[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 29 (Thursday, February 14, 2019)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1395-S1396]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           GOVERNMENT FUNDING

  Mr. CARPER. Madam President, I want to talk a little bit about John 
Dingell this evening, but before I do that, I just want to comment on 
the fact that we passed spending bills to fund our government for the 
balance of this fiscal year. That is a good thing--a good, good thing. 
I wish we had done it last year. In fact, we did--months ago. Democrats 
and Republicans joined together here almost unanimously to pass a 
spending plan for the balance of the fiscal year--all 13 appropriations 
bills, and they looked a whole lot like what we passed here today. Yet 
we went through a shutdown which created a lot of havoc and turmoil, 
not just for Federal employees but for the people whom they serve and 
we serve.
  I have apologized for that, and I know other colleagues have as well. 
Hopefully, in the months ahead, we can make it up to the people who 
were inconvenienced. In many cases they were not just disadvantaged but 
treated very badly.
  The President apparently is going to sign the spending bills we 
passed with broad bipartisan support, and I understand he is going to 
declare a state of emergency to be able to do additional things down at 
the border with Mexico.
  Tomorrow morning at 6 a.m., I will lead a bipartisan delegation, with 
House and Senate Members, and we will not be going to the border. I 
have been there any number of times as chairman of the Homeland 
Security Committee. We are not going to go to the border this time.
  The President was down there a couple of weeks ago, and standing at 
the border he said: There is a human catastrophe or tragedy going on at 
the border.
  I thought to myself: Well, what is going on at the border is very 
unfortunate, but the real human tragedy is what is going on in three 
countries: Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador. The illegal 
immigration, to my surprise a couple of years ago, is not just coming 
from Mexico. In fact, today there are more Mexicans going back into 
Mexico from the United States than there are going the other way. I was 
surprised to learn that, but that is the case today.
  Illegal immigration in our country is down about 80 percent from the 
year 2000, and the folks coming across the border illegally are coming 
from three countries--Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador. Each year 
in the last decade or so, they have vied for the title ``Murder Capital 
of the World.''
  Their lives are made miserable because of our addiction to drugs. So 
having been complicit in their misery, the thought occurred to a number 
of us, including the last administration's President and Vice President 
and some of us in the House and the Senate, that maybe we should see 
why all of those people are coming out of Honduras, Guatemala, and El 
Salvador and trying to come into the United States.
  I will tell a true story. Some of them come to Delaware. We have 
three counties in my State. The southernmost county, Sussex County, is 
a big county that raises a lot of corn, soybeans, and raise a lot of 
chickens. We process a lot of chickens. Over the years, a lot of folks 
come up from Guatemala to work in the agriculture and poultry industry.
  About 2 or 3 years ago, we had an increase--a blip in migration--
especially from Guatemala. I was in Sussex County, in Georgetown, the 
county seat, right in the middle of all of this poultry business. There 
are three chickens for every person in Delaware, to give you some idea 
of the extent of it.
  I met with the folks at La Esperanza. That is Spanish for hope. It is 
a non-profit. Their job is to try to help people who do make it across 
the border into our country and who have families, and they try to do 
some reconnection with their families.
  But, anyway, I heard this story. There was a young man in Guatemala, 
a teenager, who was recruited by a gang there. He said he had to talk 
to his parents. He went to talk to his parents, and they said: We don't 
want you to join any gangs.
  He went back, and the gang found him and approached him a couple of 
days later and said: Well, what do you think? Do you want to join our 
gang? He said: I talked to my parents, and they don't think it is the 
right thing for me to do now.
  They said: Well, think about it some more.
  A week or so later, they found him again and said: Well, what do you 
think? Are you ready to join our gang?
  He said: No, I don't think I am going to do that now.
  They said: If you don't join our gang, somebody in your family is 
going to die. Somebody in your family is going to die.
  He went home, and he told his parents. They talked it over, and he 
joined the gang.
  One of the things they do in these gangs--they have to go through an 
initiation. Part of his initiation was a requirement that he rape his 
13-year-old sister. The son was like 15 years old, and one of the rites 
of passage is he had to rape his 13-year-old sister. He went home and 
told his parents what was expected of him. Within a week or two, the 
sister and the brother were on their way out of their country to try to 
be reunited with other relatives in the United States, and they ended 
up in Delaware. That is a human tragedy. I think if they had stayed 
there, it would have been probably an even greater human tragedy.
  I am a big believer in root causes. Don't just address the symptoms 
of the problem. The symptom of the problem is people trying to get into 
our country and cross our borders illegally. That is a problem. That is 
a challenge. We need secure borders, but the root cause is what is 
going on in the countries that they are fleeing from--lack of rule of 
law, impunity, police who don't police, prosecutors who don't 
prosecute, judges who don't really administer the law, prisons that 
don't--correctional institutions that don't really correct behavior. 
Instead of turning out better people, they turn out better criminals. 
That has been a problem, and it has been a problem for some time.
  Whenever we face a situation like this where an issue is really hard 
to deal with, what I like to say is, let's find out what works.
  I am an old Governor. I used to be chairman of the National Governors 
Association. My last year as Governor, I chaired something in the NGA. 
In addition to being the Governor of Delaware, I chaired something 
called the Center for Best Practices. The idea was, how do we share 
solutions among Governors and among States for all the problems we 
face--some of the problems we face?
  In trying to figure out how we help Guatemala and El Salvador sort of 
become less violent places, places with hope and opportunity--how can 
we help in that? So we looked around the world. We don't have to look 
too far, but if we look south of Central America, we find Colombia.
  Colombia is a place where about 20 years ago, there were leftist 
guerillas trying to bring down the government, and there were drug 
lords trying to bring down the government. One day 20 years or so ago, 
a bunch of thugs rounded up the supreme court of the country--rounded 
them up, took them into a room, shot them all to death, killed them 
all.
  Colombia was teetering, and it was not clear whether it was going to 
really make it as a nation. Some very brave people stood up and some of 
the leaders of Columbia stood up and said: We are not going to let 
these guys--whether it is the FARC, the leftist guerillas, or the drug 
lords--take over our country and take it down. We are going to fight 
back.

