[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 46 (Thursday, March 11, 2021)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1490-S1493]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
Border Security
Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I am here on the floor today to talk
about the unfolding, urgent situation on our southern border, and I do
so as the ranking Republican on the Homeland Security and Governmental
Affairs Committee.
This unfortunate situation at the border includes a lot of kids
coming over the border, UACs, as they call them, unaccompanied alien
children. These children are making a long and dangerous journey north,
putting themselves at risk and bringing our immigration system and our
shelter system along the border to a breaking point.
You may have heard that the Biden administration insists this is not
a crisis. Here are the facts. You decide.
This chart shows the dire situation that we are in. On Tuesday, the
most recent confirmed information we have is there were 3,400 of these
children in Border Patrol custody. Ten days ago, that number was 1,700.
So in 10 days, this number has doubled. To put this in perspective, at
the very height of the border crisis in 2019 that we all remember being
talked about a lot on the floor of this Senate and around the country,
families and children were coming in, in big numbers. At the very
height, it was 2,600 unaccompanied kids. Today, based on some
information we just received anecdotally from the Customs and Border
Protection folks, it is over 3,500. It is a 35-percent increase even
from where it was during the crisis, and it is growing.
Under law, these children have to be transferred to the Federal
Department of Health and Human Services, HHS, within 72 hours of their
being apprehended, and why we had that law in place was to be able to
help these kids. So instead of being in a Border Patrol detention
facility, which, by the way, were all designed for single males--they
don't have any separation, don't have any trained people to help
provide care to children, and it is law enforcement, Border Patrol
agents--but within 72 hours, we had said that you have to transfer
these children to a Health and Human Services facility that is
appropriate for children. How is that working?
Again, as of Tuesday, there were 3,400 of these kids in Border Patrol
custody in the wrong kind of detention facilities for children. There
were 2,800 children who were ready to transfer to HHS. In other words,
they had been screened, gone through a process. As of Tuesday, there
were 500 beds available, meaning 2,300 children are remaining in Border
Patrol custody in overcrowded, adult facilities without proper care
because there is nowhere to take them.
Look, it is a bad situation. HHS contractors are supposed to be
trained to care for the kids. The Border Patrol
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agents are not trained for that. They are doing their best, but it is
not a safe situation for the kids. By the way, nobody in Border Patrol
believes it is a good situation for the kids. These facilities, the
Border Patrol facilities at the Border Patrol stations and HHS
facilities are all at a breaking point. They are busting at the seams.
Is that a crisis? I don't know. You decide.
This influx comes, by the way, during a season when you normally
don't have a lot of people coming over the border. This is in the
winter. Normally, in the spring and then in the fall, you see the
biggest influxes of families, kids, individuals. So we expect these
numbers to get a lot worse. We expect it to get a lot worse into the
spring.
By the way, we spoke to Customs and Border Patrol folks today. They
told us the numbers are up again today. In fact, we have some internal
document from the Department of Homeland Security that a media
organization reported on. It is an official document that says DHS,
themselves, predict there will be 117,000 children who will be placed
in this situation this year. So they know it just is growing.
Again, is it a crisis? You decide. It is certainly a dangerous
situation. By all accounts, many of these migrants, including children,
face serious threats to their lives and well-being on the trip north.
Just as happened in the past surges in 2014 and 2019, we know this
includes many victims of human trafficking who are deceived and coerced
by traffickers and smugglers as they are taken from Central America up
to the U.S. border. The trip is treacherous. We have evidence that
exploitation and sexual abuse occurs along the way.
In 2019, again, the last time this happened, estimates of migrants
who were victims of sexual or physical abuse along the journey ranged
from 30 to 75 percent. Individual victims have described incredibly
disturbing accounts of being subjected to violence, sexual assault,
rape by traffickers and other criminals. It is a bad situation.
By the way, this situation is the direct result of policy changes.
The new administration came in determined to dismantle all of what the
previous administration had done to try to disincentivize people from
coming to the border, and they have been effective in doing that. They
have dismantled the immigration practices and proceedings that were
working to reduce these incentives. It had resulted in very few kids
coming to the border, as an example--almost none.
