[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 109 (Thursday, June 27, 2019)]
[House]
[Pages H5223-H5241]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




   PROVIDING FOR CONSIDERATION OF THE SENATE AMENDMENT TO H.R. 3401, 
 EMERGENCY SUPPLEMENTAL APPROPRIATIONS FOR HUMANITARIAN ASSISTANCE AND 
               SECURITY AT THE SOUTHERN BORDER ACT, 2019

  Mr. McGOVERN. Madam Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, 
I call up House Resolution 466 and ask for its immediate consideration.
  The Clerk read the resolution, as follows:

                              H. Res. 466

       Resolved, That upon adoption of this resolution it shall be 
     in order to take from the Speaker's table the bill (H.R. 
     3401) making emergency supplemental appropriations for the 
     fiscal year ending September 30, 2019, and for other 
     purposes, with the Senate amendment thereto, and to consider 
     in the House, without intervention of any point of order, a 
     motion offered by the chair of the Committee on 
     Appropriations or her designee that the House concur in the 
     Senate amendment with an amendment consisting of the text of 
     Rules Committee Print 116-21. The Senate amendment and the 
     motion shall be considered as read. The motion shall be 
     debatable for one hour equally divided and controlled by the 
     chair and ranking minority member of the Committee on 
     Appropriations. The previous question shall be considered as 
     ordered on the motion to its adoption without intervening 
     motion.


                             Point of Order

  Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, pursuant to section 426 of the Congressional 
Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974, I make a point of order 
against consideration of the rule, House Resolution 466.
  Section 426 of the Budget Act specifically states that the Rules 
Committee may not waive the point of order prescribed in section 425 of 
that same act.
  House Resolution 466 makes in order a motion ``without intervention 
of any point of order.'' Therefore, I make a point of order, pursuant 
to section 426 of the Congressional Budget Act, that this rule may not 
be considered.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from Oklahoma makes a point of 
order that the resolution violates section 426(a) of the Congressional 
Budget Act of 1974.
  The gentleman has met the threshold burden under the rule and the 
gentleman from Oklahoma and a Member opposed each will control 10 
minutes of debate on the question of consideration. Following debate, 
the Chair will put the question of consideration as the statutory means 
of disposing of the point of order.
  The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Oklahoma.
  Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  Madam Speaker, the bill before us today provides no CBO cost 
estimate, so we literally have no idea as to whether or not there are 
additional unfunded mandates being imposed on the States. We do know 
that the States are already having to use their scarce resources to 
deal with this border crisis, and the legislation before us today does 
nothing to alleviate that.
  Indeed, my colleague from Texas (Mr. Burgess) made that very point 
and offered an amendment, which was rejected by the committee, to 
consider reimbursing the State of Texas over $800 million for their 
expenses. Those same kinds of expenses--probably not to that 
magnitude--have been undertaken by other States. Madam Speaker, we 
don't think that we should proceed until we have that information and 
the House has a chance to consider that.
  Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. McGOVERN. Madam Speaker, I claim time in opposition to the point 
of order.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from Massachusetts is 
recognized for 10 minutes.
  Mr. McGOVERN. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may 
consume.
  Madam Speaker, what we are trying to do here is bring a bill to the 
floor to help alleviate the suffering of children who, in my opinion, 
have been abused under U.S. custody at our border. Everybody has read 
the news articles and everybody has seen the pictures. We have a moral 
obligation to move forward. To try to delay consideration of a bill to 
help these children I think is a mistake.
  Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  Madam Speaker, actually, on that, we have a great deal in common with 
one another. We, too, think we ought to address this matter quickly.
  As I am sure my friend recalls, we have tried on 16 different 
occasions over the last 8 weeks to bring legislation that would 
alleviate this problem to the floor. Our friends rejected that every 
single time.
  We also have a bill that has been passed by the Senate 84-7: a bill 
where 35 Democrats--about three-quarters of the number of Democrats--
supported, a bill that we know would solve, a bill that if we would 
bring to this floor we can pass immediately and it would go to the 
President's desk; it wouldn't have to go back to the Senate. So my 
friends, by not accepting an overwhelmingly bipartisan bill by the 
Senate and simply moving it on, are the ones who are actually imposing 
a delay here.
  What they have got in front of us that we will consider later today, 
if they are successful, frankly, is something we know the Senate is 
unlikely to accept. I have not heard from the President, but given the 
scope of the changes inside the bill, these are all changes that, in 
some cases, failed yesterday in the Senate--reductions in spending for 
the military and for the Border Patrol--that the administration has 
already signaled they will reject.
  There is a simple solution here. We could simply take the Senate bill 
up that has passed 84-7--overwhelming support on both sides of the 
aisle--get that bill down to the President, and the money could start 
flowing immediately. If we proceed as my friends want to proceed, we 
are simply going to be playing ping-pong back and forth.
  Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. McGOVERN. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may 
consume.
  Madam Speaker, I am surprised that my colleagues on the Republican 
side hold this institution in such low esteem. We are the House of 
Representatives. Our voice matters.
  On this issue, the House voted first on a measure to try to help 
provide some assistance to these children at the border. Then the 
Senate passed a different version. The way it is supposed to work is we 
have a negotiation and we try to come to agreement and come up with a 
compromise bill. So the idea that somehow we don't matter in the House, 
that we shouldn't matter in the House, that we should just accept 
whatever the Senate does, to me, I find

[[Page H5224]]

that disrespectful of the House of Representatives.
  What we are doing is we are sending the Senate basically all that 
they want, plus we are adding things to help protect children and to 
provide for more transparency. We are strengthening requirements for 
children's health. We are tightening restrictions for children's 
safety. We are supporting nonprofits in communities caring for 
children's well-being. I mean, we are embracing compassionate 
processing for children's comfort. Again, we are enhancing 
accountability in transparency and mandating fiscal responsibility.
  Who can possibly be opposed to those things? That is what we are 
trying to do. We are trying to insist that the House's voice matters, 
and we are trying to make the Senate bill even better.
  Again, what motivates us here is the well-being of these children. We 
are here because we are for the children. We are here because we are 
outraged at the way they have been mistreated by this administration. 
We are tired of excuses as to why we can't protect the children. We are 
moving forward with legislation that will protect the children against 
any abuse at our border.
  Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

                              {time}  1045

  Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  Madam Speaker, I don't doubt my friend's sincerity and compassion and 
concern for these young people for one minute. I know him well as a 
person and value him as a friend. Although, I must say, this would have 
been much nicer 8 weeks ago when the administration first asked for it.
  While my friend lays out some of the changes in the House bill, he 
neglected to mention that the House bill cuts the administration's 
request for reimbursement to the military by $124 million. It cuts the 
administration's request for money to the Border Patrol, which is 
probably where the most difficult part is, by, I think, $89 million. So 
we have substantive disagreements.
  Again, we have a bill that has passed overwhelmingly. Many of the 
items my friends want to add have already been considered by the Senate 
and rejected by the Senate. So it seems to me, when we have a 
bipartisan product that has got substantial support on both sides and 
that the White House has signaled it would accept, that is the way we 
should go.
  Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. 
Womack), my good friend and the ranking Republican member of the 
Committee on the Budget.
  Mr. WOMACK. Madam Speaker, I thank my friend from Oklahoma for 
leading in this discussion.
  Madam Speaker, I rise in support of the question on consideration. We 
should be taking up the Senate-passed bill. It has already been 
mentioned that it passed 84-8.
  We don't have a CBO score for the changes made by the House 
amendments to the bill, and without a CBO score, we don't know the cost 
this bill would have on State and local governments.
  Yesterday, in a budget hearing on matters of immigration, we heard 
testimony from the mayor of Yuma, Arizona, which clearly demonstrates 
the economic impacts and costs that States and local governments are 
incurring due to the crisis at the border.
  My friends just said changes made by the House on this Senate-passed 
bill take tens of millions of dollars away from the Department of 
Defense for reimbursement and limit the ability of Customs and Border 
Patrol to adequately pay for the services incurred as a result of this 
ongoing crisis.
  Madam Speaker, Democrats have had many opportunities to advance 
bipartisan solutions that would provide the kind of relief to these 
communities and begin to address the crisis at the border, and for 
nearly 2 months, they have refused to act.
  This week has been an unfortunate loss of precious time. This is a 
situation where Congress clearly needs to come together and act 
swiftly. I am sorry to say, we are falling short in this basic 
obligation of the duties of the Congress of the United States of 
America.
  Madam Speaker, again, I rise in support of the question that we have 
under consideration.
  Mr. McGOVERN. Madam Speaker, I am a little confused. My Republican 
friends say they want to delay things to have a CBO score, then they 
say they want to get something to the President's desk right away. They 
can talk all they want about a CBO score; we are going to talk about 
the children.
  It is an emergency, and what is happening to these children on the 
border is unconscionable. It should weigh heavily on the hearts of 
every single person in this Chamber--Democrats and Republicans, alike.
  Enough is enough. We need to make sure that we not only provide the 
necessary resources to alleviate this crisis, but we need to make sure 
that those resources we provide are provided in such a way that they do 
go to the purposes that we want them to go to.
  And as far as the Department of Defense money, I mean, the bottom 
line is this administration has been diverting funds from the 
Department of Defense for this stupid wall, and they have created that 
crisis.
  The bottom line is we are here for the children, and, again, I urge 
my colleagues to stop the bickering and get down to business. Let us 
pass this rule; let us go on to pass the legislation; and let us get a 
deal with the Senate that is better than what is on the table right 
now.
  Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from 
Georgia (Mr. Woodall), my very good friend and distinguished member of 
the Rules Committee.
  Mr. WOODALL. Madam Speaker, I think folks are going to have a tough 
time containing their emotions today. We met in the House Rules 
Committee at 8 a.m. this morning, and folks already had fuses that were 
running short.
  I agree with my friend from Massachusetts, enough is enough.
  We had an amendment offered in the Rules Committee this morning. I 
don't think most folks in this body know because folks weren't at the 
Rules Committee this morning. We had an amendment offered in the Rules 
Committee this morning that said, if the gentleman wants to do this new 
bill that has been crafted by the Democratic majority, bring that new 
bill to the floor, but let's at least consider the bipartisan bill that 
passed the Senate, resoundingly, 84-8 yesterday.
  I agree with my friend from Massachusetts (Mr. McGovern), enough is 
enough, Madam Speaker. We could send a bill to the White House today to 
start the money going today.
  My friend from Massachusetts said: Let the Republicans talk if they 
want to. We want to talk about the children.
  I am tired of talking about the children. Let's serve the children. 
Let's do it. Let's do it. Let's stop talking about it.
  It has been almost 60 days that we have been talking about it, with 
one tragic picture after another rolling across the national headlines. 
Let's stop talking about it.
  If folks have an alternative view, they can share alternative view as 
they have, but allow us to vote on what the Senate agreed, 84-8, after 
roundly rejecting the previously passed House language, was an 
opportunity to serve the children today.

  Madam Speaker, I don't believe the Members of this institution know 
what happened in the Rules Committee this morning. I don't believe the 
Members of this institution know we rejected that bipartisan 
opportunity this morning. With this, under a point of order, we will 
bring the Members of this institution down here to the House floor 
where they will hear it themselves.
  We have an opportunity to act now, as my friend from Oklahoma (Mr. 
Cole) has offered. The question is: Are we going to take ``yes'' for an 
answer or are we just going to continue to talk about the children?
  Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. McGOVERN. Madam Speaker, I am really puzzled here. Why is it that 
the Senate can say no, but the House can't say no to something? Why is 
it that we always have to do what the Senate wants?
  If the gentleman is so enamored with the Senate, maybe he should work 
over in the Senate.

[[Page H5225]]

  But the bottom line is, those of us in the House deserve to have our 
voices heard, and what we are saying here is that we want to provide a 
bill that will alleviate this crisis, that will help the children.
  Mr. WOODALL. Will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. McGOVERN. I will not yield. I do not have enough time to yield.
  Mr. WOODALL. Madam Speaker, the gentleman has mischaracterized my 
statement.
  Will the gentleman yield?
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from Massachusetts has the 
time.
  Mr. McGOVERN. Madam Speaker, I would like us to make sure we provide 
resources to the border that actually alleviate the crisis.
  I do not want to be part of an effort to send money to the border to 
be diverted for whatever this President wants. He has shown us where he 
is on this issue of the children and on the issue of immigration. And, 
quite frankly, many of us on this side of the aisle--and, I think, some 
on the other side of the aisle--are offended by that.
  So we want to make sure, when we say we are providing relief to this 
crisis that is affecting so many children, that, in fact, we are 
providing relief to those children. And that is all we are saying here.
  Madam Speaker, strengthening requirements for children's health, why 
would anybody in the Senate want to be opposed to that?
  Tightening restrictions for children's safety, people are dying in 
our custody. We should want to prevent that from ever occurring again 
by supporting nonprofits and community caring for children's well-
being.
  Madam Speaker, this stuff is something that should not be 
controversial no matter how you look at it, and yet it is for my 
Republican friends, and I regret that very much.
  Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I am puzzled as well. I am puzzled why this 
wasn't dealt with 8 weeks ago when the administration asked. I am 
puzzled why, for 16 times when we tried to bring this matter up on the 
floor, our friends in the majority rejected that.
  Now we are in a hurry. Well, if we are in a hurry, the way to act is 
to take the vehicle that has actually passed the United States Senate 
in an overwhelmingly bipartisan fashion and send it to the President of 
the United States.
  That is not what my friends want to do. They want to prolong the 
debate. They have prolonged it for 2 months, for 8 weeks, by not taking 
the matter up. They are prolonging it today by not taking what has 
already been passed and moving along.
  So, obviously, we oppose this rule, and we want to move on. We will 
be happy to work with them to move on the Senate legislation. I think 
it would pass in an overwhelmingly bipartisan way; the President would 
sign it; and that aid would begin flowing. What my friends are 
proposing is quite the opposite. It is a prolonged back-and-forth with 
the United States Senate.
  I have deep respect for the institution, but what is going to come 
out of here is going to be partisan; what came out of there is 
bipartisan.
  What is going to come out of here won't be signed by the President; 
what has come out of the United States Senate will be. So if they are 
in a hurry to get the money moving, that is the way we should proceed.
  Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. McGOVERN. Madam Speaker, let me remind my colleagues, this is not 
the House bill that passed. This is a compromise that we have moved 
forward.
  And, again, here is what my friends are saying is partisan: that we 
put into this bill that for children's health we must ensure a higher 
standard for medical care, nutrition, and hygiene. That is what they 
are calling partisan. That is what they are saying, oh, it is awful, we 
can't move forward on that.
  The bill we are putting forward, this compromise bill, will meet the 
needs of the children. That is all that it does. So I don't know why we 
in the House can't, in a bipartisan way, stand together and say: Look, 
we want to improve on what the Senate did, and we want to guarantee 
that the moneys we send actually go to help the children and not get 
diverted to other things like we know this administration has a habit 
of doing.
  Madam Speaker, anybody who has seen the pictures in the newspapers 
recently, anybody who has read the news articles, again, our hearts 
should ache.
  This is not America. This is not what our country is about. We can do 
much, much better, and that is why we should move forward with 
consideration.
  Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, may I inquire as to how much time is 
remaining?
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from Oklahoma has 1\1/2\ 
minutes remaining. The gentleman from Massachusetts has 3\1/4\ minutes 
remaining.
  Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I am prepared to close and will yield back 
the balance of my time at the conclusion of my remarks.