[[Page S1396]]

  The United States, led by then-President Bill Clinton and by a guy 
who was serving as the chairman, I think, of the Foreign Relations 
Committee, Joe Biden, sort of made common calls with the President of 
Colombia, who was a very brave person, and said to the Colombians: You 
can do this. Stabilize your country. Make it a more livable, decent 
place to live. We can help because we are complicit in their misery, 
too, given our addiction to drugs.
  Well, guess what. They started something called Plan Colombia, and 
for 20 years it has worked slowly. Slowly. An example of what we did is 
we provided Apache helicopters. Why did we do that? So that the 
Colombian police and the Colombian military would have the mobility 
they need to go across the country and go after the bad guys and take 
them on. That was just one of the many things that was happening in 
Plan Colombia.
  But again, it is like Home Depot. You have Home Depot, Madam 
President, in your State, and we have them in mine. What is their 
saying? ``You can do it, and we can help.'' So we said: Colombia, you 
can do it, and we can help. We are complicit in your misery, and we can 
help. And we have.
  About a year or so ago, the President of Colombia won a Nobel Peace 
Prize. The leftist guerillas are--it is not perfect, but they are part 
of the government. Are drugs still a problem there? Yes, they are, but 
not like before. It is a country with a relatively bright future and 
one that we can be proud to call our friend and ally.
  When we looked for a way to help in Central America--the Honduras, 
Guatemala, and El Salvador--we went to Colombia, and we said: Maybe it 
is possible to have a Central American version of Plan Colombia. And 
now we have that.
  What we have done over the last 3, maybe 4 years, we funded those 
three countries in efforts to address some of the deficiencies that I 
just described--police who don't police, prosecutors who don't 
prosecute, judges who don't administer justice, and correctional 
institutions that don't really correct behavior. We have been doing 
this now for about 3 years, and our congressional delegation is going 
to go down there tomorrow and do a little bit of oversight and find out 
what is working in those three countries and what is not, whether they 
are meeting their responsibilities, and whether we are meeting our 
responsibilities.
  You know, we can build a wall from sea to shining sea and from the 
Pacific Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico. It can be 30 feet tall. But unless 
somehow the root causes of that migration--and it ain't coming from 
Mexico--some but not much. Again, more Mexicans are going back into 
Mexico than are coming the other way.
  We really want to help the people of the Honduras, Guatemala, and El 
Salvador address those root causes. You know, they are going to keep 
coming up here, and if we lived there, we would want to come too.
  You know, for what it is worth, we have had about 80 Presidential 
declarations of emergencies, I guess, in maybe the last century, and 
they were for Pearl Harbor, Katrina, 9/11, other disasters, some of 
them natural disasters, others. Since 2000, there has been an 80 
percent reduction in illegal migration at the borders. Most of it is 
coming from these three countries, not Mexico. So we will see what 
happens with the declaration of emergency that the President is going 
to declare.
  I think you have to be careful. To my Republican friends, I say this 
lovingly to you on Valentine's Day: The idea of a President invoking 
his powers, using his powers in this way, I am frankly not convinced 
that--while there certainly are challenges at the border, I have 
explained where I think the real challenges are, the real causes.
  Someday, we will have a Democratic President, and he or she will be 
considering a range of options of what to do, and somebody is going to 
suggest: Well, in the earlier administration, the Trump administration, 
they declared it. So they will say: Well, I will just declare a 
national emergency and do what I want to do. That is a slippery slope, 
and I think that is one we need to be very careful about going on.

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