[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 121 (Wednesday, July 18, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5045-S5048]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                           EXECUTIVE CALENDAR

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the nomination.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk read the nomination of Ryan 
Wesley Bounds, of Oregon, to be United States Circuit Judge for the 
Ninth Circuit.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Montana.


                 Unanimous Consent Request--S. Res. 572

  Mr. DAINES. Mr. President, as in legislative session, I ask unanimous 
consent that the Committee on the Judiciary be discharged from further 
consideration of S. Res. 572; that the resolution be agreed to, the 
preamble be agreed to, and the motions to reconsider be considered made 
and laid upon the table.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  The Senator from Oregon.


                   Unanimous Consent Request--S. 3227

  Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, this 
moment hardly seems the time for the Senate to engage in debating 
rhetorical phrases of praise for the Immigration and Customs 
Enforcement agency when that agency--better known as ICE--is deeply 
mired in the scandal of separating children from their parents. It is 
ICE that partnered with Border Patrol and Health and Human Services in 
this diabolical situation. It is ICE that holds the parents in 
detention camps. It is ICE that has failed to arrange for the knowledge 
within the system of which parents go with which children. It is ICE 
that often has prevented individuals from having access to counsel, 
from being able to even phone their children, and charged them for 
using the phone.
  In this situation, some 2,500-plus kids have been torn out of the 
arms of their parents, and this particular resolution would engage in 
nice phrases of praise instead of addressing itself to solving the 
problem.
  We should right now be considering Senator Harris's act, the REUNITE 
Act, which would accelerate the reunification of the children, would 
ensure that family separation never happens again, would coordinate 
actions between ICE and the Border Patrol and Health and Human 
Services, and would set up a family case management system that worked, 
according to the IG of Homeland Security, to deliver 100 percent of the 
time when individuals had a date for a hearing--100 percent of the 
time.
  That is why I ask my colleague to modify his request so that the 
Committee on the Judiciary, instead, be discharged from further 
consideration of S. 3227, the REUNITE Act, and the Senate proceed to 
its immediate consideration; that the bill be considered read a third 
time and passed and the motion to reconsider be considered made and 
laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Will the Senator from Montana so modify his 
request?
  Mr. DAINES. I object.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
  Is there objection to the original request?
  The Senator from Oregon.
  Mr. MERKLEY. I strongly object.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
  The Senator from Montana.
  Mr. DAINES. Mr. President, I live in a State--the State of Montana--
that has a northern border. ICE agents keep our border secure, and I 
want to thank them for the very important work they are doing.
  Far too many people are coming into our country illegally and putting 
the safety and security of American citizens at risk. In fact, in 
Montana, the effects of unsecured borders are very personal. All across 
our State, communities at this moment are torn apart by the meth and 
opioids that are trafficked through the southern border. In fact, just 
last year, ICE seized nearly 50 tons of narcotics, nearly a million 
pounds of heroin, fentanyl, and other deadly drugs that criminals and 
cartels are smuggling into our country.
  At a time when America is suffering from a drug epidemic, how many 
more lives would be lost if ICE agents were not protecting our borders? 
How many more innocent Americans would be harmed or murdered if we did 
not have ICE agents to arrest illegal immigrants with criminal 
convictions? These are the questions that those who call for the 
abolishment of ICE should be asking.
  It is outrageous. It is irresponsible to call for abolishing one of 
our country's most critical security measures. Abolishing ICE would 
give terrorists, gang members, drug dealers, and other criminals a 
field day.
  I stand for protecting American security. I stand for upholding the 
rule of law. That is why I stand with ICE.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Hawaii.
  Ms. HIRONO. Mr. President, this resolution being offered by my 
colleagues on the other side of the aisle is a partisan political stunt 
to distract the American people from the crisis created by Donald 
Trump's zero tolerance policy.
  Almost 3,000 children were ripped from the arms of their parents and 
traumatized by the President's cruelty.
  Yesterday, the Senate Judiciary Committee had a closed-door briefing 
with officials from the Department of Justice, the Department of Health 
and Human Services, and the Department of Homeland Security. The 
American people deserve to hear from these officials in public and 
under oath. All these officials provided at this briefing--not under 
oath--was more obstruction and obfuscation. The witness from 
Immigration and Customs Enforcement even claimed that they ``did not 
mess up here.''
  Separating almost 3,000 children from their parents, not meeting 
judicially set deadlines for reunifying these children--the trauma 
continues. Is there anybody in America paying attention to this issue 
who actually believes there was no mess-up?
  We need a public hearing to hear from these officials under oath.
  Donald Trump is weaponizing fear to pursue his anti-immigration 
agenda, and we are not going to be party to that. We should be focused 
like laser beams on reuniting the children with their parents.
  Mr. DURBIN. Will the Senator from Hawaii yield?
  Ms. HIRONO. I yield to the Senator from Illinois.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Democratic whip.
  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I would like to thank the Senator from 
Hawaii for joining in this statement about the agency of ICE, which is 
in the Department of Homeland Security.
  There are certain things that I think Democrats and Republicans can 
come together to agree on. Let me tell you what I think they are. 
Border security--the United States needs security at its borders. There 
is no question about that, whoever the President may be.
  The second thing we agree on is, nobody who is dangerous should be 
allowed to come to this country. Anyone