  Madam Speaker, we don't think the House bill is a better bill. We 
don't think reducing the amount the Senate gave to the military by $124 
million is a good idea. We don't think reducing the amount of money 
that is going to Border Patrol, which is one of the areas that is a 
problem, by $89 million is a good idea. We don't think a lot of this 
effort to micromanage a crisis that is thousands of miles away from us 
by this body here has good suggestions.
  We want some flexibility. We think the Senate bill does take care of 
the needs on the border in terms of unaccompanied minors who have 
crossed over into our territory. So we just don't think this does it, 
and we think this prolongs the process.
  We have a bipartisan bill--a perfect bill? No. Is our bill a perfect 
bill? No. As a matter of fact, we like the Senate bill on our side 
better than this bill. Regardless, that one can pass. That one can pass 
on this floor. That one can be signed into law.
  This one that my friends are embarking on, they think it is an 
improvement. I will just tell them, politically, not passing the 
Senate, not likely to be signed by the President.
  So if we want to get help there immediately, we have a way to do it 
in the Senate bill. We think this leads us to a political dead-end.
  Madam Speaker, I would press for my motion, and I yield back the 
balance of my time.
  Mr. McGOVERN. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may 
consume.
  Madam Speaker, my colleagues have seen the pictures and they have 
heard the stories. And if that is not convincing to them to move 
forward, to increase protections for children who are held in our 
custody, then I don't know what else to say.
  What we are asking for here in this compromise bill that we are 
moving forward is to make sure that there are stronger protections in 
here, to make sure that the abuse that we have all read about and that 
we have all seen stops and never, ever happens again. That is what this 
is all about.
  So I am at a loss because, to me, the evidence is overwhelming that 
we need to provide stronger protections for these children. If my 
colleagues disagree, then they can vote against the bill and against 
consideration, but I would urge all of my colleagues to vote ``yes'' so 
that we can move forward with this rule in consideration of this bill 
and get this passed as soon as possible and get on to either urging the 
Senate to pass it or to continue in negotiation, but we can do better 
than the Senate bill.
  Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The question is, Will the House now consider 
the resolution?
  The question was taken; and the Speaker pro tempore announced that 
the ayes appeared to have it.
  Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.
  The yeas and nays were ordered.
  The vote was taken by electronic device, and there were--yeas 226, 
nays 188, not voting 18, as follows:

                             [Roll No. 425]

                               YEAS--226

     Adams
     Aguilar
     Allred
     Axne
     Barragan
     Bass
     Beatty
     Bera
     Beyer
     Bishop (GA)
     Blumenauer
     Blunt Rochester
     Bonamici
     Boyle, Brendan F.
     Brindisi
     Brown (MD)
     Brownley (CA)

[[Page H5226]]


     Bustos
     Butterfield
     Carbajal
     Cardenas
     Carson (IN)
     Cartwright
     Case
     Casten (IL)
     Castor (FL)
     Chu, Judy
     Cicilline
     Cisneros
     Clark (MA)
     Clarke (NY)
     Clay
     Cleaver
     Clyburn
     Cohen
     Connolly
     Cooper
     Correa
     Costa
     Courtney
     Cox (CA)
     Craig
     Crist
     Crow
     Cuellar
     Cummings
     Cunningham
     Davids (KS)
     Davis (CA)
     Davis, Danny K.
     Dean
     DeFazio
     DeGette
     DeLauro
     DelBene
     Delgado
     Demings
     DeSaulnier
     Deutch
     Dingell
     Doggett
     Doyle, Michael F.
     Engel
     Escobar
     Eshoo
     Espaillat
     Evans
     Finkenauer
     Fletcher
     Foster
     Frankel
     Fudge
     Gallego
     Garamendi
     Garcia (IL)
     Garcia (TX)
     Golden
     Gomez
     Gonzalez (TX)
     Gottheimer
     Green, Al (TX)
     Grijalva
     Haaland
     Harder (CA)
     Hayes
     Heck
     Higgins (NY)
     Hill (CA)
     Himes
     Horn, Kendra S.
     Horsford
     Houlahan
     Hoyer
     Jackson Lee
     Jayapal
     Jeffries
     Johnson (GA)
     Johnson (TX)
     Kaptur
     Keating
     Kelly (IL)
     Kennedy
     Khanna
     Kildee
     Kilmer
     Kim
     Kind
     Kirkpatrick
     Krishnamoorthi
     Kuster (NH)
     Lamb
     Langevin
     Larsen (WA)
     Larson (CT)
     Lawrence
     Lawson (FL)
     Lee (CA)
     Lee (NV)
     Levin (CA)
     Levin (MI)
     Lewis
     Lieu, Ted
     Lipinski
     Loebsack
     Lofgren
     Lowenthal
     Lowey
     Lujan
     Luria
     Lynch
     Malinowski
     Maloney, Carolyn B.
     Maloney, Sean
     Matsui
     McAdams
     McBath
     McCollum
     McEachin
     McGovern
     McNerney
     Meeks
     Meng
     Moore
     Morelle
     Mucarsel-Powell
     Murphy
     Nadler
     Napolitano
     Neal
     Neguse
     Norcross
     O'Halleran
     Ocasio-Cortez
     Omar
     Pallone
     Panetta
     Pappas
     Pascrell
     Payne
     Perlmutter
     Peters
     Peterson
     Phillips
     Pingree
     Pocan
     Porter
     Pressley
     Price (NC)
     Quigley
     Raskin
     Rice (NY)
     Richmond
     Rose (NY)
     Rouda
     Roybal-Allard
     Ruiz
     Ruppersberger
     Rush
     Sanchez
     Sarbanes
     Scanlon
     Schakowsky
     Schiff
     Schneider
     Schrader
     Schrier
     Scott (VA)
     Serrano
     Sewell (AL)
     Shalala
     Sherman
     Sherrill
     Sires
     Slotkin
     Smith (WA)
     Soto
     Spanberger
     Speier
     Stanton
     Stevens
     Suozzi
     Takano
     Thompson (CA)
     Thompson (MS)
     Titus
     Tlaib
     Tonko
     Torres (CA)
     Torres Small (NM)
     Trahan
     Trone
     Underwood
     Van Drew
     Vargas
     Veasey
     Vela
     Velazquez
     Visclosky
     Wasserman Schultz
     Waters
     Watson Coleman
     Welch
     Wexton
     Wild
     Wilson (FL)
     Yarmuth

                               NAYS--188

     Aderholt
     Allen
     Amash
     Amodei
     Armstrong
     Arrington
     Babin
     Bacon
     Baird
     Balderson
     Banks
     Barr
     Bergman
     Biggs
     Bilirakis
     Bishop (UT)
     Bost
     Brady
     Brooks (AL)
     Brooks (IN)
     Buchanan
     Buck
     Bucshon
     Budd
     Burchett
     Burgess
     Byrne
     Calvert
     Carter (GA)
     Carter (TX)
     Chabot
     Cheney
     Cline
     Cloud
     Cole
     Collins (GA)
     Collins (NY)
     Comer
     Conaway
     Cook
     Crawford
     Curtis
     Davidson (OH)
     Davis, Rodney
     Diaz-Balart
     Duffy
     Duncan
     Dunn
     Emmer
     Estes
     Ferguson
     Fitzpatrick
     Fleischmann
     Flores
     Fortenberry
     Foxx (NC)
     Fulcher
     Gaetz
     Gallagher
     Gianforte
     Gibbs
     Gohmert
     Gonzalez (OH)
     Gooden
     Gosar
     Granger
     Graves (GA)
     Graves (LA)
     Graves (MO)
     Green (TN)
     Griffith
     Grothman
     Guest
     Guthrie
     Hagedorn
     Harris
     Hartzler
     Hern, Kevin
     Herrera Beutler
     Hice (GA)
     Higgins (LA)
     Hill (AR)
     Holding
     Hollingsworth
     Hudson
     Huizenga
     Hunter
     Hurd (TX)
     Johnson (LA)
     Johnson (OH)
     Johnson (SD)
     Jordan
     Joyce (OH)
     Joyce (PA)
     Katko
     Keller
     Kelly (MS)
     Kelly (PA)
     King (IA)
     King (NY)
     Kinzinger
     LaHood
     LaMalfa
     Lamborn
     Latta
     Lesko
     Long
     Loudermilk
     Luetkemeyer
     Marshall
     Massie
     Mast
     McCarthy
     McCaul
     McClintock
     McHenry
     McKinley
     Meadows
     Meuser
     Miller
     Mitchell
     Moolenaar
     Mooney (WV)
     Newhouse
     Norman
     Nunes
     Olson
     Palazzo
     Palmer
     Pence
     Perry
     Posey
     Ratcliffe
     Reed
     Reschenthaler
     Rice (SC)
     Riggleman
     Roby
     Rodgers (WA)
     Roe, David P.
     Rogers (KY)
     Rose, John W.
     Rouzer
     Roy
     Rutherford
     Scalise
     Schweikert
     Scott, Austin
     Sensenbrenner
     Shimkus
     Simpson
     Smith (MO)
     Smith (NE)
     Smith (NJ)
     Smucker
     Spano
     Stauber
     Stefanik
     Steil
     Steube
     Stewart
     Stivers
     Taylor
     Thompson (PA)
     Thornberry
     Timmons
     Tipton
     Turner
     Upton
     Wagner
     Walberg
     Walden
     Walker
     Waltz
     Watkins
     Weber (TX)
     Webster (FL)
     Wenstrup
     Westerman
     Williams
     Wilson (SC)
     Wittman
     Womack
     Woodall
     Wright
     Yoho
     Young
     Zeldin

                             NOT VOTING--18

     Abraham
     Castro (TX)
     Crenshaw
     DesJarlais
     Gabbard
     Hastings
     Huffman
     Kustoff (TN)
     Lucas
     Marchant
     Moulton
     Mullin
     Rogers (AL)
     Rooney (FL)
     Ryan
     Scott, David
     Swalwell (CA)
     Walorski

                              {time}  1128

  Messrs. BIGGS, YOUNG, and TIMMONS changed their vote from ``yea'' to 
``nay.''
  So the question of consideration was decided in the affirmative.
  The result of the vote was announced as above recorded.
  A motion to reconsider was laid on the table.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Cuellar). The gentleman from 
Massachusetts is recognized for 1 hour.
  Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield 
the customary 30 minutes to the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Cole), the 
ranking member of the Rules Committee, pending which I yield myself 
such time as I may consume. During consideration of this resolution, 
all time yielded is for the purpose of debate only.


                             General Leave

  Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members 
may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their 
remarks.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the 
gentleman from Massachusetts?
  There was no objection.
  Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, today the Rules Committee met and reported 
a rule, House Resolution 466, providing for consideration of the Senate 
amendment to H.R. 3401. One hour of general debate has been provided, 
controlled by the chair and ranking minority member of the Committee on 
Appropriations.
  Mr. Speaker, I think, by now, we all have seen the horrific images 
showing the bodies of Oscar Alberto Martinez Ramirez and his nearly 2-
year-old daughter, Valeria. They were taken on Monday as these 
Salvadoran migrants tried to cross the Rio Grande after leaving a 
Mexican migrant camp. Like so many others, they were exercising their 
legal right to seek asylum here in the United States. They wanted to be 
free from the violence, gangs, poverty, and inequality that is rampant 
in El Salvador, just as it is all across Central America.
  I visited El Salvador and I visited Honduras recently, and, Mr. 
Speaker, I saw the unbearable conditions with my own eyes. It is no 
wonder that organizations like the United Nations Office on Drugs and 
Crime have said this and other Central American countries are more 
dangerous than Afghanistan and only slightly better than Syria.
  Syria, Mr. Speaker, is the site of an ongoing civil war. Let that 
sink in for a moment.
  But, unfortunately, Alberto and Valeria didn't survive their journey. 
Alberto's wife, Tania, was forced to watch in horror as a current 
washed her family away.
  I am telling their story today because this is what migrants face as 
they risk their lives to come to this country--not to transport drugs, 
not to commit crimes, as the President suggests, but to find refuge, to 
raise their daughter in a safe place, and to have a chance at building 
a better life, a life that they could only find in America.
  Isn't this what each of us wants for our own families?
  They came to present themselves at a legal port of entry and to seek 
legal asylum, as is their right under U.S. law.
  And they weren't the only ones to die. Just this past weekend, Border 
Patrol agents found four more bodies in the river west of Brownsville, 
Texas: three more young children and a young woman in her twenties.
  Every single week, people drown in the river and perish in the 
deserts, invisible and unknown.
  It wasn't too long ago that we celebrated how immigration made our 
country stronger, whether it was a Democratic or a Republican 
administration.
  I am reminded of President Reagan's final speech in office, where he 
said:

       Anybody, from any corner of the world, can come to America 
     to live and become an American. This, I believe, is one of 
     the most important sources of America's greatness.

  But, Mr. Speaker, the Trump administration apparently has the 
complete opposite view of immigration. They don't celebrate it; they 
demonize it.
  Consider what may have happened to Oscar and his family if they did 
make it to our border, forced to sleep on concrete floors with the 
lights on 24 hours a day, with no soap, no medicine, maybe not even a 
toothbrush, Valeria separated from her parents, because that is what 
migrants are forced to endure at border facilities under this 
President.

[[Page H5227]]

  A physician who visited one recently said: ``The conditions within 
which they are held could be compared to torture facilities.''
  Mr. Speaker, when Lady Liberty encourages us to give her our poor, 
huddled masses, I don't think she means so the administration can turn 
around and throw them in a cage. I don't think she lifts her torch so 
their legal plight could be criminalized and crying children could be 
ripped from the arms of their parents.
  But that is what is happening under this President, and, Mr. Speaker, 
it is sickening. It should tear at the hearts of every single Member of 
this House, whether they are Democrats or Republicans.
  This week, the House passed bipartisan emergency legislation to 
address this humanitarian crisis at the border. The Senate had its own 
ideas. So, today, we are back with a compromise to get a bill quickly 
signed into law.
  This is a compromise that lives up to our core values and protects 
children and families. It adds critical protections for children who 
were included in the House version of the bill. It includes language to 
improve care for children by forcing influx facilities to comply with 
the Flores settlement and capping, at 90 days, the amount of time a 
child can spend in such a facility.
  We are also reducing funding for ICE, while rejecting additional and 
unnecessary dollars for the Pentagon.
  This is a crisis, Mr. Speaker. We cannot treat compromise as though 
it is a dirty word, not when migrants are literally losing their lives 
in unsafe, unhealthy, and unsanitary conditions and children are being 
torn apart from their families. That is what is at stake here.
  The horrors at detention centers shouldn't get lost in the latest 
tweet-a-thon by the President, just as the plight of migrants shouldn't 
go unseen by the American people. This should shake our conscience and 
make clear the urgent need to act.

  Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support this rule and the 
underlying bill, and let's send a message to the President and to the 
world that America is better than this. This is not who we are, what is 
happening at our border.
  Mr. Speaker, I would just say one final thing. In the compromise 
package today that seems to bother so many people are merely items that 
would protect the well-being of these children, that would provide more 
transparency. For the life of me, I don't understand the controversy. I 
don't understand why we can't make the Senate bill better, why we can't 
do more for these children.
  I know my colleagues on the other side of the aisle feel as we do, 
that what is happening is unacceptable. Let us strengthen that bill. 
Let us actually give a bill to the President that we all know will help 
these children.
  Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  I want to begin by thanking my good friend, the gentleman from 
Massachusetts (Chairman McGovern) for yielding me the customary 30 
minutes.
  Mr. Speaker, well, we are here for the third time this week and the 
second time on a supplemental appropriations bill for the southern 
border.
  Earlier this week, I spoke on this floor and expressed my concerns 
about the House bill. Make no mistake, we need emergency funding for 
the crisis on the southern border. We needed it 2 months ago, and we 
need it even more desperately today.
  Two days ago, I warned that the bill the House was considering would 
not pass the Senate and would not become law, and I was proven correct. 
The House bill failed in the Senate. In fact, it only received 37 votes 
in support. In contrast, the Senate amendment passed in a bipartisan 
vote of 84-8.
  If the Democratic leadership would allow a vote on the Senate text, I 
believe it would pass this Chamber today and be on its way to the 
President's desk--today. But, instead, we are here considering a rule 
that would further amend the bill, bringing back in provisions that 
have already failed to garner support in the Senate.
  If this bill fails to pass the Senate, as I expect will happen, then 
we will be leaving town for a week without actually having passed 
anything to deal with the crisis. And I do remind my friends on the 
other side we have attempted on our side, 16 times, to bring up 
legislation to deal with this, and the President asked for this money 2 
months ago.
  So, I am glad they have a sense of urgency now, because we have not 
seen it in the past.
  My sense is that this is more about maintaining the unity of the 
Democratic Caucus than it is about pressing legislation that can be 
enacted into law. But that has been true for this entire Congress, and 
it is why my friends have, so far, failed to enact any significant 
legislation during their tenure in the majority.
  Mr. Speaker, we are out of time. We desperately need to get these 
emergency funds to the Federal agencies responsible for managing this 
crisis. They are out of money and need additional resources to take 
care of people, many of them innocent children, who are affected by 
this crisis. We do not have the luxury of time in responding to this 
emergency.
  My friends on the other side of the aisle are about to make the exact 
same mistake that they made on Tuesday when they pushed forward a 
partisan bill that would not pass the Senate and that the President 
would not sign into law.
  What I don't understand, Mr. Speaker, is why the majority is so 
resistant to acting in a bipartisan manner here. Both Republicans and 
Democrats agree that we need additional funding to address the crisis 
on the southern border. There is a real chance to send a bipartisan 
bill to the President that will become law. And, instead of doing what 
will immediately help children and families at the border, the majority 
is attempting to cut the needed funding from the Senate bill, add 
partisan riders back into it, and then send it back to the Senate, 
where it can fail again.
  Madam Speaker, we do not have time to waste on purely political 
exercises. There is still an opportunity to correct that mistake, Madam 
Speaker, and I would urge the majority to take that opportunity 
seriously.
  Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from California (Mr. 
McCarthy), the distinguished Republican leader.
  Mr. McCARTHY. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.
  Madam Speaker, 58 days--58 days--is the amount of time since the 
administration asked and said there was a crisis on the border, that 
they needed funding.
  Madam Speaker, 18 times--18 times--we had the opportunity to take a 
vote on this floor, and we did not come to a solution, and it did not 
pass.
  Madam Speaker, two times--two times--The New York Times wrote 
editorials in those 58 days calling upon this body to put politics 
aside, that this crisis on the border was greater than the politics 
that we want to play.
  The Mexican Government realizes there is a crisis on the border and 
just sent 15,000 troops. We have seen the pictures. We have heard the 
words. On either side they talk of it.
  We were in this well just a few days ago having a debate. Many of us 
said: Why would we take this moment to do a political maneuver that 
will not go anywhere in the Senate?
  Don't take our word for it. Take the votes for it. The bill did not 
pass.
  There is a time for every season. The season to continue to play 
politics is over. The season to put people before politics is now.
  Don't take my word for it. Take the example of the Chamber that is 
just across the way. It is not far. You can see it if you look out 
those doors; you can walk it without taking much breath; and you can 
understand what bipartisanship looks like, Madam Speaker.
  The Senate took up a bill to take up this crisis. The vote was 84-8.

