[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 126 (Thursday, July 26, 2018)]
[House]
[Pages H7716-H7719]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            BORDER SECURITY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 3, 2017, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from Texas (Mr. 
Burgess) for 30 minutes.
  Mr. BURGESS. Madam Speaker, I come to the floor of the House today to 
talk about an issue that has been in the headlines a lot recently.
  Every month, more than 30,000 people come across our border, our 
southern border, without the benefit of a legal status. Now, there is 
no doubt that there are more people in those 30,000, but 30,000 are 
what are identified by our Customs and Border Protection personnel on 
the border.
  Thousands upon thousands of these are unaccompanied children. The end 
result is many of them reside in shelters and they are cared for by 
American taxpayer dollars. Some others are less fortunate, and they end 
up being released into dangerous situations.
  I think all Americans can agree that we want our immigration system 
to work, and maybe we want it to be better. But as we consider this 
crisis on

[[Page H7717]]

our southern border, it is fair to ask: How did we arrive at this 
point?
  First off, just from the numbers, America is the most generous 
country in the world. Through our Nation's legal immigration process, 
we welcome well over a million immigrants into the United States of 
America every year. That is more than every other nation on the face of 
the Earth combined. And, just to be clear, these are people who go 
through the correct process and follow our laws. Despite this 
generosity, others remain intent on entering our country without the 
full benefit of legal status.
  Congress continues to grapple with immigration reform, and 
particularly the question of what to do with unaccompanied minors and 
those who come into this country as small children and then age into 
the system.
  I actually asked the Congressional Research Service: How do other 
countries deal with this population of children, identified as 
Dreamers, how do other countries deal with this population?
  Well, their answer was pretty short. Other countries don't. If 
someone is found coming into their country without the benefit of legal 
status--man, woman, or child--they are returned to their point of 
origin. They do not keep anyone in that status, in that category.
  So, again, America is the most generous country in the world, and we 
have the most significant problem with immigration without the benefit 
of legal status.
  Over the past couple of weeks, we have heard intense criticism of the 
Trump administration of a zero-tolerance policy. We have heard Members 
of Congress opine, both at the border and here on the floor of the 
House, about the misfortune of those who have crossed into our country 
without the benefit of citizenship. From the news, you would know that 
this is a terrible situation.
  So, enforcement first; is that a bad thing? Well, that is what the 
administration is supposed to do. And there is significant proof that 
an enforcement first policy does deter people from subjecting 
themselves to harm by taking a perilous trip to the American border, 
whether it be by land or by sea.
  For example, when General Kelly was the Secretary of Homeland 
Security, before he became Chief of Staff for the White House, he 
visited our Texas border in May of 2017. Those Border Patrol stations 
were virtually unoccupied at the time.
  In June of 2017, a Reuters journalist, Julia Edwards Ainsley, 
reported on the decreased number of border crossings. She writes--and, 
bear in mind, this is just over a year ago:

       Last fall, during the waning months of the Obama 
     administration, hundreds of immigrants crossed the river on 
     rafts at this point each day, many willingly handing 
     themselves over to immigration authorities in hopes of being 
     released into the United States to await court proceedings 
     that would decide their fate.
       Now, the agents look out on an empty landscape. Footpaths 
     up from the water have started to disappear under growing 
     brush, with only the stray baby shoe or toothbrush serving as 
     reminders of that migrant flood.
       The reason for the change, the agents say, is a perception 
     in Mexico and Central America that President Donald Trump has 
     ended the practice known as ``catch and release,'' in which 
     immigrants caught in the United States without proper 
     documents were released to live free, often for years, as 
     their cases ran through the court system.
       Now, would-be border violators know ``they'll be detained 
     and then turned right back around,'' said one of the two 
     agents, Marlene Castro. ``It's not worth it anymore,'' she 
     said.

  What had happened between the end of the Obama administration and the 
first year of the Trump administration? When people believe that they 
will encounter a border wall, or that they will be turned away at the 
border, people simply do not come. However, our laws are effective only 
if they are enforced. As General Kelly said at the time:

       For changes to be permanent, Congress must change the law.

