[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 200 (Wednesday, December 19, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7844-S7847]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           IMMIGRATION POLICY

  Mr. MERKLEY. Madam President, I rise to address a current-day scar, a 
wound in America--a wound in terms of how we are treating children 
arriving on our borders and seeking asylum.
  George Washington said America is a nation open ``to receive not only 
the opulent and respectable stranger, but the oppressed and persecuted 
of all nations and religions.''
  This sense of the vision of America was repeated 100 years later 
through Emma Lazarus's poem that is carved into the foundation of the 
Statue of Liberty. Phrases of that poem include: ``Give me your tired, 
your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. . . . Send 
these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,'' but that spirit is lost 
right now in the USA.
  We are a nation almost universally of immigrants, and yet we are 
treating those children fleeing persecution as if they are criminals 
when they arrive at our borders.
  I went down this last weekend with Senator Mazie Hirono of Hawaii and 
Senator Tina Smith of Minnesota, with Representative Judy Chu of 
California and Representative Beto O'Rourke of Texas. Four of us 
visited two family internment camps--one in Dilley and one in Karnes--
and all five of us went to the Tornillo child prison in the desert in 
Texas outside El Paso.
  This war against children--this Trump war against children--was most 
dramatically demonstrated back in May and June when the U.S. Government 
implemented a ``zero tolerance'' policy that, in fact, said, if you 
assert your international rights and come to the border of the United 
States, we will treat you as a criminal. We will lock you up. We will 
rip your children out of your arms, and who knows if you will ever see 
them again.
  I went down June 3 of this year to shine a light on this and find out 
what was really going on. I saw children in cages. I tried to enter a 
facility--a former Walmart--that I was told had hundreds of kids locked 
up in it. I was denied entry because of the administration's desires to 
keep the effects of

[[Page S7845]]

their child separation policy secret. There was an outcry from people 
across America saying the United States does not do this. We do not 
inflict trauma on children as a direct and deliberate strategy of 
sending a message to the world that we do not want you, if you are 
fleeing persecution, to come to our shores. We do not deliberately 
inflict trauma on children.
  In addition to the public outcry, there was court action. The 
administration agreed and said: OK. We will stop doing child 
separation. We will quit ripping children out of their parents' arms, 
but the President said, if we can't rip children out of their parents' 
arms, instead, we will lock them up. We will lock them up with their 
parents--still treating them as criminals as they await asylum here. In 
fact, the bill to that effect passed the House of Representatives, and 
35 Senators in this Chamber signed on to this bill to expand this 
system of family internment camps at the request of the administration.
  I came to this floor. I pointed out the long and shameful history of 
family internment camps in America, and I proposed a different vision. 
I put forward a bill entitled the No Family Internment Camps in America 
Act. I noted it would be a fierce fight if those who want to proceed 
with internment camps attempted to do so. This body dropped that 
effort--stopped that effort. That is good, but the administration is 
still determined to pursue this, and they have been moving funds to 
people to expand family internment camps in places like Karnes and 
Dilley. So we went there to look at these family internment camps--one 
with fathers and sons; one with mothers and daughters.
  You know, the right thing to do as families await asylum hearings is 
for them to get that hearing on a timely basis of 6 to 12 months and 
have them under a Family Case Management Program of not locking them up 
in prison. Locking up children in prisons does deep, traumatic damage 
to these children, so we must continue to fight this internment camps 
strategy.
  The four Members of Congress who were there at Dilley met with a 
woman. She and her daughter have been locked up in Dilley going on 6 
months. Yesterday was the daughter's 15th birthday. The Quinceanera is 
a big celebration--if you come from a Latin American tradition--of a 
young girl becoming a young woman. We asked the camp: Are you going to 
recognize this girl's birthday, this very significant 15th birthday, 
this quinceanera?
  No, we can't do anything special to recognize one child.
  We said: Well, why not have a policy of recognizing each child on his 
or her birthday, so you are doing the same for everyone?
  They said: No, too much trouble. We will have a monthly gathering and 
list the names of those who had birthdays that month. That will 
suffice.
  It is a symbol of the dehumanization with which we are treating 
people locked up--families we are locking up who have fled persecution 
and are awaiting an asylum hearing.
  That young woman is suffering significantly. We met with her mother. 
Her mother told us she is not sleeping well, she is not eating well, 
and she was really depressed over the fact that this very significant 
day would go unrecognized. We should never be locking up children for 
long periods of time.
  There is an agreement--a settlement--that said children will not be 
locked up for more than 20 days. It is called the Flores settlement. It 
was a settlement that came out of the fact that we recognized that 
locking up children hurts them, traumatizes them, that it should never 
happen, and it shouldn't happen for more than 20 days.
  Well, it is happening more than 20 days and not just with the mother 
and her daughter who are locked up there. They fled persecution by a 
drug gang--a gang that was extorting the family to make payments from 
their beauty supply business or beauty parlor. When she couldn't pay, 
the gang came to her house and assaulted her daughter. She told us they 
fled the next day.

