[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 85 (Tuesday, May 21, 2019)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2991-S2993]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
Immigration
Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, it is difficult to believe that it is
happening, but I have seen it. It was about 5 weeks ago that I was in
El Paso, TX. I went down to see what has happening on the border. You
can't escape all the stories that have been written about the number of
people who are coming to our border and what is happening to them, so I
wanted to see it for myself.
I saw what was a detention facility for people who had been stopped
at the border. There was a cell with a plate glass window, so that you
could see everything inside. Above the door of the cell, it said,
``capacity 35.'' I looked inside and counted--took the time to slowly
count--and I counted 150 men in that cell, standing shoulder to
shoulder. Few of them could sit on the benches on the side of the
walls--150.
There was one toilet in that cell. They were fed their meals to eat
standing up. They slept taking turns lying down on the floor. Some of
them would be there for 3 days and some as long as 6 weeks.
Next to that cell was another one with a plate glass window; you
could see inside. Above the door, it read, ``capacity 16.'' This was a
cell for women. I counted 75 women in that cell--``capacity 16.'' There
were four or five of them with nursing babies.
I have since learned, in the few weeks since I saw this and witnessed
it firsthand, things have gotten dramatically worse. The cell with 150
now has almost 200 men jammed into it. The cell with the women is even
worse than what I saw when I visited.
If I described these conditions in a prison in some foreign country,
you would say: For goodness' sakes, the United States of America should
speak up for human rights. We cannot allow human beings to be treated
that way.
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This detention facility for these immigrants is in the United States
of America. It has to come to an end, and it has to start with a
commitment by the people of this country through their elected
representatives in Congress and this President to stop this inhumane
treatment of these individuals.
Today, I am sending a letter that I never thought I would send. I am
joining other Senators in a letter to the International Red Cross. You
see, we call on the International Red Cross to go to developing
countries and look at their prison situations and decide whether they
are humane.
I cannot believe that I am asking them to do this in the United
States of America. Because I have seen it with my own eyes and I have
been told that it is getting worse, I feel I have no choice.
I am also asking for the inspector general of the Department of
Homeland Security to immediately, on an emergency basis, review the
detention facilities for adults and children. Why do I raise that
point? We know what this administration did last year in a project
called zero tolerance.
Zero tolerance, announced by the Attorney General of the United
States Jeff Sessions, said we will treat everyone who comes to our
border as a criminal. Understand that people can come to our border and
present themselves, as many of these people do, and ask for asylum.
They have turned themselves in. They are not sneaking in.
They have turned themselves in for adjudication as to whether they
are eligible to be in this country. Attorney General Sessions said last
year that we will treat them as criminals, and therefore, because they
are suspected criminals, we will remove their children from them.
How many kids under zero tolerance were taken by the Trump
administration away from their parents? More than two thousand eight
hundred--I know that number because a Federal judge in southern
California took this administration to court and said: I want an
accounting for every one of those children.
I saw those children--at least some of them--in Chicago. They go
through a bureaucratic process and end up at agencies--at Health and
Human Services agencies to try to place them in foster care or connect
them up with a member of their family.
I remember, in a room, they brought in some of the children who had
been taken away from their parents. There were two little 4-year-old
girls who I thought were sisters, and then as I looked more closely, I
realized they weren't. They just seemed like sisters, and they had
become friends at that facility. They were 4 years old, holding hands.
We gave them crayons and coloring books, what you would give to little
kids.
Then I went to an immigration court proceeding in downtown Chicago in
an office building. You would never know it from the street, but on the
fourth floor of this high-rise, we have a U.S. immigration court. A
very caring judge was there, and she was trying to get through a docket
that was very heavy.
She invited me to stay for the first case of the day that involved
two clients. It was tough to get this proceeding underway because zero
tolerance had resulted in more children coming into these immigration
courts. The difficulty in getting this hearing underway was that she
said: Before we start, I want everyone to take their seats.
It was hard to get Marta to take her seat. Marta was 2 years old. She
had to be lifted into the chair and handed a stuffed animal for her
hearing. Luckily for the other client, Hamilton, he spotted one of
those Matchbox cars on top of the table, and 4-year-old Hamilton
scrambled up into the chair.
