[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 121 (Thursday, July 18, 2019)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4940-S4941]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                            Border Security

  Mr. CASEY. Mr. President, I start this afternoon with a topic we are 
all talking about--the horror that we saw and heard last night at a 
rally when there was a chant over and over again--we have seen the 
footage of it--of ``send her back.''
  I condemn this--as I did earlier today--in the strongest possible 
terms, and I want to reiterate my condemnation of that chant. I know 
that condemnation is widely shared on both sides of the aisle. I hope 
folks in both Chambers and both parties will condemn and reiterate the 
condemnation of that kind of chant but also what is underneath it. It 
is racist, for sure, and it is not who we are. That is not America.
  I am glad the President said that if it happens again, he will try to 
stop it. I wish he had done that in real time last night, but let's see 
what happens at the next rally.
  There is no excuse for any public official to do anything other than 
condemn that kind of language. Representative Omar is a Representative 
in the Congress of the United States who came here as a child, and for 
anyone to utter those kinds of words against her or anyone else, of 
course, should be condemned.
  Fortunately, I think most Americans agree with me, and we have to be 
very clear when we have that kind of sentiment expressed, especially 
when it is repeated across the country, as we saw last night.
  I want to talk about our asylum system, a legal asylum system that 
was established in the wake of the horrors of World War II. We as a 
Nation--the United States of America--vowed after that conflict to do 
better, to be better, to serve as a refuge for those fleeing violence 
and persecution in their home countries.
  Today, families from Central America are arriving at our southern 
border, hoping to avail themselves of this system because of the 
violence in their home countries. The three we have heard so much 
about--Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador--rank in the top 10 
countries in the world for homicide--homicide. According to a report 
issued by Doctors Without Borders in 2017, Northern Triangle countries, 
these three countries, are experiencing--and this is a direct quote 
from the Doctors Without Borders report, 2017--``violent displacement, 
persecution, sexual violence, and forced repatriation akin to the 
conditions found in the deadliest armed conflicts in the world today.'' 
So said Doctors Without Borders.
  In the face of violence and other such circumstances, the choice to 
move in search of opportunity and safety is one that the vast majority 
of families would make, even when that journey can further subject them 
to violence and danger.
  Late last month, the Nation was horrified--indeed, the world was 
horrified--by a photograph of a 2-year-old girl and her father, her 
small arm clinging to her father as they lay facedown in a river, dead.
  That is not the picture I am showing here. We all know that picture. 
I don't need to show it again. So many Americans, so many people around 
the world remember that picture.
  But the picture I put up is a picture of that little girl and her 
father as they lived, a picture of the two of them that appeared in the 
Washington Post in an article dated Thursday, June 27, 2019, on page 3.
  Here is the article that the picture was taken from. The headline 
reads, ``Pair who died at border were desperate for a better life''--
desperate for a better life.
  That is the story of so many of these families--desperate for a 
better life, free from violence or the threat of violence, free from or 
at least distant from death threats, and free from poverty, grinding 
poverty, the likes of which so many of us have never had to experience. 
That is what they are desperate for when they say ``desperate for a 
better life.''
  Rather than simply focus on this father and his daughter and how they 
died and the picture of them facedown in a river, I wanted to make sure 
we saw their faces, to celebrate their lives but to remind us of our 
obligation, our enduring obligation, to make sure that we at least--at 
least--take steps to reduce the likelihood that we will ever see again 
a horrific picture like the one of the two of them dead in a river, 
facedown.
  Here is what part of the story is of this little girl and her father. 
The little girl's name was Valeria. Quoting from the Washington Post 
story:

       Valeria was a cheery child. Not even 2 years old, she loved 
     to dance, play with her stuffed animals and brush her family 
     members' hair. Her father, Oscar Alberto Martinez Ramirez, 
     was stalwart. Nearly always working, he sold his motorcycle 
     and borrowed money to move his family from El Salvador to the 
     United States. Martinez and his wife, Tania Vanessa Avalos, 
     wanted to save up for a home there. They wanted safety, 
     opportunity.
       ``They wanted a better future for their girl,'' Maria 
     Estela Avalos, Vanessa's mother, told The Washington Post.
       They traveled more than 1,000 miles seeking it. Once in the 
     United States, they planned to ask for asylum, for refuge 
     from the violence that drives many Central American migrants 
     from their home countries every day. But the farthest the 
     family got was an international bridge. . . . On Sunday--

  This would be the Sunday before June 27.

       On Sunday, they were told that the bridge was closed and 
     that they should return Monday. Aid workers told The Post the 
     line to get across the bridge was hundreds long.

  Then we know what happened next to this father and his daughter.
  There was also another story in the New York Times the day before, 
June 26. The headline read ``Girl was Safe but Tried to Follow Father 
Back.''
  I will not go through all of it, but here is what they were facing in 
terms of their own economic circumstances. At the end of the New York 
Times story it reads as follows:

       Mr. Martinez quit his job at Papa Johns, where he had 
     earned about $350 a month. By then, his wife had already left 
     her job as a cashier at a Chinese restaurant to take care of 
     their daughter.
       The couple lived with Mr. Martinez's mother in the 
     community of Altavista, a massive housing complex of tiny 
     concrete houses east of San Salvador, according to [someone 
     referred to earlier in the story].
       Though Altavista is under the control of gangs, the couple 
     was not fleeing from violence, [Ms. Ramirez] told him. 
     Rather, the grind of surviving as a family on $10 a day had 
     become unmanageable.