[[Page S5046]]

here who is undocumented and dangerous should leave, should be removed. 
We all agree on that, do we not?
  The third thing, which 68 Senators agreed on, is comprehensive 
immigration reform. Our immigration laws are a mess--an absolute mess. 
That is why we continue to debate the topic, and 68 of us came to vote 
on a bipartisan measure 5 years ago to fix the whole system. It passed 
the Senate and died in the House.
  Where are we today? We are here today debating on the floor the 
future of ICE. There are parts of the function and responsibility of 
this agency of ICE that all of us would agree on. ICE has important 
responsibilities combating serious criminal activities, like smuggling, 
bulk cash, drugs, weapons, human trafficking, violent criminals and 
others who would do us harm, and enforcing immigration laws against 
terrorists. There is no argument about that. But what has become 
controversial is the Trump administration's new immigration policy.
  You see, we don't have the resources to deport 11 million 
undocumented people nor do we have the resources to arrest all who 
present themselves at the border. What this administration has done, 
though, is say that they are going to criminalize--charge as 
criminals--everyone who shows up at the border. By doing that, they 
take limited resources and focus them on a mass of people, most of whom 
are no threat at all to the United States, instead of focusing their 
resources on the drug smugglers, the traffickers, the would-be 
terrorists. Those are our priorities for the safety of our homes, our 
families, and our communities, are they not?
  Here we have this resolution that was brought to the floor to commend 
ICE in all its functions. I can just tell you, I don't join in that 
resolution. I specifically don't join in it when it comes to the 
President's zero tolerance policy.
  It became the policy of the Trump administration and the U.S. 
Government to forcibly remove 3,000 children from their parents. That 
is bad enough, is it not? The notion that you take a baby out of the 
arms of a mother--a toddler, an infant--separate a young child--we did 
it under President Trump's zero tolerance policy.
  Now let me state what added insult to that injury. At that point, 
there was no effort made to make certain we could reunite the parents 
with the children. Time and again, we would meet downstairs for a 
briefing from ICE and other agencies, and they would tell us: We don't 
know where the parents are. We really don't know where the kids are. We 
are going to have to go looking.
  Imagine separating up to 3,000 children from their parents, and the 
U.S. Government did not keep a record of what happened to those kids. 
Ship something by UPS--they give you a tracking number. Go online, and 
you can track that package wherever it may be. Order a pizza from 
Domino's. Call them after 15 minutes and ask: Where is the pizza? They 
will tell you. Check your coat at a restaurant before you go to the 
table. When you come back and hand them that little piece of paper, 
they give you your coat. It is pretty simple, is it not? But when it 
came to children and families, this agency, ICE, along with other 
agencies of this government, lost them. In one agency in Chicago, they 
told me that the search for the parents of the little kids they had was 
like a scavenger hunt. They just started calling right and left to try 
to figure out where the parent might be.
  Yesterday, we had a briefing, and finally these agencies came up with 
some numbers. There are 2,550 children still in our custody who are not 
reunited with their families; 1,800 parents we haven't linked up with 
their children. And we want to put a resolution on the floor to commend 
this activity--to praise them for their great work? Not me.
  They do good work in a lot of important areas, and I will be happy to 
join in that chorus. But we stand here and ignore the obvious--that 
this zero tolerance policy has given our Nation a black eye, has raised 
questions about our values as Americans, has created situations we 
cannot morally defend, such as separating children from their mothers.
