[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 188 (Thursday, November 29, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7205-S7208]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                              Immigration

  Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, on May 5 of this year, NASA launched the 
InSight rocket. That probe, the InSight probe, has traveled 300 million 
miles since May of this year and has touched down safely on Mars. It is 
a remarkable achievement. The United States is the only country in the 
world that has any probes on Mars. We have several now that are moving 
around and are stable. The technology behind that--the thought, the 
design, the engineering, the work--is a remarkable achievement for the 
science community.
  The 300 million-plus miles that it has traveled since May and to be 
able to land safely is a remarkable achievement. I compared that 300-
mile journey of the InSight probe and safely landing on Mars to our now 
two-decades-long conversation trying to solve immigration.

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  As Americans, we have figured out how to travel 300 million miles, 
but we have not been able to figure out how to manage our own 
immigration policy. This is the 10th time I have come to this floor to 
talk about immigration in just the last 3 years.
  Earlier this year in February, we had a tremendous amount of work 
that was happening here in the Senate to try to come to a set of 
agreements about how we can manage the immigration policy in the United 
States, and those agreements failed. While InSight was traveling 300 
million miles, the Senate still did nothing to solve the issue of 
immigration.
  We watched today several thousand people in Tijuana living in a 
soccer stadium after they left from Honduras. They traveled into 
Guatemala. The Guatemalans deported several thousands of them and said: 
You didn't cross legally from Honduras into Guatemala.
  Then they approached the border between Guatemala and Mexico, and 
Mexico put their law enforcement and their military on the border and 
said: You can't just cross the border illegally from Guatemala to 
Mexico. Then they charged the bridge, overran the law enforcement and 
the military of the Mexican police, went around into the river, and 
then regrouped again and continued to move forward to Mexico.
  Mexico offered them asylum, which I thought was incredibly gracious, 
based on the way they crossed into Mexico. Mexico offered them asylum 
and the ability to stay in Mexico. They offered them assistance all 
along the way. They did arrest some troublemakers along the way.
  Now they have made their way all the way through Mexico, and they are 
just outside San Diego. A few days ago, the same group rushed our 
border to see if our border would cave the same way the southern border 
of Mexico did. Yet we did not.
  Interestingly enough, that group of several thousand people who 
rushed the border, who are now parked on that border, are literally 
living within a few 100 yards of the largest legal border crossing in 
the world--the San Diego crossing. There are 100,000 people a day who 
legally cross the border from Mexico into the United States, within 
feet of where they charged the border and demanded to get entry into 
the United States. Let me just set that for you again side by side. 
There are 100,000 people every single day who legally cross the border 
from Mexico into the United States at the Tijuana-San Diego crossing. 
Yet the attention is not on the 100,000 who are legally crossing the 
border. The cameras are turned toward the few thousand who are trying 
to rush the border illegally. Our perspective is out of whack.
  We are not a closed country to immigration. We are an open country to 
immigration. There are 1.1 million people who last year became citizens 
of the United States--1.1 million--but we are a Nation that has order 
and structure.
  We have 1 million people every single day who leave the United 
States, coming in legally either through Canada or through Mexico or 
based on flights. Our law enforcement folks who handle all the issues 
there--Border Patrol, customs, and all of the different folks from 
ICE--do a tremendous job every single day.
  I think Secretary Nielsen and her leadership has been stellar in 
their leadership to help manage through a PR nightmare that has been 
created because the cameras want to focus on a few people crossing 
illegally and refuse to turn the cameras just 15 degrees and focus on 
100,000 people coming across the border legally.
  We do have to do something about our immigration policy. We are a 
Nation that has been open to immigrants our entire history as a nation, 
and we remain so and should remain so.
  But the question seems to get spun up on this one issue: What do we 
do about someone who intentionally breaks the law to come into our 
country? How do we treat them versus the person who has gone through 
the process and who is legally coming into the country? Are they to be 
treated the same if they illegally cross the border at San Diego as 
someone who legally crosses the border at San Diego, or do we treat 
them differently?
  Last year, there were 400,000 people who were arrested for illegally 
crossing our southern border--400,000. Again, that may seem like an 
incredibly large number, but let me put that back in perspective. Half 
a million people--that would be 500,000 people--legally cross our 
border on the south every day. So we had 400,000 people arrested 
crossing our southern border illegally--400,000--but yet over the total 
of an entire year, there are 400,000 people arrested, but every single 
day 500,000 people legally cross our entire southern border. As I 
mentioned, 100,000 of those are just at San Diego.
  We, as Americans, need to make decisions about how we are going to 
handle immigration. I think we have to get some numbers and some 
perspective in place because all of the attention seems to be 
distracting us from the actual facts and numbers. So let me run through 
some things.
  There has been a lot of conversation about family units, about what 
it means for family units to be able to come in and whether family 
units should be separated. Let me make it very clear. I have been very 
outspoken to say that family units need to stay together whenever 
possible.
  We are Americans. We are very passionate about families. If a family 
unit crosses the border illegally, as much as possible, we need to keep 
that family unit together. That may mean we need to have them in a spot 
in a detention unit or someplace where they can actually stay together 
as a family as much as possible, but, for whatever reason, the courts 
have not allowed us to go through that system. I think that is 
something that this Congress needs to respond to and needs to step up 
to, but this Congress has been unwilling to have the votes that it 
takes to make sure family units stay together because the drama of 
tearing families apart looks so much better on TV.

