[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 130 (Wednesday, August 1, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5556-S5558]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              IMMIGRATION

  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, we know that President Trump during the 
course of his campaign made immigration a major issue. Almost from the 
beginning, he made it clear that he would take a different approach to 
immigration than previous Presidents of either

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political party. We can remember when he referred to those coming to 
the United States from Mexico as murderers and rapists. We can remember 
when he called for the construction of a 2,000-mile wall between the 
United States and Mexico, and quickly added: And Mexico will pay for 
it.
  We can remember all of the statements that were made during the 
course of the campaign about immigration and terrorism. We knew we were 
in for a change in policy with this administration. Some of the things 
that have occurred have been stunning, and some of them have been 
horrible. One of those things was the subject of a hearing this week in 
the Senate Judiciary Committee, which I serve on. It was about the zero 
tolerance policy. Some may remember that last year President Trump 
decided to eliminate and abolish the DACA Program. That was a program 
for those young people brought to the United States as children--
infants, toddlers, and children--who grew up in the United States and 
believed they were part of this country and future. They learned, 
probably about the time they became teenagers, that this wasn't true. 
They didn't have legal status. They weren't documented in the United 
States.
  They have lived their whole lives here. They have gone through our 
schools, and some of them have been amazing students. They had planned 
to go on with their education and their lives, and they learned they 
had an obstacle in their path.
  President Obama created an opportunity for them to continue to live 
in the United States without fear of deportation and to be able to work 
here. So 790,000 of them stepped up and paid a $500 filing fee, went 
through a criminal background check, and were given, on a temporary 
renewable basis, this protection under President Obama's Executive 
action.
  President Trump eliminated that order. In doing so, he eliminated the 
protection they had to stay here. Their fate and their future were in 
doubt because of the President's unilateral action. He challenged 
Congress to pass a law to save them.
  We tried. At the last minute, a bipartisan bill, agreed to here in 
the Senate by a majority of the Members, was rejected by President 
Trump. It also included massive construction of his wall, but he 
rejected it nevertheless.
  Today, the only thing protecting those young people--the 790,000--are 
court orders, which can change any day or any week. The President's 
effort on immigration and children didn't end with his elimination of 
the DACA Program. Just a few months ago, they announced something 
called zero tolerance. Here is how it would work. At our border, any 
person who presented themselves between ports of entry and wasn't a 
legal resident of the United States could be arrested and charged with 
a misdemeanor--a criminal misdemeanor--of trying to come into this 
country without legal documentation.
  People can come in without legal documentation between ports of entry 
and claim asylum and refugee status, but no distinctions were made. If 
a person presented themselves and didn't have legal status, they face 
this misdemeanor criminal charge.
  What flowed from that has created a humanitarian disaster. Because of 
that charge, the Trump administration then ordered the agencies to 
forcibly remove all the children who were with their parents who came 
to the border. That meant that almost 3,000 children were forcibly 
removed from their parents at the border under the zero tolerance 
policy.
  That was the law of the land for some period of time, or at least 
that was the President's order for some period of time, until public 
reaction from both Republicans and Democrats was so strong that on June 
20, President Trump did something very rare in his administration. He 
almost admitted he made a mistake. He decided to eliminate the family 
separation policy.
  The elimination of that policy did not solve the problem for 2,700 
children who were in the custody of the U.S. Government. These are 
children under the age of 18 who were basically spread across the 
United States, and are being held by government agencies and government 
contractor facilities.
  The case went before a judge in the Southern District of California, 
Judge Sabraw, as to what to do with these children. A number of 
organizations, like the ACLU, came forward and said: These children 
should be reunited with their parents. Our government separated them. 
They should be reunited.
  He set a time table and schedule for that to occur. A lot was done, 
but not nearly enough. We had a hearing this week in the Senate 
Judiciary Committee, which went on for several hours with 
representatives from five different agencies of the Trump 
administration trying to explain how we created this policy and what we 
have done ever since to reunify these parents with their children.
  All of us know it is not healthy to take kids away from their 
parents. The pediatric physicians in America--the American Academy of 
Pediatrics--came forward and called it institutional child abuse. If 
that sounds like an exaggeration, imagine if it were your child who was 
being taken away by our government, or your grandchild, for that 
matter. I know how I would feel as a parent and a grandparent, and I am 
sure most people realize it would be a traumatic experience for any 
parent--or for grandparent, for that matter--to go through. Then, from 
the side of the children, we know that kind of separation can cause 
real psychological problems for these kids.
  I met some of these kids--they were 5 and 6 years old--in Chicago. 
They had been transported 2,000 miles from the border to Chicago and 
were being held by our government in a contractual facility--5 and 6 
years old. These little kids couldn't figure out what had happened to 
them in their lives.
  I will never forget the scene of being in a room with 10 of them and 
watching 2 little girls walk into the room who were hanging on to one 
another for dear life. I thought they were twins. They weren't. They 
weren't even sisters. One of them said: ``No, amigas.'' They had really 
latched on to one another because they were so uncertain about where 
they were and what their future would be. Doctors tell us that isn't 
healthy for children. Yet it continues for too many of these kids.
  At the hearing we held, we talked about how many kids are still out 
there who haven't been reunited, who have been separated from their 
parents by our government agencies under this Trump zero tolerance 
policy. The numbers change almost by the day, but they estimate that 
over 700 children are currently separated, and in over 400 of those 
cases, their parents have been deported. So the parents come to the 
border, the kids are taken away, the parents are invited to leave the 
country, and the kids remain. Where are the parents? No record was kept 
as to where they were going. How will we reunite these kids with their 
parents? No one really knows. It was clear at this hearing that nobody 
had even thought in advance about what that meant.
  When you listened to the testimony of the sworn government witnesses 
there, it was clear that no one from day one even envisioned what this 
policy was going to do. One of the people who testified before us--a 
man whose degree and expertise are in public health--said that he 
warned this administration. He told them that this was not a healthy 
thing to do to children, to separate them and put them in some 
institutional setting. Yet they went forward with this plan, and not a 
single one of them could point to any effort made to keep track of the 
kids and the parents so that someday they could be reunited.
  In fact, what we found was that the head of the Department of 
Homeland Security, Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, on June 17, sent out the 
following tweet. It said: ``We do not have a policy of separating 
families at the border. Period.'' The sworn testimony this week tells 
us that is not true, and it wasn't true from the beginning of the zero 
tolerance policy. There was a policy of separating children from 
parents. What this member of the Trump Cabinet said was just wrong, 
just plain wrong.
  Listen to what the Department of Health and Human Services and the 
Department of Homeland Security said on June 23. In a fact sheet that 
they sent out across the country, they said: ``The United States 
Government knows the location of all children in its custody and is 
working to reunite them with their families.'' Here we are, 6 weeks 
later, and they have fallen 700 children short of what they claim they 
already knew back in June.