  He went on to say:

       If Congress does not want us to enforce the law, they 
     should change the law.

  So, every night, when you are listening to the news, you might 
believe that this is the first time in American history that a 
Presidential administration has used an enforcement first, or a so-
called ``zero-tolerance'' policy.
  But let's think about this for a minute and turn the clock back to 
1992.
  In the early 1990s, rafts of immigrants from the country of Haiti 
were bound for the United States and were intercepted at sea, as 
authorized by a policy enacted by President George H. W. Bush's 
administration.
  A young Governor from Arkansas was running for President against the 
incumbent George H.W. Bush, and, what a surprise, the campaign rhetoric 
became divisive. Then-Governor Clinton, time and again, spoke of his 
disagreement with then-President Bush's zero-tolerance immigration 
policy.
  During his campaign, Governor Clinton often maligned President Bush 
for being so cruel in his treatment of Haitian refugees traveling to 
America by boat. The rhetoric then was the same as the rhetoric now: 
You have put a closed sign on the Statue of Liberty, or you have hung 
up a no vacancy sign on the border of the United States. During his 
campaign, some people feared that Governor Clinton was creating 
unrealistic expectations for the Haitian people, who were suffering 
significantly from unrest in their country.
  As Douglas Farah wrote in the New York Times article titled ``Clinton 
Inspires Hope and Fear in Haiti'' on November 28, 1992:

       It was Mr. Clinton who helped create the expectation of an 
     exodus from Haiti when he condemned the Bush administration 
     for a ``cruel policy of returning Haitian refugees to a 
     brutal dictatorship without an asylum hearing.''

  Now, we all know that Governor Clinton won the Presidential election 
in 1992. From Governor Clinton's promises, the people of Haiti expected 
to be welcomed into the United States with open arms. The problem is 
that after winning the White House, President-elect Clinton had a 
change of heart.
  Now, I will read from some of President-elect Clinton's remarks, and 
this was spoken directly to the people of Haiti over the radio on Voice 
of America.

       For Haitians who do seek to leave Haiti, boat departure is 
     a terrible and dangerous choice. I've been deeply concerned 
     by reports that many of you are preparing to travel by boat 
     to the United States. And, I fear that boat departures in the 
     near future would result in further tragic losses of life.
       For this reason, the practice of returning those who flee 
     Haiti by boat will continue for the time being after I become 
     President. Those who do leave Haiti for the United States by 
     boat will be stopped and directly returned by the United 
     States Coast Guard.
       To avoid the human tragedy of a boat exodus, I wanted to 
     convey this message directly to the Haitian people: Leaving 
     by boat is not the route to freedom.

  Now, this dramatic change of heart did not go without notice. On 
January 17, 1993, the Chicago Tribune columnist Stephen Chapman wrote:

       The President-elect has a terrible time making up his mind 
     and keeping it made up. A lot of Haitians are disappointed to 
     find he's something less than a man of his word. They're not 
     the only ones.

  As you can see from this story, border security is not a new debate. 
Zero-tolerance policies do go back far longer than the current 
administration.
  Now, just before I leave this topic, I want to thank the Library of 
Congress and the National Archives for their work in helping me track 
down this now long-forgotten radio address. But I do think it is useful 
as we consider our current situation, and I am grateful to them for 
their work to uncover this recording from their archives.
  It actually was easier to find evidence of the zero-tolerance policy 
in effect during the Carter administration.
  There was a phenomena known as the Mariel boatlift. Fidel Castro, 
solving a problem he had internally in his country, opened the doors to 
his prisons and some of his asylums. He sent criminals and patients 
suffering from mental diseases through the straits of Florida and he 
left Jimmy Carter's administration to grapple with a Cuban refugee 
crisis.
  In a 1997 interview, former Deputy Secretary of State John A. 
Bushnell recalled a meeting with President Carter in which he and other 
key advisers discussed possible solutions to the Cuban refugee problem. 
He said:

