[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 181 (Wednesday, November 13, 2019)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6516-S6518]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                              Immigration

  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, if members of the American public came to 
the Senate Chamber this week to witness legislative activity, such as a 
piece of legislation on the floor, amendments, debate, votes, 
deliberation, or compromise, they are out of luck. We don't do that in 
the Senate anymore. We are not going to do it this week; we didn't do 
it last week; and we didn't do it the week before.
  Now, the Republican leader just said the problem is impeachment. The 
problem is not impeachment. The problem is the Senate is not a Senate 
anymore. All we do in the Senate--all we do in the Senate is this 
serial list of judicial nominations, one after the other, after the 
other, after the other. That is it. We don't take up legislation.
  Yesterday there was a--right across the street from this Capitol 
Building, in front of the Supreme Court, hundreds of people were there 
because of a hearing in the Supreme Court on the issue of DACA, which 
was created by President Obama, where 780,000 undocumented young people 
had a chance to stay in this country and was abolished by President 
Trump. Hundreds came out yesterday. They wanted to hear--at least try 
to hear the Supreme Court deliberations on their future and what would 
happen to them.
  It is quite possible that the Court will rule in the President's 
favor. I hope not, but it is possible, and the future of these young 
people will be deportation. You can imagine how they feel about this 
issue. They look back over here at the Capitol and they wonder: What 
are they doing in the U.S. Capitol building to deal with an issue of 
such grave importance for such a large group of people in the United 
States? Here's what we are doing: Nothing--nothing.

  The House of Representatives passed the American Dream and Promise 
Act in the month of June, and the U.S. Senate and Senator McConnell 
will not let us bring it to the floor. Is he going to blame the 
impeachment proceedings for the fact that we have waited 5 months now 
with this critical bill, having passed the House, not even being 
considered in the U.S. Senate? Is that the reason we haven't been able 
to take up serious legislation for weeks in the U.S. Senate? Of course 
not. It is not about impeachment; it is about a strategy designed by 
the Senate Republican leader not to entertain substantive legislation--
just to take up the issues of nominations.
  The nominations, of course, are an issue themselves. I mentioned the 
judicial nominations. Well, last week in the Senate Judiciary 
Committee, we had the ninth Trump nominee for the

[[Page S6517]]

Federal bench who had been found unqualified by the American Bar 
Association. That is nine so far. You say to yourself, well, that must 
happen from time to time. It never happened one time under President 
Obama; not one nominee was judged unqualified. There are nine of them 
under President Trump. Why? Because this administration, with the 
cooperation of Senator McConnell, is hell-bent to fill these vacancies, 
regardless of the competency of the individual who is being nominated.
  On the calendar today is another nomination. Today the Senate is 
going to vote on the nomination of Chad Wolf. This is technically a 
vote for Mr. Wolf to be the Department of Homeland Security's Under 
Secretary for policy.
  Let's be clear. This is actually a vote on whether Mr. Wolf would run 
the entire Department of Homeland Security. He would be the sixth 
Secretary in charge of this critical agency, the Department of Homeland 
Security--the sixth one since President Trump was elected. Talk about a 
fast-moving, revolving exit door. You can hardly get your desk put 
together with a few pens and computers on top of it; then, with 
President Trump, you are out the door if you are the Secretary of the 
Department of Homeland Security.
  Next up is Chad Wolf. The President has indicated he is going to 
appoint him, not as the Secretary of Homeland Security--no, the Acting 
Secretary of Homeland Security. But he first has to be confirmed as an 
Under Secretary.
  The Trump administration has shown in their immigration policy an 
approach to this issue that we haven't seen for decades in Washington 
or the United States. The President has been especially harsh when it 
comes to families and children. President Trump's ineffective policies 
have made our southern border much less secure than when he took 
office. The situation has even been worsened by this gaping leadership 
vacuum in the Department of Homeland Security. In less than 3 years, 
there have been four heads of the Department. Wolf would be the fifth 
person--I said six earlier, sorry--to run it and the third Acting 
Secretary. Every position at the Department of Homeland Security with 
responsibility for immigration is now held by a temporary appointee 
ready to be fired at a moment's notice, and the White House is not even 
submitting nominations for those positions. This is a conscious choice 
by the Trump White House to increase their power and to undermine the 
role of the U.S. Senate, and the Republican majority thinks it is just 
fine.
  The President has boasted about all of his Acting Secretaries. He 
even has an Acting Chief of Staff. Donald Trump said: I like acting. It 
gives you great, great flexibility.
  It sure does. You can just fire a person and call the next up in a 
moment, in a matter of days.
  Stephen Vladeck, a leading expert on the Senate's confirmation 
process, notes that the President's approach is ``depriving the Senate 
of its constitutional role--and in the process, of opportunities to vet 
his nominees, to reject those who are unqualified, and to conduct 
meaningful oversight of the executive branch.''
  So what does the Senate institutionalists and the Senator from 
Kentucky think about diminishing the roles of the Senate? Just fine, 
Mr. President, whatever you want.
  Today, the Senate will actually have a chance to vote on this 
individual, Chad Wolf, to become an Under Secretary on his quick path 
to become an Acting Secretary on his even quicker path to be in some 
way retired or fired.
  So is Chad Wolf the right person to run the Department of Homeland 
Security, one of the most important law enforcement agencies? His main 
qualification appears to be that he was Chief of Staff and top adviser 
to former Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen.
  I would say that arguably she may have been one of the worst 
performing Homeland Security Secretaries ever in our history. It was 
Kirstjen Nielsen who falsely claimed, ``We do not have a policy of 
separating families at the border.'' Then came along the Federal judge 
in Southern California and demanded an accounting of what actually was 
going on at the border. Do you know what the judge found after he 
demanded that the Department of Homeland Security under Kirstjen 
Nielsen account for family separations? They found that more than 2,800 
infants, toddlers, and children had been separated from their parents 
at the border. Even worse, there was no effort made to trace where the 
parents were headed and where the child was headed. At the end, some of 
these children never ever were reunited with their parents, separated 
by Kirstjen Nielsen's Department of Homeland Security.
  I have seen the results of these disastrous separations. At the 
immigration court in downtown Chicago, in a Loop high-rise building 
that you would never pick out as a court, you take an elevator to one 
of the top floors and get out on a crowded floor. There are people 
standing four- and five-deep waiting for the docket call for 
immigration court.
  I went into the court just last year to see what family separation 
was all about. I found a good judge who had been at it for almost 20 
years, and she said to me: Senator, please stay for the docket call, at 
least the first group of clients.
  The first group of clients were called. Marta was one of the clients. 
The judge said: Would the clients please take their seats. The 
problem--the problem was, Marta was 2 years old. Marta had to be lifted 
into her chair and handed a stuffed animal that she was hanging onto 
throughout this hearing, which I am sure she never understood.
  Hamilton was a little boy who was also a client in the immigration 
court that day. He was 4 years old--4 years old in a U.S. immigration 
court because of the separation of children from their parents. He did 
jump up on the chair because he saw a Matchbox car on the table that he 
could play with while this hearing was deciding his fate.

