[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 181 (Wednesday, November 13, 2019)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6528-S6529]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                              Nominations

  Mr. HEINRICH. Mr. President, earlier today, we were asked to vote on 
the confirmation of Chad Wolf to serve as the Under Secretary for 
Strategy, Policy, and Plans at the Department of Homeland Security. Mr. 
Wolf has been serving in that role on an acting basis since February.
  Because of the way the Trump administration functions, or fails to 
function, what we were really being asked to do today was to confirm 
Mr. Wolf to a position so the President can then promote him to Acting 
DHS Secretary. This comes on top of most appointed positions at the 
agency going unfilled or only filled with similarly temporary acting 
roles.
  Before we all throw our hands up in the air and simply add this vote 
to the growing list of broken norms and incompetent actions on the part 
of the Trump White House, I would like us to consider what is at stake 
in this particular case. I beg us to take seriously the human toll that 
has been incurred because of this administration's willful chaos at the 
Department of Homeland Security.
  The Department of Homeland Security is the Nation's third largest 
Federal agency, behind only the Pentagon and the VA. The agency 
oversees disaster relief, transportation safety, counterterrorism, and 
immigration and border security. According to a report in the 
Washington Post, Mr. Wolf is the favored pick of senior Trump adviser 
Stephen Miller to take over as Acting Homeland Security Secretary. That 
should tell us about everything we need to know.
  Stephen Miller has been the lead architect of the White House's 
immoral and anti-immigration policies over the last 3 years. The Senate 
should have taken this vote as a reason to examine how this 
administration has spent the last 3 years flouting our Nation's laws 
and our Nation's values through its intentional chaos at the Department 
of Homeland Security.
  We should do our jobs and give an honest accounting of this 
administration's inhumane and, frankly, ineffective policies--policies, 
it should be said, that Mr. Wolf has been right in the middle of each 
step of the way. Instead, the Senate voted to confirm Mr. Wolf in this 
sham process to a position we weren't even sure he will serve in. This 
is shameful.
  Now that the Senate has confirmed Mr. Wolf to the Under Secretary 
position and as we anticipate Mr. Trump moving him into the Acting 
Secretary role, I ask my colleagues to please consider his record. We 
know Mr. Wolf played a central role in authoring and implementing the 
family separation policy. We don't fully understand how much he did to 
implement President Trump's other harmful immigration policies because 
the Department of Homeland Security has stonewalled and refused to 
provide key documents to the Senate on his tenure before we took the 
vote this morning.
  However, given his major role with Secretary Nielsen, it seems safe 
to assume that Mr. Wolf was involved in many of the administration's 
policy failures. Under these policies, thousands of children, as young 
as infants and toddlers, arriving at our Nation's southern border have 
been separated from their families. We have seen migrant families and 
children held in appalling, overcrowded, some say prisonlike--I would 
say prison facilities--immigration detention facilities like those in 
Clint, TX, that we saw in the media.
  The Trump administration has also throttled major ports of entry 
where refugees present themselves for asylum as is actually dictated by 
current U.S. law. This has resulted in huge groups going instead to 
remote and dangerous stretches of the southern border. We have 
tragically seen that result in the deaths of several children in New 
Mexico near some of our remote ports of entry that lack even the most 
basic medical infrastructure.
  We have seen President Trump play politics with the lives of 
thousands of refugees and asylum seekers, mothers, fathers, and 
children who are desperately seeking refuge and the prospect of a 
better life in this country.
  We have seen the President even go so far as shutting down the 
government and stealing billions of dollars of