  Do you know what the American Academy of Pediatrics tells us? The 
doctors tell us it is an institutional form of child abuse to remove 
these children.
  I have seen them, these poor kids, 5 and 6 years old in these 
settings. The place I visited in Chicago was doing its best to help the 
children, but two little girls walked into the room where I was 
sitting. They were holding hands--cute little kids. It was my 
opportunity to meet about 10 or 12 kids who were separated from their 
parents under the zero tolerance policy.
  These two little girls were holding hands, and I thought they were 
sisters. We asked in Spanish. ``No, amigas,'' she said. They had become 
friends to one another.
  It turns out that the one who was 5 years old was from Guatemala and 
the one who was 6 years old was from Chiapas, Mexico. They were holding 
on to one another. All they had was one another because our government 
had separated them from their mothers.
  Now this agency is struggling to find these mothers. In some 
circumstances, they cannot even link up the children with their 
parents.
  No, I am not going to join in a resolution of congratulations for the 
work they have done. Many of the things they have done have been 
courageous and important for the security of this country, but when it 
comes to the zero tolerance policy, it is not.
  I do want to make one last point. Listen to what the top agents at 
ICE's Homeland Security Investigations agency, which focuses on serious 
transnational criminal activity, had to say. Last month, a majority of 
the agents focusing on transnational criminal activity wrote a letter 
to the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Kirstjen 
Nielsen, asking that Homeland Security Investigations be removed from 
ICE because of ``the political nature of civil immigration 
enforcement.''
  These are men and women who are focusing on serious crimes, and they 
asked to be removed from ICE. They are tired of the politics. I am 
weary of it as well.
  We need to start solving these problems--border security, dangerous 
people kept out of this country and removed, comprehensive immigration 
reform. And for goodness' sake, reunite these children with their 
parents.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas.
  Mr. CRUZ. Mr. President, I rise in support of the brave men and women 
of our Immigration Customs Enforcement agency. These are law 
enforcement officers who risk their lives every day to keep this 
country safe.
  Rising in support of law enforcement used to be a bipartisan issue. 
It used to be an issue that brought us together, that unified us. 
Sadly, as we have seen in the preceding minutes, that is no longer the 
case.
  I rise today to urge my Democratic colleagues to say no to the 
reckless and radical voices within their party that are pulling their 
party so far out of the mainstream and so far out of touch with the 
American people that it is barely recognizable. For a long time, when 
Democrats were debating immigration issues, they used to say ``Well, of 
course, we support enforcing the laws,'' almost as an obligatory 
throwaway. Instead, we are here today, debating the abolishing of the 
Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, the exact antithesis of 
where most congressional Democrats claimed they were. All of this 
started because a few weeks ago, a longtime Democratic incumbent, a 
Member of the House, found himself beaten in a primary in New York 
State by an avowed socialist. As a result, many of my colleagues on the 
Democratic side of the aisle are suddenly terrified of their left 
flank. Because her campaign focused on abolishing ICE--abolishing the 
Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, more incumbent Democrats 
have said that they, too, are open to abolishing ICE.
  I call on this body to pull back from the abyss. On immigration there 
are areas of good-faith disagreement that this body has debated and 
will continue to debate. I have long characterized my views on 
immigration as being able to be summed up in four words: legal, good; 
illegal, bad. I think the vast majority of Texans and the vast majority 
of Americans agree with that. There

