[Congressional Record Volume 162, Number 108 (Wednesday, July 6, 2016)]
[Senate]
[Page S4779]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        IMMIGRATION LEGISLATION

  Mr. REID. Finally, on another subject, Mr. President, Senate 
Republicans today will promote Donald Trump's anti-immigrant rhetoric 
with action. This afternoon, the Senate will vote to consider a pair of 
bills proposed by the junior Senators from Pennsylvania and Texas. 
These bills follow Trump's lead in demonizing and criminalizing 
immigrant Latino families.
  Senator Toomey's bill will undermine the ability of local law 
enforcement to police their own communities and to ensure public 
safety. It would deny millions of dollars of critical community and 
economic development funding to cities and States that refuse to target 
immigrant families. Senator Toomey's legislation would simply create 
more problems. It wouldn't solve anything. Not surprisingly, it is 
opposed by mayors, domestic violence groups, Latino and civil rights 
groups, and labor organizations.
  Senator Cruz's bill is no better. It would enact unnecessary 
mandatory minimum sentences and would cost billions and billions of new 
dollars, increasing the prison population and siphoning funding from 
State and local law enforcement. Worst of all, this sort of partisan, 
piecemeal approach undermines bipartisan efforts to enact badly needed 
reforms in our criminal justice system.
  One desk over from me is Dick Durbin, the assistant Democratic 
leader. He has worked for years on doing something about the criminal 
justice system. He has been joined by a bipartisan group of people to 
get something done, but, again, the Republican leader is too interested 
in doing things that mean nothing than doing something that means 
something.
  By pursuing legislation targeting so-called sanctuary cities, 
Republicans are legislating Donald Trump's vision that immigrants and 
Latinos are criminals and threats to the public. Republicans want red 
meat going into the convention and desperately want to pivot from the 
epidemic of gun violence plaguing our nation and the epidemic of Zika, 
but Americans deserve a real solution to our broken immigration system, 
not political games and dog-whistle politics.
  If Senator McConnell wants to bring this legislation forward, we are 
going to take a serious look at it. Maybe getting on the bill might be 
the right thing to do. If we get on that, and the Republican leader 
said he wants a robust amendment process, well, we will be happy to 
give him one. We will have a number of amendments on guns, we will have 
a number of amendments on Zika, and we will do something about 
comprehensive immigration reform. So we are going to take a look at 
that. We may just get on that bill and find out if we are going to have 
this robust amendment process, but let's address comprehensive 
immigration reform, guns, Zika, and other issues. We are happy to do 
that. This may be an opportunity for us to move forward on those 
issues.
  Will the Chair announce what the Senate is going to do the rest of 
the day.

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