Last week, the Secretary of Homeland Security said in a press
conference that the surge of unaccompanied kids is a ``challenge'' but
not a ``crisis.'' He then deflected blame to the previous
administration. That is fine. Look, I wish it were just a challenge
that didn't require an urgent response, but that is not the reality
along the border today. I, frankly, don't care what we call it. Call it
a difficult situation, a challenge, whatever you want, but I care a lot
about what we do in response.
There is an old saying that says Washington only responds to a
crisis. I think, unfortunately, there is a lot of truth to that. We
have to respond here. We have to do something. That is why I think we
need to consider this dire situation a crisis before it gets much
worse.
The next chart shows the reality, which is this surge happened almost
immediately after President Biden and his administration were sworn in
and they made these announcements about changes in policy. Here we have
the election. Here we have the swearing-in. Look at this huge surge in
both family units and in these kids. As I said, we have twice as many
kids today as we had 10 days ago.
This is surging up. Nearly 10,000 unaccompanied alien children and
twice as many family members crossed our border in February, and that
is the shortest month of the year. These surges stopped under the
previous administration because they put in place policies that reduce
the incentives for individuals, families, and unaccompanied minors to
try to unlawfully enter the United States. In less than 2 months, the
Biden administration has systemically taken away these tools that were
being used to reduce these incentives. On day one, the new
administration revoked the emergency declaration for the border,
stopped construction of the border fence, and placed a 100-day halt to
deportations. Not surprisingly, this gave traffickers the green light
to exploit the situation, and more people and more drugs are now moving
across the border.
Next, the new administration reversed what is known as the Migrant
Protection Protocols or the ``Remain in Mexico'' policy, which required
asylum seekers to wait in Mexico rather than being released in
communities around the United States while waiting for their asylum
claims to be adjudicated. About 20 percent of the asylum seekers who
went through the entire application process, including all of the
hearings, were granted asylum in 2018.
So, if you go through all of the process, about 20 percent of those
individuals actually got asylum. Now, that is a self-selected group
because I know not everybody goes to the hearing. In fact, the best
data show that most don't show up for all of the hearings. The long-
term data show that about half of all asylum applicants eventually get
removal orders due to their not attending all of their asylum hearings.
We don't have great data on this, to be honest, and some people say
that very few go to these asylum hearings. Some say more do. The point
is that about half of them are getting removal orders--we know that--
for not attending all of their asylum hearings.
Given that there is a 1.2 million-case backlog in America today for
asylum applicants and that there were fewer than 5,000 noncriminals
deported last year by ICE, that tells us that, under the current
system, if you are a noncriminal asylum seeker who is denied asylum and
is subject to one of these removal orders, it is highly unlikely that
you are going to actually end up being deported from the United States.
Asylum seekers know that. So do the traffickers. It is no wonder there
has been a surge of those who want to live in the United States who
have come to the border and sought asylum in recent years.
I went to the border in 2019, and many of my colleagues have been
down to the border to see this situation. I will be going back again
soon to see firsthand what is happening and to see how we can help. It
should not be a partisan issue. It should be one in which Democrats and
Republicans alike see what is happening--see the tragedy unfolding
along the border--and do something to address it. This Migrant
Protection Program put in place by the Trump administration had
resulted in a sharp reduction in the surge of asylum claims as people
realized, pending their asylum hearings, they were not going to be
released in U.S. communities. Now we are seeing the reverse happen.
Second, the Biden administration actually suspended Safe Third
Country agreements with the Governments of El Salvador, Guatemala, and
Honduras, which allowed migrants to apply for asylum in the first
foreign country they crossed into. This, of course, reduced incentives
for migrants from those countries to make the long, arduous, and
dangerous journey to the southern border.
These agreements were in the process of being fully implemented, but
they were already helping and had the potential of finding a much more
expeditious way to identify and process those who would qualify for
legitimate asylum-refugee status before they would come all the way to
our border. All that work that has been accomplished has now been lost.
I urge the administration to reinstate those Safe Third Country
agreements with Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador.
Third, the new administration has also significantly changed the way
we process migrants during the COVID-19 crisis. Instead of establishing
the practice of turning away most immigrant and nonimmigrant visa
holders to protect the health and safety of the American people, we are
now learning from media reports, including the Washington Post, that
this new administration has made an unofficial exception to the COVID-
19 rules for children and for families.
