[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.
                                 ______