[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 99 (Thursday, June 14, 2018)]
[House]
[Pages H5195-H5198]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           ISSUES OF THE DAY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Mast). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 3, 2017, the Chair recognizes the gentlewoman from 
Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) for 30 minutes.
  Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I rise tonight, and have chosen not to 
attend the Congressional Baseball Game, because I think I have an 
important message that needs to be heard.
  I rise to elevate an economic and humanitarian issue that is 
manifesting itself across Ohio, our Nation, and our continent. Millions 
upon millions of workers, many landless workers essential to getting 
America's work done in agriculture and other sectors, live and toil in 
an eerie, shadow existence.
  These workers often are exploited due to our broken immigration and 
legal systems, which afford them and their work no respect.
  Our beloved father, Steven, would say: ``They are caught between the 
Devil and the deep blue sea.''
  Let's take a peek inside who some of these workers really are.
  These workers dare to climb skyscrapers and install the steel beams 
and pour concrete across our country, one slip away from death.
  They embrace harsh work circumstances, going into the brutally hot 
Sun in the south and west, picking your vegetables and fruits for 12 to 
16 hours a day at high season.
  In our vast tobacco fields, they work from sunup to sundown, picking 
off flowers from tobacco plants in the blistering 110-degree heat as 
their fingers and hands numb from the nicotine and their sweaty 
sunburned bodies turn ripe for melanoma skin cancer, and they have no 
health insurance.

                              {time}  1800

  They work in hot steam chambers cleaning our laundry in the big 
cities and in the very, very difficult environments of slaughterhouses 
using electrified cutting equipment, and they are covered in blood in 
those slaughterhouses for the meat that we eat.
  They trudge through manure in dairy farms; and they harvest mushrooms 
sold in every store, in the grocery stores around this country; in 
cold, damp, dark, underground caves, walking through horse dung.
  They catch, by hand, thousands of chickens every night in the dark, 
hot coops that generally have 25,000 or more chickens each, where the 
stench and the dust are life-threatening.
  They clean bathrooms in amusement parks, along State turnpikes, and 
in airports.
  And why do they do this work? To survive, while holding out hope for 
a better life for them and their loved ones.
  Without these workers, our tables would be bereft of the food we 
depend upon. America could not feed itself.
  Without these workers, companies would have to pay higher wages and 
offer health insurance to do the work.
  Indeed, many, many, many millions of these workers are uprooted, 
actually, continental labor refugees, spit out of vicious and violent 
economic and political systems across the Americas. Yet continental 
trade compacts like NAFTA and CAFTA were designed purposefully to 
create this landless class of laborers to purposely undervalue them and 
their work.
  NAFTA caused millions of these workers to be upended and lose their 
small farmsteads in Mexico, precipitating the largest human exodus from 
the land in modern history. And, reciprocally, in our country, millions 
of Americans lost their jobs in factories and farms across the Nation 
as our jobs were shipped south.
  Trade agreements have failed workers on this continent in their 
homelands; and many of those south of our border fled--fled--to find 
ways to make a living, drawn by worker shortages in many countries, 
including our own, finding work in the most unappealing jobs, jobs our 
citizens won't take.
  Now, for those who came here to work, they face even more cruelty by 
the Trump administration and many Members of this body, too, as their 
children and families are being ripped apart. And I am going to tell 
you a story about that in a second.
  News reports are beginning to reveal the edges of this ugly system of 
de facto human bondage. Our Nation,

[[Page H5196]]