  We need to improve the programs with which we are trying to help 
stabilize those countries and help decrease the power of those drug 
gangs, but, certainly, when those fleeing persecution come here to our 
shores, let's treat them with respect and dignity.
  This is a birthday card that several dozen Members signed yesterday 
that we are sending to this young woman locked up. The card says: 
``Feliz Quinceanera.'' It is signed inside by dozens of Senators. It 
says: From your friends in the Senate of the United States. We want her 
to know--we want every child who is locked up in these child prisons 
under the Trump war on children to know that we are working to end this 
war.
  We went on to Tornillo--the child prison that was initially 
established to be an emergency shelter for 1 month for 450 children. It 
has now been extended 3 times, and it has been expanded to hold not 450 
children but 3,800 children.
  At this moment, they cranked up the number of people there to 2,700, 
and they are purposely keeping this as a ``temporary shelter'' so they 
can bypass all the laws related to incarcerating children; they can 
bypass the requirements for education; they can bypass the Flores 20-
day standard.
  I asked: How many children are here over 20 days of these 2,700, a 
couple of dozen?
  The director said: No, more than 2,000 of the 2,700 children here are 
over the 20 days. Then we were told that 1,300 of those children 
already have a sponsor. They already have the sponsors who have filled 
out all the paperwork and have done their fingerprints and everything. 
They could be released immediately, if the administration would 
complete the paperwork.
  He told us that 1,300 children could be in homes and schools and 
parks in 5 to 7 days from now if the administration would complete the 
paperwork. We proceeded to hold a press conference, and we said this is 
unacceptable that the paperwork is not being completed and these 
children are being locked up here.
  We held this on Saturday. We said this Tornillo prison camp should be 
shut down. This is not the spirit of the USA and certainly is not being 
used as a temporary shelter for 1 month.
  I have good news to report because yesterday the administration said 
they are changing the rules. They expect to release several thousand 
children within the next few days--that is the right thing to do--and 
we may shut down Tornillo.
  So let's keep the attention of America on this. Let's keep the 
spotlight on it. Let's not let this war on children continue with our 
money, on our territory, under our government, deliberately inflicting 
trauma on children. It must end.
  The Family Case Management Program, which was an alternative to 
locking people up, had a report from the Department of Homeland 
Security inspector general who said 99 percent of people show up for 
their check-ins and there was 100 percent attendance at court hearings. 
There was a closeout report for the program because the administration 
shut it down, and the closeout report called the program a success. It 
said 99.3 percent attendance for court proceedings overall, 99 percent 
compliance with monitoring requirements, including check-ins, and it 
costs $38 a day compared to many hundreds of dollars for internment 
camps or prison camps.
  Let's restart a program that made sense--a program that worked. We 
have seen this series of attacks on children--child separation, family 
internment camps, child prison camps. Let's put America back on track 
and treat children coming to this country fleeing persecution with 
respect and dignity as they await their asylum hearings.
  Thank you.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Cotton). The Senator from Missouri.


