[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 94 (Wednesday, June 5, 2019)]
[Senate]
[Page S3231]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                               DETER Act

  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I want to thank my colleagues for 
supporting the Defending Elections against Trolls from Enemy Regimes 
Act, aka the DETER Act, a bipartisan piece of legislation I introduced 
with the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Senator Lindsey Graham, 
Senator Blumenthal, and Senator Grassley.
  This legislation would prevent foreign regimes from exploiting U.S. 
immigration laws to undermine U.S. elections. Specifically, it would 
make ``improper interference in U.S. elections'' a violation of 
immigration law.
  Given the ongoing threat to the United States in terms of the 
integrity of our electoral process from Russian interference, we need 
to ensure that we are denying--and, if necessary, revoking--any visas 
to foreign nationals who seek to improperly interfere in our elections.
  One of the most important takeaways from the Mueller report is that 
Russia successfully attacked America in 2016 by doing everything it 
could to undermine our election process.
  Page 1 of the Mueller report says: ``The Russian government 
interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic 
fashion.''
  The report detailed numerous examples of Russian interference, 
including an ``intelligence-gathering mission'' that employees of the 
Internet Research Agency--also known as the IRA--took in June of 2014. 
The IRA was the Russian troll farm that waged information warfare 
against the 2016 election with stolen identities, fake social media 
accounts, fake campaign events, and even attacking the voter list for 
the State of Illinois.
  The report and the earlier indictment of several IRA employees noted 
that two of the Russians arrived in the United States for a 3-week trip 
``for the purpose of collecting intelligence to inform [IRA's] 
operations.''
  The DETER Act would respond to threats like this, barring foreign 
actors from traveling to our country to interfere in our elections. I 
thank my colleagues for supporting this important legislation which was 
approved on Monday night. I hope the U.S. House of Representatives will 
quickly pass it and send it to the President's desk for his signature.
  This should be the first of many steps Congress takes to deter and 
punish future election interference by the Russians or by any foreign 
power.