[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.

[[Page S2992]]

  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.)