                           Government Funding

  Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, we come to the end of what I think has been 
a very productive conference.
  I am not happy, as most of us aren't, with an ending that doesn't 
allow us to get all of the principal work of the Congress done, which 
is to decide how we are going to fund the government, how we are going 
to spend money. We did--this year for the first time in a long time--
get 75 percent of that job done before the beginning of the fiscal 
year. There is nowhere else in America where that would be a bragging 
point, but we hadn't done that in 20 years, and so it is a pretty 
significant accomplishment.
  What we need to figure out is what we did and how we can replicate 
that in

[[Page S7846]]

the future. We have to get to this work. We have to have the kind of 
floor debates we had this year. We don't need to let it drag into the 
end of the year as too many of the bills did this time.
  The worst possible thing to do, in my view, in terms of funding the 
government, is to shut down the government. The next worst possible 
thing to do is a long-term CR, where you just say: We couldn't decide 
how to spend the money this year, so we are going to spend it like we 
spent it last year.
  The next option is the one we are following, which appears to be a 
short-term CR to, unfortunately, come back and begin next year's work 
with the obligation to finish this year's work. That is clearly a 
mistake, and it is a mistake that ends a Congress that otherwise was 
pretty successful.
  All kinds of regulatory reform occurred. Some of it the Congress was 
involved in. For the first time in the history of the Congressional 
Review Act, the Congress--15 times--sent to the President a regulation 
that the Congress was not going to approve, and, 15 times, the 
President agreed with that decision. That happened exactly one other 
time in the 25-year history of the Congressional Review Act. There was 
one time before this Congress when it had happened 15 times.
  The regulatory situation of the country is much better. The first 
major rewrite in the tax bill in 31 years has clearly had and is having 
an impact on our economy. The numbers in my State of Missouri are as 
good as they have been in a long time. I think our unemployment number 
is at its lowest in 18 years. The national unemployment number is at 
its lowest in almost 15 years. Missouri's number, at 3.2 percent, is 
even lower than that. There are things like the long-term extension for 
the FAA, or the Federal Aviation Administration, and the farm bill. 
There are a lot of things that we should be talking about.
  I want to talk, for just a few minutes, about the things that have 
happened for Missouri this year here in the Senate. We have made 
significant progress in addressing some of the most important issues 
facing both the State and the Nation.
  Just this month, we had a land transfer for the National Geospatial-
Intelligence Agency. It started out as an ocean mapping agency in St. 
Louis, MO, decades ago, and then it became a full partner in our 
overhead architecture that tries to figure out what is going on in the 
world at any given moment on any given day--things like mapping out 
what we know about the outside of the place where Osama bin Laden was 
hiding and where he was eventually found, guessing from watching 
traffic going in and out of there, what might be on the other side of 
the door when you go in. That is just one of the things that happens at 
the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency every day.
  That one and others happened at Next NGA West, the St. Louis 
facility. There was big competition on what we should do about that. 
The decision was made to put that $1.3 billion new facility in the city 
of St. Louis, right next to one of the great Federal disasters of all 
time.
  The Pruitt-Igoe housing complex--not well thought out--had to be 
imploded within a short time of people's moving in there. Within a 
decade or so, it was known to be a disaster. Not too long after that, 
it just imploded. That is sort of, again, the implosion of so much of 
that part of a city that, at one time, was the fourth biggest city in 
the country in terms of population. It is not there any longer. There 
are things like the GEOINT workforce--the national geospatial location 
being there--that will make a difference.
  Certainly, there is aviation, and we make lots of military aircraft 
in our State. The bill that we funded that we worried so much about in 
recent years really brought it back to where we have the multiyear 
funding of things like the Super Hornet, the Hornet, and the Growler. 
