[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 53 (Monday, March 22, 2021)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1667-S1669]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
Immigration
Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, from El Paso to Brownsville, my home
State shares a 1,200-mile border with Mexico. If you were daring enough
to attempt to walk that entire stretch, you would trek through deserts,
mountains, big cities, small towns, and maybe even stick your big toe
in the Rio Grande. You get to know folks who are proud of the strong
bonds that our country has with our southern neighbor, including many
who have relatives in both countries. You would meet entrepreneurs
whose businesses depend on legitimate trade and travel between our
countries. You would talk with local, State, and Federal law
enforcement officials who go above and beyond the call to keep our
communities safe. And I have no doubt that along the way, you could
enjoy some great Tex-Mex, and depending on the season, you would find
the best grapefruit you have ever eaten in the Rio Grande Valley.
Our Texas-Mexico southern border is a beautiful, vibrant region with
a rich sense of community that you can't find in any other part of the
country. I believe it is truly unique.
Throughout my time in the Senate, I have had the opportunity to spend
a lot of time in our border communities and work with their incredible
leaders: mayors, county judges, sheriffs, school superintendents,
NGOs--nongovernmental organizations--and countless others.
Well, I am sure you have heard the song ``God Bless Texas.'' It is
true, I believe, and the folks I have come to call friends along the
border are certainly doing the Lord's work. These men and women work
around the clock to create safe communities and thriving economies,
something that has been especially tough during the hand they have been
dealt this last year with the pandemic. But they have lived through a
pandemic, hurricanes, droughts, a winter storm that presented subzero
freezing temperatures for a week. All have hit my State in the last 12
months.
Folks in these communities, as they have throughout the country, have
lost friends and loved ones. They have lost jobs. They have lost
businesses and opportunities and so much more. Now they are trying to
deal with another crisis, one they had no hand in creating and should
not be responsible for managing alone.
Unfortunately, the administration continues to play a high-stakes
version of the game Taboo as they try to find a word--any word--but
``crisis'' to refer to what is happening along the southern border.
President Biden himself has called it a ``humanitarian challenge.''
Secretary Mayorkas prefers the term ``situation.'' And the President's
Chief of Staff referred to it as a ``mess.'' The problem here isn't the
choice of the word you use to describe it but the implication of
downplaying the seriousness of this migration surge.
In an attempt to lessen the impact of this dramatic increase in
illegal migration, the administration has revoked policies that were
helping deter such an influx. It failed to rapidly provide the
resources needed to respond to the crisis once it revoked the previous
policies, and now the border communities in my State along that 1,200-
mile common border with Mexico are expected to pick up the slack.
Regardless of how you want to brand what is happening, here are the
facts. Last month, Customs and Border Protection encountered more than
100,000 individuals along our border last month alone--100,000. That is
the highest number since 2006. More than 9,000 of these 100,000 people
were children, unaccompanied children, separated when their parents
sent them, along with human smugglers, criminal organizations, to make
their dangerous trek from Mexico or Central America or somewhere else
into the United States. Another 19,000 are what are euphemistically
called family units, usually 1 parent and 1 or more children.
Now, we know that this journey to our borders isn't safe or easy, and
you can imagine that is especially true fo unaccompanied children. Many
arrive at our border in critical health, having endured days and weeks
or even months of exposure on the road. I have heard horrific stories
of physical and sexual abuse that occur in the hands of these criminal
organizations who move migrants from place A to place B. But they are
nothing more than cartels, human smugglers, criminals who care nothing
about the individuals whom they are ferrying from their point A to
point B. All they care about is the money that they make, and they make
a lot of money.
By law, children cannot be in the custody of Customs and Border
Protection for more than 72 hours. Within that window, they are
required by law to be transferred to the custody and care of the
Department of Health and Human Services. But right now, the system is
so overwhelmed that thousands of children have been in custody beyond
the legal limit, including hundreds who have been held for more than 10
days in border detention facilities.
Axios has recently released some pictures taken inside, I believe,
the Donna
[[Page S1668]]
detention facility showing children basically stacked end to end,
trying to stay warm, trying to sleep because the Border Patrol
facilities are simply overwhelmed.
The situation has grown so dire, the administration has sent the
Federal Emergency Management Agency to help, and now they have set up a
new influx care facility in Dallas and Midland to provide for these
children. The Midland facility has experienced so many issues that no
additional migrant teens are being sent there. In the first few days of
operation, more than 10 percent of the population housed there tested
positive for COVID-19, and at least one child has been hospitalized.
One government official described the process of setting up the
facility as ``building a plane as it's taking off.''