       I remember sitting in that windowless conference room of 
     the National Security Council with Secretary of State Muskie, 
     the Chief of Naval Operations, the Director of the CIA, the 
     head of the Coast Guard, the head of Immigration and 
     Naturalization Service, and several other senior officials 
     debating how to stop this flow of Cubans. National Security 
     Advisor Brzezinski chaired until President

[[Page H7718]]

     Carter came in toward the end of the meeting.
       There was a long discussion of how Coast Guard and Navy 
     ships might physically stop the Cuban boats, either from 
     leaving the United States or returning. The Navy and the 
     Coast Guard, represented at this meeting by admirals, asked: 
     ``How can we do this?''
       It was suggested that these boats could be rammed or shot 
     at. The Navy and Coast Guard said that it would be very 
     difficult to stop these boats physically from leaving the 
     United States or from returning without major loss of life 
     among the boat crews and passengers.
       I guess Secretary Muskie was something of a sailor. He 
     certainly knew a lot more about boats than I did. He was 
     suggesting ways of maneuvering boats to block passage, which 
     struck me as sort of wild. It sounded to me as if he had in 
     mind a picket line of Coast Guard and Navy boats going across 
     the straits of Florida to stop the movement of these small 
     boats with refugees. This naval discussion went on for a long 
     time, but was inconclusive.

                              {time}  1345

  Well, from this interview, we understand that President Carter's 
administration was contemplating how to physically stop Cuban boats 
from coming to the United States.
  More recently, President Obama's administration faced a crisis in 
2014. There was a flood of unaccompanied minors who came across our 
southern border from countries like Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala. 
There is no question that President Obama's dangerous catch and release 
policies helped to bring us to this point.
  President Carter, President Clinton, President Obama, they all 
learned the same lesson. It is inhumane and dangerous to encourage 
anyone to attempt a harrowing journey by land or sea in order to reach 
America's borders.
  But I do want to emphasize some important points moving forward.
  First off, under the jurisdiction of the Energy and Commerce 
Subcommittee on Health, we do oversee the Health and Human Services 
Office of Refugee Resettlement. Over the last 5 years, I have made 10 
trips to the border to visit these Office of Refugee Resettlement 
facilities. In the last few weeks, I had the opportunity to visit 
shelters in Tornillo and McAllen and Brownsville, all on the Texas 
border.
  I can tell you this: The shelters are in excellent condition. The men 
and women of the Office of Refugee Resettlement and the men and women 
who work in the nonprofit organizations who help in those endeavors, 
they do an excellent job. The children receive professional care from 
the exemplary HHS employees. Children were living in a healthy 
environment. Children were playing on a soccer field with artificial 
turf. In McAllen, at Casa Padre, I witnessed the same thing.
  Regardless of what you are hearing on the news and from our friends 
on the other side of the dais here in the House of Representatives, the 
Department of Health and Human Services is providing outstanding care 
to the minors in its custody.
  This was not always the case. Back in 2014, I made other trips to ORR 
facilities early in what was then the Obama administration's 
unaccompanied alien minors crisis. The children, when I visited the 
shelters in 2014, they didn't have access to a doctor. There were no 
medical personnel.
  Today, they have access to the full range of medical facilities and 
mental health resources, and the children are being screened for 
communicable diseases. This is important. These children are likely to 
be placed with families in the United States. They are likely to attend 
schools with those families where they are placed. Certainly illnesses 
such as tuberculosis need to be screened for and ruled out before those 
children are placed with families in the interior of the United States.
  Today, children have a way to contact back to the Department of 
Health and Human Services, or the office of oversight, the Office of 
Refugee Resettlement after they have been placed.
  In 2014, when I visited those shelters, there was no way--if a child 
ended up in a situation that was not just not agreeable, but perhaps 
dangerous for the child, they were not given any means of contacting 
back to ORR once they left Federal custody. And, unfortunately, we know 
now that some children were not placed in loving homes but, rather, 
fell victims to trafficking or other abuse.
  Now, because of the House Republicans who serve on the Energy and 
Commerce Committee, if children need help after they leave a shelter, 
they do, indeed, have a lifeline. These are helpful resources for those 
who are entrusted to Federal care.
  This afternoon, I want to thank and commend Secretary Alex Azar and 
his team at Health and Human Services for their work, yes, to reunite 
children with verified family members and for children who have come 
across the border without any other visible means of support, who are 
then taken care of by the men and women of the Office of Refugee 
Resettlement, and, of course, the generosity of the American taxpayer.
  The people at HHS are taking the appropriate care to ensure that 
children released from their custody will be placed safely.
  My primary goal still remains to secure the border. Yes, this would 
be a problem that would be much better prevented than managed after it 
occurs, but there remains a problem with unaccompanied minors crossing 
the border without the benefit of citizenship. All the time that that 
does occur, we must do our best to ensure that they are safe when they 
are in the custody of the men and women of Health and Human Services.
  Again, I want to stress, when it comes to immigration, the United 
States of America is the most generous country in the world. But is it 
okay, is it all right for us to allow 30,000 people to enter our 
country illegally each month?
  Is it okay, is it all right to allow 13,000 children to enter our 
country illegally each month?
  Is it all right for us to subject these innocent children to a 
dangerous journey?
  Is it all right for us to continue to encourage and monetize child 
traffickers and coyotes who bring these children across central Mexico?
  President Trump has said that the highest sovereign duty of the 
President is to defend this Nation, and that includes the defense of 
the borders. Quite simply, sovereign countries must define and defend 
their borders.
  I believe that America is a country worth defending, so, ultimately, 
we are going to have to solve this problem.
  From experiences, both recent and throughout history, we do know that 
rhetoric matters, and President Trump's enforcement first policy should 
not come as a surprise to anyone. As the President, current President 
campaigned, he promised to end the catch and release program and 
restore order on the southern border.
  The traffickers and coyotes in Central America use our words, our 
words spoken here on the floor of this House, in Washington, D.C. They 
use our words to prey on the disadvantaged in Central American 
countries, and they encourage families to put their children on top of 
a freight train, a train called La Bestia, from southern Mexico to the 
Rio Grande, and subject their children to violence of the cartels or 
worse. And these are children, some of whom will never arrive in the 
United States because of the dangers on that journey. When we say, or 
even suggest, that children could receive amnesty at the border, we put 
innocent lives at risk.