It just so totally disrupts the efforts of our enemies to figure out 
what that formation of planes is all about. It is an important part of 
flying, whether they come off of the deck of a ship or off of a runway 
or anything else. Boeing won the opportunity to make the Air Force's T-
X trainer, and it is beginning the process right now. The nonmanned 
tanker is important. Just a few years ago, keeping those lines open in 
a way that we were concerned about wouldn't have happened.
  I had the chance this weekend to be a part of the launching of the 
future Freedom Class ship USS St. Louis. The Navy asked for 32 of those 
ships, and this Congress gave them 35. Now, if you are listening out 
there and you are a taxpayer and are thinking about this, well, why 
would the Congress give them 35 when they asked for 32? We look not 
just to the immediate need of that line but at the long-term and 
unfunded need. It hasn't been that long since the Navy would have asked 
for 32 ships but might have gotten 18 or 16. We are in a place in 
which, once again, we are looking at our defense obligations. We also 
had the biggest pay increase for men and women in uniform in over a 
decade. All of those things matter.
  Senator McCaskill and I worked on one piece of legislation to allow 
the historic Delta Queen, which will be based at Kimmswick, MO, which 
is just south of St. Louis on the Mississippi River, to get back in 
operation again. It is a 1920s riverboat on which, not too many years 
ago, President Carter took his summer vacation with the other 
passengers.
  The Gateway Arch was reopened. Officially, 60 years after the arch 
was built, it was time to restore it. It was also time to connect the 
arch in better and different ways to the city of St. Louis--to the 
historic courthouse where the Dred Scott decision was started. That is 
where the local Federal court case was that wound up in a Supreme Court 
disaster. In the hearts and minds of the people, they are looking back 
at how wrong-headed that particular court was, but that old courthouse 
is still there. It is now connected to the arch, as it was not before, 
and to downtown.
  I talked yesterday to the designated person who runs the Park 
Service. I said that we wanted the second century of the Park Service 
to be a public-private partnership. There is no greater example of that 
than the reopening and the restoring of the arch and in the connecting 
of it to downtown. There has been 300-and-some million dollars spent. 
Almost all of that money was either privately or locally raised with a 
tax on the city of St. Louis. I think about $20 million of that 300-
plus million-dollar project was Federal highway money.
  The message there is that if you are going to expect a different 
source of money, you also have to expect a different kind of 
partnership. I think one of the things the Park Service learned with 
that big project was if the second century of the system were going to 
be different, it can't be just like the first century. You get your 
money from somewhere else, and then do whatever you want to do. What 
happens is you get your money from somewhere else and you have to 
create a sense that you really have partners in that.
  In St. Louis, during World War II and after, a lot of the work on 
atomic weapons was done. In September, Congresswoman Wagner and I were 
able to join a signing ceremony on a record of decision of what to do 
with some of that military waste--that radioactive waste that had been 
left from the years before and after the end of World War II. It had 
been discarded by the Federal Government in ways that were not well 
thought out, in the West Lake Landfill.
  Families there have been tireless advocates in demanding that things 
be done for the health and safety of their children and their 
community. They waited for 27 years for some real criticism out there 
by Scott Pruitt, who was the EPA Director. When we first talked to him 
about this, he said that you can't be on the priority list for almost 
30 years if it is really a priority list. With his and Administrator 
Wheeler's leadership, somehow we came to a conclusion there that has 
generally been met positively by people who have worked so hard to get 
that Federal decision--there is a public-private partnership--and the 
private companies they worked with to do something with this material--
to now do the right thing with the material, which means moving it out 
of our State.
  In southeast Missouri, there was a port authority, an inland port 
authority. An almost $20 million bridge grant was announced the other 
day that will allow that inland port, with two new