There is simply no reason the administration should have been caught
flat-footed by this surge of illegal migration. After all, the
President campaigned on promises of policies that were sure to lead to
this very situation. When you remove the policies that deter illegal
border crossings, what do you expect?
We know that the spring months are typically the busiest for
migration because mild temperatures make the journey a little less
dangerous and folks want to come to the United States for summer work.
We know the cartels and criminal organizations are very knowledgeable
about our immigration laws. They know them perhaps better than most
Americans do, and they know how to navigate them. We know a flawed
court ruling on the Flores settlement agreement means even more
children will come across our border because now families are subject
to the same requirements as unaccompanied children. We know we have an
immigration court backlog that is roughly 1.3 million cases deep, and
the average time for a case to be presented in court is now 2\1/2\
years. Nevertheless, the Biden administration, by revoking the previous
policies without having a plan to replace them, has created a perfect
storm that anyone could have told them would end up in this situation.
We have experienced migration surges in the past but never of this
magnitude.
In the midst of a pandemic, Secretary Mayorkas has said that we are
on track to see the highest number of border crossings in 20 years and
the administration needs to take action now to keep things from getting
any worse.
As migrants continue to make their way to our southern border in
record numbers, law enforcement, local officials, and nongovernmental
organizations, notwithstanding their best efforts, are not equipped to
manage the influx, certainly not in these numbers. They don't have the
facilities. They don't have the policies, the funding, or the resources
to manage the crisis in a fair, efficient, and humane way. That needs
to change.
For folks who are not from a border State or haven't spent much time
at the border, it is difficult to understand just how complex the
situation is. They may have learned what they think they know about the
border from movies or novels, or they may have read news articles and
assume border communities are dangerous or lawless places. That
assumption could not be farther from the truth. But it is true that our
border communities are being asked to carry more than their fair share
of the weight during this crisis, when the past year has already been
challenging enough with the pandemic.
Like cities across the country, border communities have had to cover
a range of expenses created by the pandemic, but unlike those other
communities, they now have the added economic struggle created by
limits on nonessential border travel.
Prepandemic, folks from Mexico could travel across the border to
shop, to eat at restaurants, and visit family members. These were huge
drivers of the economy along our entire border region. But the pause on
legitimate, nonessential travel by title 42 has created a serious
economic strain on these communities, and leaders are struggling to
understand the disconnect between the Biden administration's two very
different approaches.
At a recent roundtable my friend Congressman Henry Cuellar and I
hosted in Laredo, someone said: I don't understand how you can catch
and release the migrants and not let our neighbors across the border
come over and spend money in our communities to help bolster our
economy.
This confluence of crises is a one-two punch for our border
communities, and it is unfair they are expected to carry the burden of
this crisis. That is the Federal Government's responsibility.
This Friday, my colleague Senator Cruz and I will welcome a number of
our colleagues to the Rio Grande Valley, where they can hear and see
about these challenges firsthand. I welcome any Member of the Senate or
the Congress to join me at the border at a time of their choosing. I
know I have benefited from the feedback and advice from the experts on
the ground who are dealing with this crisis firsthand, and I am glad to
bring some of my Senate colleagues on Friday along for a visit at this
critical moment.
Hopefully that will help us to find a way, along with the
administration in a bipartisan way, to reduce some of the pull factors
that incentivize people to come and navigate our system.
You are never going to deal with the fact that people want a better
life or are fleeing violence. We all get that. We understand why, as
human beings, people would want to leave that, but we also know that
the cartels are getting rich off of this business model, and certainly
they are incentivized to encourage as many people as possible to come
and pay their extortionate fees in the process. But the combination of
those at this point--both the push factors and the pull factors,
especially with the Biden administration putting a green light on our
border and basically saying ``All comers are welcome to enter the
country''--is creating an unreasonable expectation about what people
are going to encounter, as well as overwhelming the capacity of our
Border Patrol, Health and Human Services, and the Office of Refugee
Relocation to be able to deal with them.
We know that the incentives involved in a catch-and-release system,
in which people are asked to return in perhaps months, maybe years, for
a future court date to consider their asylum claims, are nothing but an
invitation for them to not appear and simply melt into the great
American landscape and, again, continue to incentivize people to come
because they know they can beat the system. They certainly can game the
system, and, unfortunately, too often people beat the system, creating
the situation we find now at the southern border.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Hirono). The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. BURR. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered
nomination of martin joseph walsh
Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Madam President, I rise to support the nomination of
Marty Walsh to be our Nation's next Secretary of Labor. Mr. Walsh is an
experienced leader who has always been a fighter for working families
as the mayor of Boston, a State legislator, and as a union president.