[[Page S5047]]

are a host of immigration policies that ought to be commonsense 
bipartisan policies.
  The Presiding Officer has shown great leadership in fighting against 
sanctuary cities, fighting against jurisdictions that defy Federal 
immigration law and that release violent criminals without being 
willing to turn them over to immigration officials. Those violent 
criminals, in turn, go on far too often to commit even more violent 
crimes.
  I am the author of Kate's Law, a commonsense proposal which says that 
aggravated felons who repeatedly enter the country illegally should 
face a mandatory minimum prison sentence. It was named for Kate 
Steinle, a beautiful young woman, 28 years old, murdered on a 
California pier by an illegal immigrant who had been deported over and 
over and over again and had been in and out of jail over and over and 
over again and had multiple felony convictions. Yet, because San 
Francisco is a sanctuary city, they released him yet again, and he 
committed murder.
  Kate Steinle would be alive if we could come together on Kate's Law, 
if we could come together on ending sanctuary cities. Yet it turns out 
that in today's hyperpolarized world, even that is not extreme enough 
for the modern Democratic Party. Multiple leaders of their party are 
advocating abolishing the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.
  What does ICE do? ICE men and women--I have met with a great many of 
them in my home State of Texas. I have met with a great many Border 
Patrol agents. I have joined them on their midnight muster. I have gone 
out on patrol with them as they risk their lives securing our border 
and risk their lives keeping us safe in the interior.
  Criminal aliens arrested by ICE in fiscal year 2017 were responsible 
for more than 76,000 dangerous drug offenses; yet many Democrats are 
saying: Abolish their role. They were responsible for over 48,000 
assault offenses. They were responsible for over 11,000 weapons 
offenses. They were responsible for over 5,000 sexual assault offenses. 
They were responsible for over 2,000 kidnapping offenses, and they were 
responsible for over 1,800 homicide offenses.
  Yet the approach of the modern Democratic Party is not to find a 
reasonable, commonsense common ground. It is, instead, to say: Abolish 
the agency that has arrested criminals responsible for over 1,800 
murders.
  When it comes to drugs--the volume they are dealing with in fighting 
the narcotics traffickers--ICE in fiscal year 2017 seized more than 
980,000 pounds of narcotics. ICE seized approximately 2,370 pounds of 
fentanyl, approximately 6,967 pounds of heroin. Yet, today, too many 
elected Democrats are afraid that they, too, might face a socialist 
primary and that their far left is so angry, hates President Trump so 
much, that their position is not that we should enforce the immigration 
laws; their position is not that they will stand with law enforcement. 
Their position has become to abolish the Immigration and Customs 
Enforcement agency, the agency charged with enforcing our immigration 
laws.
  This is not a reasonable position and a public policy debate upon 
which reasonable minds might differ. There are many of those in the 
immigration world. This is not one of them. This is a radical and 
reckless position.
  Yet, this resolution--by the way, this resolution says not a word 
about the issue of family separation. We have heard some of the 
speeches from my Democratic colleagues focused on family separation. I 
can state that every Member of this body, Democrat and Republican, 
agrees that families should not be separated.
  Indeed, I have introduced legislation to prohibit family separation, 
to ensure that children stay with their parents--the best place for a 
kid is with his or her mom or dad--but to do so in a way that also 
respects the rule of law, that doesn't return to the failed policy of 
catch-and-release that only encourages more and more illegal 
immigration, that only puts more and more children--little boys and 
girls--in a position of being physically and sexually assaulted by 
human traffickers.
  No one who cares about humanity, no one who cares about compassion 
should want to incentivize putting little children in the control of 
global, transnational drug cartels and human traffickers.
  For the past several weeks, I have been negotiating with Democratic 
Members of this body, trying to see if we could reach common ground to 
unite and say that we will not separate families, but at the same time, 
we will respect the rule of law and not return to catch-and-release in 