Border Patrol agents and CBP officers who are on the frontlines are
telling us that they are returning to the pre-COVID practice of
bringing people into the country despite the health crisis that all of
us understand. The reports are that either the CBP officers are not
testing kids and families for
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COVID at all or, if they are, they are still releasing some of those
who test positive to shelters or into the United States with a request
that they quarantine after they travel to their final destinations in
the interior of the United States. In fact, we know of one instance in
which more than 100 unlawful immigrants in Brownsville, TX, who tested
positive for COVID-19, were simply told to quarantine when they reached
their final destinations regardless of how many people they interacted
with when taking a bus--in that case, most were taking a bus,
apparently--or when taking a plane to their destinations. Obviously,
that doesn't make any sense.
The final policy changes that encourage illegal entry is the new
administration's advocating for amnesty for those here illegally
without making it clear that such amnesty would not apply to anyone not
already here. That is important. As the experience of the last amnesty
in 1986 demonstrated, unless it is very clear that illegal entry won't
be rewarded, it will spawn more illegal entries. Now, let's face it.
The traffickers and the smugglers are going to take advantage of this,
and they are going to misrepresent the reality, but, still, it is
important that all of us as policymakers make it very clear, as we talk
about amnesty, that it is not as to the people who might come in the
future; it is as to the people who are already here.
I will say that the State Department has announced that it will be
reinstating the Central American Minors Program, which was a
streamlined refugee process that existed under the Obama administration
and was run by the U.S. Government and the U.N. High Commissioner for
Refugees, but it was discontinued under the Trump administration. I
think it is a positive thing that they are reinstating that.
We don't have all of the details yet, but I will tell you that
standing up this program without incentivizing people to use it is not
going to be very effective. Even if it were to be as effective as it
was at the height of the program, which was during the Obama
administration, it would not be nearly enough people. In 2 years, the
program resettled 3,300 individuals. So 3,300 children were resettled
in 2 years. That is not going to make a real impact when we are
receiving, right now, 3,300 children every couple of weeks at the
border. Again, I hope they do reinstate that program, as I think that
would be positive, but they have to do much more in order to avoid this
tragic situation from continuing and getting much worse.
The decision by the new administration to change all of these
policies, which were working, without having viable alternatives is
causing this chaos. It was done without thinking through the real
safety and security concerns for both communities and citizens of the
United States as well as for these unaccompanied kids and their
families. As a result, we have a surge of people being incentivized to
enter our country unlawfully, and our systems are being strained during
a public health emergency.
This influx is even worse than in 2019, not just because the numbers
are greater but because we now have the COVID-19 pandemic, and children
and families are being forced into tight quarters in detention
facilities. Asylum seekers with COVID-19 are being released into our
communities, and Customs and Border Protection officers who haven't
been able to receive the vaccine yet, which is a problem, are being
exposed to this influx of migrants who haven't been tested. So it is an
even bigger problem--forgetting the numbers--given the situation we are
in.
That ties in another concern I have about the way this crisis has
been handled so far, which is the administration's response to the
overcrowding at the shelter facilities. It has been to rush and
potentially cut corners to place these unaccompanied children with
sponsors because their goal, after HHS detention in HHS facilities, is
to get these children out to sponsor families. The standards of due
diligence that are required to ensure these children are not being
placed in danger are not being met, as far as we can tell, which
continues a troubling trend that goes back years and administrations.
It is an issue I have worked on since 2015, when we had a terrible
situation in my home State of Ohio wherein kids were given back to the
traffickers by HHS--the traffickers who had brought them up from
Central America by lying to their parents about what they were going to
do: take them to school and so on. These kids ended up working on an
egg farm, 6 to 7 days a week, below the minimum wage. I have seen this.
I have seen what happens when HHS does not take its time and do it
right, and it is very difficult for HHS to do that with the surge that
it has.