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  These were two falsehoods that were promulgated on the American 
people to try to get them to believe this wasn't a serious problem. 
Well, we know better, because this Federal judge got serious about it, 
and he said: I am going to set a deadline for you to put these kids 
back with their families. Our government failed to meet the deadline.
  Now read what this Federal judge had to say about it. This judge, 
incidentally, was appointed by a Republican President, lest you think 
this is some Democrat who is trying to make political hay. Here is what 
Judge Sabraw said: ``The practice of separating these families was 
implemented without any effective system or procedure for tracking the 
children after they were separated from their parents, enabling 
communication between the parents and their children after separation, 
and reuniting the parents and children.'' That is what the Federal 
judge said about the zero tolerance policy.
  I can't remember a more heartbreaking and embarrassing chapter in 
American Government history in recent years--to think that our 
government set out with a policy to separate these kids from their 
parents, forcibly removing them and separating them without any plans 
to reunite them.
  They argued afterward: We can't send these kids back to parents who 
might be dangerous.
  No one argues with that.
  We can't send them back to smugglers who are pretending to be 
parents.
  Well, we can't argue with that either. But the United States accepted 
responsibility when we took custody of those children. We became what 
they call in law in loco parentis. In other words, we accepted a 
parental responsibility for these children. We have not met that 
responsibility.
  I asked at some point, who is going to accept responsibility for this 
humanitarian disaster in this Trump administration? Absolutely no one 
has. I believe Secretary Nielsen should. I believe she should step down 
because this policy--this disastrous policy--has given a black eye to 
the United States.
  What we have seen happen here is not consistent with our values as a 
nation. It is not consistent with the kind of treatment we have given 
to those who have come to our border over the years. Think about the 
refugees who presented themselves to become part of the United States 
and our history.
  Think about the thousands of Cubans who came to this country saying: 
We want to escape communism. We want to come to the United States. 
Think about what a valuable contribution they have made. Did we punish 
them when they came into the United States? We accepted them. Have 
Cuban Americans been an important part of our country? Ask three U.S. 
Senators who are Cuban Americans. The answer is in the affirmative.
  Think about the Soviet Jews, those of the Jewish religion who were 
living in the Soviet Union and facing all sorts of prejudice and 
discrimination. They asked for an opportunity to come to the United 
States, and we opened our arms.
  Think about the Vietnamese who worked with us during the war trying 
to protect our soldiers, trying to be a part of the solution to their 
problems, risking their own lives in the process. We welcomed them to 
the United States too.
  Time and again, this country has opened its arms to refugees who 
needed a helping hand and a place of safety. We did not put them in 
internment camps. We didn't take their children away to punish them. We 
said: We will hear you out, and if you have a legitimate claim, a fear 
of where you live, we will stand by you.
  We know what is happening in Central America--in Honduras, El 
Salvador, and Guatemala. At this point, there are higher rates of 
murder, domestic violence, and rape than almost anywhere in our 
hemisphere, and these people are bringing their kids here for their 
safety.
  I met in Chicago with one of the immigration lawyers who represent 
some of these immigrants, and she said to me: ``Senator, they believe 
their children will die if they leave them in these countries. They are 
willing to put their entire life savings on the line to get them to our 
border in the hope that they can be treated as refugees or people 
seeking asylum, and they are going to keep coming because the 
alternative is to accept rape and murder on their children.''
  Think about if that were your choice in life, what you would do. 
Would you do everything in your power to protect these children? Well, 
they have done it, and they have come to the border, and we answered 
them by separating them from their children and deporting many of them 
back to these dangerous countries. This isn't consistent with what 
America is all about.
  We should stand together, both political parties, and not only 
condemn zero tolerance but make a solemn commitment to return these 
children to their parents. These lost children sadly reflect on our 
Nation, and we need these children to be with their parents as quickly 
as possible. That needs to be our highest priority.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from South Carolina.

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