                              {time}  1145

  Madam Speaker, 84-8. There has been historic legislation that was 
passed with much less, but there have been very few that have ever been 
defeated that have gone 84-8.
  But today, we are going to take hours to learn the exact same 
experience that we had just a few, short hours ago. The 84-8--when I 
listen to the other side and say that this--the Democratic Party, Madam 
Speaker, wants to do this.

[[Page H5228]]

  Let me read the names of some of those who voted for this bill to 
understand what bipartisan sounds like: Senator Chuck Schumer, Senator 
Dick Durbin, Senator Tim Kaine, Senator Patty Murray, and Senator 
Dianne Feinstein all voted ``yes.'' Every single member of the Senate 
Democratic leadership voted ``yes'' to end the crisis on the border.
  But why, Madam Speaker, are we on this floor now? Why does the 
Democratic leadership on this side want to continue to play politics 
when the Democrat leadership in the Senate says no?
  Fifty-eight days is enough. Eighteen votes over there are too many.
  But, yes, people are dying. But, yes, the money is out. We have all 
acknowledged it on this floor.
  Madam Speaker, it makes me begin to wonder, how can a few control so 
many?
  On that opening day, when we are on this floor, we all raise our hand 
individually. We all swear to uphold the Constitution. Our names are 
individually on the ballot when we are voted to come in here.
  This is not a moment to let somebody else control your name or your 
voting card. This is not a moment to say, my party tells me to go here, 
because that is not the case.
  Chuck Schumer is the leader of the Democratic Party. Dick Durbin is 
the leader of the Democrats when it comes to immigration. I have spent 
hours and months with Dick Durbin in a room trying to come to an 
immigration agreement, and we have seen places far, far apart. We have 
spent months trying to come to a conclusion.
  But you know what? We have this time. We have found a more perfect 
union when we found bipartisanship.
  But are we going to allow a few to continue to deny it?
  Fifty-eight days. You do not have more. The money is gone. The time 
is now.
  We all know that we are better than this. I do not accuse anybody on 
either side of what they truly believe about a crisis. I have heard.
  I have heard people on the other side of the aisle, Madam Speaker, 
that said they want to vote for the Senate bill. Can we allow them to 
vote for the Senate bill?
  Can we allow them to join with the 84 Senators out of 100 on the 
other side that said ``yes'' to it? Or do we have a few that control 
what can come to the floor?
  Now, I heard in this rule debate that there are some amendments; that 
somehow they are going to make it better. What makes it better? That we 
do not fund to pay any overtime costs for Immigration and Customs 
Enforcement officers, or provide funding for the active duty of the 
National Guard troops working with them on the front line of the crisis 
at the border?
  Is that making it better?
  Is that really what you want to stake your political career on?
  Is that really what you want to stand up against bipartisanship for?
  Madam Speaker, I have heard a lot of names on the other side say they 
would vote for it. I think everybody in this body knows that that 
Senate bill will pass. I think everybody in their heart knows that is 
where we are going to end up.
  But do we have to go through it one more time?
  You do not have to worry about what the outcome will be. The leader 
of the Senate has already said what will happen; because I will promise 
you this, on this side of the aisle, we will stay here until this is 
done. We will not leave, and we will stand with the bipartisan vote in 
the Senate.
  If you are worried about getting to 218, do not worry. Put that bill 
on suspension, I promise you it will pass.
  I call upon all of our better angels for this one moment, for this 
one time, when America is watching, that we rise to the occasion; that 
we put the partisanship aside; that we have swapped; that the Senate 
has actually taught us, given us the adult supervision to show that, 
yes, we have had that fight; yes, you tried to make it and it didn't 
make it. But there is something better. There is a window, and there is 
an opportunity.
  Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to take from the Speaker's 
table H.R. 3401, with the Senate amendment thereto, and concur in the 
Senate amendment.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Ms. Jackson Lee). The Chair would advise 
that all time has been yielded for the purpose of debate only.
  Does the gentleman from Massachusetts yield for the purpose of this 
unanimous consent request?
  Mr. McGOVERN. Madam Speaker, I do not yield for that purpose. All 
time yielded is for the purpose of debate only.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from Massachusetts does not 
yield; therefore, the unanimous consent request cannot be entertained.
  Mr. McGOVERN. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may 
consume.
  I want to assure the distinguished minority leader that I am not 
asking Members of Congress to vote for what we are bringing before the 
House today based on their party. I am asking Members to vote their 
conscience.
  And to be totally frank, we want to make sure there are protections 
built in this legislation so that funds are not misused as they have 
been in the past; so we don't see any more children being abused; so we 
don't see the mismanagement that we have witnessed.
  With all due respect to the Senate majority leader, and to many of my 
friends on the other side of the aisle, when children were being ripped 
apart from their parents, we heard silence. When we read about the 
terrible conditions that these children were in, being denied soap, and 
toothpaste, and toothbrushes, and not being cared for, we heard 
silence.
  When we saw the picture of Oscar and Valeria dead, trying to seek 
asylum in this country, there is nothing.
  So the bottom line is, we want to get this done, and we will stay 
here as long as it takes, I assure the minority leader. We are not 
going anywhere.
  But we are going to stand for the children, and that is what our 
purpose is here today.
  Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Pennsylvania 
(Ms. Scanlon), a distinguished member of the Rules Committee.
  Ms. SCANLON. Madam Speaker, I am so glad that our colleagues across 
the aisle agree that the conditions at the border are intolerable, 
because they are.
  A few months ago, I had the opportunity to go to the southern border, 
meet with Border Patrol agents and advocates on the ground, including a 
woman who had been separated from her children, and we toured detention 
facilities.
  The humanitarian crisis then, in February, was undeniable, and it has 
only gotten worse. But the cause of this crisis has raised serious 
questions, particularly as to why it has escalated.
  In addition to suspending critical aid designed to relieve conditions 
causing desperate families to flee their homes, the Trump 
administration is failing to use longstanding lawful processes and 
available resources to provide relief to children and refugees at the 
southern border.
  The Trump administration's policies are not making our border safer, 
but they are worsening the situation, at the expense of the health and 
well-being of desperate children and families.
  There are unused beds at facilities in my home State of Pennsylvania 
and in Texas, and many refugee children have sponsors, family members 
available here, but they are being denied access.
  Prior to coming to Congress, I represented immigrants and asylum 
seekers who, by definition, lawfully enter this country seeking refuge. 
I can confidently say that international law is being violated on a 
daily basis by this administration, and it has abandoned longstanding 
legal norms for processing asylees, with the apparent purpose of 
exacerbating the crisis for political gain.
  I agree that we need to send additional resources to relieve the 
inhumane conditions affecting refugees at our border. But we also have 
a responsibility to make sure that those resources are not misused to 
worsen rather than relieve this crisis.
  Therefore, I urge that we support the border relief bill that is 
before us, which will provide resources to relieve the crisis and 
improve the health and well-being of innocent children, while allowing 
transparency and oversight.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The time of the gentlewoman has expired.

[[Page H5229]]

  

  Mr. McGOVERN. I yield the gentlewoman from Pennsylvania an additional 
30 seconds.
  Ms. SCANLON. It is important that we allow transparency and oversight 
on how those funds are used.
  To our Republican colleagues in the Senate, especially Majority 
Leader McConnell, if you fail to work with us to address this 
humanitarian crisis, not only will your legacy be your legislative 
graveyard in the Senate, but the deaths of these children and families.
  Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. 
Granger) for the purpose of a unanimous consent request.
  Ms. GRANGER. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to take from the 
Speaker's table H.R. 3401, with the Senate amendment thereto, and 
concur in the Senate amendment. This bipartisan bill passed the Senate 
with 84 votes and could be sent to the President's desk for his 
signature today.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair understands that the gentleman 
from Massachusetts has not yielded for that purpose; therefore, the 
unanimous consent request cannot be entertained.
  Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield to the distinguished gentleman from 
New York (Mr. Katko) for the purpose of a unanimous consent request.
  Mr. KATKO. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to take from the 
Speaker's table H.R. 3401, with the Senate amendment thereto, and 
concur in the Senate amendment. This bipartisan bill passed the Senate 
overwhelmingly. Ten times more Senators voted for this bill than voted 
against it. That is the essence of bipartisanship.
  I ask that we make this House proud. I ask that we make our 
colleagues proud. And I ask that we pass this bill and send it to the 
President's desk for his signature today.

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair understands that the gentleman 
from Massachusetts has not yielded for that purpose; therefore, the 
unanimous consent request cannot be entertained.
  The Chair would advise Members that even though a unanimous consent 
request to consider a measure is not entertained, embellishments 
accompanying such requests constitute debate and will become an 
imposition on the time of the Member who yielded for that purpose.
  Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Missouri 
(Mrs. Wagner) for the purpose of a unanimous consent request.
  Mrs. WAGNER. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to take from the 
Speaker's table H.R. 3401, with the Senate amendment thereto, and 
concur in the Senate amendment.
  We must not adjourn. We will stay and do the people's work and take 
care of this humanitarian crisis on the border. Send this to the 
President's desk immediately, today, for signature.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair understands that the gentleman 
from Massachusetts has not yielded for that purpose; therefore, the 
unanimous consent request cannot be entertained. Time will be deducted 
from the gentleman from Oklahoma.
  Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania 
(Mr. Fitzpatrick) for the purpose of a unanimous consent request.
  Mr. FITZPATRICK. Madam Speaker, as an FBI agent who worked border 
security on the border, understanding it all too well, I ask unanimous 
consent to take from the Speaker's table H.R. 3401, with the Senate 
amendment thereto, and concur in the Senate amendment. This bipartisan 
bill passed the Senate with 84 votes and could be sent to the 
President's desk for his signature today.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair understands that the gentleman 
from Massachusetts has not yielded for that purpose; therefore, the 
unanimous consent request cannot be entertained.
  Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield to the distinguished gentleman from 
South Dakota (Mr. Johnson) for the purpose of a unanimous consent 
request.
  Mr. JOHNSON of South Dakota. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent 
to take from the Speaker's table H.R. 3401, with the Senate amendment 
thereto, and to concur with the Senate amendment. This bipartisan bill 
passed the Senate with 84 votes and could be sent to the President for 
his signature today.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair understands that the gentleman 
from Massachusetts has not yielded for that purpose; therefore, the 
unanimous consent request cannot be entertained.

                              {time}  1200

  Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield to the distinguished gentlewoman 
from Indiana (Mrs. Brooks), my good friend, for the purpose of a 
unanimous consent request.
  Mrs. BROOKS of Indiana. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to 
take from the Speaker's table H.R. 3401, with the Senate amendment 
thereto, and concur in the Senate amendment. This bipartisan bill 
passed the Senate with 84 votes, and could be sent to the President's 
desk for his signature today.
  We must show the American people that bipartisanship is about solving 
these children's problems.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from Massachusetts has not 
yielded for that purpose.
  Time will be deducted from the gentleman from Oklahoma.
  Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield to the distinguished gentleman from 
North Carolina (Mr. Walker) for the purpose of a unanimous consent 
request.
  Mr. WALKER. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to take from the 
Speaker's table H.R. 3401, with the Senate amendment thereto, and 
concur in the Senate amendment. This bipartisan bill passed the Senate 
84-8 and could be sent to the President's desk for his signature today.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. As the Chair has previously advised, the 
unanimous consent request cannot be entertained.
  Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield to the distinguished gentleman from 
Michigan (Mr. Walberg), my friend, for the purpose of a unanimous 
consent request.
  Mr. WALBERG. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to take from the 
Speaker's table H.R. 3401, with the Senate amount thereto, and concur 
in the Senate amendment. This bipartisan bill passed the Senate with 84 
votes and could be sent to the President's desk for his signature 
today.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. As the Chair has previously advised, the 
unanimous consent request cannot be entertained.
  Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield to the distinguished gentleman from 
Michigan (Mr. Mitchell), my friend, for the purpose of a unanimous 
consent request.
  Mr. MITCHELL. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to take from the 
Speaker's table H.R. 3401, with the Senate amendment thereto, and 
concur in the Senate amendment.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. As the Chair has previously advised, the 
unanimous consent request cannot be entertained.
  Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield to the distinguished gentleman from 
Florida (Mr. Mast), my friend, for the purpose of a unanimous consent 
request.
  Mr. MAST. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to take from the 
Speaker's table H.R. 3401, with the Senate amendment thereto, and 
concur in the Senate amendment.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. As the Chair has previously advised, the 
unanimous consent request cannot be entertained.
  Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield to the distinguished gentleman from 
Minnesota (Mr. Bergman), my good friend, for the purpose of a unanimous 
consent request.
  Mr. BERGMAN. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to take from the 
Speaker's table H.R. 3401, with the Senate amendment thereto, and 
concur in the Senate amendment.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. As the Chair has previously advised, the 
unanimous consent request cannot be entertained.
  Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Missouri 
(Mrs. Hartzler), my good friend, for the purpose of a unanimous consent 
request.
  Mrs. HARTZLER. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to take from 
the Speaker's table H.R. 3401, with the Senate amendment thereto, and 
concur in the Senate amendment. This bipartisan bill passed the Senate 
with 84 votes and could be sent to the President's desk for his 
signature today.

