checks. They are not required to be actual
family members, and they could well be some extension of the same
criminal organizations that smuggled them into the United States in the
first place.
It is shocking to me that the Senate would not be moved to act on
this because, of course, we passed a large anti-human trafficking law
this last spring with a 99-to-0 vote. But to sit quietly while these
children continue to stream across our border and are placed in the
hands of potentially dangerous individuals is unacceptable.
Earlier this year, four individuals were indicted for their
involvement in a trafficking ring that smuggled unaccompanied
Guatemalan children into the country and forced them into slave labor
at a farm in Ohio. These children were not only forced to work long
hours, but they were abused and threatened and exploited. Many of them
could have been spared if the Federal Government and Health and Human
Services had an adequate system for screening and vetting the sponsors
of these unaccompanied minors.
We have to do a better job of protecting these children, which is why
I recently joined a letter with the chairman of the Senate Judiciary
Committee demanding answers from the Department of Homeland Security
and the Department of Health and Human Services.
It is clear that the Federal Government needs to step up and create a
more effective review process before releasing these children to
strangers and perhaps criminals. Our government has a duty to protect
them once they are here and to ensure that they are no longer preyed
upon by criminals and human traffickers.
Given the administration's inability to deter illegal immigration and
the Federal Government's failure to deal with them reasonably,
rationally, and humanely when they get here, we have every reason to
believe that illegal immigration surges of this nature will continue
and will grow until we reform this system. That is why I intend to
introduce a piece of legislation called the HUMANE Act, which will
reform the system to end the practice of automatic catch-and-release to
nongovernmental sponsors. It would enhance the screening of these
children to determine if they are victims of crime or in need of some
specialized care. It will make sure they get a swift and fair court
determination on whether or not they are eligible for any protected
status under our immigration laws.
The HUMANE Act would also help ensure that if these children are in
need of humanitarian assistance, they will never be released to sex
offenders, criminals, or others who will seek to harm them. Of course,
preventing these surges is not just a humanitarian issue; it is a
national security issue as well. By tying up our law enforcement,
customs, and other security officials with humanitarian care
obligations, the cartels and other transnational criminal organizations
create an environment where it is much easier to traffic drugs,
weapons, and other contraband.
We know there are increasing ties between terrorist organizations and
drug cartels, so the threat that they will work together to exploit
another humanitarian crisis is very real. For instance, last year
before the Senate Armed Services Committee, SOUTHCOM's commander, John
Kelly, stated that he was ``troubled by the financial and operational
overlap between criminal and terrorist networks in the [Central
American] region.''
He went on to say: ``Although the extent of criminal-terrorist
cooperation is unclear, what is clear is that terrorists and militant
organizations easily tap into the international illicit marketplace to
underwrite their activities and obtain arms and funding to conduct
operations.''
I am not just talking about economic migrants. I am talking about
immigrants from around the world who can potentially get through our
southern border virtually at will. I am talking about transnational
criminal organizations determined to spread violence and import
narcotics into the United States.
I hope the administration will take these most recent reports
seriously, before we experience once again the horrifying humanitarian
disaster we experienced in 2014. But nothing short of real improvements
to border security and our laws will work.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maryland.
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