  We can be compassionate and we can provide a secure border at the 
same time. These two concepts are not mutually exclusive.
  In 1980, I previously quoted former Deputy Secretary of State John A. 
Bushnell, and let me quote him again. He recalled that Congress, that 
year, appropriated over $400 million to assist holding and settling 
Cuban refugees in the United States. Reflecting on that time, here's 
what he said:
  ``I used this appropriation as a key example of why foreign aid 
through the Caribbean Group was a good investment. It was much better 
to help our neighbors build a good economic future for themselves at 
home than to have a flood of desperate refugees, which would cost more 
money to settle.''
  Madam Speaker, I would ask my colleagues in the House if it would not 
be wise to consider former Deputy Secretary of State John Bushnell's 
reasoning. Perhaps our foreign aid to countries such as Honduras, El 
Salvador, Guatemala, and even Mexico, should be tied to how they care 
for their children.
  Here is the deal: Why should we reward those countries whose children

[[Page H7719]]

are fleeing for their safety to the United States of America? It is 
certainly something to consider, particularly as we consider the 
foreign operations appropriations that we will likely have on the floor 
of the House when this House reconvenes in September.
  As we have heard today, it is simply irresponsible. It is inhumane 
for the American Government to incentivize anyone, to subject their 
citizens, the children of their citizens, to this perilous journey to 
our border.
  This was a lesson that President Clinton learned; it was a lesson 
that President Carter learned; and it was a lesson that President Obama 
learned; and, unfortunately, each of them learned it a little bit late.
  But we have an opportunity. We could end this broken pattern. We 
could find a solution. First is to secure the borders, and second is to 
use our foreign aid to encourage those countries to take care of their 
children first and to not count on the generosity of the American 
taxpayer to continue to do the job that they refuse to do at home.
  Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________