[[Page H5230]]

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. As the Chair has previously advised, the 
unanimous consent request cannot be entertained.
  Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield to the distinguished gentleman from 
Oklahoma (Mr. Kevin Hern), my good friend, for the purpose of a 
unanimous consent request.
  Mr. KEVIN HERN of Oklahoma. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to 
take from the Speaker's table H.R. 3401, with the Senate amendment 
thereto, and concur in the Senate amendment. This bipartisan bill 
passed the Senate with 84 votes and could be sent to the President's 
desk for his signature today.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. As the Chair has previously advised, the 
unanimous consent request cannot be entertained.
  Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield to the distinguished gentleman from 
Nebraska (Mr. Smith), my good friend, for the purpose of a unanimous 
consent request.
  Mr. SMITH of Nebraska. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to take 
from the Speaker's table H.R. 3401, with the Senate amendment thereto, 
and concur in the Senate amendment. This bipartisan bill passed the 
Senate with 84 votes and could immediately be sent to the President's 
desk for his signature.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. As the Chair has previously advised, the 
unanimous consent request cannot be entertained.
  Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield to the distinguished gentleman from 
Ohio (Mr. Latta), my friend, for the purpose of a unanimous consent 
request.
  Mr. LATTA. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to take from the 
Speaker's table H.R. 3401, with the Senate amendment thereto, and 
concur in the Senate amendment. This bipartisan bill passed the Senate 
with 84 votes and could be sent to the President's desk for his 
signature today.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. As the Chair has previously advised, the 
unanimous consent request cannot be entertained.
  Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield to the distinguished gentleman from 
Texas (Mr. Babin), my good friend, for the purpose of a unanimous 
consent request.
  Mr. BABIN. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to take from the 
Speaker's table H.R. 3401, with the Senate amendment thereto, and 
concur in the Senate amendment. This bipartisan bill passed the Senate 
with 84 votes and could be sent to the President's desk for his 
signature today.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. As the Chair has previously advised, the 
unanimous consent request cannot be entertained.
  Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield to the distinguished gentleman from 
Texas, Judge Carter, my very good friend, for the purpose of a 
unanimous consent request.
  Mr. CARTER of Texas. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to take 
from the Speaker's table H.R. 3401, with the Senate amendment thereto, 
and concur in the Senate amendment. This bipartisan bill passed the 
Senate with 84 votes. It could be sent to the President's desk for his 
signature today.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. As the Chair has previously advised, the 
unanimous consent request cannot be entertained.
  Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield to the distinguished gentleman from 
Texas (Mr. Wright), my good friend, for the purpose of a unanimous 
consent request.
  Mr. WRIGHT. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to take from the 
Speaker's table H.R. 3401, with the Senate amendment thereto, and 
concur in the Senate amendment. This bipartisan bill passed the Senate 
with 84 votes and could be sent to the President's desk for his 
signature today.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. As the Chair has previously advised, the 
unanimous consent request cannot be entertained.
  Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield to the distinguished gentleman from 
Arkansas (Mr. Westerman), my good friend, for the purpose of a 
unanimous consent request.
  Mr. WESTERMAN. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to take from 
the Speaker's table H.R. 3401, with the Senate amendment thereto, and 
concur in the Senate amendment. This bipartisan bill passed the Senate 
with 84 votes and could be sent to the President's desk for his 
signature today.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. As the Chair has previously advised, the 
unanimous consent request cannot be entertained.
  Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. 
Burchett), my friend, for the purpose of a unanimous consent request.
  Mr. BURCHETT. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to take from the 
Speaker's table H.R. 3401, with the Senate amendment thereto, and 
concur in the Senate amendment. This bipartisan bill passed the Senate 
with 84 votes and could be sent to the President's desk for his 
signature today.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. As the Chair has previously advised, the 
unanimous consent request cannot be entertained.
  Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield to the distinguished gentleman from 
Indiana (Mr. Baird), my good friend, for the purpose of a unanimous 
consent request.
  Mr. BAIRD. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to take from the 
Speaker's table H.R. 3401, with the Senate amendment thereto, and 
concur in the Senate amendment. This bipartisan bill passed the Senate 
with 84 votes and could be sent to the President's desk for his 
signature today.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. As the Chair has previously advised, the 
unanimous consent request cannot be entertained.
  Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield to the distinguished gentleman from 
Washington (Mr. Newhouse), my very good friend, for the purpose of a 
unanimous consent request.
  Mr. NEWHOUSE. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. 
Cole) for yielding.
  Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to take from the Speaker's 
table H.R. 3401, with the Senate amendment thereto, and concur in the 
Senate amendment. This bipartisan bill passed the Senate with 84 votes 
and could be sent to the President's desk for his signature today.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. As the Chair has previously advised, the 
unanimous consent request cannot be entertained.
  Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield to the distinguished gentleman from 
Kansas (Mr. Marshall), my very good friend, for the purpose of a 
unanimous consent request.
  Mr. MARSHALL. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to take from the 
Speaker's table H.R. 3401, with the Senate amendment thereto, and 
concur in the Senate amendment. This bipartisan bill passed the Senate 
with 84 votes and could be sent to the President's desk for his 
signature today.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. As the Chair has previously advised, the 
unanimous consent request cannot be entertained.
  Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania 
(Mr. Joyce), my good friend, for the purpose of a unanimous consent 
request.
  Mr. JOYCE of Pennsylvania. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to 
take from the Speaker's table H.R. 3401, with the Senate amendment 
thereto, and concur in the Senate amendment. This bipartisan bill 
passed the Senate with 84 votes and could be sent to the President's 
desk for his signature today.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. As previously advised, the unanimous consent 
request cannot be entertained.
  Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield to the distinguished gentleman from 
Alabama (Mr. Palmer), my very good friend, for the purpose of a 
unanimous consent request.
  Mr. PALMER. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to take from the 
Speaker's table H.R. 3401, with the Senate amendment thereto, and 
concur in the Senate amendment. This bipartisan bill passed the Senate 
with 84 votes and could be sent to the President's desk for his 
signature today.

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. As the Chair has previously advised, the 
unanimous consent request cannot be entertained.
  Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. 
Spano), my good friend, for the purpose of a unanimous consent request.
  Mr. SPANO. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to take from the

[[Page H5231]]

Speaker's table H.R. 3401, with the Senate amendment thereto, and 
concur in the Senate amendment. This bipartisan bill passed the Senate 
with 84 votes and could be sent to the President's desk for his 
signature today.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. As the Chair has previously advised, the 
unanimous consent request cannot be entertained.
  Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania 
(Mr. Meuser), my very good friend, for the purpose of a unanimous 
consent request.
  Mr. MEUSER. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to take from the 
Speaker's table H.R. 3401, with the Senate amendment thereto, and 
concur in the Senate amendment. This bipartisan bill passed the Senate 
with 84 votes and could be sent to the President's desk for his 
signature today.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. As the Chair has previously advised, the 
unanimous consent request cannot be entertained.
  Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. 
Steil), my good friend, for the purpose of a unanimous consent request.
  Mr. STEIL. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to take from the 
Speaker's table H.R. 3401, with the Senate amendment thereto, and 
concur in the Senate amendment. This bipartisan bill passed the Senate 
with 84 votes and could be sent to the President's desk for his 
signature today.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. As the Chair has previously advised, the 
unanimous consent request cannot be entertained.
  Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania 
(Mr. Reschenthaler), my very good friend, for the purpose of a 
unanimous consent request.
  Mr. RESCHENTHALER. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to take 
from the Speaker's table H.R. 3401, with the Senate amendment thereto, 
and concur in the Senate amendment. This bipartisan bill passed the 
Senate with 84 votes and could be sent to the President's desk for his 
signature today.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. As the Chair has previously advised, the 
unanimous consent request cannot be entertained.
  Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. 
Weber), my friend, for the purpose of a unanimous consent request.
  Mr. WEBER of Texas. Madam Speaker, for the love of God and this 
country, I ask unanimous consent to take from the Speaker's table H.R. 
3401, with the Senate amendment thereto, and concur in the Senate 
amendment. This bipartisan bill passed the Senate with 84 votes and 
could be sent to the President's desk for his signature today, so help 
us, God.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from Massachusetts has not 
yielded for that purpose and therefore the unanimous consent request 
cannot be entertained.
  Time will be deducted from the gentleman from Oklahoma.

                              {time}  1215

  Mr. McGOVERN. Madam Speaker, I include in the Record two articles, 
one from The New York Times entitled: `` `There is a Stench': Soiled 
Clothes and No Baths for Migrant Children at a Texas Center''; the 
other, `` `The Taliban Gave Me Toothpaste': Former Captives Contrast 
U.S. Treatment of Child Migrants.''

                [From the New York Times, June 21, 2019]

`There Is a Stench': Soiled Clothes and No Baths for Migrant Chidren at 
                             a Texas Center

                         (By Caitlin Dickerson)

       A chaotic scene of sickness and filth is unfolding in an 
     overcrowded border station in Clint, Tex., where hundreds of 
     young people who have recently crossed the border are being 
     held, according to lawyers who visited the facility this 
     week. Some of the children have been there for nearly a 
     month.
       Children as young as 7 and 8, many of them wearing clothes 
     caked with snot and tears, are caring for infants they've 
     just met, the lawyers said. Toddlers without diapers are 
     relieving themselves in their pants. Teenage mothers are 
     wearing clothes stained with breast milk.
       Most of the young detainees have not been able to shower or 
     wash their clothes since they arrived at the facility, those 
     who visited said. They have no access to toothbrushes, 
     toothpaste or soap.
       [Hundreds of migrant children have now been transferred out 
     of the facility.]
       ``There is a stench,'' said Elora Mukherjee, director of 
     the Immigrants' Rights Clinic at Columbia Law School, one of 
     the lawyers who visited the facility. ``The overwhelming 
     majority of children have not bathed since they crossed the 
     border.''
       Conditions at Customs and Border Protection facilities 
     along the border have been an issue of increasing concern as 
     officials warn that the recent large influx of migrant 
     families has driven many of the facilities well past their 
     capacities. The border station in Clint is only one of those 
     with problems.
       In May, the inspector general for the Department of 
     Homeland Security warned of ``dangerous overcrowding'' among 
     adult migrants housed at the border processing center in El 
     Paso, with up to 900 migrants being held at a facility 
     designed for 125. In some cases, cells designed for 35 people 
     were holding 155 people.
       ``Border Patrol agents told us some of the detainees had 
     been held in standing-room-only conditions for days or 
     weeks,'' the inspector general's office said in its report, 
     which noted that some detainees were observed standing on 
     toilets in the cells ``to make room and gain breathing space, 
     thus limiting access to the toilets.''
       Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas on Friday announced the 
     deployment of 1,000 new National Guard troops to the border 
     to help respond to the continuing new arrivals, which the 
     governor said have amounted to more than 45,000 people from 
     52 countries over the past three weeks.
       ``The crisis at our southern border is unlike anything 
     we've witnessed before and has put an enormous strain on the 
     existing resources we have in place,'' Mr. Abbott said, 
     adding, ``Congress is a group of reprobates for not 
     addressing the crisis on our border.''
       The number of border crossings appears to have slowed in 
     recent weeks, possibly as a result of a crackdown by the 
     Mexican government under pressure from President Trump, but 
     the numbers remain high compared to recent years. The 
     overcrowding crisis has been unfolding invisibly, with 
     journalists and lawyers offered little access to fenced-off 
     border facilities.
       The reports of unsafe and unsanitary conditions at Clint 
     and elsewhere came days after government lawyers in court 
     argued that they should not have to provide soap or 
     toothbrushes to children under the legal settlement that gave 
     Ms. Mukherjee and her colleagues access to the facility in 
     Clint. The result of a lawsuit that was first settled in 
     1997, the settlement set the standards for the detention, 
     treatment and release of migrant minors taken into federal 
     immigration custody.
       Ms. Mukherjee is part of a team of lawyers who has for 
     years under the settlement been allowed to inspect government 
     facilities where migrant children are detained. She and her 
     colleagues traveled to Clint this week after learning that 
     border officials had begun detaining minors who had recently 
     crossed the border there.
       She said the conditions in Clint were the worst she had 
     seen in any facility in her 12-year career. ``So many 
     children are sick, they have the flu, and they're not being 
     properly treated,'' she said. The Associated Press, which 
     first reported on conditions at the facility earlier this 
     week, found that it was housing three infants, all with teen 
     mothers, along with a 1-year-old, two 2-year-olds and a 3-
     year-old. It said there were dozens more children under the 
     age of 12.
       Ms. Mukherjee said children were being overseen by guards 
     for Customs and Border Protection, which declined to comment 
     for this story. She and her colleagues observed the guards 
     wearing full uniforms--including weapons--as well as face 
     masks to protect themselves from the unsanitary conditions.
       Together, the group of six lawyers met with 60 children in 
     Clint this week who ranged from 5 months to 17 years old. The 
     infants were either children of minor parents, who were also 
     detained, or had been separated from adult family members 
     with whom they had crossed the border. The separated children 
     were now alone, being cared for by other young detainees.
       ``The children are locked in their cells and cages nearly 
     all day long,'' Ms. Mukherjee said. ``A few of the kids said 
     they had some opportunities to go outside and play, but they 
     said they can't bring themselves to play because they are 
     trying to stay alive in there.''
       When the lawyers arrived, federal officials said that more 
     than 350 children were detained at the facility. The 
     officials did not disclose the facility's capacity but said 
     the population had exceeded it. By the time the lawyers left 
     on Wednesday night, border officials told them that about 200 
     of the children had been transferred elsewhere but did not 
     say where they had been sent.
       ``That's what's keeping me up at night,'' Ms. Mukherjee 
     said.
       Some sick children were being quarantined in the facility. 
     The lawyers were allowed to speak to the children by phone, 
     but their requests to meet with them in person and observe 
     the conditions they were being held in were denied.
       The children told the lawyers they were given the same 
     meals every day--instant oats for breakfast, instant noodles 
     for lunch, a frozen burrito for dinner, along with a few 
     cookies and juice packets--which many said was not enough. 
     ``Nearly every child I spoke with said that they were 
     hungry,'' Ms. Mukherjee said.

[[Page H5232]]

       Another group of lawyers conducting inspections under the 
     same federal court settlement said they discovered similar 
     conditions earlier this month at six other facilities in 
     Texas. At the Border Patrol's Central Processing Center in 
     McAllen, Tex.--often known as ``Ursula''--the lawyers 
     encountered a 17-year-old mother from Guatemala who couldn't 
     stand because of complications from an emergency C-section, 
     and who was caring for a sick and dirty premature baby.
       ``When we encountered the baby and her mom, the baby was 
     filthy. They wouldn't give her any water to wash her. And I 
     took a Kleenex and I washed around her neck black dirt,'' 
     said Hope Frye, who was leading the group, adding, ``Not a 
     little stuff--dirt.''
       After government lawyers argued in the Ninth Circuit Court 
     of Appeals in San Francisco this week that amenities such as 
     soap and toothbrushes should not be mandated under the legal 
     settlement originally agreed to between the government and 
     migrant families in 1997 and amended several times since 
     then, all three judges voiced dismay.
       Among the guidelines set under the legal settlement are 
     that facilities for children must be ``safe and sanitary.''
       The Justice Department's lawyer, Sarah Fabian, argued that 
     the settlement agreement did not specify the need to supply 
     hygienic items and that, therefore, the government did not 
     need to do so.
       ``Are you arguing seriously that you do not read the 
     agreement as requiring you to do anything other than what I 
     just described: cold all night long, lights on all night 
     long, sleeping on concrete and you've got an aluminum foil 
     blanket?'' Judge William Fletcher asked Ms. Fabian. ``I find 
     that inconceivable that the government would say that is safe 
     and sanitary.''
                                  ____


    `The Taliban Gave me Toothpaste': Former Captives Contrast U.S. 
                      Treatment of Child Migrants

                            (By Deanna Paul)

                            [June 25, 2019]

       The federal government told a panel of Ninth Circuit 
     appellate judges last week that U.S. border detention 
     facilities are ``safe and sanitary,'' as required by law, 
     even though migrant children are denied soap, toothbrushes 
     and dark places to sleep.
       Judge William A. Fletcher called the position of Sarah 
     Fabian, a senior attorney from the Office of Immigration 
     Litigation, ``inconceivable.''
       Senior U.S. Circuit Judge A. Wallace Tashima told the 
     government attorney, ``If you don't have a toothbrush, if you 
     don't have soap, if you don't have a blanket, it's not safe 
     and sanitary.''
       Fabian's argument spread rapidly across the Internet--and 
     so did several tweets supporting the notion that the United 
     States treats migrant detainees less humanely than foreign 
     pirates and the Taliban treat their captives.
       American journalist Michael Scott Moore, abducted in 2012 
     while reporting in Somalia, watched Fabian argue that minimal 
     necessities, like toiletries and sleeping conditions, were 
     not essential to meet minimum ``safe and sanitary'' 
     standards.
       ``That was--let's say--below my experience in Somalia,'' he 
     told The Washington Post Tuesday of his more than two years 
     in captivity.
       ``The conditions were about as miserable as you could 
     imagine,'' he said, describing a barren and concrete prison 
     house. Often there was no electricity, he said, ``but we had 
     certain minimum things that kept it from being completely 
     wretched.''
       He said he was given toothpaste, soap, a daily shower and a 
     foam mattress.
       Recent reports have surfaced describing U.S. border 
     detainees held in cages of chain-link fencing, sleeping on 
     concrete and covered with blankets made of aluminum foil, 
     allegations that Customs and Border Protection officials 
     dispute.
       On Tuesday, the agency said that children in custody 
     receive ``continuous access to hygiene products and adequate 
     food'' while awaiting shelter placement.
       Somali pirates gave me toothpaste & soap. https://
twitter.com/nowthisnews/status/1142151178177978368 . . .
       An executive editor at newyorker.com, David Rohde, 
     contributed to the online conversation, too.
       ``The Taliban gave me toothpaste & soap,'' he wrote on 
     Twitter, drawing from the seven months he spent as a hostage 
     of the Taliban. Rohde said he was not abused in their 
     custody, though the group is known for abusing its captives.
       The online thread with former prisoners has been liked 
     nearly half a million times. Washington Post Global opinions 
     writer Jason Rezaian, who was held in Iranian custody for a 
     year and a half and has an ongoing lawsuit against the 
     Iranian government, also responded on Twitter.
       ``I felt if I didn't chime in, it would be the height of 
     hypocrisy,'' Rezaian told The Post on Tuesday, calling U.S. 
     treatment of children at the border misaligned with ``what 
     this country stands for.'' ``The government is treating them 
     like they're statistics, `the other' and not deserving of 
     basic humanity.''
       From the first day in captivity, Rezaian was permitted to 
     shower regularly. He was also given a toothbrush and 
     toothpaste. Rezaian asked, ``If we're going to treat the most 
     vulnerable people this way, what does that say about our 
     actual values?''
       I had a toothbrush and toothpaste--not exactly Aquafresh or 
     Tom's--from the first night. Actually, I had almost nothing 
     else in my cell while I was in solitary confinement. I was 
     allowed to shower every couple of days. https://twitter.com/
 yashar/status/1142546005688311808 . . .
       The case heard on Tuesday stems from a motion filed under 
     the Obama administration. In part, it argued that Customs and 
     Border Protection was holding children in detention 
     facilities that were not ``safe and sanitary,'' in violation 
     of a 1997 precedent.
       The Trump administration, however, opted to bring the 
     appeal, asking the panel of three judges to condone current 
     custody conditions.