  Do you know what happened? They continued their cases for another 6 
months. Fortunately, Marta was reunited with her father in less than 6 
months. Do you know what happened when separated children were united? 
Some of these children would not even let their own mothers hold them. 
That is what happens when you separate a 2-year old from her mother for 
months at a time. That is what happened over and over again on the 
watch of Kirstjen Nielsen, the Secretary of Homeland Security. Mr. Chad 
Wolf, who is on our calendar today, was her chief of staff during this 
zero-tolerance policy.
  These disastrous separations have done permanent damage to countless 
children. I saw two of them. Publicly released emails show that Mr. 
Chad Wolf, who will be voted on today in the Senate, was deeply 
involved in the discussions that led to this policy. As far back as 
December of 2017, Wolf was Acting Chief of Staff to Secretary Nielsen. 
He sent the Justice Department a list of 16 options for deterring 
undocumented immigrants. No. 2 on the list was ``separate family 
units.'' His fingerprints are all over zero tolerance.
  Mr. Wolf was also intimately involved in the Trump administration's 
efforts to use Dreamers as bargaining chips to advance the President's 
anti-immigrant agenda. After he repealed DACA, President Trump rejected 
numerous bipartisan deals to protect Dreamers. I will not go through 
the awful details of our bipartisan efforts to come up with a bill, 
which the President time and again rejected. Instead, he said: Here is 
my approach to the Senate. Take it or leave it.
  The Senate left. It received fewer than 40 votes in a Senate 
dominated by a Republican majority.
  The administration said that it would support the authorization of 
Dreamers if the Congress passed his plan, which included the largest 
cut in legal immigration in almost a century. The Senate rejected it. 
How do I know that Mr. Wolf was involved in this effort? I sat in on a 
half dozen meetings with Secretary Nielsen and Mr. Wolf, just down the 
hall from here in the office of Republican Congressman Kevin McCarthy. 
He was there. Wolf was part of the program.
  In another administration, involvement in family separation and DACA 
repeal would be grounds for dismissal. In the Trump administration, it 
is grounds for promotion--promotion to become the Acting Secretary and 
to see if this flavor of the month as the head of one of these key 
agencies can actually gut it out for 6 months. It might be a record if 
he did.

[[Page S6518]]

  I urge my colleagues to oppose the nomination of Mr. Wolf.