  What has been the result of that? The result is a massive increase in 
the number of children who are coming to our border. This may sound 
familiar to you, and it should. In 2014, under the time of President 
Obama, he announced the DACA proposal, or Deferred Action for Childhood 
Arrivals, President Obama looked at those individuals who were living 
in the country here, who had been here for a long time, who came as 
children. Their parents broke the law by crossing the border, but they 
were children.
  In American law, we do not punish children for the actions of their 
parents. We don't do that. So President Obama looked at these kids and 
said: You have grown up in our country. Your parents violated the law, 
but you did not. We are going to give you deferred action. We are going 
to give you the opportunity to be able to work and to be able to live 
here. It wasn't citizenship, but it is an opportunity to stay here and 
to work.
  As soon as that was announced, within months, the American border 
started being flooded with unaccompanied minors--kids 17 years old and 
younger who would cross the border. They showed up in the thousands. 
They were brought by human smugglers from Central America who make 
their living moving people from Central America to the United States. 
That business started traveling all through Central America saying: 
President Obama is going to allow you to be able to stay in the 
country. He has just announced this program, and if you will go now 
with me, you will get to stay in America.
  So parents were literally surrendering their teenagers, most of them 
boys, and saying to their boys: Go to America and go find a job and 
work and send money back. They would send their kids with human 
smugglers.
  President Obama then said: Time out. That is not what I said. 
President Obama was very clear to say: You had to have been here years 
ago. You are not eligible if you cross the border now. Do not come.
  Our State Department actively worked to get the message out in 
Central America, saying: Do not come. You will not be able to stay.
  But the human smugglers were telling them: They are just kidding. I 
am going to take you, and we will show you that we can get you in.
  What happened is that they started bringing kids by the thousands up 
to the border. When they got there, they were introduced to the border 
folks. They would go in, and they would get an opportunity to all stay. 
They would get a piece of paper that said they can't be deported while 
they go through their paperwork.

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  Those kids then were taking a picture of that piece of paper, saying: 
I got in. I am legal.
  They were snapping that picture and sending it back on social media 
to their friends in Central America. It just accelerated, and it blew 
up into huge numbers.
  In my State of Oklahoma, President Obama used one of the military 
bases there in Watonga, OK. He converted one of the dorms and was 
moving unaccompanied minors into this military base around a big giant 
fence in the middle of the base, just as he used other military bases 
to house unaccompanied minors because they were coming in such large 
numbers that they couldn't be managed. That was under President Obama's 
time.
  It took a long time--several years--to get the message back out to 
Central America: Stop sending your unaccompanied minors because it is 
not just an automatic entry.
  Then the conversation started about family units, saying: If you come 
as a family unit, you are going to be able to get in.
  Now, that is not what everybody was saying here, but that is what the 
smugglers said back in Central America. They said: Hey, the Americans 
allow you to come in if you come in as a family unit. So bring a child 
with you, and you can get in.
  Over the last year, we have watched the number of adults showing up 
with a child on our southern border dramatically increase by the tens 
of thousands--an unintended consequence.
  It is interesting. Some may have noted over the weekend a Washington 
Post story that was titled: ``For Central Americans, children open a 
path to the U.S.--and bring a discount.'' The Washington Post story was 
a story about research they are doing in Central America on these human 
smugglers and what they are doing now in their business. In the story 
they detailed that it will cost $10,000 if you travel as an adult, but 
if you bring a child with you, you and the child can come for $4,500. 
So it is half price if you bring a kid, and families are so desperate 
in that area to get some kind of assistance that, literally, adult 
males, mostly, are going to families and saying: Let me take your child 
with me. I will get a discount, and then I will send you some cash 
back, and I will try to enroll this child in an American school or find 
somebody to take care of them.
  We have individuals who are now showing up at our southern border who 
are bringing a child they are not related to because they get a 
discount on their human smuggling time, and they get more expedited 
process to be able to actually get across the border to request asylum. 
Although, they are not actually requesting asylum. They are just 
getting across the border and trying to find a job. It is economics.
  Do we not see what is happening? We are encouraging the human 
trafficking of children from Central America, from unrelated adults, to 
come here. It has a nickname in Central America now, which the 
Washington Post story highlighted. It is called ``adoptions.'' That is 
the new nickname--that I am going to take my child and adopt them out 
to some unrelated adult so they can get into America cheaper and 
faster, and, hopefully, things turn out for that kid as well. Our 
broken immigration system is encouraging this, and we need to address 
it.
  Over the last 2 years, Congress has appropriated about $1.7 billion 
to build 124 miles of new or replacement fencing along the border. This 
funding is not some tall, concrete tapeworm running along the southern 
border. It is a fence.
  In 2006, it wasn't controversial for the Secure Fence Act. The Secure 
Fence Act built 650 miles of wall--fence--along the southern border. 
That fence was very effective.
  For instance, earlier this year, Congress provided funding to replace 
14 miles of fencing along the border between San Diego and Tijuana, 
Mexico. For the last 20 years, the border between Tijuana and San Diego 
has been actually old metal sheets from the Vietnam era that were used 
in Vietnam to lay out on the jungle floor to land helicopters on. They 
took that old sheet metal decades ago when they brought it back, and 
then they used it as the fencing between San Diego and Tijuana. That 
fencing is being replaced.

