[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 103 (Monday, June 14, 2021)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4508-S4509]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            BORDER SECURITY

  Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, last month, more than 180,000 migrants 
crossed our southern border. That is the highest monthly total since 
the Clinton administration.

[[Page S4509]]

  Unaccompanied children continue to arrive at our border by the tens 
of thousands. In the first 5 months of this year, more than 65,000 
migrant children crossed our southern border--nearly double the amount 
we saw in fiscal year 2020. As bad as things are, things can, and I 
predict will, get worse.
  The administration is weighing whether this is an appropriate time to 
lift title 42, which is a public health order designed to protect from 
the spread of the COVID-19 virus, but they have yet to tell us what 
transition plans they may have, if any, in transitioning from the 
current exclusion of many adult migrants to welcoming those who are 
currently excluded or processing them through our immigration courts.
  Depending on what the administration decides, the humanitarian crisis 
at the border will likely swell even larger this summer. Despite the 
clear need for action from Congress, most of our colleagues on the 
other side of the aisle have put on blinders. Instead of a bipartisan 
effort to eliminate or, I should say, alleviate or mitigate the 
humanitarian and security crisis at our border, we have one side 
pushing for action and the other side largely staying silent.
  The Judiciary Committee of the Senate should be leading the charge to 
address this crisis in a fair and humane way. Back in April, Senator 
Grassley, the ranking Republican, and I sent a letter to Chairman 
Durbin and Subcommittee Chairman Padilla requesting a hearing of either 
the full committee or the Immigration Subcommittee on this current 
crisis at the border.
  Two months and hundreds of thousands of migrants later, they have 
simply refused to even hold a hearing.
  Last month, the Subcommittee on Border Security and Immigration held 
its first hearing, but the topic wasn't on the border crisis. Instead, 
the topic was increased numbers of visas for undocumented immigrant 
workers. That is a topic we can and should discuss but certainly not 
with the looming crisis on the border.
  Tomorrow morning, the Senate Judiciary Committee will continue to 
ignore this backlog of migrants and this blinking red light that should 
warn all of us that this crisis will get nothing but worse.
  What is the topic of tomorrow's hearing in the Senate Judiciary 
Committee? We are set to hold a hearing on the unserious, House-passed 
immigration bill. This legislation stands zero chance of being passed 
by the Senate--zero. It combines some of the most radical proposals 
from the far left in one massive bill that fails to address the needs 
of our country. Rather than discuss the humanitarian crisis at the 
border, our Democratic colleagues have chosen to hold a hearing on a 
dead-on-arrival bill, and they know it. It is a remarkable show of 
priorities.
  Tomorrow, I expect we will hear a lot about discussing the Deferred 
Action on Childhood Arrival recipients--one of the categories of 
undocumented immigrants that would receive a path to citizenship under 
this legislation.
  I should say that Texas is home to about 100,000 DACA recipients who 
are vital parts of our communities. They have grown up with our kids, 
attended the same churches, shopped in the same grocery stores, and 
defended our freedoms in the U.S. military. They are also a huge driver 
of our economy. Ninety-six percent of DACA recipients are either 
working or in school, and, on the whole, these young people contribute 
more than $400 million a year in State and local taxes in Texas alone.
  Despite all the ways these young men and women strengthen our country 
and our communities, they have been living in a constant state of 
uncertainty about their future. That is because when President Obama 
announced this program 9 years ago, he did so through a shortsighted 
Executive memorandum rather than engage Congress. That is right. Rather 
than rolling up his sleeves and working with Congress to pass long-
lasting immigration policy, he chose a path of least resistance that 
didn't involve any input from Congress but merely created this with a 
stroke of a pen. To say the least, this made things easier for 
President Obama in the short run, but it caused a lot of fear--has 
caused a lot of fear and uncertainty for these young people in the long 
run, and that continues today. They were set unfairly on a yearslong, 
tumultuous journey, waiting nervously to see how the courts would weigh 
in on the various court challenges that we knew were going to occur. 
President Obama knew it as well. So these young DACA recipients have 
been left wondering whether they might be deported to a country they 
have no memory of and being forced to leave behind the families, the 
jobs, and the opportunities they have worked so hard to build here in 
the United States.
  Many of these young people are in their twenties and thirties now 
with careers, families, and plans of their own. The possibility of 
being forced to leave the United States is no less terrifying for them 
than it would be for anyone who was born here. After years of being 
yanked around from court ruling to court ruling, these young men and 
women deserve certainty. They deserve to know whether they can apply to 
college, grow their families, live their lives, and do all the things 
other young Americans can do without this dark cloud hanging over their 
plans. After all, they haven't done anything wrong. They were brought 
here as children, as minors. And in America, we do not hold children 
responsible for the mistakes of adults--in other words, their parents.
  That is why I believe we should take action that gives these DACA 
recipients the certainty they deserve, and the only way to do that is 
through more legislation, not further Executive actions. And I strongly 
support that legislative effort. However, massive partisan bills, like 
the legislation the House passed this year, is not the answer. I 
support DACA recipients because they were brought here at a young age 
through no fault of their own, but the American Dream and Promise Act 
has completely abandoned this justification in favor of rewarding 
recent illegal entries with green cards, even adults who violated our 
immigration laws.
  If the goal is to provide legal certainty for our DACA recipients as 
opposed to making a grand political statement, we need to be realistic 
about how we get there. We need to learn from our mistakes of the past, 
where we have tried to build big, comprehensive immigration reform 
bills only to see them collapse of their own weight, which means we 
need to begin working on smaller packages that can gain broad support 
and hopefully build trust in the process. I am not suggesting we quit 
there, but that is the place we need to start if we have learned from 
the lessons of the last 20 years
  The American people overwhelmingly support allowing DACA recipients 
to remain in the United States, and I believe it is true of a majority 
of Members of the Senate. We have to set aside policies we cannot agree 
on so we can make progress on the ones we do agree on, and we need to 
keep our efforts focused on DACA recipients. If this is a priority for 
folks on both sides of the aisle, I hope we will finally be able to get 
a bill to the President's desk to help these young people.
  More broadly, though, there is no denying our immigration system is 
sorely in need of reform. It is outdated; it is inefficient; and it 
simply does not meet the needs of our country today. But there is very 
little room for those types of conversations until we solve the current 
crisis at the border. Once that is under control and our bipartisan 
Border Solutions Act, which is the only bicameral, bipartisan bill that 
has been introduced--once we solve that problem, I hope we will have a 
bipartisan debate about the changes that should be made to our 
immigration system, and the DACA recipients are at the top of that 
list.
  As I said, these young men and women deserve certainty, and Congress 
cannot pass legislation to provide that certainty if our Democratic 
colleagues and the White House insist on attaching controversial 
policies or ignoring the current crisis at the border, as the Biden 
administration is appearing to do.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alabama.

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