[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 132 (Monday, July 27, 2020)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E684-E685]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                HONORING THE ACHIEVEMENTS OF TERRY SLOAN

                                 ______
                                 

                          HON. EMANUEL CLEAVER

                              of missouri

                    in the house of representatives

                         Monday, July 27, 2020

  Mr. CLEAVER. Madam Speaker, I rise today to commemorate Terry Sloan 
for thirty-two years of federal service, including five years as the 
National Records Center Director within the Department of Homeland 
Security's United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). 
Prior to joining USCIS in 2008, Ms. Sloan held various legal and 
leadership positions within the Department of Defense and the 
Department of Commerce. Recognized as an outstanding public servant 
throughout her illustrious career, Ms. Sloan's long list of 
accomplishments have been celebrated with several prestigious awards, 
including the Department of the Army Civilian Service Achievement 
Medal. Once named the USCIS Manager of the Year, Ms. Sloan was 
appointed to the Senior Executive Service in 2015, making her a civil-
service equivalent to a general officer within the United States 
military. Having served the US, federal government for over three 
decades, including a half-decade at the helm of the USCIS National 
Records Center, Ms. Sloan's example of leadership and public service is 
well-worth reflecting upon.
  Lee's Summit, Missouri became home to the USCIS National Records 
Center in 1999, when the country's most extensive collection of 
immigrant records was moved to a limestone cave sixty feet below 
ground. Currently holding nearly sixty-million immigrant files, another 
one-and-a-half million records are added each year to the countless 
shelves within this four-hundred-and-fifty-thousand square foot 
repository. Among these, the National Records Center houses the 
immigration files belonging to highly acclaimed cultural icons who 
immigrated to the United States, including John Lennon, Salvador Dali, 
and Elizabeth Taylor. Receiving over six hundred FOIA requests each 
day, the USCIS National Records Center documents contain our country's 
immigration history through the eyes of individual immigrants who 
journeyed across the globe before stepping foot on American shores, As 
new files arrive at the National Records Center by the truckload, the 
eight hundred employees and contractors employed within the vast 
facility work around the clock to retrieve documents needed to 
determine immigrant status for granting government benefits.
  As the Director of the USCIS National Records Center, Ms. Sloan had 
the profound responsibility of managing this immense, ever-growing 
repository to ensure that the history of immigration to the United 
States is properly archived, made accessible to the public, and 
preserved for future generations. In 2016, while serving as the 
National Records Center's Director, Ms. Sloan oversaw efforts to locate 
photographs of five immigrants who lost their lives in the terrorist 
attacks on the World Trade Center. For fifteen years, it had proved 
impossible to find images of these five individuals. However, when Ms. 
Sloan and the team she oversaw was put to the task, portraits of all 
five victims were quickly discovered and then shipped to the National 
September 11 Memorial and Museum for public display--a

[[Page E685]]

striking testament to the record center's archival excellence. Ms. 
Sloan has promoted innovation and efficiency through strategic 
initiatives such as document digitization, the proactive disclosure of 
records, and the use of modern case-processing technology. Ms. Sloan 
championed the Freedom of Information Act Immigration Records System, 
otherwise known as FIRST--the only government-used, end-to-end, 
automated, electronic FOIA system that allows users to submit and track 
FOIA requests and receive their documents digitally.
  Madam Speaker, please join me in commemorating thirty-two years of 
public service from Ms. Terry Sloan. At the base of the Statue of 
Liberty, a poem written by Emma Lazarus welcomes people from all lands 
with the promise of the United States. ``Give me your tired, your poor, 
/ Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, / The wretched refuse 
of your teeming shore,'' the poem reads. Thanks to the service of Ms. 
Terry Sloan, the millions of people who embraced those words as they 
made way to America will have their history preserved for future 
generations of scholars, authors, genealogists, and curious 
descendants.

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