  Mr. McGOVERN. Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman 
from Texas (Ms. Escobar).
  Ms. ESCOBAR. Madam Speaker, the last thing I would want to see is a 
repeat of the other night when my colleagues on the other side of the 
aisle laughed and jeered as I described the situation at the border and 
what is happening to the children in our custody.
  Madam Speaker, the minority leader earlier asked why are we here 
again--one word, ``oversight''--``oversight.''
  We have seen, as Members of Congress, too often, our desire to 
provide oversight, which is a fundamental responsibility, a fundamental 
duty of ours, we have seen it thwarted and we have seen it obstructed.
  There is no one in this Chamber right now who feels more of a sense 
of urgency than the Representative from Texas 16, El Paso, where we 
have had a front row to the atrocities occurring at the hands of this 
government.
  And I will tell you, part of the challenge for many of us who have 
worked with goodwill and charity has been witnessing the fact that 
Congress has not been able to provide fundamental guardrails for the 
treatment of these kids.
  What is the main difference between the Senate bill and the House 
bill? Ours is far more humane. Ours ensures that money will not be 
diverted for things that have turned a challenge into a crisis.
  A few examples include ripping children from the arms of their 
parents or sending vulnerable populations back into Mexico. In fact, 
Madam Speaker, in my district, one of the individuals sent back to 
Mexico under this administration's policy was kidnapped and raped. We 
have also seen people legally blocked at our ports of entry, sent to 
more treacherous crossings. That is why Oscar and Valeria died.
  So oversight is why our bill is the better bill.
  Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker I yield to the distinguished gentleman from 
Arkansas (Mr. Hill), my very good friend, for the purpose of unanimous 
consent.
  Mr. HILL. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to take from the 
Speaker's table H.R. 3401, with the Senate amendment thereto, and 
concur in this Senate amendment. This bipartisan bill was passed in the 
Senate with 84 votes, Madam Speaker, and could be sent today to the 
President's desk for his signature.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. As the Chair has previously advised, the 
unanimous consent request cannot be entertained.
  Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield to my very good friend from the 
great State of Kentucky (Mr. Comer) for a unanimous consent request.
  Mr. COMER. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to take from the 
Speaker's table H.R. 3401, with the Senate amendment thereto, and 
concur in the Senate amendment. This bipartisan bill passed the Senate 
with 84 votes and can be sent to the President's desk for his signature 
today.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. As the Chair has previously advised, the 
unanimous consent request cannot be entertained.
  Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield to my very good friend from the 
great State of Montana (Mr. Gianforte) for the purpose of a unanimous 
consent request.
  Mr. GIANFORTE. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to take from 
the Speaker's table H.R. 3401, with the Senate amendment thereto, and 
concur in the Senate amendment. This bipartisan bill passed the Senate 
with 84 votes and could be sent to the President's desk for his 
signature today.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. As the Chair has previously advised, 
unanimous consent request cannot be entertained.
  Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield to my very good friend from the 
great

[[Page H5233]]

State of Idaho (Mr. Fulcher) for the purpose of a unanimous consent 
request.
  Mr. FULCHER. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to take from the 
Speaker's table H.R. 3401, with the Senate amendment thereto, and 
concur in the Senate amendment. This bipartisan bill passed the Senate 
with 84 votes and could be sent to the President's desk for his 
signature today.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. As the Chair has previously advised, the 
unanimous consent request cannot be entertained.
  Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield to my very good friend from the 
great State of Texas (Mr. Conaway) for the purpose of a unanimous 
consent request.
  Mr. CONAWAY. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to take from the 
Speaker's table H.R. 3401, with the Senate amendment thereto, and to 
concur in that Senate amendment. This bipartisan bill passed the Senate 
with 84 votes and can be sent to the President's desk for his signature 
today.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. As the Chair has previously advised, the 
unanimous consent request cannot be entertained.
  Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield to my very good friend from the 
great State of Pennsylvania (Mr. Thompson) for the purpose of a 
unanimous consent request.
  Mr. THOMPSON of Pennsylvania. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent 
to take from the Speaker's table H.R. 3401, with the Senate amendment 
thereto, and concur in the Senate amendment. This bipartisan bill 
passed the Senate with 84 votes and can be sent to the President's desk 
for his signature today.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. As the Chair has previously advised, the 
unanimous consent request cannot be entertained.
  Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania 
(Mr. Keller), my friend and newest Member of the House of 
Representatives, for the purpose of a unanimous consent request.
  Mr. KELLER. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to take from the 
Speaker's table H.R. 3401, with the Senate amendment thereto, and 
concur in the Senate amendment. This bipartisan bill passed the Senate 
with 84 votes and could be sent directly to the President's desk for 
his signature today.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. As the Chair has previously advised, the 
unanimous consent request cannot be entertained.
  Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield to my very good friend from the 
great State of Illinois (Mr. Bost) for the purpose of a unanimous 
consent request.
  Mr. BOST. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to take from the 
Speaker's table H.R. 3401, with the Senate amendment thereto, and 
concur in the Senate amendment. This bipartisan bill passed the Senate 
with 84 votes and could be sent to the President's desk for his 
signature today.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. As the Chair has previously advised, the 
unanimous consent request cannot be entertained.
  Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield to the distinguished gentleman from 
Florida (Mr. Rutherford), my very good friend, for the purpose of 
unanimous consent request.
  Mr. RUTHERFORD. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to take from 
the Speaker's table H.R. 3401, with the Senate amendment thereto, and 
concur in the Senate amendment. This bipartisan bill passed the Senate 
with 84 votes and could be sent to the President's desk for his 
signature today.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. As the Chair has previously advised, the 
unanimous consent request cannot be entertained.
  Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield to the distinguished gentleman from 
Virginia, my good friend (Mr. Riggleman) for the purpose of a unanimous 
consent request.
  Mr. RIGGLEMAN. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to take from 
the Speaker's table H.R. 3401, with the Senate amendment thereto, and 
concur in the Senate amendment. This bipartisan bill passed the Senate 
with 84 votes and could be sent to the President's desk for his 
signature today.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. As the Chair has previously advised, the 
unanimous consent request cannot be entertained.
  Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield to my good friend from the great 
State of Tennessee (Mr. Rose) for the purpose of a unanimous consent 
request.
  Mr. JOHN W. ROSE of Tennessee. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent 
to take from the Speaker's table H.R. 3401, with the Senate amendment 
thereto, and concur in the Senate amendment. This bipartisan bill 
passed the Senate with 84 votes and could be sent to the President's 
desk for his signature today.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. As the Chair has previously advised the 
unanimous consent request cannot be entertained.
  Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield to my good friend from the great 
State of Illinois (Mr. LaHood) for the purpose of a unanimous consent 
request.
  Mr. LaHOOD. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to take from the 
Speaker's table H.R. 3401, with the Senate amendment thereto, and 
concur in the Senate amendment. This bipartisan bill passed the Senate 
with 84 votes and could be sent to the President's desk for his 
signature today.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. As the Chair has previously advised, the 
unanimous consent request cannot be entertained.
  Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield to my good friend from the great 
State of South Carolina (Mr. Norman) for the purpose of a unanimous 
consent request.
  Mr. NORMAN. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to take from the 
Speaker's table H.R. 3401, with the Senate amendment thereto, and 
concur in the Senate amendment. This bipartisan bill passed the Senate 
with 84 votes and could be sent to the President's desk for his 
signature today.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. As the Chair has previously advised, the 
unanimous consent request cannot be entertained.
  Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield to my very good friend from the 
great State of Ohio (Mr. Stivers) for the purpose of a unanimous 
consent request.
  Mr. STIVERS. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to take from the 
Speaker's table H.R. 3401, with the Senate amendments thereto, and 
concur with the Senate amendment. This bipartisan bill passed the 
Senate with 84 votes and it could be sent to the President for his 
signature today.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. As the Chair has previously advised, the 
unanimous consent request cannot be entertained.
  Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield to my good friend from the great 
State of Virginia (Mr. Cline) for the purpose of a unanimous consent 
request.
  Mr. CLINE. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to take from the 
Speaker's table H.R. 3401, with the Senate amendment thereto, and 
concur in the Senate amendment. This bipartisan bill passed the Senate 
with 84 votes and could be sent to the President's desk for his 
signature today.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. As the Chair has previously advised, the 
unanimous consent request cannot be entertained.
  Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield to my very good friend from the 
great State of Michigan (Mr. Moolenaar) for the purpose of a unanimous 
consent request.
  Mr. MOOLENAAR. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to take from 
the Speaker's table H.R. 3401, with the Senate amendment thereto, and 
concur in the Senate amendment. This bipartisan bill passed the Senate 
with 84 votes and could be sent to the President's desk for his 
signature today.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. As the Chair has previously advised, the 
unanimous consent request cannot be entertained.
  Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from the great 
State of West Virginia (Mrs. Miller), my good friend, for the purpose 
of a unanimous consent request.
  Mrs. MILLER. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to take from the 
Speaker's table H.R. 3401, with the Senate amendment thereto, and 
concur in the Senate amendment. This bipartisan bill passed the Senate 
with 84 votes and could be sent to the President's desk today for his 
signature.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. As the Chair has previously advised, the 
unanimous consent request cannot be entertained.

[[Page H5234]]

  

  Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from the great 
State of Kansas (Mr. Estes), my very good friend, for the purpose of a 
unanimous consent request.
  Mr. ESTES. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to take from the 
Speaker's table H.R. 3401, with the Senate amendment thereto, and 
concur in the Senate amendment. This bipartisan bill passed the Senate 
with 84 votes and could be sent to the President's desk for his 
signature today.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. As the Chair has previously advised, the 
unanimous consent request cannot be entertained.
  Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield to my good friend from the great 
State of Ohio, (Mr. Balderson) for the purpose of a unanimous consent 
request.
  Mr. BALDERSON. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to take from 
the Speaker's table H.R. 3401, with the Senate amendment thereto, and 
concur in the Senate amendment. This bipartisan bill passed the Senate 
with 84 votes and could be sent to the President's desk for his 
signature today.

                              {time}  1230

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. As the Chair has previously advised, the 
unanimous consent request cannot be entertained.
  Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield to the distinguished gentlewoman 
from North Carolina (Ms. Foxx), my very good friend, for the purpose of 
a unanimous consent request.
  Ms. FOXX of North Carolina. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to 
take from the Speaker's table H.R. 3401, with the Senate amendment 
thereto, and concur in the Senate amendment. This bipartisan bill 
passed the Senate with 84 votes and could be sent to the President's 
desk for his signature today.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. As the Chair has previously advised, the 
unanimous consent request cannot be entertained.
  Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from the great 
State of Tennessee (Mr. David P. Roe), my very good friend, for the 
purpose of a unanimous consent request.
  Mr. DAVID P. ROE of Tennessee. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent 
to take from the Speaker's table, H.R. 3401, with the Senate amendment 
thereto, and concur in the Senate amendment. This bipartisan bill 
passed the Senate with 84 votes and should be sent to the President's 
desk for his signature today.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. As the Chair has previously advised, the 
unanimous consent request cannot be entertained.
  Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from the great 
State of Tennessee (Mr. Fleischmann), my very good friend, for the 
purpose of a unanimous consent request.
  Mr. FLEISCHMANN. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to take from 
the Speaker's table H.R. 3401, with the Senate amendment thereto, and 
concur in the Senate amendment. This bipartisan bill passed the United 
States Senate with 84 votes and could be sent to the President's desk 
for his immediate signature today.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. As the Chair has previously advised, the 
unanimous consent request cannot be entertained.
  Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from the great 
State of Maryland (Mr. Harris), my very good friend, for the purpose of 
a unanimous consent request.
  Mr. HARRIS. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to take from the 
Speaker's table H.R. 3401, with the Senate amendment thereto, and 
concur in the Senate amendment. This bipartisan bill passed the Senate 
with 84 votes and could be sent to the President's desk for his 
signature today.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. As the Chair has previously advised, the 
unanimous consent request cannot be entertained.
  Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from the great 
State of Ohio (Mr. Gibbs), my very good friend, for the purpose of a 
unanimous consent request.
  Mr. GIBBS. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to take from the 
Speaker's table H.R. 3401, with the Senate amendment thereto, and 
concur in the Senate amendment. This bipartisan bill passed the Senate 
84-8 and could be sent to the President's desk for his signature today. 
Let's vote on it.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. As the Chair has previously advised, the 
unanimous consent request cannot be entertained.
  Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield to the distinguished gentleman from 
the great State of Illinois (Mr. Rodney Davis), my very good friend, 
for the purpose of a unanimous consent request.
  Mr. RODNEY DAVIS of Illinois. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent 
to take from the Speaker's table H.R. 3401, with the Senate amendment 
thereto, and concur in the Senate amendment. This bipartisan bill 
passed the Senate with 84 votes and could be sent to the President's 
desk immediately for his signature.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. As the Chair has previously advised, the 
unanimous consent request cannot be entertained.
  Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield to the distinguished gentleman from 
the great State of West Virginia (Mr. Mooney), my very good friend, for 
the purpose of a unanimous consent request.
  Mr. MOONEY of West Virginia. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent 
to take from the Speaker's table H.R. 3401, with the Senate amendment 
thereto, and concur in the Senate amendment. This bipartisan bill 
passed the Senate with 84 votes and could be sent to the President's 
desk for his signature today.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. As the Chair has previously advised, the 
unanimous consent request cannot be entertained.
  Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from the great 
State of Alabama (Mr. Byrne), my very good friend, for the purpose of a 
unanimous consent request.
  Mr. BYRNE. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to take from the 
Speaker's table H.R. 3401, with the Senate amendment thereto, and 
concur in the Senate amendment. This bipartisan bill passed the Senate 
with 84 votes and could be sent to the President's desk for his 
signature today.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. As the Chair has previously advised, the 
unanimous consent request cannot be entertained.
  Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield to the distinguished gentleman from 
the great State of Ohio (Mr. Wenstrup), my very good friend, for the 
purpose of a unanimous consent request.
  Mr. WENSTRUP. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to take from the 
Speaker's table H.R. 3401, with the Senate amendment thereto, and 
concur in the Senate amendment. This bipartisan bill passed the Senate 
with 84 votes and could be sent to the President's desk for his 
signature today.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. As the Chair has previously advised, the 
unanimous consent request cannot be entertained.
  Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield to the distinguished gentleman from 
the great State of Florida (Mr. Dunn), my very good friend, for the 
purpose of a unanimous consent request.