  Congress provided the funding, and DHS has done 18-foot-high, 
bollard-style fencing, open fencing that you can see through, not the 
solid sheet metal that is up there. Although the actual final results 
haven't been released on it yet, the border agents on the ground have 
said they used to have 10 illegal crossings a day through that old-
style fencing. Now they have one illegal crossing a month through that 
new fencing.
  For all of the whining and all of the conversation I hear, which is 
that if you build a fence, it is just a ladder, it has dropped from 10 
a day to 1 a month, just when the fencing changed. It also allows our 
agents to see a danger or a risk on the other side and respond to it.
  By the end of the next fiscal year, DHS will have completed about 120 
miles of new fencing in California, Nevada, and Texas. They have also 
installed 100 different video towers because it is not about fencing, 
it is also about technology and the ability to see what is happening at 
the border. We don't need fencing in every area of a 2,000-mile border.
  Just since January 2017 until now, DHS has put up 31 different fixed 
surveillance towers along the southern border. They have put in 74 
different remote video surveillance systems all along our southern 
border and 7 command and control facilities on the southern border. 
They put up a tunnel threat program. They have put in what is called a 
linear ground detection system and a fiber optic detection system 
across our southern border in many areas to detect the tunnels that are 
being dug to move illegal narcotics, mostly, in those tunnels, rather 
than people. They put up mobile surveillance systems.
  This is not just about fencing, it is also about technology. DHS has 
done both, and it is making a difference.
  While the cameras are focused on children coughing from tear gas at 
our southern border, we need to ask ourselves a question: What are we 
doing in the policy that is encouraging people to bring children to the 
border thinking they are going to get faster access if they can 
illegally cross? Why is this happening? How do we stop it with our 
policy?
  This Nation should continue to be open. We should continue to receive 
immigrants from around the world, including from Central America and 
from Mexico. I have neighbors and friends all through my community who 
are from Central America and from Mexico. They are welcome citizens of 
our country. They are part of the fabric of who we are--people from all 
over the world--but I have a very difficult time saying that 100,000 
people at the San Diego crossing who are crossing legally should be 
ignored every single day for the sake of a few thousand who want to 
crash the fence, who crashed the barriers in Southern Mexico and who 
are working to crash the barriers here. We need to have a more reasoned 
response to this.
  Listen, if you have never been to a naturalization service, you ought 
to go. I have a staff member whom I completely agree with who says: I 
can't ever go to a naturalization service and not cry. So far, I have 
never been to a naturalization service where I don't cry. They are 
exceptionally moving events, to watch a large group of people from all 
backgrounds, from all languages, standing and raising their right hand 
and pledging allegiance to a brandnew country. People who have set 
aside their old path to realize--for many of them this was years in the 
process, to legally go through all of the right checks and get to that 
point. For those 1.1 million people who do that every year, we honor 
those individuals and welcome them openly.
  Let's honor people who are doing it the right way. Let's fix broken 
areas of the system that are encouraging people to bring children 
because they get a discount if they travel with children illegally 
across our border. Let's find a way to work out work visas. Let's deal 
with issues like temporary protective status that need to be resolved. 
Let's deal with the issues of our immigration, but let's not continue 
to stall.
  If the Mars InSight probe can travel 300 million miles in 5 months, 
surely this Congress can sit down and resolve the immigration issue in 
a few months. I look forward to that in the next Congress and in the 
days ahead to finally getting this resolved.

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  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maryland.