founded in slavery, fought a bloody Civil War over whether the economic 
system of the South would be extended west, and we have not completely 
healed from that war even till today.
  Sadly, American history has not been immune from subjugating and 
indenturing workers. This situation of penniless workers in bondage is 
the modern-day version of a continuing continental exploitation of 
labor. It is an old story, repeating itself in a new chapter.
  Last Tuesday, in a very well-known greenhouse operation in my 
district in Erie County, Ohio, near Sandusky, the home of the roller 
coaster at Cedar Fair, this well-regarded greenhouse operation was 
raided at the height of this spring season by dozens and dozens and 
dozens of Federal Immigration, Border Patrol, and IRS officials.
  At least 114 male and female workers were detained, removed to jails, 
and are being questioned somewhere. But where? Those who are parents 
have been cruelly separated from their children, with no provision made 
for the children.
  This is a photo.
  I will say something about that in a second, of what was going on 
last week in Ohio.
  The reverberations of this raid in Ohio will be felt across a 
greenhouse and nursery industry at high season when these companies 
must have workers. They are highly dependent on thousands of seasonal 
laborers to perform the necessary work, and I am talking just in Ohio, 
tens of thousands of workers. The same is true in our border State of 
Michigan.
  I worry about these workers, and I worry about whether these firms 
will find the workers to perform the work at such a key time of the 
year. There simply aren't enough hands left to do the work.
  Men and women workers, some of whom had worked for this firm for 
nearly two decades, were surrounded by ICE officers who came out of 
another State, Detroit, Michigan, heavily armed with rifles. They even 
tied the hands of citizens of our country behind their backs before 
questioning them.
  Border Patrol helicopters whirred overhead as workers were handcuffed 
and made to lie down on their bellies before being taken by bus to 
detention centers hundreds of miles from Erie County, where this raid 
occurred.
  As far as I have been able to determine, the women workers, most of 
whom are mothers, have been placed in the Calhoun County Jail near 
Battle Creek, Michigan, and the men, in a facility, the Northeast Ohio 
Correctional Center in Youngstown, Ohio.
  I took particular note that Immigration and Customs Enforcement must 
have notified the Associated Press that took this picture of the 
impending raid, as the reporter traveled all the way from Michigan to 
take this particular photo and report on the raid. But the same 
notification was not extended to the local press nor, for that matter, 
to local Ohio law enforcement officials who knew nothing about this 
raid.
  It certainly looks like the Trump administration seems intent on 
staging a big show on immigration, but where is its interest in real 
solutions?
  Was this raid really about security? or is it more about 
intimidation? or is it trying to divide Americans along economic and 
racial lines?
  I was told the greenhouse workers put up no resistance. They were 
peaceful.
  When I asked ICE if I could visit the workers in one of the detention 
centers this past weekend, I was told arrangements could not be made, 
even though these workers work in the district I represent. This is 
simply unacceptable.

  ICE, which reports to the superlords in the Trump administration 
responsible for this, have been over a day late and a dollar short in 
their answers back to us in their communications. Yet people's lives 
and their children's well-being are at stake. Stonewalling is simply 
not an option.
  So I intend to head to Michigan in a few days to try to find the 
detention center and, hopefully, speak to some of the women. I 
understand if I do so, we have to do it over a videophone or something. 
And I will say to the Department of Homeland Security I expect a full 
report on the status of each of these workers, as well as evidence they 
are being treated with dignity and respect in the county jail.
  I hope to share more publicly about what I learn with my colleagues 
here in the House, as well as the people of Ohio's Ninth District. I 
want a full effort and report on what is at issue with each of the 
persons apprehended. I want to know where each is located, as well as 
what can be done to minimize the trauma for their children being 
separated from their parents.
  So how did America get to a point where people who work hard with 
their hands for a living are rounded up like cattle and their children 
taken from them to places they know not where?
  Some of these children may be Dreamers, Americans who have grown up 
in the United States whose immigration status needs to be addressed. So 
let's do it.
  Today, we learned that next week this House, apparently, will vote on 
two competing measures that relate to immigration. One is from Mr. Bob 
Goodlatte of Virginia, H.R. 4760, called Securing America's Future Act 
of 2018. That bill only gives temporary status to young people who have 
grown up in this country. It makes deep cuts to legal immigration. It 
prevents legal immigrants from sponsoring their family members to enter 
the United States, and, of course, it boosts enforcement. It is a 
punitive bill, certainly not a very hopeful bill. And even if it could 
pass this House, it is not going to pass the Senate.
  Then there is this mysterious new bill that Speaker Ryan calls a 
compromise bill, and the compromise bill we may vote on next week still 
isn't written. It follows the framework, we are told, set forward by 
the White House, legal status for Dreamers, increased border security, 
including funding for a wasteful, ineffective border wall, an end to 
the diversity visa lottery, and curbing family-based legal immigration.
  Wow, there are so many people who have come to our office who want to 
marry someone who is waiting in another country. How many decades are 
they going to have to wait?
  Just an hour ago, a summary provided said this:

       This second measure would authorize funding for 
     construction of a border wall sought by President Trump and 
     give a path for so-called DACA populations to apply for a 6-
     year, indefinitely renewable, nonimmigrant legal status, 
     after which they can apply for newly allocated green cards.

