[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 72 (Thursday, May 2, 2019)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2616-S2617]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
By Mr. CORNYN:
S. 1303. A bill to amend the Immigration and Nationality Act to
address the protective custody of alien children accompanied by
parents, and for other purposes; to the Committee on the Judiciary.
Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, during the last break in our schedule here
in Congress in Washington, I spent 2 weeks traveling across my State--
as all of us, no doubt, did--and listening and talking to my
constituents about what is on their minds, what they think we ought to
be doing, and what our priorities should be.
In one city, I spoke with students and teachers about the need to
improve college and career readiness for historically underrepresented
populations and how a piece of legislation that we have introduced with
colleagues called the GEAR UP for Success Act would better serve those
students.
It was a little bit of a revelation for me, having come from a family
where my parents expected me to go to college, and they themselves went
to college, that if other children are growing up and don't have that
experience--many times, their parents are not prepared to help counsel
them on which courses they ought to begin to take as early as seventh
grade in order to be prepared with the prerequisites to advance up the
educational ladder and be ready for college, to get into the college of
their choice. So that was an important piece of legislation. Certainly,
working together with colleagues here, I hope we can reauthorize and
fund those grants so that more of our young people can get the
advantage that comes from that sort of counseling and tutoring and
help.
I also spent a little time at Dyess Air Force Base in Abilene, TX, to
talk about military readiness and the importance of the new strategic
bomber--the B-21--mission that is coming to Texas and to the U.S. Air
Force.
I also had a chance to talk to some of my educators and other
advocates about the Jenna Quinn Law, which is designed to help give
caregivers and teachers training so that they can actually recognize
and report signs of child sexual abuse in the children for whom they
are responsible.
It has been interesting to me because it actually follows on
legislation that passed and has been successful in Texas to train
teachers and caregivers on the signs of child sexual abuse so that they
can help get those children the help they need, sometimes by asking
questions they would never ask if they had not been trained to
recognize those signs.
Jenna Quinn herself was an example--this bill is named for her--of
somebody who was asked by her sister: Jenna, has somebody hurt you? And
that opened up the story and, fortunately, a prosecution and began the
path to healing from that trauma.
It is great to be able to talk about a number of topics as we all
return home, and you can imagine, coming from Texas, with 1,200 miles
of common border with Mexico, one of the things we talked about is the
humanitarian crisis along the southwestern border.
Border Patrol agents in the Rio Grande Valley Sector encountered
several large groups of people trying to enter the United States last
week. This is just in 1 week. On Thursday, agents near La Joya
responded to a report of a large group of migrants and found more than
220 people in that one group, mostly families and unaccompanied
children from Central America. The very next day, they came across two
additional large groups, one with 145 people and another with nearly
300. On Sunday, they apprehended a group of 170. That brings the total
to more than 800 people from just 4 groups in 1 week.
These numbers represent a surge in the volume of people we see coming
across the border historically. In fact, now almost all of them come
from someplace other than Mexico. There is actually no new net
migration from Mexico. But we see people being recruited and paying for
the services of human smugglers to come from Central America and
actually many other countries around the world where people realize
that if they can get access to Central America and they can pay the
fees to the human smugglers, they can make their way into the United
States.
That is why even President Obama said in 2014 that this is a
humanitarian and security crisis. In fact, the statement that President
Obama made in June of 2014 when he said that came on the heels of 2
months of record-high apprehensions of unaccompanied children. Between
May and June of 2014, more than 135,000 people were apprehended at the
southern border. Those numbers were absolutely mind-boggling to us at
the time, but those figures pale in comparison to the level of
apprehensions we are seeing today.
In February and March of this year--again, a 2-month period--more
than 180,000 people were apprehended at the southwestern border. So in
2014 when President Obama called it a humanitarian and security crisis,
it was 135,000. Today, in February and March, it was 180,000. That is
more than a 33-percent increase from the humanitarian crisis President
Obama referred to in 2014. So if it was a crisis then, it has now
turned into a full system failure, and all lights are blinking red.
Detention centers are at over capacity. The already understaffed
Border Patrol is struggling to meet their needs. Officers and agents
are pulling double duty, as law enforcement officials have become
caregivers for children. Customs agents are being pulled off their duty
to process migrants. NGOs--the nongovernmental organizations--and
community organizations that usually help the migrants process the
system are unable to keep pace. Cities and counties across the border
are bearing the brunt of this massive wave of humanity.
But if you think the situation is bad now, and it is, it will only
continue to get worse because we typically see higher apprehension
rates in April and May than we do in February and
[[Page S2617]]
March. These rapidly depleting resources are being overwhelmed, as I
said, and cannot keep pace.
We need to address the root of the problem, and we need to do it
soon. Only Congress can pass the legislation that is needed in order to
come to grips with this crisis. It is time for us to pass legislation
that will provide our frontline officers and agents with the resources
they need in terms of staffing, authorities, and infrastructure.
It is also important for us to plug some of the holes that are being
exploited by the human smugglers and others that allow them to
successfully place migrants into the United States 97 percent of the
time as long as they are an unaccompanied minor or come with a family.
Fortunately, I found a partner and ally from the House body who
happens to be a Democrat by the name of Henry Cuellar, who is willing
to work with me on this issue. He has been my ally on a number of
efforts to bring commonsense reform, when it comes to border security
or trade, to Texas. We don't always agree, but we can agree on a number
of things, and those are the things on which we like to work together.
