[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 76 (Wednesday, May 8, 2019)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2712-S2714]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                     Customs and Border Protection

  Mr. President, last month, on Friday, April 12, I visited the port of 
entry in El Paso, TX, that is known as Paso Del Norte and a nearby 
Border Patrol station known as Station No. 1. What I saw was 
heartbreaking.
  The migrants who presented themselves at our border are being 
detained in cramped cells known as hieleras, Spanish for the word 
``iceboxes.'' These are metal-sided detention rooms, which the 
detainees complain are kept painfully cold. The sign above one of these 
detention room doors reads ``Capacity: 35.'' I took a few minutes and 
counted the number of men in that cell. Capacity may have been 35, but 
there were over 150 men standing in that cell and maybe one toilet. The 
large, heavy glass window on the cell gave a clear view of the 
detainees. But for a few benches along the walls, which accommodate a 
very small number, there is literally no room to sit or lie down. Meals 
are provided to the standing migrants to eat in the cell. Many will 
wait for up to 3 weeks in this so-called icebox to be transferred to an 
ICE facility.
  Next to it was a woman's cell that has a sign reading ``Capacity: 
16.'' I paused and counted about 75 women in a cell designed for 16, 
including nursing mothers with their babies. As our eyes would lock, 
some of the women would mouth the word ``help.''
  Just outside this building, hundreds of men and women and children 
who were brought in from the border hours before stood in long lines. 
These migrants are at the end of a long and dangerous journey, and this 
preliminary process led them to a table where four officials were 
writing down information. The approach was clearly designed to be slow, 
and it was clearly understaffed.
  I stood in line with a translator speaking to those who were waiting. 
One was a young mother holding a 1-

[[Page S2713]]

year-old child. She told me of taking 4 weeks--1 month--to escape 
Honduras and to cross Mexico to escape the narco gangsters in her 
country. Another young Honduran woman, pregnant and obviously close to 
delivering, stood patiently in line. The young father-to-be hovered 
behind her, holding two disposable diapers. The previous night, they 
had come to our border looking for protection. I asked them why, in her 
condition, she would make such a journey. She told me she was 
threatened with not only her death but the death of her infant if her 
husband refused to work with the drug gangs in Honduras. As a result, 
she told me her family sold absolutely everything they had to pay for 
the transporters--also known as smugglers or coyotes--to transport them 
across Mexico to our border.