  We will see. Count me as a skeptic.
  To date, the Trump administration has failed to help young Dreamers 
who have been here their whole lives. To date, the Republican 
congressional majority has failed to provide a pathway for these 
Dreamers. The majority has failed to act on comprehensive immigration 
reform, which we really need.
  Years of inaction by House Republicans who hold the majority have 
brought us to this point. And we had a measure down here on the floor 
that had garnered 216 signatures to bring a set of votes to the floor 
that could really have addressed this problem, and the majority jerked 
it off the ledger the other day.
  Rather than blaming workers and harming U.S. companies, let's put the 
blame where it belongs: on the trade agreements that the United States 
has been passing since the 1990s that set us on a treacherous and 
greedy path of bad trade deals like NAFTA and CAFTA that threw millions 
of workers out of work in our country, and millions of workers and 
small businesses in countries like Mexico lost their work, treated like 
chattel on this continent.
  We need a renegotiated NAFTA. These bad deals have never resulted in 
a positive trade balance for our country. Instead, they displaced 
millions of workers in North America. U.S. plants shut down here, and 
trade deals like NAFTA thrust cheap labor into the market, forcing 
wages down across the continent, including in Mexico.
  Border crossings doubled into our country after NAFTA's passage, 
including illegal entries of desperate people under desperate 
circumstances.
  Those trade deals disrupted the markets that small farmers in Mexico 
and Central America relied on to support themselves.
  Who would not flee desperation? You would, too, if your livelihood 
disappeared. Think about it.
  The best estimate suggests 11 million undocumented immigrants have 
assumed some of the hardest, low-paying

[[Page H5197]]

jobs inside our economy since NAFTA's passage and, 10 years after that, 
CAFTA's passage. Employers and employees are transfixed by a rigged 
global economy that pits businesses and workers across this continent 
against one another.
  Who benefited from that? Ask yourself that question. Answer the 
question.
  Many workers have endured long journeys by foot, train, and boat as 
labor traffickers indebted them to make it across our border. Others 
who work here simply stayed beyond the expiration of their temporary 
visitor permits.
  The situation is more complicated than many people realize. The 
reality is about 60 percent of the unauthorized population of workers 
here has been here for at least a decade. A third of undocumented 
immigrants 15 years of age and older live with at least one child who 
is a U.S. citizen by birth.
  So do we close our eyes to all of this and what has happened on this 
continent or do we fix it?