In the United States of America at an immigration hearing, the
clients were 2 years old and 4 years old because of the conscious
policy of this administration to separate children from their parents.
So we have this setting with detention cells jammed with people in
inhumane circumstances and the separation of children from their
parents.
I sent a letter to the inspector general of the Department of Health
and Human Services asking about these children who had been separated.
They came back to me a few months ago and said: We have discovered
there were more.
Before they announced it, this administration had been separating
infants, toddlers, and children from their parents as they presented
themselves at the border. The judge who was involved in the case in
southern California stepped in and asked: Well, how many?
It is now reported at least 1,712 more kids may have been separated.
That means we have over 4,500 babies, toddlers, infants, and children
separated from their parents by this administration. Sadly, some of
these children will not be reunited. Their parents were sent back,
usually to the Central American countries they came from, and now the
kids are in the system and way too young to even remember who Mom or
Dad was.
This circumstance has reached the point of a humanitarian crisis on
our border. How can this President, who was elected promising that he
would do something about immigration, have brought us to this terrible
moment where we have more people presenting themselves at the border
than we have had in recent history--certainly those with children? We
have never had families in these numbers showing up. The tougher this
President's rhetoric is and the meaner his tweets are, the more people
come to our borders. It is exactly the opposite of what he promised us.
This circumstance here is absolutely intolerable, unacceptable, and
embarrassing to our country. That we would have to call on an
international organization to look at the way we are treating people in
the United States--I am sorry it has come to this. But in good
conscience, I can't ignore it.
The most recent news report said that another child died at the
border. I think that brings the total to five in the last few months.
Is that what America has come to?
We need to have an immigration policy that makes sense. Absolutely,
we must have border security. In an age of terrorism and drug
epidemics, I want to know what is coming into this country, and I want
to know what they are bringing with them.
Second, the United States certainly cannot accept everyone in the
world who wants to come here. It is understandable they want to live in
this great country. That is what brought my grandmother and more to
these shores as immigrants to this country. But we cannot accept
everyone in the world.
Third, we don't want anyone dangerous coming into this country,
period. No exceptions. If you are dangerous and not legal in this
country, you should be gone.
Having said that, now it is our burden to come up with a
comprehensive immigration bill that makes sense for this Nation of
immigrants in the 21st century.
Unfortunately, the U.S. Senate and this empty Chamber tell you how
much work we do on legislation. We give speeches--we ran for the Senate
to give speeches--and occasionally we vote on another nominee every few
hours. That is it. You will not see a comprehensive immigration bill
come to the floor of the Senate. It hasn't--not this year and not for
the previous 6 years. But the last time it did, I was part of a
bipartisan effort that wrote one that passed the Senate with I believe
68 votes--an overwhelming rollcall, bipartisan, in favor of immigration
reform. That died in the Republican-controlled House, and there has
never been another try since. Why were we elected to come here if we
can't face this problem squarely, dealing with what is going on at our
border and making sense of our immigration system?
There is a humanitarian nightmare on our border, but I will tell you
about another one. This President decided to end the DACA Program. I
know a little bit about that--maybe more than some of my colleagues--
because it was 19 years ago that I introduced a bill. We do a lot of
that. This bill was called the DREAM Act--19 years ago. It said: If you
were brought to this country as a child, you lived here, went to
school, and didn't get in trouble with the law, you ought to have a
chance to become legal in America. That was it. For 19 years, we have
been trying to make it the law of the land and have been unable to get
60 votes in the Senate. We always got a majority but never the 60 votes
we needed.
[[Page S2993]]
I appealed to my former Senate colleague and friend, President Obama,
and said: Can you do something to help these young people who have
never known another country and want to be part of the United States
and its future? Many of the schoolchildren who visit us here get up in
their classrooms every day, and I am proud to say they put their hands
over their hearts and pledge allegiance to that flag. These kids do
exactly the same thing. It is the only flag and the only country they
have ever known.
