[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 38 (Monday, March 5, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1326-S1328]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                                  DACA

  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, today is the day--March 5--the deadline 
imposed by President Trump on those who are being protected and allowed 
to stay in the United States under the DACA Program.
  It was last September 5 when President Trump's Attorney General held 
a press conference and said: That is it. The protection that is 
currently given to 780,000 young people in America to allow them to 
stay in this country and pursue their dreams will end on March 5 of 
2018--today--780,000 who were brought to the United States as infants, 
toddlers, children, and teenagers, who have lived their lives in this 
country, who have gone to school, who have never had a serious run-in 
with the law, who have gone through criminal background checks, come up 
with $500 filing fees, and who were given permission under an Executive 
order by President Obama to legally stay in this country for 2 years at 
a time. During that period, they would not be deported, and they would 
be allowed to work.

  Who are these young people? They are known as the Dreamers, although 
President Trump hates that term. They are known as the Dreamers because 
they represent young people who went to school in America, stood up in 
their classroom every day and pledged allegiance to that flag. This is 
the only country they have ever known. This was to be the country of 
their future, but at some point in their lives, a member of their 
family sat down and said: We have to have a serious conversation. You 
see, we never filed the papers when we brought you to this country as 
an infant, and right now you are undocumented in the United States of 
America.
  What that means is that any minute, there could be a knock on the 
door and you and perhaps your entire family would be asked to leave. I 
introduced a bill called the DREAM Act 17 years ago. Senator Hatch was 
my cosponsor when I introduced it. The purpose of the DREAM Act was to 
say to these young people: We will give you a chance. Though you are 
illegal in the eyes of the law in the United States--undocumented--we 
will give you a chance to earn your way to legal status, give you a 
chance someday to be a citizen of the United States. It will not be 
easy. There is no helping hand for you. If you want to go to college, 
there will be no Federal assistance for you. You are going to have to 
make it on your own. You will have to work and work harder than perhaps 
the person sitting next to you at their desk in high school. See if you 
can do it. If you can, we will give you your chance.
  That is what the DREAM Act said. It passed with a majority vote in 
the Senate many times, but it never quite made it to 60 votes, which it 
needs to become the law of the land.
  President Obama, when he was a Senator in this Chamber, was my 
colleague from Illinois. He cosponsored the DREAM Act with me. So the 
time came when he was elected President, and I wrote him a letter. Dick 
Lugar, Republican of Indiana, joined me in that letter. He supported 
the DREAM Act when he served in the Senate. We wrote to President Obama 
and said: Can you do anything to give these young people a chance, to 
spare them from deportation? He worked on it for 1 year. Then President 
Obama came up with something called DACA, a program by Executive order 
that gave these young people their chance--780,000 of them went through 
the background check, paid their filing fee, and proved they were 
eligible.
  They were spared for 2 years at a time and allowed to stay in this 
country. During the course of the campaign, President Trump said many 
strong words about immigration. We remember them well--it is hard to 
forget--the words about the wall, words about Mexican rapists, on and 
on, but he seemed to have a soft spot in his heart for these kids. Many 
times he would say: We have to give them a chance. They are different.
  The very first time I met President Donald Trump was minutes after he 
had been sworn in. It was at a luncheon here in the Capitol.
  I went up to him and said: Congratulations. I want to thank you for 
the kind words you said about the Dreamers and those protected by DACA.
  He said: Dick, don't worry about those kids. We are going to take 
care of those kids.
  That is what President Trump said on January 20, 2017. I brought it 
up to him several times too. It is an issue that is important to me, 
but, more importantly, it is an issue that is critical to the future of 
these young people.
  Then, what happened on September 5 of last year, just 9 months after 
the President was sworn in? His Attorney General held a press 
conference and said: That is the end of the protection for these young 
people. As of March 5, 2018, no protection.
  Then he challenged Congress. He said: Pass a law. Do what you are 
supposed to do here in the House and Senate. Pass a law that will 
protect these young people.
  A number of us took up the President's challenge. We had a bipartisan 
effort, six of us--three Democrats and three Republicans--and we worked 
through some really hard issues on immigration and on these young 
people. I want to salute my colleagues who were part of that: Lindsey 
Graham, Republican of South Carolina; Jeff Flake, a Republican of 
Arizona; Cory Gardner, a Republican of Colorado; joined with myself and 
Michael Bennet, a Democrat of Colorado; Bob Menendez, a Democrat of New 
Jersey, and we put together an approach that gave these young people 
protection and a fighting chance to prove they deserve to stay in 
America.
  We felt pretty good about it. The President called a meeting in the 
White House on January 9--I remember these dates. I will always 
remember them--with about 25 Members of Congress, Democrats and 
Republicans, House and Senate. He held an open press conference for an 
hour, which is unusual and rarely done in the White House.
  We talked about DACA and we talked about Dreamers and we talked about

