[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 108 (Wednesday, June 27, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4498-S4500]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
FAMILY SEPARATION
Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, I come to the floor on a separate
issue involving the rule of law. We have been reminded literally within
the last 24 hours about the importance of the rule of law as applied to
the families who have sought to cross the border and experienced
extraordinary cruelty and inhumanity when their children were taken
from them. A court, literally in the last 24 hours, issued an order
requiring that those children be reunited with their families. That
decision is not only a humane and moral one, it is also in accord with
constitutional and statutory requirements. Those children never should
have been separated from their parents, but now, because of the court,
an excessive and abusive use of power will be corrected.
We are living in a time of unparalleled threats to the rule of law
and fundamental rights and liberties from a Chief Executive who seems
to have no respect for them. The courts are exercising their
traditional role--in fact, the role the Founders envisioned for them as
a check on unhinged Executive power.
We also learned just today that a key figure in the judicial system,
Justice Kennedy, will be retiring this summer. This retirement is
earthshaking and gut-wrenching, and his departure means a historic
challenge is ahead. The American people should have a voice. My
Republican colleagues should follow their own precedent. A confirmation
vote should take place after the new Congress is seated. A historic
decision--one that will literally shake the decisions of the courts for
years and likely decades--requires deliberate consideration that simply
is impossible in the short months we have between now and the election;
indeed, politically charged months.
The future of privacy protections, women's healthcare, and many basic
civil rights, including healthcare--whether young people are on their
parents' insurance until the age of 26, whether people are vulnerable
to preexisting condition abuses, whether people have basic healthcare
rights that
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are guaranteed to them under the Affordable Care Act--all of these
rights are at stake and at risk.
The Supreme Court is not just marble pillars and velvet drapes. Its
decisions have a direct impact on people's lives and the lives of our
children. So we are in this Chamber at a critical moment when the
judicial system literally will be determined for decades to come.
Nothing brings this issue home more readily and dramatically than
viewing the children who have been separated from their families and
the families themselves at the border.
I visited the border this past Friday, along with my colleagues
Senator Heinrich and Senator Udall of Utah--two good friends and
colleagues. At each stop we made, we saw the devastating human impact
of this President's immoral and inhumane policies of family separation
and family detention. In Tornillo, TX, we visited a tent city where
teenagers, 14 to 17 years old, are confined--in effect, incarcerated in
a modern-day internment camp. Make no mistake, they have been deprived
of basic access to the outside world and of access by that outside
world to them.
The deprivation of liberty is the core definition of incarceration,
and the potential detainment of tens of thousands of families in
exactly that kind of tent city located on our military bases throughout
the country should frighten and alarm every American because we are
seeing repeated in a different age, in color rather than black and
white, the images of those internment camps where thousands of people
of Japanese descent were sent during World War II.
We may not agree with every decision of the U.S. Supreme Court, but
we know it is unique. It is certainly different as a judicial
institution. It should be considered unique in choosing open-minded and
fair jurists in the mold of Justice Kennedy for these positions--not
right-wing fringe ideologues.
I believe colleagues on both sides of the aisle will stand up and be
counted if that kind of right-wing fringe ideologue is nominated. We
certainly must use every tool available to stop that kind of nominee
because what is at stake are real lives like the ones I saw in El Paso.
I met with a 2-year-old girl who trekked across Mexico with her
father for a month. Her father held her as we spoke to him. He must now
worry whether she will be separated from him and detained indefinitely
and indiscriminately. The anguish and anxiety I saw in that girl's eyes
still haunt me, and it will be with me for a long time.
We saw a legal, moral, and humanitarian crisis unfolding before our
eyes in realtime. This administration claims it is solving this crisis,
but the clear, virtually undisputed evidence suggests exactly the
contrary. More than 100 facilities nationwide house migrant children,
and the administration is looking to open even more facilities, very
likely, on military bases, and little progress has been made on
reuniting these families.
The Department of Health and Human Services has reported that 2,047
unaccompanied minor children are still in its custody. Health and Human
Services Secretary Azar claimed before the Finance Committee yesterday
that there is ``no reason why any parent would not know where their
child is located.'' He claimed that ``every parent should know where
their child is located.''
The reality is, there is no plan to reunite them. Thousands of
parents have no idea where their children are. What is happening on the
ground is that many parents are enduring the pain and suffering of
simply not knowing where their child is, and many children have the
pain and suffering of not knowing where their parent is. The father of
the 2-year-old whom I saw clutching his child to his chest as she
stared into the unknown future ahead of her has no reason to believe
the Secretary of Health and Human Services because he knows what the
reality is on the ground.