  Included in the omnibus appropriations bill that we wrote this year 
was more than $400 million for humanitarian assistance for the border. 
We could do so much more even in the midst of our political debate--so 
much more to treat these desperate people in a humane way.
  I am sorry to report that I do not believe the detention facilities 
that we have for detained migrants could possibly pass any inspection 
by the International Red Cross. We are America. We are better than 
this.
  It is clear the Trump administration's border security policies have 
failed. They have destabilized the region, encouraged more migration, 
and are driving more families into the arms of human traffickers. The 
Trump administration has shut down legal avenues for vulnerable 
families and children fleeing persecution.
  There was a program called the Central American Minors Program under 
President Obama. It was straightforward. Children and certain relatives 
seeking protection who lived in a country such as Honduras could 
present themselves in-country at the consulate, fill out the forms, and 
determine whether they were eligible for refugee status or humanitarian 
parole. These children and family members didn't have to make a 
dangerous journey, liquidate everything they owned on Earth, and risk 
their lives. President Trump closed down that program. Why? Wouldn't 
you want them to learn their status, if they could, in their country of 
origin?
  Migrants fleeing persecution are also being blocked from using legal 
ports of entry. They have been forced to use human traffickers to cross 
the border illegally. They may have gone through ports of entry and 
presented themselves, but when we started queuing them up and limiting 
the number each day, some of them, in desperation, went to present 
themselves at the border between ports of entry. Make no mistake. This 
is not an invasion, as the President has described over and over. This 
is actually a person making his or her way across that desert land and 
presenting themselves voluntarily to the first person in an American 
uniform.
  The President terminated temporary protected status for El Salvador 
and Honduras, which could force a quarter of a million people back to 
these countries--exactly the opposite of what we should be doing at 
this moment.
  The President has also proposed slashing the humanitarian and 
security assistance to the Northern Triangle. That is illogical. The 
notion that we would cut off funds to these desperate countries that 
lack civil government and that are controlled by drug gangs will make 
the situation worse. It will make these people more desperate.
  The President is doing and saying exactly the opposite of what he 
should be saying. I understand his emotion. We see it regularly. I 
understand his anger, but someone should sit down with him and explain 
to him that he is making the matter worse. Each of these policy 
mistakes could be reversed by the President immediately. Let's not 
forget that just a few short months ago, the President shut down the 
Federal Government in his desperate pursuit of taxpayer-funded border 
walls so he could fulfill a campaign promise. We all remember, of 
course, that Mexico was supposed to pay for this wall. That has been 
forgotten by most, but not by those of us who have a memory of the last 
campaign.
  Did you realize that while the government was shut down, the 
President shut down the immigration courts? In not paying or not 
allowing them to meet the immigration court backlog, it started 
growing, making the situation even worse. Every time the President's 
emotion takes over on immigration, his instincts are 180 degrees off 
course. When the President blocks all assistance to the Northern 
Triangle countries--Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador--and shuts 
down avenues to legal migration, he guarantees that more refugees will 
flee to our border. When he talks about ``dumping'' these migrants into 
sanctuary cities, he shows contempt for these human beings and their 
plight. When he uses words like ``murderers,'' ``rapists,'' and 
``invasion,'' he appeals to base emotions of fear and hate. At every 
turn, the President has responded to this heartbreaking humanitarian 
challenge at the border with threats and meanness that only makes the 
matter worse.
  When Attorney General Barr is not busy trying to make the Justice 
Department the President's personal law firm, he is enthusiastically 
carrying out Attorney General Sessions' and Secretary Nielsen's legacy 
of failed immigration policies.
  One year ago, on May 7, 2018, then-Attorney General Sessions made an 
announcement. He announced that the Department of Homeland Security was 
referring 100 percent of the border cases to the Justice Department to 
be prosecuted under criminal statutes, under what they characterized as 
the ``zero-tolerance'' policy. The targets of those prosecutions 
included mothers seeking safety from gang violence and domestic 
violence.
  We know the result. I remember that last August I went to an 
immigration court in Chicago. I didn't know it was there. It was in the 
Loop, downtown, in an office building, and one whole floor was 
dedicated to a U.S. immigration court. This was after the announcement 
of the zero-tolerance policy. I could barely get off the elevator. The 
hallways were packed for the hearings that were scheduled. It was a 
long, long docket.
  I went into the courtroom before it started and sat down with the 
immigration court judge who had been on the job for almost two decades. 
I believe she is a caring person who really wanted to follow the law 
and do it in a thoughtful, humane way. She asked me if I wanted to stay 
for the first docket call. I said I would.
  So I watched as she asked everyone in the courtroom to take their 
seats before the two clients who would be called first. One of these 
clients had difficulty getting into the chair. Maria was 2 years old. 
She wasn't old enough to climb in the chair by herself. She had been 
separated from her parent under this policy announced by Attorney 
General Sessions. So they lifted her up and put her in the chair and 
handed her a stuffed animal that she clung to. She obviously didn't 
understand a thing about what was happening in that room--2 years old 
and in an immigration court of the United States.
  The other client was much more agile. He was able to get into the 
chair. His name was Hamilton, and he was 4 years old. The reason he 
scrambled into the chair is that he saw a Matchbox car on top of the 
table.
  Those were, I believe, the first two clients under the zero-tolerance 
policy in a Chicago courtroom. Can we possibly be proud of that? Were 
those children separated from their mothers and fathers in an effort to 
deter others from coming to the United States? Is that what this was 
all about?
  It didn't take long for President Trump to abandon the zero-tolerance 
policy. Thankfully, after a few months, a Federal judge in San Diego, 
CA, said: That is it. Reunite those kids with their parents.
  It turned out that there were more than 2,800 of these children who 
had been separated from their parents. Some of them are still in the 
system. Even after several months the government was unable to locate 
their families so the children could be reunited with them. There have 
been hints by the President that he is going to return to that policy. 
Really? Really? Is that what America is all about--snatching children 
away from their parents?
  Those who are experts in the area, psychologists and doctors, tell us 
that this could have a long-term dramatic negative impact on a baby. It 
is understandable. I have seen cases and met

[[Page S2714]]

the mothers, when, finally, after months they were reunited and the 
child wanted nothing to do with them, feeling that they had been 
abandoned by their parents. America is better than that.
  In an investigation by the inspector general of Health and Human 
Services that I requested with Senator Patty Murray, it now turns out 
that 1 year ago, even before the announcement of zero tolerance, 
thousands of kids may have been separated by this same administration, 
and we still don't know their plight. The Federal judge in San Diego 
has once again asked for a human accounting of what happened to those 
kids.
  I stand ready to work with my Republican friends on smart, effective, 
and humane border security, but we need the Trump administration to 
drop the cruel campaign of targeting families and children and focus on 
the real threats to America--the lethal narcotics that still flood our 
communities, 80 to 90 percent which come through ports of entry that we 
were discussing today.
  In the last Congress, Democrats introduced the Central America Reform 
and Enforcement Act as a comprehensive response to the problem. The 
bill addresses measures like the root causes of migration from the 
Northern Triangle countries. If our laws are so bad and so welcoming to 
people who shouldn't be here, why is it that overwhelmingly these 
people are coming from three countries? They are not coming from Mexico 
or other Central American countries. There is something going on in 
these three countries--Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador--that needs 
to be addressed. We need to crack down on the cartels and the 
traffickers.
  Make no mistake. Our thirst and appetite for narcotics coming into 
this country has created a cycle of violence and death. As we purchase 
the narcotics and send drug money back to the cartels in Central 
America and Mexico, that money fuels their further efforts to export 
narcotics to the United States, as well the export of firearms. The GAO 
found that seventy percent of the guns confiscated and traced in Mexico 
came from the United States, most purchased legally in gun shops and at 
gun shows. In the name of the Second Amendment and not doing a 
background check, we are literally arming the drug cartels that are 
terrorizing people in Central America.
  We have to put two and two together. We have to expand third-country 
resettlement in Mexico and other Central American countries. We have to 
have in-country processing of refugees, as I mentioned earlier, and we 
have to eliminate the immigration court backlog.
  I will be introducing legislation soon to achieve these goals. I am 
willing to work with colleagues on both sides of the aisle to address 
this crisis on our border.
  Mr. President, there is no one else on the floor to speak. I ask 
unanimous consent to address another subject for the record.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.