  Mr. DUNN. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to take from the 
Speaker's table H.R. 3401, with the Senate amendment thereto, and 
concur in the Senate amendment. This bipartisan bill passed the Senate 
with 84 votes and could be sent to the President's desk today.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. As the Chair has previously advised, the 
unanimous consent request cannot be entertained.
  Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from the great 
State of Texas (Mr. Gooden), my very good friend, for the purpose of a 
unanimous consent request.
  Mr. GOODEN. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to take from the 
Speaker's table H.R. 3401, with the Senate amendment thereto, and 
concur in the Senate amendment. This bipartisan bill passed the Senate 
with only 6 nay votes from Democrats. There is overwhelming support for 
this in the Senate, and I urge my colleagues to join them in passing 
this bill today and sending it to the President.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. As the Chair has previously advised, the 
unanimous consent request cannot be entertained.
  Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from the great 
State of Louisiana (Mr. Johnson), my very good

[[Page H5235]]

friend, for the purpose of a unanimous consent request.
  Mr. JOHNSON of Louisiana. Madam Speaker, I ask that we do the right 
thing here. I ask unanimous consent to take from the Speaker's table 
H.R. 3401, with the Senate amendment thereto, and concur in the Senate 
amendment. This bipartisan bill passed the Senate with 84 votes and 
could be sent to the President's desk for his signature today to solve 
this crisis.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. As the Chair has previously advised, the 
unanimous consent request cannot be entertained.


                             Point of Order

  Mr. GRIFFITH. Madam Speaker, point of order.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman will state his point of order.
  Mr. GRIFFITH. Madam Speaker, has the gentleman from Massachusetts 
yielded the floor by taking his seat?
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from Massachusetts has 
reserved his time.
  Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield to the distinguished gentleman from 
North Dakota (Mr. Armstrong), my very good friend, for the purpose of a 
unanimous consent request.
  Mr. ARMSTRONG. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to take from 
the Speaker's table H.R. 3401, with the Senate amendment thereto. And 
if we would like to talk about accountability and if we would like to 
talk about oversight, I would prefer we start right here. Let your 
Members vote.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from Massachusetts has not 
yielded for that purpose and, therefore, the unanimous consent request 
cannot be entertained.
  Time will be deducted from the gentleman from Oklahoma.
  Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I think you will be delighted to hear that I 
yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from the great State of Michigan (Mr. 
Mitchell).
  Mr. MITCHELL. Madam Speaker, it is nice to know that my colleagues on 
the other side of the aisle now recognize it as a crisis.
  The President asked 58 days ago for a supplemental appropriation to 
deal with this issue. It was ignored. We have tried 18 times to bring 
up a bill on the floor to deal with supplemental appropriations for 
humanitarian aid at the border, and it was ignored.
  My friends on the other side of the aisle said they want to improve 
the bill. They want to ignore the fact that the Senate took up the 
House bill and overwhelmingly rejected it on a bipartisan basis.
  Then they passed a bipartisan bill 84-8, which doesn't happen over 
there very often. We have gone through a list of those who voted in 
favor, including Senator Schumer and Senator Durbin, yet somehow the 
House wants to ignore it. At least the majority in the House want to 
ignore it.
  How they want to improve the bill, you may ask? Well, let's start by 
simply reducing or eliminating border security, that appears to be 
optional to my colleagues on the other side of the aisle. They want to 
take a hatchet to ICE. These are law enforcement personnel.
  My son is a police officer. He puts on a vest every day. If you told 
me we were going to withhold payroll or overtime when they are doing 
the job, I would be offended, I would be disgusted, and I am, at this 
moment in time.
  Let me ask how many over there would put on a vest, go out and do the 
job, and then hear, we may or may not pay you? Do I see any hands 
raised? I doubt it.
  Law enforcement is struggling to do a job, an extraordinarily tough 
job, and we want to make it harder. So let me suggest, as the UC 
request was made, that we take up the bill that was passed by the 
Senate and we pass it.
  And I ask for your attention over there, sir, unless, of course, you 
decided that policy is being made by a fragment of your conference, 
unless you decided that you are going to turn over the gavel to a 
fragment of your conference to make decisions for you, which may well 
appear to be the case. But let's be honest to the American people and 
tell them that a fragment, a small portion, of your conference is now 
functioning as a Speaker of the House.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Members are reminded to address their 
remarks to the Chair.
  Mr. McGOVERN. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may 
consume. What we just witnessed was really interesting. In the amount 
of time that it took my friends on the other side of the aisle to get 
through those antics, we could have passed this bill. That is what 
urgency looks like. Not political theater. These kids that we are here 
to try to protect deserve more than grandstanding. They deserve things 
like medicine. They deserve things like soap and clothing.
  And my Republican friends say they don't want to waste time, but they 
wasted a hell of a lot of time with what we just saw happen.
  And just one other observation. In all the other editorial comments 
that were made, I didn't hear the word ``children'' mentioned once. I 
mean, it is telling, because that is what this debate is all about. It 
is not about grandstanding, and it is not about more money for cages to 
put kids in. It is about the children. And I am sorry that the children 
who are suffering under U.S. custody are such an afterthought.
  And to the gentleman from Michigan, I am outraged, too. I am outraged 
that the terrible conditions that these kids have been forced to 
experience happened under U.S. custody. I am outraged that that would 
happen in the United States of America.
  Madam Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Connecticut 
(Ms. DeLauro), the distinguished chairwoman of the Appropriations 
Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and 
Related Agencies.
  Ms. DeLAURO. Madam Speaker, I rise in support of this emergency 
supplemental bill.
  Madam Speaker, the principles guiding this bill were clear from the 
outset. It is a response to a humanitarian crisis.
  By increasing the housing capacity at Health and Human Services to 
moving these vulnerable children from the detention centers at Customs 
and Border Protection as quickly as possible to Health and Human 
Services, because we know what the conditions are at CBP. They are 
deplorable. In fact, it is government-sponsored child abuse.
  We wanted to build in the protections for children that have been 
nonexistent in the past, and we uncovered those abuses. They have been 
reported in the press. The Miami Herald just recently said they are 
``prison-like conditions'' at Homestead.
  And we wanted to place children with a sponsor in a safe placement, a 
safe environment, as expeditiously as possible to reverse the 
administration's policy of frightening sponsors to come forward.
  This bill includes strong protections and safeguards for these 
vulnerable children; it extends to the influx shelters' enhanced 
standards of care. And, my friends, it is for the first time ever. 
These protections have never been required of these influx shelters.
  It continues to prevent the waiving of core standards and protections 
after 6 months.
  It continues to hold influx shelters accountable by requiring HHS to 
remove an operator if they do not comply with these core standards.

                              {time}  1245

  If the shelter is not in compliance, then HHS is required to award 
the contract to a new service provider, and the bill continues to 
protect sponsors and potential sponsors by extending a provision that 
prohibits funds from being used to put anyone into a removal proceeding 
based on information from HHS' sponsor-vetting process.
  The bill continues to require HHS to maintain the directives that 
they issued in December that removed bureaucratic barriers and have 
helped to place these children with sponsors as expeditiously as 
possible. And the bill continues to require HHS to report to Congress 
within 24 hours if an unaccompanied child dies in HHS custody.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The time of the gentlewoman has expired.
  Mr. McGOVERN. Madam Speaker, I yield the gentlewoman from Connecticut 
an additional 1 minute.
  Ms. DeLAURO. Madam Speaker, a child did die in HHS custody. No one 
knew about this for 8 months, and it was only the news media that 
uncovered it. A child died.

[[Page H5236]]

  This bill continues to ensure that Members of Congress can conduct 
oversight visits of shelters without being required to provide advance 
notice, and the bill continues to protect taxpayer funding by 
prohibiting funds from being diverted to programs outside of Health and 
Human Services. This bill provides clear direction, legal guardrails, 
about how our emergency funds should be used, and this bill wages the 
battle for the vulnerable.
  Madam Speaker, I urge every Member of this House to support this 
bill.
  Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  Madam Speaker, if we defeat the previous question, I will offer an 
amendment to the rule to simply concur in the Senate amendment without 
further amendment. This will immediately send the bill to the President 
and deliver the necessary resources needed to respond to this 
humanitarian crisis.
  Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to insert the text of my 
amendment in the Record, along with extraneous material, immediately 
prior to the vote on the previous question.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the 
gentleman from Oklahoma?
  There was no objection.
  Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, let me just say again, we can solve this 
problem now.
  I respect that my friends have strong feelings about their 
legislation. We all do. The reality is that that legislation is not 
going to get through the Senate; it is not going to be signed by the 
President.
  We have a vehicle that has already gotten through the Senate, that 75 
percent of the Democrats in the Chamber voted for, including the entire 
Democratic leadership, and that could go, if this House would act on 
it, straight to the President's desk and be signed into law.
  Now, my friends are, I know, concerned about resources. And, again, 
it is nice that they are. It would have been nice if, in the 18 
previous times we have tried to bring this matter up before the House, 
they would have helped. It would have been nice if, 2 months ago, we 
had actually seen them respond.
  We share their concern for these young people. That is why we asked 
for extra resources. The administration asked for extra resources 58 
days ago. So I think, again, this ought to be pretty easy to resolve 
here.
  My friends, with all due respect, have a partisan bill that will pass 
along partisan lines in this House, that will not be enacted by the 
Senate, and that will not be signed by the President.
  The Senate has a bill they have already passed in a bipartisan 
fashion. It, frankly, has more money to help the people who are being 
paid overtime in the Border Patrol to--


                Announcement by the Speaker Pro Tempore

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair notes a disturbance in the gallery 
in contravention of the law and rules of the House. The Sergeant at 
Arms will remove those persons responsible for the disturbance and 
restore order to the gallery.
  The gentleman from Oklahoma may continue.
  Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I want to thank the Speaker personally for 
taking control of a difficult situation.
  So, Madam Speaker, just to resume my point, we have a vehicle. It 
could literally pass on this floor in less than an hour. It could head 
to the President. It satisfies almost all--not all, but almost all--of 
my friends' concerns. I would just ask them, in all seriousness, to 
just consider political reality here and let's get this done and get 
these resources to where they are needed. We can do that. We can do it 
in a bipartisan fashion.
  Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. McGOVERN. Madam Speaker, I include in the Record two articles: 
One from Vox, entitled, ``The Horrifying Conditions Facing Kids in 
Border Detention, Explained,'' and another from Time magazine, 
entitled, ``Lawyers Say Migrant Children Are Living in `Traumatic and 
Dangerous' Conditions at Border Detention Site.''

                       [From Vox, June 25, 2019]

  The Horrifying Conditions Facing Kids in Border Detention, Explained

                             (By Dara Lind)

       On any given day, 2,000 children are in Border Patrol 
     custody, and the problems are hardly confined to one 
     facility.
       At any given time, for the past several weeks, more than 
     2,000 children have been held in the custody of US Border 
     Patrol without their parents. Legally, they're not supposed 
     to be held by border agents for more than 72 hours before 
     being sent to the Department of Health and Human Services, 
     which is responsible for finding their nearest relative in 
     the US to house them while their immigration cases are 
     adjudicated.
       In practice, they're being held for days, sometimes weeks, 
     in facilities without enough food or toothbrushes--going days 
     without showering, overcrowded and undercared for.
       Late last week, the conditions of that detention in one 
     facility in Clint, Texas, became public when investigators, 
     checking on the US government's obligations under the Flores 
     agreement (which governs the care of immigrant children in US 
     custody), were so horrified that they turned into public 
     whistleblowers and spoke to the Associated Press about what 
     they saw.
       The stories they told have horrified much of America. The 
     past several days have seen growing outrage, and the acting 
     commissioner of Customs and Border Protection (which oversees 
     CBP) announced his resignation Tuesday (though officials 
     maintain the outrage didn't cause the resignation).
       But the problem goes beyond one official--or one facility.
       The story gained even wider traction after Rep. Alexandria 
     Ocasio-Cortez's (D-NY) reference to the detention facilities 
     as ``concentration camps,'' and the ensuing debate over 
     whether that term was appropriate.
       The US government's response was to move the children out 
     of the Clint facility--and move another group of children in.
       On Monday, officials confirmed that all 350 of the children 
     there last week would be moved to other facilities by 
     Tuesday; about 250 of them have been placed with HHS, and the 
     remainder are being sent to other Border Patrol facilities. 
     But on Tuesday morning, a Customs and Border Protection 
     official told a New York Times reporter on a press call that 
     about a hundred children were currently being housed at 
     Clint.
       That's illustrative of the hectic improvisation that's 
     characterized much of the Trump administration's response to 
     the current border influx. It's a problem that is much, much 
     bigger than the problems at a single facility. Indeed, the 
     problems investigators identified at Clint are problems 
     elsewhere as well.
       The lone member of the team of legal investigators who 
     visited the El Paso facility in which many children were sent 
     from Clint--called ``Border Patrol Station 1''--told Vox that 
     conditions there were just as bad as they were in Clint, with 
     the same problems of insufficient food, no toothbrushes, and 
     aggressive guards.
       The problem isn't the Clint facility. The problem is the 
     hastily-cobbled-together system of facilities Customs and 
     Border Protection (the agency which runs Border Patrol) has 
     thrown together in the last several months, as the 
     unprecedented number of families and children coming into the 
     US without papers has overwhelmed a system designed to 
     swiftly deport single adults.
       It is apparent that even an administration acting with the 
     best interests of children in mind at every turn would be 
     scrambling right now. But policymakers are split on how much 
     of the current crisis is simply a resource problem--one 
     Congress could help by sending more resources--and how much 
     is deliberate mistreatment or neglect from an administration 
     that doesn't deserve any more money or trust.
       Border Patrol isn't prepared to care for children at all. 
     It's now housing 2,000 a day.
       According to statistics sent to congressional staff last 
     week and obtained by Vox, between May 14 and June 13, US 
     Border Patrol facilities were housing over 14,000 people a 
     day--and sometimes as many as 18,000. (The most recent tally, 
     as of June 13, was nearly 16,000.)
       Most of these were single adults, or parents with children. 
     But consistently, over that month, around 2,000--2,081 as of 
     June 13--were ``unaccompanied alien children,'' or children 
     being held without adult relatives in separate facilities.
       In an early June press call, a Customs and Border 
     Protection official said, referring to the total number of 
     people in custody, ``when we have 4,000 in custody, we 
     consider that high. 6,000 is a crisis.''
       Traditionally, an ``unaccompanied alien child'' refers to a 
     child who comes to the US without a parent or guardian. 
     Increasingly--as lawyers have been reporting, and as the 
     investigators who interviewed children in detention last week 
     confirmed--children are coming to the US with a relative who 
     is not their parent, and being separated.
       Because the law defines an ``unaccompanied'' child as 
     someone without a parent or legal guardian here, border 
     agents don't have the ability to keep a child with a 
     grandparent, aunt or uncle, or even a sibling who's over 18, 
     though advocates have also raised concerns that border agents 
     are separating relatives even when there is evidence of legal 
     guardianship.
       Under the terms of US law--and especially the 1997 Flores 
     settlement, which governs the treatment of children in 
     immigration custody--immigration agents are obligated to get 
     unaccompanied children out of immigration detention as 
     quickly as possible, and to keep them in the least 
     restrictive conditions possible while they're there. Barring 
     emergencies, children aren't supposed to be