[[Page S7847]]

rail lines, to become much more multimobile than it had been before.
  What is going to happen to rural food demand? It is critically 
important. No country in the world is better suited than we are to meet 
the doubling of world food demand between now and 2050. In the doubling 
of the biggest area of commerce in the world, our inland ports in that 
discussion become particularly important.
  Both the Congress and, in this case, the Missouri General Assembly 
are paying attention to the inland port structure like they have not 
before. The biggest single piece of contiguous agricultural ground in 
the world is the Mississippi River Valley. Unlike the others in the 
world that may be almost as big, it has its own built-in transportation 
network. The Missouri, the Ohio, the Arkansas, and the Illinois are 
rivers that flow into the Mississippi River and create that network 
that now links through the Panama Canal easily. You can go to Asia. You 
don't go through the Panama Canal. You easily get to the east coast of 
our country or you get to Europe and Africa. It is a great opportunity 
for us, and that kind of investment makes that opportunity more likely 
to pay the kind of dividends we would hope it would pay.
  In September of this year, Congress passed and the President signed 
the Energy and Water appropriations bill, which included $25 million 
for the Delta Regional Authority, which is an authority designed to 
benefit a part of our country in which the early focus on labor 
intensive occupations, particularly farming, has given way to looking 
at that part of our economy without thinking about what has happened to 
rural communities and the rural workforce as that has moved on. 
Broadband is part of that, and I think we are going to see that 
continue to be a big part of what goes on in the future.
  We have the small ports and the Mississippi River and tributaries 
project. We have the Ste. Genevieve National Historic Park, and the 
President signed that bill in March. Ste. Genevieve has French 
architecture that goes back to the late 1700s and to the very early 
1800s. It is unique in the kind of architecture that is preserved 
there. Some of the oldest buildings, certainly, in the middle of the 
country and, in some cases, west of the Mississippi are there, and we 
are moving forward. I hope, even this week, to do a couple of 
additional things that will make that historic park work and be open to 
people from all over the world. The French Ambassador wants to go there 
in the near future and see what we are doing, as an example, to 
maintain those buildings that are reflective of a different part of our 
heritage than we have in most of the country.
  Research institutions, like the University of Missouri, the USDA ag 
research facility in Columbia, and other places across our State, have 
benefited from additional research money.
  In East Locust Creek, in August of 2018, it was announced that the 
final investment would be made for an East Locust Creek Reservoir in 
North Central Missouri. Water is a bigger and bigger challenge as we 
look toward the future, and thinking now about how we are going to have 
the kinds of water opportunities we need for drinking water or 
agriculture water and other water is very important.
  In Sedalia, MO, a project to help--Congresswoman Hartzler and I 
worked on a project to help make the industrial park work better. Nucor 
just announced this year a significant and brandnew steel facility in 
that part of our State.
  In Kansas City, the Buck O'Neil Bridge, across the Missouri River, is 
something that has needed to be done for a long time. The community had 
come up with 90 percent of the money needed, a bridge grant that 
Secretary Chao called me about, that the community had applied for, 
gets that last $25 million of that 200-and-some million-dollar project.
  There has been a long fight at Whiteman Air Force Base in Warrensburg 
to maintain the A-10s and then do what we could to get the replacement 
wing there. That is important, as were the things that happened in 
Saint Joseph with the lift capacity, the ability with those C-130s, 
where 19 different countries come to that facility and train to figure 
out how to get the kind of support we need for military all over the 
world, including our NATO allies.
  Senator Boozman and I, from the days we were in the House together, 
formed an I-49 caucus. Another announcement just in the last month will 
allow the last few miles of I-49 to be completed in our State. I was 
there about 8 years ago when Highway 71 in Missouri became I-49, and in 
most of our State now it is I-49, and it will be I-49 in all of our 
State.
  So what has happened there and what has happened with opioid grant 
funding and with our mental health leadership in our State have 
resulted in significant legislative achievements this year.
  The HIRE Vets Act is legislation that provides not only for hiring 
vets, but it also establishes recognition. Everybody says they hire 
vets. This is following up on legislation that was passed here in the 
Senate and in the House and signed into law in May of 2017. The Labor 
Department came up with that new standard of acknowledging who hires 
vets and who is better at hiring vets than anybody else. The first five 
Missouri employers were recognized this year with dozens of employers 
all over the country, in a tiered situation. It is sort of like the 
LEED standard for energy efficiency; we now have a standard for hiring 
vets.
  As with the FAA reauthorization bill I mentioned earlier, our efforts 
to move toward more rural broadband have moved significantly this year, 
but, still, that is one of the things we need to be looking at next 
year.
  I would argue that this is certainly one of the most effective right-
of-center Congresses in a long time. I think it has been an effective 
Congress. We looked at the issues facing the country, and we have done 
the best we can, in a long- and short-range way, to deal with those 
issues. It is something we ought to be talking to people we work for 
about, trying to use that as a standard. We were good this year; let's 
figure out how to be even better next year.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from West Virginia.

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