So President Obama created what was called DACA, and more than
800,000 of these young people stepped up, paid a filing fee of almost
$500, went through a criminal background check, and were given a chance
to stay legally in the United States for 2 years at a time, not to be
deported but be able to work and go to school--more than 800,000 of
them.
I really believe in them. And you know human nature--out of 800,000,
there have to be some of them in there who are going to disappoint you.
But I stand here today in the Senate and tell you that in all of these
years since President Obama did that, I have never heard any of those
stories. These are extraordinary young men and women. I have told their
stories on the floor of the Senate--over 120 of them--of how these
DACA-protected young people want to become part of America's future.
Let me tell you about a group of them in Chicago. Loyola University
in Chicago is a great school, and they have a great school of medicine.
When they heard about the DACA Program, they said: We are going to open
up competition to these DACA-protected young people to compete to go to
medical school. And the news flashed across the country because many of
these young people who dreamed of being doctors had no chance because
they were undocumented. Because of DACA, they were given temporary
legal status, and because of Loyola University, they were able to
apply. Over 30 of them were accepted to the medical school--some of the
brightest kids living in our country who wanted to become doctors.
There was a catch: If you went to Loyola and you needed to borrow
money--and most of them did--you had to promise to give a year of
service back to the State of Illinois, which loaned you the money to go
to school, for each year they loaned the money. They signed up for it.
They were ready to go to neighborhoods where we needed doctors and to
small towns in rural America where we desperately need doctors. These
young people are some of the best and brightest I have ever met, every
one of them an inspiration.
When President Trump eliminated the DACA Program, he eliminated their
opportunity to continue their medical education. You see, after 4 years
of medical school, you go into a residency. A residency is a job,
employment, and it is a lot more than 40 hours a week, I might add. But
since President Trump eliminated DACA, they cannot legally take a job.
This case is going through the courts now as to whether the President
had the right to eliminate DACA. He didn't. Last Friday, a second court
said that he was wrong, that he had no reason, no basis to eliminate
this program.
When you hear these stories about what is happening at the border and
at these detention cells; when you hear about the conscious decision of
this administration to separate infants and toddlers from their
parents--4,500 of them having been separated; when you hear about this
administration coming forward to eliminate the DACA Program and to stop
these medical students from becoming doctors and serving in my State,
where they are desperately needed, you have to ask: Mr. President, what
is your immigration policy? Why have you made such a mess of this
situation that wasn't very good to start with?
And what are we going to do about it? Anything? Not in this empty
Chamber. Not today. We are just going to pick up the papers every
morning and say: Isn't it a shame? Well, it is more than a shame; it is
an embarrassment to this country that this Nation of immigrants has
reached this moment.
Mr. President, I continue to appeal to my colleagues on both sides of
the aisle: Please, come forward, and let's solve these problems
together.
I have been part of bipartisan groups who have come up with
comprehensive bills and all sorts of legislative responses. My door is
always open to anyone who wants to sit down.
In the meantime, bring humanity to our border. Let's not do things
with these people presenting themselves at our border that don't speak
well of our values and our reputation around the world. We can do
better. We can provide humane treatment.
Even as Congress fails to do its job, those people at the border
deserve to be treated like human beings as we work through our legal
issues and our political issues. No more separation of children from
their parents. How devastating it must be for that child. When some of
these parents were reunited with their children--these little babies
and infants--the young kids wouldn't talk to their mothers. They turned
away from them. With their body language, they said what we knew was
going through their minds: You abandoned me. You left me. I don't know
who you are anymore.
Over time, maybe they can reestablish that relationship. Child
psychologists tell us there could be some damage that needs to be
repaired there. Isn't that a shame, that an innocent child would go
through that experience?
Now that we know there may be 1,712 more of these children, we need
to do everything we can to work with this Federal judge, who had the
courage to step up, to reunite them with their parents as quickly as
possible.
In the meantime, I want to call on this administration and the Acting
Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Kevin McAleenan, to
go down to the border, take a look at the detention facilities, and do
everything possible to make certain there is humane treatment there.
These are desperate people risking their lives to come to this United
States of America. We owe them at least humane treatment while they are
here, as our political and legal system works its way through it.
(Mr. CRUZ assumed the Chair.)