                              {time}  1815

  The renegotiation of NAFTA presents a precious moment, and I am with 
the President on renegotiating NAFTA, but with what provisions? The 
chance to create a just economic model for all of North America that 
respects and recognizes both employer needs and labor rights should be 
in a trade agreement.
  Renegotiation could have a monumental impact on not only economic 
opportunity for millions, but also correct distorted, migratory 
patterns in labor markets made so much worse by NAFTA. Instead of 
lifting up workers and improving their plight, achieving good jobs with 
living wages, the current NAFTA-CAFTA system forces workers in a harsh 
system that equates to a modern-day versions, yes, of slavery.
  Workers understand that standing up and complaining about abusive 
conditions will mean termination because an employer can report them to 
immigration authorities. So the guillotine always hangs over their 
head. A renegotiated NAFTA can bring workers out from under the 
shadows. It will benefit business. It will benefit workers, and it will 
benefit our communities and our continent.
  When workers are asked why they endure all this, almost all have the 
same reason: survival and a hope for the American Dream. For those that 
have come here from other places and work here, they are performing the 
jobs the rest of America chooses not to do. Rather than end this 
miserable underground system of indentured servitude, Republicans have 
chosen inaction time and time again.
  NAFTA and CAFTA need to be renegotiated to institute a legal system 
that gives workers standing in the law, not exploitation, whatever side 
of the border they live on.
  Now, Republican lawmakers fail to acknowledge the vast role American 
foreign policy has played in creating the conditions in North America 
that push and pull workers on their perilous trek, destabilizing their 
way of life. You cannot solve this problem without solving the NAFTA 
and CAFTA problem.
  Recall, President Reagan worked with Congress to pass the last 
comprehensive immigration reform bill in the 1980s, and at the same 
time, unfortunately, the United States Government negotiated with 
international development institutions to develop new policies that 
favored large multinational corporations but undercut workers, 
including the smaller farms and businesses that created economic 
opportunity for communities in our country and south of our border.
  In 1994, the North American Free Trade Agreement--boy is that a 
misnomer--was sold to Congress as a way to keep Mexicans home and to 
make sure that American workers were cared for. Well, guess what? NAFTA 
actually threw millions of Americans out of work and also millions of 
Mexican farmers and small businesses were displaced.
  These upended workers sought opportunity wherever they could find it. 
Indeed, immigration to the United States from Mexico doubled post-NAFTA 
as millions of U.S. citizens saw their jobs shipped south of the 
border. And those south of the border, who couldn't even afford food at 
that point--a desperate exodus began and people were willing to work 
for penny wages.
  A decade later, Congress passed CAFTA, the Central American Free 
Trade Agreement, further undercutting agricultural workers and small 
entrepreneurs throughout the rest of the southern tip of North America. 
So these policies trapped Latin America workers between a foreign 
policy that drove them from home and a U.S. domestic policy that kept 
them in the shadows, while driving good jobs out of the United States 
to low-wage environments.
  Ask yourself: Who would benefit in that kind of system? Look at the 
profits of some of the companies and the CEOs of those companies that 
did that. We also know, far too many employers take on undocumented 
workers and exploit them for their willingness to work long hours for 
no pay.
  President Trump, please know, walls will not solve these passive 
economic inequities our trade policies created. Only fixing NAFTA and 
CAFTA will.
  Our Nation needs comprehensive, continental immigration reform that 
should include an E-Verify employee system to take the onus off the 
employers to verify a worker's status, and to give workers standing on 
this continent.
  No border wall can succeed against the enormous pull of our vast 
economy's needs, including for labor, as employers complain every day 
to me they cannot find the workers they need.
  Let me conclude in my remaining minutes with a few stories that came 
out of this horrendous raid that occurred in northern Ohio.
  Maria Sandra worked at this greenhouse and was present the day of the 
raid. She recalls clocking in at 7 a.m. These workers work hard. She 
walked to her van to get her sunscreen and gloves when she heard 
vehicles slamming on the brakes in the gravel.
  The officers got down with large weapons so she figured they were 
looking for a dangerous criminal. Then she says:

       I realized it was immigration. Two men came up behind me 
     screaming at me to walk. I told them I have my ID and my 
     Social Security card. They screamed louder: Walk. I picked up 
     my phone and they told me to put it away, that I couldn't use 
     it. I was so scared seeing how they pushed people and put us 
     together like animals on their way to a slaughterhouse. The 
     officers tied everybody up.
       I kept saying, I have my documents. I will show them to 
     you. But they ignored me. They began separating us into two 
     lines. Everybody that was White was let go. I was there so 
     long that I had to use the bathroom. They refused to let me 
     go until many others had to go.
       We were taken, tied, to the restroom, accompanied by an 
     officer with a big gun. I kept asking: Why are you doing 
     this? I have all of my documentation in my van. They asked 
     me: Are you a citizen? And I said: Yes. They laughed at me.
       I had never felt so humiliated. I can still hear everybody 
crying. When they finally ran my social, they escorted me to my van, 
still tied. They told me to leave and I said: How can I drive with my 
hands tied? Another officer came with scissors to untie me and actually 
cut my wrist. I pulled away in pain and he got angry and said: Why did 
you move?

       I said: Because you cut me. I stormed out of there in fear. 
     I have never experienced anything like this in my whole life. 
     I was treated like a criminal with no voice or rights.