We need a Secretary of Labor who will make workplaces safer and prevent
the spread of COVID-19 on the job, ensure that unemployed workers get
the benefits they need and deserve, and support workers exercising
their rights to form a union and bargain collectively.
Only 11.6 percent of workers were represented by a union in 2019,
down from 27 percent in 1979. The decline in unionization has coincided
with a marked divergence between overall productivity growth in our
economy and paychecks for workers. While productivity has grown
significantly, hourly compensation for rank-and-file workers has been
nearly stagnant once inflation is taken into account.
In a January 22 Executive order on protecting the Federal workforce
which faced especially harsh attacks from the Trump administration,
President Biden reaffirmed that it is ``the policy of the United States
to encourage union organizing and collective bargaining.''
Strengthening and enforcing the laws that enable workers to do so must
be at the core of our efforts to build an economy that works for all
Americans, and Marty Walsh is the right person for the job.
[[Page S1669]]
Mr. BURR. Madam President, I am going to support the nomination of
Mayor Marty Walsh to be the U.S. Secretary of Labor.
Now, why is a guy from North Carolina here to encourage my colleagues
to vote for the mayor of Boston, MA? Well, it is quite simple. Mayor
Walsh has the background and skills and the awareness for the need of
balance in conversations between labor and management.
He has been a mayor; he has been a State representative; and he has
also been a union leader. The Department of Labor serves an immensely
important role in our economy and in the lives of the American people.
Especially in the midst of a pandemic, with unemployment at 6.7 percent
and 12.6 million Americans unemployed, this is a job that needs
filling.
But our Nation can't have a Labor Secretary that will ever be accused
of being in cahoots with labor or beholden to management. I have made
it clear that the Labor Secretary's job is to play a balanced role and
to confront both, when necessary, for the protection of the rank-and-
file workers.
Mayor Walsh emphasized during his nomination hearing that he wanted
to work with us collaboratively to help the American workers improve
and expand opportunities. He respects the importance of job creators
and the need for better coordination of numerous job training programs.
Mayor Walsh is committed to making sure commerce and labor work
cooperatively. He stated that the workers in a representation election
have the right to listen to both sides. Mayor Walsh agreed to be
responsive to our oversight requests and to keep us updated on his
plans and departmental actions.
Now, we won't agree on everything, but we should be able to find
places that we can agree, in a bipartisan way, to move forward. I
support the nomination of Mayor Marty Walsh, and I look forward to
working with him. I encourage my colleagues to support this nomination
as well.
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. CARDIN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
vote on walsh nomination
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, all postcloture time
has expired.
The question is, Will the Senate advise and consent to the Walsh
nomination?
Mr. CARDIN. Madam President, I ask for the yeas and nays.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
There appears to be a sufficient second.
The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant bill clerk called the roll
Mr. THUNE. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator
from Tennessee (Mrs. Blackburn), the Senator from Alaska (Ms.
Murkowski), and the Senator from Pennsylvania (Mr. Toomey).
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Heinrich). Are there any other Senators in
the Chamber desiring to vote?
The result was announced--yeas 68, nays 29, as follows:
[Rollcall Vote No. 127 Ex.]
YEAS--68
Baldwin
Bennet
Blumenthal
Blunt
Booker
Brown
Burr
Cantwell
Capito
Cardin
Carper
Casey
Cassidy
Collins
Coons
Cornyn
Cortez Masto
Cramer
Duckworth
Durbin
Feinstein
Fischer
Gillibrand
Graham
Grassley
Hassan
Heinrich
Hickenlooper
Hirono
Hoeven
Kaine
Kelly
King
Klobuchar
Leahy
Lee
Lujan
Manchin
Markey
Marshall
Menendez
Merkley
Murphy
Murray
Ossoff
Padilla
Peters
Portman
Reed
Romney
Rosen
Sanders
Schatz
Schumer
Shaheen
Sinema
Smith
Stabenow
Sullivan
Tester
Tillis
Tuberville
Van Hollen
Warner
Warnock
Warren
Whitehouse
Wyden
NAYS--29
Barrasso
Boozman
Braun
Cotton
Crapo
Cruz
Daines
Ernst
Hagerty
Hawley
Hyde-Smith
Inhofe
Johnson
Kennedy
Lankford
Lummis
McConnell
Moran
Paul
Risch
Rounds
Rubio
Sasse
Scott (FL)
Scott (SC)
Shelby
Thune
Wicker
Young
NOT VOTING--3
Blackburn
Murkowski
Toomey
The nomination was confirmed.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the motion to
reconsider is considered made and laid upon the table, and the
President will be immediately notified of the Senate's actions.
The majority leader.
____________________