If the Department of Health and Human Services or the Department of
Homeland Security can tell parents where their children are as easily
as Secretary Azar claims, they should have done so yesterday. They
should have done so before Friday when I visited.
We all know, from firsthand accounts, it simply isn't happening and
that the emotional, mental, and physical damage to these families will
last a lifetime for many of them. That trauma will be enduring. The
President claims his Executive order has solved these problems, but it
has not. All it has done is substitute family imprisonment and
incarceration for family separation.
This Executive order is in clear violation of the Flores settlement
agreement, which is legally binding on the U.S. Government. It
prohibits detaining children for more than 20 days, in effect,
imprisoning them with their parents, as the Executive order has the
effect of doing. Putting aside the humanitarian and moral costs to this
Nation and the damage to our image around the world, the cost per
individual per day in Tornillo is $2,000. Let me repeat that number.
The cost per individual per day for every person in Tornillo is $2,000.
That cost alone, financially, is intolerable, but moral and
humanitarian costs are even more profound.
This Executive order is destructive. It is draconian. It is no answer
to the problem of family separation and detention. The evidence is
clear from my visit to the border, so far as I am concerned but also in
everything the administration said, that the time is now to end this
immoral and inhumane zero tolerance policy that involves, integrally,
criminal prosecution, and the rest of these issues really flow from
that criminal prosecution because it triggers the imprisonment. In
effect, confinement without bail is the way it would be looked at in
the civilian setting.
This administration must adopt less restrictive alternatives if it
wants to guarantee the appearance of these families for their hearings.
We know less restrictive alternatives work, they have been proven in
the past, and they also cost less. They are more humane. They protect
our moral principles, and they are less expensive.
Piecemeal announcements from this administration have been
contradictory and unclear. It has been the opposite of transparent.
Congressional committees now must exercise our responsibility for
oversight and scrutiny. There must be hearings. It must involve all the
Federal agencies with responsibility. As a member of the Senate Armed
Services Committee, I am particularly concerned that the Department of
Defense is dramatically increasing its involvement in immigration and
enforcement. The plan is to build these tent camps on two military
bases in Texas. Fort Bliss in El Paso is one of them, and unaccompanied
children will be held at Goodfellow Air Force Base in San Angelo. The
families at Fort Bliss and the unaccompanied children at Goodfellow Air
Force Base in San Angelo will be, in effect, incarcerated at the bases
of military men and women who serve and sacrifice for the values that
will be betrayed by that illegal and immoral confinement, in violation
of the Flores agreement and fundamental principles of fairness.
Military services are preparing, as well, to offer additional
military bases to detain migrants. DOD has sent 21 Active and Reserve
uniformed judge advocates to the border on temporary order to prosecute
Department of Justice immigration cases. All of these developments
represent a clear diversion of Department of Defense resources from
military mission to immigration enforcement.
The Presiding Officer and I serve together on the Armed Services
Committee as well as the Judiciary Committee. We both know the deep and
serious consideration that was required as to resource commitments in
the latest National Defense Authorization Act--the difficult decisions
that had to be made in a time of scarce resources and growing danger
around the world through our military and national security. I am
concerned that these policies will comprise military residents and
immigrants on American military installations.
I consistently oppose the use of these military installations to
house unaccompanied migrant children. I will continue to oversee the
Department of Defense's involvement in this critical issue.
Again, I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle that the
Senate Armed Services Committee must hold
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an oversight hearing on this issue as soon as possible. We owe it to
the American people. Family separation and detention should no longer
be a political issue. We need to come together and make sure the
President understands that migrant children can no longer be treated as
pawns or hostages--as leverage to secure changes to parts of our
immigration system that have nothing to do with the plight of these
immigrant families. We should reject this President's crude and cynical
political strategy. We cannot risk continuing to separate and
indefinitely detain migrant families. These practices offend our basic
sense of morality and justice, and they are unnecessary to protect our
borders.
Yes, we all want border security. Yes, we want to stop drug
traffickers and human traffickers from taking advantage of our borders.
We want more resources in judges and Border Patrol agents and members
of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Service. They should have the
resources and support they need. We met with many of the dedicated men
and women who are serving in those agencies. Violating our basic sense
of due process, abrogating due process rights so adjudication is denied
and due process is abrogated certainly should be intolerable.
At this juncture, the emergent need that has to be addressed now is
reuniting these families. If shaming the administration is what is
needed, we should do it, but ultimately the rule of law will be
enforced by our courts. They will be regarded in history along with our
free press as the bulwark between a potentially tyrannical Presidency
and preservation of our fundamental rights. Now is the time to
celebrate and protect those basic rights and the rule of law.
Thank you.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection it is so ordered.
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