  Gloria Reyes works at Corso's and was there the day of the raid. 
Gloria's coworker, who was arrested, asked Gloria to drop off her lunch 
bag at home and check on her children. Gloria's coworker, whose name 
she would prefer not to give out because of fear of the children being 
taken, has three children: a little boy, a little girl, and a baby.
  Gloria went to that house and when she knocked, she said she could 
hear them behind the door shushing each other. Gloria says:

       I knocked for a while and just kept saying, son, open up. I 
     won't hurt you. I just came to drop off your mom's lunch. The 
     eldest finally opened the door but wouldn't let me in. He 
     broke down crying and asking questions I couldn't answer 
     because I didn't know where any of them were.
       I tried to calm him down and said everything would be okay. 
     I went back to take the children food, but nobody answered 
     the door. I don't know if they are okay. Those children only 
     have their mother.
       I have been here in this community 42 years, and I have 
     never seen anything like

[[Page H5198]]

     this. Families are being broken without caring of what would 
     be of the children. Working is not a sin, and all of those 
     people just wanted to better themselves.
       We work hard, sometimes taking shifts from 7 a.m. until 
     midnight. What the government is doing is wrong. People are 
     suffering. The American children are suffering.

  Another woman who worked at Corso's writes that she escaped the raid 
and she wants to remain anonymous because she fears that she might be 
hunted down. She said:

       I never expected anything like this to happen. When I saw 
     them coming, I ran, and I ran, and ran until I hid under a 
     bed of flowers. I buried myself under the dirt and cried in 
     silence. All I could think about is my kids. I have three. A 
     lot of us have small children who need us. My skin itched of 
     the mud stuck to my body drying.

  Is this America? Is this America?

       I prayed to God for strength. I hid there for 8 hours in 
     fear of being taken or that maybe ICE would still be around. 
     I still feel like I am there suffocating. When I came out, I 
     asked someone who also works at Corso's for a ride. The 
     entire complex was silent. Lunch boxes were left everywhere. 
     There was a void in the room.
       As I got home, I was scared to get out of the car. I looked 
     around the neighborhood to make sure there were no officers 
     around. Walking through the door and hugging my son was a 
     relief. However, I hurt when he asks me: What is going to 
     happen now? I don't know what to say.
       All I know is, I have to provide for them. I am alone and I 
     don't have a dime to my name. If I had a voice, I would tell 
     the government that we don't hurt anyone. We are humble 
     people who are just working to better our lives. I would tell 
     them to put their hands on their hearts and realize they are 
     hurting people. Children are suffering. Please stop.

  A young girl, age 13, who resides in a place named Willard, her 
mother was taken in the raid. She said:

       I was still in bed when I could hear someone banging on my 
     door. Right after, there was banging on my bedroom window, so 
     I got up to see what was going on. As I opened the door, my 
     neighbor in panic and tears asked where mom was. I said: She 
     is working. Why?
       She asked, had I spoken to her? I began to say no when she 
     interrupted me by saying she had been arrested at her job 
     along with many others from our town. My neighbor said: Call 
     your dad. I was so confused and even dumb because I didn't 
     know what to do. I couldn't even remember my dad's phone 
     number. My dad didn't answer, so I panicked. I cried on the 
     floor hugging a picture of my mom. All I could do was cry and 
     hope it wasn't true. Not her.
       My father eventually walked through the door and just 
     hugged me tight and we cried. I have little sisters and they 
     kept asking: Mommy, mommy. I would just say: She is at work. 
     It was even harder to tell my little brother. I played a 
     song, ``I Am Not Alone,'' and I prayed and prayed.
       That night my sisters wouldn't go to bed, insisting to wait 
     for my mom. I went to sleep at 4 a.m. just thinking every 
     time my mom gave me advice and how I wish I had listened 
     every time.
       My dad didn't go to work the next day. I think everybody is 
     scared. Everyone says: Be strong. It is going to be okay. But 
     all I can think about is, when will I see my mom again? When 
     will I hug her again? Now I have to take care of my sisters. 
     But looking at mom's empty chair at the table, just doesn't 
     seem fair.

  I hope the American people who are listening tonight think about 
these human beings that honestly don't deserve to be caught between our 
government, the Mexican Government, and the governments of the southern 
tip of North America. NAFTA and CAFTA have to be renegotiated and 
workers of this continent have to be respected.
  We have to treat people like human beings and there must be a legal 
system that protects them all. ``God Bless America'' and God bless this 
continent.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Members are reminded to address their 
remarks to the Chair.

                          ____________________