  So we have a lot of families fleeing for reasons based on violence 
and death threats and that horror, and then we also have families 
fleeing because they, in this case, had $10 a day to live on.
  So these families risk danger as they cross through--what could only 
be said by way of understatement--treacherous terrain. They risk that 
danger because the graver risk is not to make that journey.
  The administration has not sought, in my judgment, to address the 
root causes of migration, such as what we just talked about: violence, 
poverty, and corruption. Rather, the administration has repeatedly 
attempted to walk back our Nation's solemn vow

[[Page S4941]]

and close the door on refugees and asylum seekers.
  Over the past couple of weeks, reports have surfaced of children held 
in squalid conditions without adequate medical attention, sanitation, 
or even food and water.
  A law professor who spoke with children at a Texas CBP facility was 
quoted in the Washington Post as saying, ``It's the worst conditions I 
have ever witnessed in several years of doing these inspections.''
  That is a law professor, not a casual observer but someone who has 
experience and training, recognizing what is happening in these 
facilities.
  In May, the Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector 
General issued a report stating that the El Paso Del Norte Processing 
Center, a facility with a maximum of 125 detainees, was holding 900--
capacity 125, holding 900 detainees.
  Some migrants were held in standing-room-only conditions for days and 
weeks with limited access to showers and clean clothing. These 
conditions were dangerous and posed an immediate risk to both migrants 
and personnel.
  The administration has sought to use inhumane policies like 
separating families, just one example, as a deterrent--as a deterrent.
  They recently canceled English classes, recreational programs, and 
legal aid for unaccompanied minors at shelters across the country, and 
an attorney for the Department of Justice argued that the government 
should not be required to give detained migrant children toothbrushes, 
soap, towels, or showers.
  Does that make any sense at all? Is that consistent with our values?
  The administration is seeking to relax standards for holding 
children, when, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics--also 
not casual observers but a set of experts on what a child needs to 
survive and thrive--Department of Homeland Security facilities already 
do not meet the basic standards for the care of children in residential 
settings.
  Earlier this week, the administration issued an interim final rule 
that essentially bars Central American migrants from claiming asylum by 
making them ineligible for asylum, including unaccompanied children who 
enter the United States at the southern border after passing through 
another country. This is just the latest in many attempts to restrict 
our asylum system and bar those fleeing violence, persecution--and for 
other reasons--from exercising their legal right, a legal right that is 
not just grounded in United States law but international law, the right 
to petition the U.S. Government for protection consistent with what we 
did after World War II because of the horrors we saw in World War II. 
This wasn't just some concept that was dreamed up. It was meant to deal 
with the horrors that World War II brought, to say to the world that we 
are going to make sure that if someone is fleeing violence and 
persecution, they will at least have a shot to make their case, to have 
due process to make their case. Most don't make the case; we know that. 
Most end up not being successful. But we should let them make the case 
because we are, on our best days, a nation of laws. We are also, of 
course, a nation of immigrants, and both of these principles are 
intertwined and undergird our values.
  President Kennedy said it pretty well:

       Immigration policy should be generous; it should be fair; 
     it should be flexible. With such a policy, we can turn to the 
     world and to our own past with clean hands and a clear 
     conscience.

  It is entirely possible to create an immigration system that reflects 
not just President Kennedy's vision but our values as Americans--a 
system that respects the rule of law, that treats all individuals with 
human dignity, and reflects our values as a Nation.
  When we think of not just what our immigration system must be about 
but what our asylum system must be about, let us think of those 
families who put their lives at risk because of what they are fleeing, 
who simply want to make their case.
  Let's also remember two people whose faces we didn't see much of 
except in this one picture--a father and a daughter, little Valeria and 
her father, Oscar Martinez Ramirez--and remember what they were trying 
to do. I realize some will debate this: What happens when someone 
presents themselves at our border based upon poverty? I understand that 
will be the argument against it, but we are a big enough country and a 
great enough country to be able to develop a system to make sure that 
child and that father have a shot to come here.
  One of the problems we are having now at the border is that when you 
tell the world that you want to push people away, by way of rhetoric or 
by way of extreme policies at the border--inhumane policies, which 
might be an understatement--and by telling the world, or at least 
sending the message to the world, that you want to greatly restrict 
immigration, you are going to have people choosing a different system 
to try to make their case. We need to fix both. We have a broken 
immigration system which this body dealt with in 2013--68 votes in the 
Senate--to fix the system and to deal with all the tough issues. We 
can't get 68 votes around here to adjourn for lunch or to move on to 
the next part of the day sometimes. That is only a slight 
exaggeration--but 68 votes.
  What happened? Because there are extreme voices in this town that 
told the House of Representatives, ``Don't even vote on it; just end it 
right here,'' the best attempt in maybe decades to secure the border, 
to deal with citizenship, to deal with the guest worker program, to 
deal with all the difficult issues with immigration, and with 68 votes 
here, died in the House. It didn't even get a vote in the House, and 
this Chamber and the House have done basically nothing since then, at 
least the way I see it--nothing in terms of dealing with this system, 
trying to fix this broken system so you have rules and order and 
certainty, but also based upon and founded upon our values.
  Some people say: You can't do it. It is just too hard. Congress isn't 
equipped for that.
  We are the greatest country in the world for a lot of reasons. One of 
them is because of our values. Another reason is when we are at our 
best, we tackle tough problems. Fixing this broken immigration system 
is a tough problem. Many Presidents and many Congresses have wrestled 
with it, but we got as close to getting to a fix as anytime in recent 
American history when that bill passed. The faster we get back to 
something that comprehensive, that bipartisan, and that grounded in 
fact and law, the better off we will be.
  While we are doing that on immigration, we should have a conversation 
about asylum--how to do it right and how to make sure that system is 
working so well that it will be an example to the world.
  We have a long way to go. We have work to do, but I think these 
difficult issues are indeed a great mission--a difficult mission, but I 
think they are a mission worthy of a great country.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.