[[Page H5237]]

     in Border Patrol custody for more than 72 hours before being 
     sent to HHS--which is responsible for finding and vetting a 
     sponsor to house the child (usually their closest relative in 
     the United States).
       That hasn't been happening. Attorneys, doctors, and human 
     rights observers have consistently reported that children are 
     being held by Border Patrol for days or longer before being 
     picked up by HHS. And in the meantime, they're being kept in 
     facilities that weren't built to hold even adults for that 
     period of time, or in improvised ``soft-sided'' facilities 
     that look like (and are commonly referred to as) tents.
       The detention conditions crisis doesn't just affect 
     children. But conditions for children are under special legal 
     scrutiny.
       Since late last year, US immigration agents have been 
     overwhelmed by the number of families coming across the 
     border. The US immigration system, which was built to quickly 
     arrest and deport single Mexican adults crossing into the US 
     to work, doesn't have the capacity to deal with tens of 
     thousands of families (mostly from Central America) who are 
     often seeking asylum in the US.
       The length of time migrants are spending in Border Patrol 
     custody (and the conditions there) have attracted some alarm 
     before. In April, pictures of migrants being held outside 
     under a bridge in El Paso, fenced in and sleeping on the 
     ground, attracted outrage and led Border Patrol to stop 
     holding migrants there. And in May, the DHS Office of the 
     Inspector General released an emergency report about 
     dangerous overcrowding of adults in two facilities: with up 
     to 900 people being held in a facility designed to hold 125.
       Because of the Flores settlement, lawyers have the 
     opportunity to investigate conditions for children to see if 
     the government is complying--and possibly ask a judge to 
     intervene if it is not. That's what spurred the fact-finding 
     mission that led to last week's stories.
       The reports about Clint broke at a time when the Trump 
     administration was already playing defense about its 
     compliance with the Flores settlement. (While the 
     administration is working on a regulation that would 
     supersede the terms of the agreement, that regulation isn't 
     expected to be published in final form until fall, and may 
     well be held up in court.)
       In a 9th Circuit Court of Appeals hearing earlier last week 
     about whether the administration needed to allow a court 
     appointee to monitor conditions for children in ICE and CBP 
     custody, Department of Justice lawyer Sarah Fabian told 
     judges that children didn't necessarily need towels or 
     toothbrushes to be in ``safe and sanitary'' conditions--a 
     clip that looked especially bad when the Clint stories came 
     out showing the children were being denied just that.
       The court hearing was not specifically about the Clint 
     facility--it wasn't about what investigators found last week 
     at all. And as Ken White explained for the Atlantic, Fabien's 
     cringeworthy ``safe and sanitary'' argument came from the 
     awkward stance the Trump administration has taken in this 
     litigation: In order to challenge the court appointment of a 
     special monitor, they argued that there's a difference 
     between a promise to keep kids in ``safe and sanitary'' 
     conditions (which the government has agreed to for decades) 
     and a guarantee of particular items like toothbrushes.
       The court appeared unimpressed. And the stories about Clint 
     and other facilities that have come out in the ensuing days 
     certainly bolstered the case that the Trump administration 
     has either willingly violated its agreement to keep kids safe 
     and healthy, or has been unable to keep it--or a mix of both.
       The problem isn't Clint.
       The problems that investigators identified at Clint--too 
     many people, not enough food, no toothbrushes--weren't 
     inherent to that facility. They were indications of an 
     overloaded (or neglected) system.
       And it's already clear that those problems go beyond Clint.
       ABC News obtained testimony from a doctor who visited 
     another facility for children in Texas--the Ursula facility--
     and witnessed ``extreme cold temperatures, lights on 24 hours 
     a day, no adequate access to medical care, basic sanitation, 
     water, or adequate food.'' She said the conditions were so 
     bad that they were ``tantamount to intentionally causing the 
     spread of disease.''
       The children are now being sent from Clint to a facility 
     that is just as bad, according to Clara Long of Human Rights 
     Watch, who was the only member of last week's investigative 
     team who visited it.
       Long told Vox that when she was there, the facility in El 
     Paso known as ``Border Patrol Station 1'' was mostly being 
     used as a transit center where migrants were staying only a 
     few hours before going elsewhere. But she spoke to one family 
     who had been held in a cell there for six days, and who 
     voiced the same concerns that children in the Clint facility 
     did.
       The mother of the family, Long said, was so ashamed of not 
     having clean teeth--the El Paso facility, like Clint, wasn't 
     providing enough toothbrushes--that ``when she was talking to 
     you she would put her hand up in front of her mouth and 
     wouldn't take it down.'' The teenage son said he was afraid 
     of the guards because when he'd gotten up to go to the 
     bathroom in the middle of the night, a guard had shoved him 
     back into his cell and slammed the door on him. For two 
     nights, the family had had to sleep on the cold floor without 
     blankets.
       The fundamental question: Why is it taking so long to get 
     kids out of custody--and is it happening on purpose?
       Most of the children who were at Clint when the team 
     visited last week--about 250 of the 350--were set to be sent 
     to HHS custody by Tuesday.
       Questions remain about what is happening to the other 1,750 
     or so children who were in Border Patrol detention on 
     Thursday if levels have remained static since mid-June, and 
     why the government was able to place only 250 children over 
     five days with the agency that's supposed to take 
     responsibility for all children within 72 hours.
       It's not clear where the bureaucratic breakdown really is--
     and whether it's the result of resource constraints or 
     choices about how resources are used.
       The Trump administration definitely has made a choice to 
     keep single adults in detention, even if it could release 
     them. Border Patrol chief Carla Provost has told Congress 
     that ``if we lose (the ability to keep and deport) single 
     adults, we lose the border.'' That does raise questions about 
     whether the overcrowding in adult facilities could be 
     avoided.
       But it doesn't address the issue of unaccompanied children, 
     who can't simply be released with a notice to appear in 
     immigration court. While children with parents in the US 
     could theoretically be placed with those parents, the 
     government is supposed to vet potential sponsors to make sure 
     it's not placing children with traffickers--but that's the 
     job of HHS, and the vetting doesn't begin until children are 
     released from Border Patrol custody.
       Observers and policymakers agree that HHS simply doesn't 
     have the capacity to take migrant kids in. One Democratic 
     Hill staffer compared it to a ``jigsaw puzzle'': Not only are 
     there only so many spaces available to place a child, but the 
     facilities available might not match the child's particular 
     needs. (You can't put an infant in an HHS shelter for teens, 
     for example.) But another Hill staffer told Vox that HHS 
     claims it's never refused a transfer for space reasons, 
     muddying the waters.
       Then there's the question of whether CBP is really doing 
     all it can to care for kids in the time they're in CBP's 
     care.
       One of the Clint observers told Isaac Chotiner of the New 
     Yorker stories of cruelty from some guards, indicating that 
     they were deliberately punishing children for the sin of 
     coming to the US without papers. But she also said that many 
     guards were sympathetic, and told the observers that children 
     shouldn't be in their custody--implying that they were doing 
     the best they could and simply didn't have the resources to 
     do more. (Advocates also say they've tried to donate supplies 
     to Border Patrol facilities but had their donations rejected; 
     it's not clear if this was a Border Patrol decision, or if 
     there's a legal complication banning outside donations.)
       Congress is considering a package right now to give the 
     Trump administration billions more dollars to deal with 
     migrants coming into the US. To Democratic leadership, 
     including the appropriators led by Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard 
     (D-CA), who drafted the House version of the supplemental 
     package, the solution to poor conditions in custody is to 
     provide more money specifically to improve those conditions. 
     They emphasize that the bulk of the funding will go to HHS to 
     increase capacity for migrant kids and that funding for ICE 
     and CBP will be strictly limited to humanitarian use.
       But to some progressives, led in Congress by Alexandria 
     Ocasio-Cortez, giving any money to immigration enforcement 
     agencies right now is an endorsement of the current state of 
     affairs.
       The not-one-more-dime camp, in part, is taking a bright-
     line stance against the detention of children. But in part, 
     they're demonstrating a lack of trust in the administration 
     to adhere to any law or condition. And they assume that any 
     money given to ICE for transit of migrant kids will, in some 
     way or another, encourage ICE to detain more families and 
     arrest more immigrants in the United States.
       The ``smart money'' camp, on the other hand, believes 
     firmly that without funds to improve conditions in detention, 
     the conditions will only get worse.
       That's especially relevant in the case of kids deemed 
     ``unaccompanied,'' who have to remain in custody until a 
     sponsor is found. The past few days have demonstrated that 
     those children are extremely vulnerable and that much of the 
     American public wants their situation to change. It just may 
     not be clear how.
                                  ____


                       [From Time, June 20, 2019]

 Lawyers Say Migrant Children Are Living in `Traumatic and Dangerous' 
                  Conditions at Border Detention Site

        (By Ccedar Attanasio, Garance Burke and Martha Mendoza)

       Clint, Texas.--In a tiny Texas town about a half-hour drive 
     from El Paso, a nondescript Border Patrol station operated 
     for six years primarily as a hub for agents on patrol, 
     drawing little scrutiny from immigration attorneys who have 
     been loudly advocating against mass U.S. detention camps that 
     can hold more than 2,000 teens at a time.
       And so attorneys visiting the Border Patrol station in 
     Clint, Texas, this week said they were shocked to find more 
     than 250 infants, children and teens inside the complex of 
     windowless buildings, trying to care for each other with what 
     they described as inadequate food, water and sanitation. 
     ``This facility wasn't even on our radar before we

[[Page H5238]]

     came down here,'' said law professor Warren Binford, a member 
     of the team that has interviewed 60 detainees in Clint.
       Binford's group warned that because Customs and Border 
     Protection facilities are overwhelmed with migrants, they 
     feared similar situations could be unfolding elsewhere.
       Attorney Toby Gialluca, who visited teens and their babies 
     last week in a McAllen, Texas, Border Patrol station, said 
     everyone she interviewed was very sick with high fevers, 
     coughing, and wearing soiled clothes crusted with mucus and 
     dirt after their long trip north. Fifteen kids at Clint had 
     the flu, another 10 were quarantined. ``Everyone is sick. 
     Everyone. They're using their clothes to wipe mucus off the 
     children, wipe vomit off the children. Most of the little 
     children are not fully clothed,'' she said.
       Migrant teens in McAllen told her they were offered frozen 
     ham sandwiches and rotten food, Gialluca said. In both 
     stations, the children told attorneys that guards instructed 
     girls as young as age 8 to care for the babies and toddlers.
       Border Patrol stations are designed to hold people for less 
     than three days, but some children held in Clint and McAllen 
     have been in there for weeks. Legally, migrants under 18 
     should be moved into Office of Refugee Resettlement care 
     within 72 hours.
       But federal officials have said they have hit a breaking 
     point, with too many migrant children and nowhere to put 
     them. That's in part because over the last year, migrant 
     children have been staying longer in federal custody than 
     they had historically, meaning there are fewer shelter beds 
     in the separate Office of Refugee and Resettlement program 
     where kids are sent from the Border Patrol stations.
       Unlike privately contracted child detention facilities, 
     Border Patrol stations are federal facilities, exempt from 
     state health and safety standards, according to Texas 
     Department of Health and Human Services spokesman John 
     Reynolds. Child abuse and neglect investigators are not 
     allowed to investigate the stations because they not licensed 
     by the state.
       In Clint, Binford described that during interviews with 
     children in a conference room at the facility, ``little kids 
     are so tired they have been falling asleep on chairs and at 
     the conference table.'' An 8-year-old taking care of a very 
     small 4-year-old with matted hair could not convince the 
     younger girl to take a shower, Binford said.
       The lawyers inspected the Border Patrol facilities as part 
     of a President Bill Clinton-era legal agreement known as the 
     Flores settlement that governs detention conditions for 
     migrant children and families.
       Neha Desai, director of Immigration at the National Center 
     for Youth Law, said Friday that the U.S. government, 
     attorneys involved in the Flores settlement and an 
     independent monitor appointed by the judge overseeing the 
     Flores settlement are in conversation about the situation of 
     children held in McAllen and Clint.
       The Clint facility opened in 2013 with little fanfare on a 
     country road not far from the town's water tower, a liquor 
     store and the sandwich shop where Border Patrol agents eat 
     lunch and dinner. The advocate lawyers who negotiated access 
     to the complex said Border Patrol officials knew of their 
     impending visit three weeks in advance.
       Customs and Border Protection officials had no immediate 
     comment, but have said for months that the agency is at its 
     breaking point for housing migrants, calling the situation in 
     the El Paso area a humanitarian and security crisis.
       In an interview earlier this week with The Associated 
     Press, Customs and Border Protection John Sanders 
     acknowledged that children died after being in the agency's 
     care, and said Border Patrol stations are currently holding 
     15,000 people--more than three times their maximum capacity 
     of 4,000.
       He urged Congress to pass a $4.6 billion emergency funding 
     package includes nearly $3 billion to care for unaccompanied 
     migrant children.
       A migrant father, speaking on condition of anonymity 
     because of his immigration status, said he did not know where 
     his daughter was until one of the attorneys visiting Clint 
     this week found his phone number written in permanent marker 
     on a bracelet the girl was wearing. ``She's suffering very 
     much because she's never been alone. She doesn't know these 
     other children,'' her father said.
       Republican Congressman Will Hurd, whose district includes 
     Clint, said ``tragic conditions'' playing out on the southern 
     border were pushing government agencies, nonprofits and Texas 
     communities to the limit.
       ``This latest development just further demonstrates the 
     immediate need to reform asylum laws and provide supplemental 
     funding to address the humanitarian crisis at our border,'' 
     he said.

  Mr. McGOVERN. Madam Speaker, before I yield to our next speaker, I 
would remind my colleagues that a vote to defeat the previous question 
really isn't a vote to bring up the Senate bill. It is a vote to give 
control of the House floor to the Republicans.
  They say they would bring up the Senate bill, but there is absolutely 
no guarantee that they would. They could bring up a bill to fund a 
wall, for all we know.
  Madam Speaker, we are here to find a way to alleviate the suffering 
of these children at our border and not to play political games. So I 
would urge my colleagues to make sure that they vote ``yes'' on the 
previous question.
  And, by the way, I just say to my colleague from Oklahoma, a lot of 
us aren't satisfied with the Senate bill the way it has been drafted 
because there are protections that we want to see in that bill because, 
quite frankly, speaking for myself, I don't trust this administration.
  I don't trust this administration to do the right thing, an 
administration that separated--knowingly and deliberately separated--
children from their parents at the border, an administration that 
tolerated the conditions that have horrified the entire country.
  So I want it clear that the moneys that we are appropriating are 
going to help children, not to continue this insane inhumane policy 
that has horrified this Nation.
  I won't trust this administration to tell me the correct time, at 
this particular point. So, no, we are not satisfied. We want more 
protections in here for the children. We want more transparency. The 
American people, I think, expect that. We should provide them that 
information.
  Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from California 
(Mrs. Torres), the distinguished member of the Rules Committee.
  Mrs. TORRES of California. Madam Speaker, I rise in support of the 
rule.
  Yes, indeed, we have a responsibility to act. As Speaker Pelosi has 
said, we must do this for the sake of the children, and I thank her for 
not capitulating to the Senate demands for a blank check.
  When I reflect on the number of deaths that we have seen at the 
border, when I reflect on the horrific conditions in facilities where 
children are being held in ice-cold cells with no one to care for them 
but a child stranger--conditions in these facilities are horrific--I 
ask myself: Is this the America that I came to as a young child? Is 
this the America that my son swore to protect when he joined the U.S. 
Air Force? This surely isn't the country that welcomed me as a young 
child from Guatemala.
  But we must work toward that American ideal that we all share. We 
cannot simply allocate funds to agencies where we have seen numerous 
children die in their custody.
  No blank checks.
  No more torturing of babies.
  No more separating infants from their mothers.
  This legislation brings funds to the children that are urgently 
needed.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The time of the gentlewoman has expired.
  Mr. McGOVERN. Madam Speaker, I yield the gentlewoman an additional 30 
seconds.
  Mrs. TORRES of California. It brings more transparency to CBP and ICE 
and HHS, and it contains important provisions to protect children. It 
ensures that the emergency funding that Congress provides is spent on 
what it is intended for and not the President's deportation force.
  So I look forward to supporting this rule, and I urge all of my 
colleagues to join me in doing so.
  Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished 
gentlewoman from Arizona (Mrs. Lesko), my very good friend and 
distinguished member of the Rules Committee.
  Mrs. LESKO. Madam Speaker, well, here we are again, and I talked on 
this before.
  I am from the State of Arizona, so border security is top and center 
of the discussion in Arizona and it has, quite frankly, been for years.
  We have all known there has been a crisis at our border for many, 
many years, and that is why I am at least hopeful and inspired a little 
bit that my Democratic colleagues are actually admitting--finally--that 
there is a crisis at our border. So that is good.
  The thing that is bad about this rule today is that I just don't 
understand. I guess some of my Democratic colleagues are just being 
stubborn because, on the one hand, you have the Senate that already 
passed an overwhelmingly bipartisan bill, where Senator Schumer voted 
for it. You have a President who said we are not in favor of this House 
version of the bill.
  So here you have a President who, seemingly, is willing to sign the 
Senate bill; you have a Senate bill that has vast bipartisan support, 
even with the

[[Page H5239]]

top leadership in the Democrat Party; but, yet, here we are in the 
House, and I guess Members just want to make sure they have what they 
want in their bill, even if it is not going to pass and even if the 
money isn't going to actually get to solving the problem.
  And so I ask my Democrat colleagues to put your stubbornness a little 
bit aside, because if we all have the goal, as has been said on both 
sides, to help solve this problem, to help with the children who are 
dying at the border, you know--what was it? Yesterday we saw the 
picture of the father and the daughter, and then June 14, we had a 
story in Arizona of a young 7-year-old girl who died, and the Arizona 
Air National Guard helped find and rescued other members of the party. 
I think we are united in trying to solve the problem, and I am glad 
that my Democrats finally say there is a crisis, to have acknowledged 
it.
  But if you really want to help, let's stop this. Okay. Let's stop 
what you are doing, because I don't think you are going to win. You 
have the President on one side, the Senate on one side with bipartisan 
support, including Mr. Schumer, and yet we are here today, right before 
the July Fourth recess, and instead of giving in and saying let's just 
put up the Senate bill that we know is going to pass, that we know is 
going to help, you continue to, I guess, try to make a point.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The time of the gentlewoman has expired.
  Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield the gentlewoman from Arizona an 
additional 30 seconds.
  Mrs. LESKO. Madam Speaker, I sincerely hope the Members have made 
their points, have made their talking points. Now let's get down to the 
business of doing what we are supposed to do in Congress: Pass a bill, 
pass the bipartisan Senate bill, but, also, let's work together on 
actually reforming our immigration laws, the root of the problem that 
is causing this problem, so we are not back here in 6 months or 1 year 
doing this again.