a way that incentivizes illegal immigration.
  We will find out if any Democrats are willing to find common ground. 
All 100 could join together on ending family release and ending it 
today, but too many on the Democratic side want to condition ending 
family release on essentially mandating the release of every illegal 
alien in custody--those apprehended with children, mandating their 
release. That is not a reasonable position. That is not a position the 
American people support, and, critically, this resolution before the 
Senate says not a word about it.
  This resolution does not address that question. Instead, this 
resolution says that those ICE agents--the ICE agents who right now may 
be kicking down the door on a meth house and facing violent drug lords, 
firing weapons at them, risking their lives to keep us safe--we stand 
with those law enforcement agencies, even if we may disagree on the 
parameters of illegal immigration.
  I am one who believes we should welcome and embrace legal 
immigrants--those who follow the rules and wait in line like my father 
in 1957, when he came as an immigrant from Cuba seeking freedom. Those 
are debates we can have.
  We ought to be coming together in the spirit of bipartisan agreement 
to stand with law enforcement. I call upon the responsible members of 
the Democratic Party--and, surely, there must be some left. Surely, in 
the Democratic Party, there are some voices that are willing to stand 
up to the reckless and radical left and say: No, we should not abolish 
the agency charged with enforcing our immigration laws, charged with 
protecting us from vicious and violent criminals.
  The fact that Senate Democrats are today objecting to this resolution 
shows just how captive they are to the fury that rages against 
President Trump.
  Everyone in this Chamber has, at one time or another, had something 
the President has said or done that we all disagreed with. That is part 
of the political process, but the rage and fury on the far left is a 
qualitatively different matter. It is a rage that is demanding 
Democrats to go after, to undercut, to attack law enforcement agents 
who keep us safe. That is a mistake. It is a disservice to this 
institution. It is a disservice to the legacy of many distinguished 
Senators and a disservice to the American people and the Constitution 
that we are sworn to protect.
  I urge this body to pass this commonsense resolution, standing with 
law enforcement, enforcing our borders, and stopping violent criminals, 
murderers, kidnappers, and rapists that ICE arrests every year. 
Abolishing law enforcement puts all of us at peril. I call upon my 
Democratic colleagues to reject that radical and reckless position.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Florida.
  Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, this Senator came to talk about trade, and 
I am going to do that, but I think what we have is an example of 
extremes in politics that is on display before us.
  I think, on the one hand, political points are trying to be scored 
about the abolition of certain law enforcement organizations. On the 
other hand, there are the political points that a government, 
especially our government, should not have a policy of separating 
children from their parents, unless the parents have committed a crime 
and need to be incarcerated for the purpose of that crime.
  Here we have the extremes again going to either side, when, in fact, 
if there were good will, if there were not such a highly polarized, 
highly charged, partisan atmosphere, in part, as we say in the South, 
egged on by various Members of the leadership in the Congress as well 
as the Executive--if we didn't have all of that, we could get a lot 
more done.
  The genius of American politics is for us to be able to come 
together, to respect each other, to understand the

[[Page S5048]]

other fellow's point of view, and then work out our differences.
  It is the same thing on the international stage. That is why we see 
it is so difficult to reach international agreements when people have 
gotten hardened into positions because of race or religion or political 
balance.
  So if you note a tone of sadness in this Senator's voice, then you 
are correct because, again, we are seeing the polarization of American 
politics.
  Why can't we have a law enforcement organization that also doesn't 
have to operate under a policy of separating children from their 
parents? That is the commonsense point of view, but, no, we devolve 
into these extremes.