[[Page S1327]]

what was going to happen next, since the President had given us a 
deadline of today, March 5, to do something.
  The President outlined what he wanted to see, and then he said in 
front of the television cameras: Send me the bill, and I will sign it. 
I will take the heat on this one. That was January 9. So a number of 
us, the six I mentioned earlier, came together immediately that same 
day and said: Let's finish this bill, and let's get it in his hands as 
quickly as possible.
  By January 11, 2 days later, we were ready. We reached a compromise, 
and it truly was a compromise. Parts of it I didn't care for at all, 
but that is what we do around here if Democrats and Republicans are 
going to produce something that might become a law. We called the 
President. We met the President--Senator Graham and I and a number of 
others, and he totally rejected what we had done. In fact, the 
President went on to reject five other bipartisan proposals to try to 
solve this problem.
  This is the same President who said on January 9 of this year, ``Send 
me a bill, and I will sign it,'' who turned down bipartisan option 
after bipartisan option. He just said no.
  We had a vote on the floor of the Senate. It has been about 3 weeks 
ago now. It was a vote on four different proposals to deal with this 
challenge. Not one of those proposals received 60 votes.
  The one I had hoped for, a bill with a version of the Dream Act, was 
put together by Senator Coons and Senator McCain and brought to the 
floor. I remember it had 52 votes. It needed 60 votes. It fell short. 
The bipartisan compromise led by Senator Rounds and Senator King with 
the President's opposition ended up with 54 votes--6 votes short of 
what it needed to pass. Then the President's own immigration proposal 
came up here on the floor of the Senate. Now, there are 49 Democrats 
and 51 Republicans in the Senate. The President's proposal came up and 
got 39 votes--60 votes in opposition. It was a rejection by his own 
party and the Democrats in the Senate.
  So here we are on March 5. The deadline is here. No bill has passed 
the Senate. The House will not even consider the measure--will not take 
up any version of the measure. What is at stake? There are 780,000 
young people protected by DACA, which officially, by President Trump's 
order, ends today.
  They have one ray of hope, perhaps two. Two courts have said they are 
going to suspend this abolition of DACA until we hear the arguments of 
the President's authority in the Constitution. So there is a 
temporary--and I underline temporary--injunction in place while these 
cases are pending, but I can tell you as a Member of the Senate and as 
a lawyer, no one--no one--can predict how long that protection will 
last. Is it a matter of days or weeks or months, at best?
  That is what these young people live with, this uncertainty.
  This humanitarian crisis in this country--and I call it that--was 
created by President Trump on September 5. He has failed to agree to 
six different bipartisan proposals to solve the problem he created, and 
now these lives hang in the balance.
  Well, who are they? Who are these young people?
  I was with one of them earlier today. Her name is Ana Flores. Ana 
grew up in Aurora, IL, and went to the public schools there. She is a 
very bright young woman who was brought to the United States at the age 
of 5 from Mexico by her parents. She is undocumented in America and 
lives under the protection of DACA.
  What did she do with her life?
  She went to the Illinois Institute of Technology, one of the best in 
the Nation, and she won a civil engineering degree there. Clark Dietz 
is an engineering firm in Illinois that stepped up and said: We want 
that bright young woman on our staff as an engineer, and they hired 
her.
  I met her for the first time today. She is a wonderful person. She 
struggled against the odds all of her life. She is protected by DACA, a 
program that officially, under President Trump's edict, ends today.
  Will Illinois be a better State, Chicago be a better city, the United 
States be a better nation with this young lady and her engineering 
talents at work for us? Of course, there is no question about it. Why 
in the world would we ever want to deport someone who has gone through 
our educational system and excelled like this young lady?
  She is not the only one, by any means. This is a photo of Elizabeth 
Vilchis. She is the 109th Dreamer whom I have spoken about on the floor 
of the U.S. Senate. She was brought to the United States at the age of 
7. She grew up in Yonkers, NY. As a child, she heard about STEM 
subjects--science, technology, engineering, and math. She decided to 
make that her life's work. She excelled in math and science and decided 
she would be part of the future of this country and took on these 
important subjects. She said: ``From that point forward I made pursuing 
a career in STEM my responsibility, as an American.''
  During high school, Elizabeth was a member of the Honor Society, the 
Key Club, the Architecture, Construction and Engineering Program. She 
was editor of the yearbook and also played on the volleyball team. She 
graduated high school with an Advanced Regents diploma.
  She was then accepted into the Honors College at City University, New 
York City College.
  Remember, these Dreamers--these undocumented students--don't qualify 
for Federal assistance to go to school as most kids do. They have to 
find another way to work and save their money or take private loans.
  She received a Community Service Award from the School of Engineering 
4 years in a row for her work organizing engineering education programs 
for low-income students. She received a Student Leader Award for her 
work with an engineering student association. She was named Volunteer 
of the Year 4 years in a row for managing the Manhattan robotics 
competition.
  I have seen those robotics competitions. A lot of young people in 
high school do some amazing things in these competitions, and it 
launches a career and a life in the STEM subjects.
  Elizabeth graduated with a double major in mechanical engineering and 
political science. She worked as an engineer for Samsung for 2 years. 
Then she founded a nonprofit organization focused on creating funding 
opportunities for early stage technology startups. Today, Elizabeth's 
nonprofit has over 700 members. To date, they have raised over $8 
million to grow their companies.
  She wrote me a letter and Elizabeth said:

       To me DACA is my opportunity to give back to the United 
     States and my family the way I dreamed of since I was 10 
     years old. It's the ability to help solve the STEM talent 
     shortage after 15 years of preparing for it and being told it 
     was impossible. It's the power to say ``No'' to going back to 
     the shadows and ``Yes'' to serving as a role model for young 
     girls across the country who aspire to be engineers and 
     entrepreneurs.

  People like Elizabeth are the reason why more than 400 business 
leaders signed a letter to Congress urging us to pass the bipartisan 
Dream Act.
  The letter says:

       Dreamers are vital to the future of our companies and our 
     economy. With them, we grow and create jobs. They are part of 
     why we will continue to have global competitive advantage.

  It would be a personal tragedy for us to deport Elizabeth Vilchis, 
but the decision of President Trump to abolish the program that 
protects her, sadly, makes that a possibility. If this injunction by 
the court is lifted, at that moment, there could be a knock on her 
door--or perhaps on the door of the company that hires her or her 
engineering firm--and she could be told that her time is up. Under 
President Trump, she has to leave the United States of America.

  President Trump created this crisis. Instead of working toward a 
solution, he has rejected every bipartisan effort that has been sent 
his way to save the Dreamers.
  What will happen next? Do we have to stand by and watch as these 
families are divided, as talented young people like Elizabeth and Ana 
are deported? Is that what we are all about? Is that what the President 
meant when he told me ``We'll take care of those kids''? That is what 
it has come down to.
  It is a sad reality that all across America, hundreds of thousands of 
these young people now live in fear of deportation. They should be 
living, as Elizabeth said, outside the shadows and

[[Page S1328]]

as part of America and its future. What can we do about it? I am at a 
loss.
  Unless and until this President accepts the responsibility to help us 
solve the problem he created, I am afraid we will never be able to 
rally the necessary Republican votes to make this a reality. It is up 
to President Trump.
  In the part of the world that I come from in the Middle West, there 
is a saying that I am going to clean up a little bit, and it goes 
something like this: Any old mule can kick down a barn door, but it 
takes a carpenter to build one. This President has kicked down DACA, 
kicked it down to the dirt, and this is the day--the deadline that he 
set. The question is, Does he have the will or the heart to rebuild it?
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Utah.