Over the course of three bipartisan reports and hearings as part of
the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which I chair, and across
two different administrations, we found failures to ensure the safety
of or to even keep track of these vulnerable children once they were
handed off to sponsors as well as a fundamental refusal by Agencies to
accept that they were responsible for the welfare of these kids. That
is the reality. Our bipartisan investigations also found that the
Office of Refugee Resettlement failed to exercise appropriate oversight
at its facilities and wasted millions of taxpayer dollars on
organizations and on contractors that could not acquire State licenses
to safely open the planned shelter facilities.
As those in this administration attempt to process this influx of
unaccompanied kids and safely get them to longer term housing
solutions, it is urgent that they do the due diligence on who is going
to be looking after these children and not cut corners as some reports
are indicating. That means fingerprinting the sponsors. That means
background checks. That means home visits. The Federal Government
cannot allow these kids to fall victim to human trafficking, to abuse,
or other harm.
I, along with my bipartisan cosponsors, will be reintroducing the
Responsibility for Unaccompanied Minors Act again in the coming days to
help ensure these requirements are met to protect our kids.
Here is the reality: Once these children arrive at the border, there
are no good options. The answer is to stop providing the incentives,
the pull factor. That is the short-term imperative. We should not be
encouraging these young people to make that arduous journey to then
have them end up in a detention facility. That is wrong for them. It is
a place where single males are crowded together but where kids are not
taken care of. Then, when they have to go to the HHS facility, there is
not enough room--again, making the point of there being 3,400 kids in
detention and 2,800 kids who are ready to be transferred to HHS, to
more appropriate facilities, but there are only 500 beds. So 2,300 are
kept in these overcrowded facilities that are meant for single males.
It is not a good option. There is no good option. The option is to keep
them from coming up to the border in the first place.
Yes, we can do more on the push factors also. That means investing in
Central America and other places to try to make those countries places
where people would want to stay rather than come to the United States.
Yet, my colleagues, that is what is called a long-term solution. Let's
be frank. I am for it, but we have to recognize that this is not a
solution to the current crisis that we face.
In the last 5 years, we have spent $3.6 billion of U.S. taxpayer
funds in aid for these Northern Triangle countries of Guatemala, El
Salvador, and Honduras. President Biden is proposing to spend another
$4 billion in those countries. I support smart investments that don't
get wasted because of corruption or other challenges, but it won't fix
the crisis this month, this year, or next year. The development of the
Northern Triangle is a decades-long effort--one we need to do but one
that is not going to address, again, the crisis that we face now.
I urge the Biden administration to also step up efforts to tie any
aid to better collaboration with our international partners, including
with the Governments of Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador,
to address this challenge, discourage migration, and provide
alternatives to those seeking to make the dangerous journey north. They
need to help us, and they have in the past.
In the Trump administration, we had a valuable partner in Mexico, as
an example. It used tens of thousands of its
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own military to patrol its own southern border to ensure migrants could
be processed, if necessary, and turned away if they didn't meet the
requirements. That was very helpful. I am concerned that these troops
have now been pulled back--that is the information that we are
receiving--partly because, as we are told, President Biden is not
encouraging the current Mexican leadership to continue this practice. I
hope that changes. The current surge in unaccompanied children at our
border, in the midst of a global pandemic, is a situation in which no
one wins and the children lose the most.
I am disappointed that the Biden administration chose to overturn the
policies put in place by the Trump administration, which were to help
control the flow of migrants during this pandemic, without having any
viable alternatives. I am concerned that leaders at key Agencies
involved in the response to this crisis are somehow seeing it as in
their interests to downplay the severity of the situation.
I urge the Biden administration to change course. Put back in place
smart policies that reduce the pull factors, and address the need for
legal and orderly processes for migration.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas.
Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, before he leaves the floor, let me just
congratulate our colleague from Ohio.
That was, perhaps, the most concise and informative speech I have
heard on that topic, including speeches that I have given on that
topic. In representing a border State, as I do, and in my having served
on the Judiciary Committee and on the Immigration Subcommittee for my
entire time here, the way he described it, I thought, was entirely
accurate. I think you can call it a crisis, a challenge--whatever you
want to call it--but it is getting worse all the time, and I think it
will get much, much worse if we don't act and act together. So I thank
him for his outstanding remarks.
(Ms. CORTEZ MASTO assumed the Chair.)