[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 15 (Monday, January 30, 2017)]
[House]
[Page H706]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




            STAND UP AGAINST EXECUTIVE ORDER ON IMMIGRATION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Connecticut (Mr. Himes) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. HIMES. Madam Speaker, this Sunday I was out on the road amongst 
my constituents when at about midday, I started to get panicked emails 
from the doctors of Yale New Haven Hospital because one of their own, 
Tarek Alasil, an ophthalmologist of Syrian dissent, an ophthalmologist 
who has made his home here in the United States, who has U.S. citizen 
children, who has his family in New Haven, had been detained in the 
Caribbean in the Bahamas.
  He had been in the Caribbean doing cataract surgery for people who 
might otherwise not have access to the surgery that might allow them to 
see again; stepping forward, as all that we think is best about a 
country that was founded and strengthened by immigrants abroad, doing 
God's work as an ambassador--informal, though, he may have been--that 
America is a good and decent place.
  But he was detained and sat there in the Bahamas detained by the 
customs and border patrol, wondering if he would ever see his family 
again, wondering if he might ever become the United States citizen that 
he hoped to be, wondering if he was going to get sent back to his 
native city of Aleppo, which now is a smoking ruin.
  Of course, we hear story after story like that. The worst I heard was 
an elderly lady in her eighties, Hamidyah Al Saeedi. Hamidyah Al Saeedi 
has a son who is a sergeant in the 82nd Airborne. She hadn't seen 
Sergeant Al Saeedi for 5 years, and she was on her way to the United 
States to see her son, a sergeant in the United States Army, for the 
first time in 5 years.
  She spent 33 hours in detention; some of those hours handcuffed--this 
mother of an 82nd Airborne soldier--because of the actions of Donald 
Trump.
  She thought she was going to be deported. She was told she would be 
deported. Thank God she wasn't, this mother of an 82nd Airborne 
soldier.
  Madam Speaker, I serve on the Intelligence Committee and have for 
some 4 years. I know a little something about national security, and 
the executive order signed by President Trump on Saturday is not only 
about national security, it is profoundly dangerous to the security of 
this country because it gives our enemies a logic to say the United 
States is bigoted; it is anti-Muslim; and it does not stand for its 
principles.
  What is this executive order?
  It is a travesty. It is dangerous security theater. It is a knife in 
the heart of the values that founded this country. What it is most 
assuredly not is a mechanism to keep us safer.
  It opens with a preamble on 9/11--a devastating day for all of us. 
Yet, not one of the countries that produced the 9/11 hijackers is on 
the list of countries affected by this order.
  How do you explain that?
  All over the world right now radical Muslims are saying: We told you 
so.
  And we are hearing this from our generals. We are hearing this from 
our national security experts; not one of whom has stood up and said 
that this is a good idea which will keep us safer.
  It comes at a huge cost to our country. The costs to our values that 
we are a decent country are incalculable and we will be bearing them 
for a long time.
  We are the Congress of the United States. We are the House of 
Representatives. We are the people's House. Article I of the 
Constitution--now is the time to stand up against this madness. I plead 
with my Republican colleagues: Now is the time to stand up for national 
security, for safety, and for the values enshrined by the Constitution 
to which we all pledged an oath.

  I understand I am a Democrat, so maybe I don't have that much 
credibility with my Republican colleagues. Let me quote to you what 
Eliot Cohen, noted conservative, national security strategist, former 
State Department official said: ``Either you stand up for your 
principles and for what you know is decent behavior, or you go down, if 
not now, then years from now, as a coward or opportunist. Your 
reputation will never recover, nor should it.''
  History is staring us in the face right now. It doesn't happen very 
often, but it is staring us in the face right now. And when history 
stares you in the face, that is not a gaze that wavers. It stays for 
generations. And how you respond to that gaze and how you behave will 
be the stuff of the stories of your children and your grandchildren.
  So now is the time for the Congress of the United States to stand up 
to the bigotry, to the national security theater, to the destruction of 
our values, with legislation that reverses this travesty of a decision 
that we saw this weekend.

                          ____________________