Earlier today, Henry Cuellar and I introduced the HUMANE Act, which
will make important and long-overdue reforms to our immigration system,
and it includes commonsense provisions that Republicans and Democrats
can and should agree on.
First, it closes a major loophole that is often exploited by the
human smugglers when they bring families into the United States across
the border illegally. This is called generically the Flores Settlement
Agreement. That name comes from a 1997 agreement that determined that
the Department of Homeland Security can only detain unaccompanied
children for 20 days before releasing them to the Department of Health
and Human Services.
While this was unquestionably well-intentioned at the beginning, it
has morphed into a much bigger problem because in 2016, the Ninth
Circuit Court of Appeals expanded the Flores holding, effectively
applying the settlement not just to unaccompanied children but also to
families and turning it into a pull factor for illegal immigrants
hoping to game the system.
I am grateful for the support of my friend and ally Congressman
Cuellar because we recognize that rather than single adults arriving at
the border alone, many people are now bringing children with them so
they can pose as a family. They realize they can bring a child--
anybody's child--and pose as a family unit so they can be released
after 20 days. Children are literally being kidnapped to serve as a
free ticket into the United States. Sadly, many are abused along the
way, and many arrive at our border in very ill health. We simply cannot
stand by and do nothing and let this continue to occur.
I know today I read in one of our newspapers that the San Antonio
Chamber of Commerce said that because Customs agents are being
redeployed to deal with children and families, handing out juice boxes
and diapers, that there has been a huge slowdown in cross-border
commerce and trade. Because of the unique nature of the supply chains
that apply to manufacturing both in Mexico and the United States, they
estimate that as much as $800 million a day is being lost because now
our infrastructure and our staffing at our borders are being
overwhelmed.
So the HUMANE Act would clarify that the Flores Settlement Agreement
only applies to unaccompanied children and not to families, and it
would provide greater time for processing and immigration proceedings
to take place before the families are released from custody.
Secondly, this legislation would require that all unaccompanied
children are processed the same, regardless of the country of their
origin, because under current law, children from Mexico and Canada can
be promptly returned home if they don't have a legitimate claim, but
processes for other countries move much more slowly, if at all. Put
simply, we should make every effort to safely return these children to
their home countries as quickly as possible if they don't qualify for
an immigration benefit, just as we do now for those from Mexico and
Canada.
It would also require all children to undergo biometric and DNA
screening to establish family relationships and ensure that they are,
in fact, traveling with relatives rather than human smugglers.
To better protect children who are released to Health and Human
Services, this bill would place prohibitions on certain individuals who
could be serving as guardians. For example, no child should be released
to the custody of a sex offender or a human trafficker.
Third, the HUMANE Act would enable family units to stay together--
something, I would think, that all of us should agree on--and
streamline the process for those in custody.
Consistent with the recommendations from the bipartisan DHS Homeland
Security Advisory Council, the bill would require DHS to establish at
least four regional processing centers along the southern border to
house and process families. This would literally serve as a one-stop
shop, with DHS personnel from Customs and Border Protection, ICE,
USCIS, and FEMA assisting migrants and working to process their claims.
Under this legislation, asylum officers and immigration judges would
be forward-deployed to adjudicate claims and expedite the entire
process, which we hope would begin to ease the burden on our current
debilitating immigration court backlog.
In addition to those changes, the legislation also includes
provisions to make commonsense improvements, like additional Customs
and Border Patrol personnel, and training for our CBP and ICE employees
who work with children.
While we know this will not fix all of the problems that exist in our
immigration system, we believe it is an important start to change the
calculation when it comes to people who say: I know I don't qualify for
asylum, but I am going to try anyway, and I am going to pay a human
smuggler $5,000, $6,000, $7,000, or $8,000 to try to get me from my
home in Central America into the United States because right now, 97
percent of the time, it works.
This is also a huge bonanza to these cartels that are commodity
agnostic. They trade in drugs. They traffic children, women, and, yes,
they move migrants across the border for money. This will put a big
dent in their profits, as we should want to do.
It will also send a message to those who do not have valid claims:
Don't even try.
So it will have a deterrent value, which I think will begin to help
us control the huge surge of humanity coming across now, which were, as
I said, 76,000 in February and 103,000 in March. We are going to see
those numbers continue to go up and up and up, further overwhelming our
capacity to deal with this humanitarian crisis unless we do something,
like this legislation that Congressman Cuellar and I have introduced.
I am grateful for the support and cooperation of my friend and
colleague from the House. I am sure there are people in his party who
will say he has done too much, just as there are people in my party who
will say we haven't done enough. But around here, you have to start
somewhere, and where you start is where you can find common cause and
agreement and begin to build consensus to solve problems.
Hopefully, if we are successful in passing this legislation, this
will not only address this humanitarian crisis, but it will maybe
establish a downpayment of goodwill and demonstrate our ability to
solve some of our other problems here in the Congress, particularly
those that relate to our broken immigration system.
I hope we will soon have the opportunity to consider this text in the
Judiciary Committee--I talked to Chairman Graham, who seemed willing to
do that--and bring more members into the debate so we can provide
relief for those struggling to manage the crisis.
______