                              {time}  1300

  Mr. McGOVERN. Madam Speaker, I would like to remind the gentlewoman 
that we are members of the Democratic Party, not the Democrat Party, 
and I would appreciate it if we were characterized correctly.
  Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. 
Mucarsel-Powell).
  Ms. MUCARSEL-POWELL. Madam Speaker, I rise today in support of this 
rule.
  Right now, there are thousands of children detained in temporary 
facilities, facilities like the ones in Homestead, which is right in 
the middle of my district. We have no answers. We have no idea of when 
these kids are going to be released. It is an overcrowded facility, 
with kids who are sleeping in warehouse areas on bunk beds, of more 
than 144 kids.
  They are living in prison-like conditions. Many have been there for 
months. These kids should not be detained without their freedom and 
their rights. What we are asking from the Senate are reasonable 
requests for the safety and for the well-being of thousands of 
children.
  We have to pass these provisions put forth by the House. We must put 
in writing that no child can be held and detained in a temporary 
facility like Homestead for more than 90 days.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The time of the gentlewoman has expired.
  Mr. McGOVERN. Madam Speaker, I yield an additional 30 seconds to the 
gentlewoman from Florida.
  Ms. MUCARSEL-POWELL. Madam Speaker, many of the children have 
families living right here in the United States that they could be 
reunited with. But those who are running the facilities have no 
incentive for reuniting them.
  The Senate bill does not have a timeline. The Senate bill is 
inadequate. We must pass the House-amended bill.
  Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  I know my friends are aware of this, but the Senate bill is 
actually--well, I certainly would vote for it. I think it would have 
overwhelming support on our side. The President, in the past, has 
expressed some concerns, and that is an important thing, but the Senate 
has really worked through a lot of these differences.
  The bill that we would like to see put on this floor and that we know 
would pass with overwhelming, bipartisan support is a product of 
compromise, so much compromise that the entire Democratic leadership 
felt comfortable voting for it.
  With all due respect to my friends, their bill is not the product of 
compromise. It is not going to get very many Republican votes here, if 
any. I would be surprised, frankly, if it did. It is not going to get 
accepted by the United States Senate. It absolutely won't be signed by 
the President of the United States.
  We are all concerned about the conditions. We have been expressing 
that concern for 8 weeks. We never called this a manufactured crisis. 
We never said that this was made up for political purposes. The 
administration recognized it 8 weeks ago.
  We have tried multiple times to get this House to focus on it. I am 
very pleased that we finally reached a point that both sides are 
focusing on it. But we also ought to focus on what is possible to 
achieve in a limited timeframe.
  We know we are running out of money. We know there are real-life 
consequences to that. They are starting to unfold right now. There are 
services being cut back. For a lot of these conditions, frankly, we 
ought to look in the mirror, as Congress, and ask why we didn't get 
these resources there a long time ago.
  Frankly, the House rule that we are discussing on the House bill, 
that bill actually reduces resources at the border. It doesn't expand 
them. It reduces them. It reduces them also for the American military. 
That is part of it.
  The Senate bill, in my view, frankly, is much superior to my friends' 
product, but it has one virtue above all: All we have to do is put it 
on the floor and pass it, and it goes to the President of the United 
States to be signed immediately. Resources begin to move to where they 
are desperately needed immediately.
  That is not true with my friends' bill. All it does is reopen the 
dialogue with the Senate, where it has very little prospect of passing. 
Then, frankly, if it did pass--not likely--it would be vetoed.
  I am befuddled, Madam Speaker, that they are pursuing a goal that 
they know will not work, but we have seen this time and time again. It 
is more important to get a bill across the floor in a partisan fashion 
than it is to put something on the floor that is bipartisan, that can 
pass the Senate and come into law.
  Now, my friends know we live in an era of divided government, and we 
have wasted 6 months, in my view, dealing with a lot of things that we 
knew would never pass. But I respect my friends' right to bring their 
agenda to the floor.
  This is different. This is a national emergency. It has to pass. We 
have one vehicle where it can be passed and be signed so that help can 
go immediately. We have my friends' vehicle, which I know they believe 
in passionately, and I respect that, but it can't pass.
  It is pretty simple. Sooner or later, I hope we get to the obvious 
answer and pass the Senate bill and send it to the President.
  Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. McGOVERN. Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from 
Michigan (Ms. Tlaib).
  Ms. TLAIB. Madam Speaker, I take offense to my colleague from Arizona 
saying we are not going to win. This is not a game. These are people's 
lives.
  When my colleague says we need to try, we have tried. I am asking 
them to try harder because we are creating a whole generation of 
children, Madam Speaker, who will remember what we did. They will 
remember that we caged them up like animals. We ripped them away from 
their parents and pumped them with drugs to make them stop crying for 
their mothers.
  No amount of apologizing and no amount of debating in this Chamber 
will make it better, Madam Speaker. I am asking my colleagues to be 
more humane, to debate real policy change that will address the crisis 
at the border, like comprehensive immigration reform.
  We must do better for these children. Again, no amount of 
apologizing, no amount of debating, no amount of politicking will make 
it better.

[[Page H5240]]

  

  Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  I will just make the same point I have been making for days on end. 
We have something that can pass versus something that can't. I don't 
doubt for a minute that my friends are sincere in their concerns, but I 
also respect my colleagues on the other side of the rotunda in the 
United States Senate. I think they are sincere, too.
  They have worked through and found a way to get something that got 84 
votes. Three-quarters of the Democratic minority in the Senate voted 
for it. The entire Democratic leadership voted for it. The President 
has signaled that he will sign it.
  We can continue the debates on some of these other things at a later 
point. My friends might want to come back with another piece of 
legislation addressing some of their concerns that they think are not 
appropriately addressed in the Senate bill. But the reality is that is 
the bill that can pass. The bill that they want to bring to this floor 
cannot.
  We all agree there is a crisis. We all agree we need resources there. 
I think my friends know, if they would just put the Senate bill on the 
floor, it could pass, and it would go to the President.
  We can continue to have this debate. We can even end it, launch some 
vehicle over to the Senate, and waste more time. That is all it will 
be, a waste of time.
  I would hope we have all had our say. We all feel strongly about our 
points, but let's agree on the one thing we know can pass and the 
President would sign, which would get us resources and relief 
immediately on the border where we desperately need it.
  Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. McGOVERN. Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from 
Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee).
  Ms. JACKSON LEE. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding, 
and I appreciate the gentleman from Oklahoma, but I am an optimist.
  More importantly, I stand here in the name of Mr. Ramirez and his 
little, baby girl who were found on the shores of the Rio Grande. The 
question is: How did they wind up there? They wound up there because of 
this administration's policies that rejected them as they stood on the 
Brownsville-Matamoros International Bridge.
  There was no reason to say the bridge was closed. They had a legal 
right to claim asylum, fleeing from the horrible violence of El 
Salvador. Yet, they could not stand there, and so this is their end.
  I am supporting this bill because I believe we should not settle for 
just anything. This bill particularly provides for the requirements 
that have additional resources for these children so that they don't 
die, so that they do have toothpaste, that they are clean, that they 
are living in clean places. It acknowledges that children cannot be 
held like cattle in one place beyond 90 days, that you must find their 
family members, and, yes, there are family members.
  This is a process that has been the law of the land and the 
international law for decades. It is an asylum that can be sought so 
the Nation can address it. It takes no one's place. It does nothing to 
hurt this Nation.
  I support the underlying legislation because, in the name of Mr. 
Ramirez and his child, we must do what is right.
  Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  I personally thank my good friend, the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. 
Jackson Lee), for the professional and very patient manner in which she 
handled the Chair and presided over this body. I wanted to recognize 
that.
  Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from 
New York (Mr. Katko), my very good friend.
  Mr. KATKO. Madam Speaker, I, too, want to recognize my colleague from 
Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee) for having the coolest scarf in the House 
today, the American flag.
  Bipartisanship has broken out in the Senate. They passed H.R. 3401, 
as amended, 84-8.
  I am now happy to report to the House that bipartisanship has broken 
out on the floor of the House of Representatives, for I am announcing 
that 23 Democrats and 23 Republicans from the Problem Solvers Caucus 
have just issued the following statement: ``Given the humanitarian 
crisis at the border, the Problem Solvers Caucus is asking for the 
immediate consideration on the House floor today of H.R. 3401, as 
amended by the Senate.''
  We now are certain that H.R. 3401 will pass. I ask us to let the 
bipartisanship spread to the rest of this House and put an end to this 
now, once and for all, and get the help to the border that is so badly 
needed.
  Mr. McGOVERN. Madam Speaker, may I inquire how much time is 
remaining.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Ms. Jackson Lee). The gentleman from 
Massachusetts has 4 minutes remaining. The gentleman from Oklahoma has 
8\1/4\ minutes remaining.
  Mr. McGOVERN. Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from 
California (Mr. Cardenas).
  Mr. CARDENAS. Madam Speaker, I have the honor and privilege to be 
born as an American citizen. There are billions of people around the 
world who don't have that privilege, that honor, and that blessing.
  Today, I get to exercise my privilege as a Member of Congress to 
bring my two grandchildren, ages 1 and 3, to the floor of the House of 
Representatives. It is a very emotional moment for me because when I 
see their beautiful brown eyes, I see their grandparents who were born 
in another country, and I see their great-grandparents born in another 
country, just like many people on this House floor whose grandparents 
and great-grandparents came from Germany, Guatemala, Mexico, or any 
other place on the planet.

  We are fighting to do what is right, to do what is right for the gold 
standard that the world has seen in the United States of America, a 
place of hope and a place of future for people who are fleeing 
persecution for religious reasons or otherwise to be able to come to 
this country, kiss the ground that they walk on, and start anew.
  My beautiful grandkids get to be American citizens because somebody 
made the journey sometime before them.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The time of the gentleman has expired.
  Mr. McGOVERN. Madam Speaker, I yield an additional 30 seconds to the 
gentleman from California.
  Mr. CARDENAS. Madam Speaker, I will close by saying this: The United 
States of America has always been the gold standard, and that is the 
argument that we are making here today.
  This is not a game. We are fighting for the lives of human beings who 
should have the opportunity to be just like every person on this floor: 
to be allowed the freedom to be who they choose to be, who God made 
them to be, by being in the greatest place on the planet. That is why 
we are fighting today.

                              {time}  1315

  Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished 
gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Stivers), who is my good friend.
  Mr. STIVERS. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding. We 
have a crisis on our southern border, and H.R. 3401 with the Senate 
amendments gets resources to give humanitarian assistance to those 
seeking asylum.
  It also adds judges and judge teams to hear the claims of asylum. 
Many people have to wait up to 3 years to get their hearing. That is 
too long. I have twice in the last 2 weeks attempted to offer an 
amendment to add judge teams. Both times, the Rules Committee has 
failed to include it.
  My amendment this week would have included the amount that was in the 
Senate bill, but it is now in the bill because we have the Senate bill 
sitting at the Speaker's desk.
  I urge my colleagues to take up the bill with the Senate amendments 
that include judge teams. That is the only way to solve this real 
crisis: adjudicate the claims of these people who want asylum, reunite 
families, and stop people from being held in detention as long.
  Mr. Gonzalez from Texas and I have worked together on this. It is a 
bipartisan effort. This is a no-brainer. We need to add judges. The 
Senate bill does that.
  Madam Speaker, I hope we can take up the Senate bill and make it 
happen.
  Mr. McGOVERN. Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

[[Page H5241]]

  

  Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  Madam Speaker, in closing, I urge opposition to this rule. Once 
again, the majority is making the exact same mistake it made earlier 
this week. We have a bipartisan bill already approved by the Senate. 
The House should simply take it up and work its will on that bill.
  Frankly, we all know, if that bill were allowed to come to the floor, 
it would pass overwhelmingly with a majority of each side voting in 
favor of it. Then it wouldn't have to go back to the Senate. It would 
go immediately to the President of the United States. He could sign it, 
and these resources would begin to flow.
  Now, again, we have had a robust debate today, and I respect the 
passions on both sides and every point of view about this. Actually, I 
see a great deal of common agreement. We agree, which we did not 8 
weeks ago, that there is an emergency on the southern border. We agree 
it is a humanitarian crisis. We agree there need to be resources that 
go there immediately. We agree that time is short.
  We are also all elected officials who are privileged to be in this 
Chamber, and my experience with my friends on both sides of the aisle 
is that they are basically pretty practical people. They came here to 
solve problems. They have different viewpoints, but they are almost 
always very practical and try to get something done.
  We know the Senate bill is not everything that my side would want. We 
certainly know it is not everything that my friend's side would want. 
But we know it is bipartisan. We know three-quarters of the Democrats 
in the other Chamber voted for it. We know it will pass.
  With all due respect to my friends, they have clung so tightly to 
their bill, which I know they believe in. It will pass here, but it 
won't pass the Senate, and it certainly won't be signed by the 
President.
  Where will we be if we continue down the road that they are laying 
out in front of us?
  I know they are sincerely concerned about children on the border, but 
we are better off with a bill that passes so we have billions of 
dollars moving to where they are supposed to go, and a bill, by the 
way, that the entire Democratic leadership thought was appropriate and 
good enough.
  Let's not sit here and make the perfect the enemy of the good. Let's 
be practical and deliver to the American people what they want, which 
is a solution, a solution that both parties will vote for and a 
solution that the President will sign.
  How many times do we go home and hear that from our own constituents: 
Can't you guys get together and do anything? Can't you work together? 
Can't you put aside your differences and put the American people first?
  It pains me as a House Member to admit it, I suppose, but the United 
States Senate did that in this case before we did. We can accept that 
and move on, and my friends can continue to fight for the things they 
believe. It is not as if, for these things that are in this bill that 
the administration won't accept, they can't wrap them up again and put 
them back in another bill and start the process.
  If we do not act, the resources will not get to the border where they 
are needed, and these conditions that concern us all will continue.
  I urge us to step back a little bit, accept that in this case the 
Senate has a bipartisan solution that will work, and for goodness' 
sake, just put it on the floor to see what happens.
  We know what will happen. My friends will vote for it in overwhelming 
numbers. My friends on my side of the aisle will vote for it in 
overwhelming numbers. It will go straight to the President of the 
United States.
  That isn't going to solve the problem, but it is going to ease the 
problem, and that is going to move us in the right direction and 
provide our very hard-pressed people--who are working this problem by 
caring for the migrants, trying to protect our borders, and trying to 
provide justice--the resources they need to continue to work on this 
problem while, frankly, we continue to try to arrive at a legislative 
solution.
  Madam Speaker, I want to end with a point I made just a little bit 
earlier. I thank the Chair for the patient and professional manner in 
which she has allowed us to conduct this debate. I thank her very much 
for making sure that when we had an outside disturbance, it was quickly 
dealt with.
  I urge my friends to reconsider and, hopefully, come together around 
a bill that neither of us thinks is perfect but both of us could 
probably vote for and the President could sign.

  Madam Speaker, I thank my good friend, the chairman of the Rules 
Committee, for his participation in debate. It is always helpful and 
always enlightening. He is a good friend and a person I admire a great 
deal, even when we differ on a particular issue.
  Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
  Mr. McGOVERN. Madam Speaker, I think what is so frustrating to so 
many of us is that there is controversy around language to guarantee 
the protection of these children. The reason we think that is important 
is because this administration has ignored all the warnings.
  We have had whistleblowers talk about the abuse at the border and how 
these children were being mistreated, and they did nothing.
  This administration oversaw a policy of literally tearing children 
away from their parents. As a dad, I can't imagine what that must be 
like for any of those parents, and yet this administration thought it 
was fine.
  We have a crisis at the border largely as a result of this 
President's policies. We need to deal with it, and we need to deal with 
it now. But we want to make sure we are actually dealing with the 
crisis and not giving him more money to create other crises.
  I appreciate what the gentleman from Oklahoma said about the need for 
us to continue to work together, and while these negotiations are 
continuing.
  Madam Speaker, I withdraw the resolution.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The resolution is withdrawn.

                          ____________________