[[Page S6529]]

congressionally appropriated funds from the military to pay for his 
wasteful and candidly ineffective border wall.
  Finally, President Trump's decision to terminate the Deferred Action 
for Childhood Arrivals Program, or DACA, has thrown Dreamers across 
this country deep into fear and uncertainty. The stakes of that 
decision have been shown in oral arguments before the Supreme Court 
this very week.
  Dreamers are among our best and brightest--our best and brightest 
students, teachers, and even veterans. They only know this Nation as 
their home in many cases, and today I am meeting with a Dreamer named 
Samuel, who lives in Las Cruces, NM.
  Samuel came to the United States from Mexico with his family when he 
was 11 years old. He has called Las Cruces his hometown for the last 13 
years. As a DACA recipient, Samuel was able to study accounting at New 
Mexico State University and help provide for his family.
  Dreamers like Samuel want to give back to their communities and the 
only Nation they know as home. They are American in every way except on 
paper, and because of President Trump, Dreamers like Samuel face a 
deeply fearful future.

  Whenever we debate immigration, frankly, it becomes a little personal 
for me, and that is because, like most--all of us in this Nation of 
immigrants--my family's story in America began with a search for a 
better life. My father came to the United States with his family from 
Germany as a young boy. They were fleeing the government of a racist, 
populist dictator who was first elected democratically and then used 
race and scapegoating to cement his grip on power. I always wonder how 
different my own life would be if America had turned my father away or 
separated him from his family.
  This is not some abstract question for the mothers, fathers, and 
children who are desperately seeking refuge and the prospect of a 
better life in America today. I know that so many Americans watching 
this administration's immigration policies know in their hearts what 
America truly stands for as a nation built by many generations of 
immigrants like my father. That includes local officials, first 
responders, and volunteers in communities like Deming, Las Cruces, and 
Albuquerque, NM, who over the last year provided shelter, food, and 
help to asylum seekers who had nowhere else to turn. It includes the 
thousands of Americans who marched in the streets and demanded an end 
to family separation, and it includes millions of Americans who want 
our leaders in Washington to finally affirm the incredible value that 
immigrants provide for our country.
  I want all of you to know that I stand with you. You are on the right 
and just side of history.
  I will keep calling on us to hold this administration accountable to 
our American values, and I will keep calling on Congress to uphold our 
end of the bargain and finally act to reform our broken immigration 
system. That should start by passing the Dream Act.
  We also need to address the root causes of migration from Central 
America, including extreme poverty, criminal gangs, and violence. We 
must make smart investments in real border security and economic 
development in our border communities. We need to provide the necessary 
medical and humanitarian resources to our border region, particularly 
for the rugged, back-country terrain we have in my State.
  I will never stop fighting for policies that respect the dignity of 
immigrants, recognize the real needs of our vibrant border communities, 
and live up to our true American values.
  Unfortunately, I don't think we will ever have a productive path 
forward on any of these urgent matters with this President and his 
administration. That is true no matter who President Trump ultimately 
shuffles into the role of Acting Homeland Security Secretary, but it is 
especially true if the President chooses Chad Wolf.
  When Senator Rosen questioned Mr. Wolf in the Homeland Security and 
Governmental Affairs Committee about the role he played in family 
separation and other cruel immigration policies, Mr. Wolf said: ``My 
job wasn't to determine if it was the right or wrong policy.'' In other 
words, folks, he was just following orders.
  I think it is clear that the Trump administration has shown an 
appalling disregard for basic human dignity. Now the Senate has 
confirmed someone who will simply rubberstamp the continued failures of 
this administration.
  I should also note that the current pending vote on the floor is for 
a judicial nominee, Steven Menashi, who has also played a role in the 
administration's shameful immigration policies. As a counsel in the 
Trump administration, Mr. Menashi has acknowledged that he advised 
Stephen Miller on immigration policy, and he has a long record of 
opposing the basic human and civil rights of people of color, women, 
LGBTQ Americans, and immigrants.
  As the general counsel at the Department of Education under Betsy 
DeVos, he played a leading role in trying to deny debt relief to 
students defrauded by for-profit colleges.
  I can't believe that we as the Senate can allow these types of 
appointments to keep going forward. We should not let this go on. This 
is not who we are as a country, and this is not the America that I know 
and love.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. SULLIVAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.