[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 202 (Wednesday, December 3, 2025)]
[Senate]
[Pages S8458-S8460]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                              Immigration

  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, in my office here in the U.S. Capitol, 
which is a few steps away from this Chamber, I have behind my desk a 
credenza. On that credenza is a document that is dear to me and my 
family and really defines who I am. It is my mother's naturalization 
certificate.
  Despite all the speeches you hear on the floor about immigrants, we 
are a nation of immigrants, and my mother was an immigrant from 
Lithuania to the United States, brought here at the age of 2. Her 
brother and sister were with her on that boat, and her mom was bringing 
them along.
  They went from Lithuania to Germany and then took the ship to 
Baltimore, eventually catching a train that took them to what they 
considered to be the land of opportunity, my hometown of East St. 
Louis, IL. That is my story. That is my family story. It is an 
immigrant story, and I am proud of it.
  There were problems with immigration throughout our history. But 
there is also an opportunity with immigration which we have taken 
advantage of over and over and over again. We are a nation of 
immigrants. You will hear many of the speeches--and even this morning--
from the other side of the aisle on what is wrong with immigrants and 
immigration. It is not a perfect system by any means.
  But I think we can all agree on some basics. Whoever the President 
may be, whatever political party, we need an orderly process at the 
border when it comes to immigrants, No. 1. No. 2, we should never 
knowingly allow any dangerous person to come into the United States. 
No. 3, anyone who is here seeking citizenship and is a danger to the 
community or neighborhood they live in should be removed from the 
United States, period, end of story.
  Finally, we need a process that allows people who have the best 
intentions to come here, work hard, pay their taxes, and be part of 
America's future. That is the story of my family. It is a story of 
millions of American families.
  About 25 years ago, a young woman in Chicago contacted my office and 
asked for help. Her name was Tereza Lee--an interesting story. Tereza 
was born in Korea. She came to the United States through South America, 
and her father and mother brought her to Chicago where her father, a 
Protestant minister, was looking for a church to serve.
  He spent many years doing that with limited success, and he brought 
along his little daughter Tereza with him as he visited these churches. 
Many times, when the services were not taking place, this little girl 
would go over to the beat-up old piano in each of these churches and 
start hammering away. Someone noticed that and invited her to be part 
of something called the Merit Music Program in Chicago. The Merit Music 
Program provides money for poor kids in public schools to buy 
instruments and take lessons and learn how to play. They decided to 
give Tereza that chance. They let her take

[[Page S8459]]

lessons in piano. She turned out to be a child prodigy when it came to 
music.
  At the end of her high school years, her friends and those who taught 
her encouraged her to apply to the very best music schools in America. 
Tereza applied to the Manhattan Conservatory of Music, but she had a 
problem. Filling out the application, there was a question: ``What is 
your citizenship?''
  She turned to her parents and said: ``What do I put here?''
  They said: ``We don't know. You came here on a visitor visa. We 
didn't renew the request for a permanent visa. We don't know what your 
status may be.''
  ``What are we going to do,'' she said.
  They said: ``We are going to call the office of a U.S. Senator named 
Durbin and see if he can give us advice.''
  We checked the law. The law was clear. Tereza had overstayed her 
visitor visa. She was in the United States as a child, grew up here, 
but she didn't have legal status. She was undocumented. The law was and 
is very clear. That 18-year-old girl had to leave the United States for 
10 years and then apply to come back in.
  When we found that out, my staff came to me and said this isn't even 
possible for her to do. She has never really lived any other place than 
the United States. So at that point, I decided to address this with 
legislation. It was 24 years ago that I introduced a measure called the 
DREAM Act.
  What the DREAM Act basically said was these young immigrants brought 
to the United States as children, like any American child, were 
destined to grow up dreaming of getting their first job, passing their 
driver's license test, and applying to college. But they had a problem. 
Under the current law, they were not legal to do those things. So the 
DREAM Act gave them a chance--those brought to the United States as 
children to have a path to citizenship after earning their way in a 
rather long and rigorous process. Many of them did. These Dreamers have 
gone on to serve as our Nation's doctors, nurses, teachers, engineers, 
and first responders over the last 24 years. But, unlike many of their 
peers, Dreamers live in fear that their lives will be uprooted and that 
they will be deported to a country they don't even call home. That was 
the threat that faced Tereza.

  It was 2001 when I first introduced bipartisan legislation to provide 
Dreamers with a pathway to citizenship. My cosponsor was Republican 
Senator Orrin Hatch, who was then the chairman of the Senate Judiciary 
Committee. In fact, we had a little argument as to who would be the 
lead name on the legislation. Since he was chairman of the Judiciary, I 
deferred to him, and the first DREAM Act was a Hatch-Durbin piece of 
legislation. I am sad to say that more than two decades later, Dreamers 
are still waiting for that bill to pass.
  Just over 13 years ago, President Barack Obama created the Deferred 
Action for Childhood Arrivals Program, widely known as DACA. He created 
DACA in response to a bipartisan request from myself and the late 
Indiana Republican Senator Richard Lugar. Over those 13 years, DACA has 
protected more than 830,000 young people from deportation. All of them 
were brought to this country as children, some as young as a few months 
old.
  Sadly, since President Obama established the program, many 
Republicans have waged a relentless campaign to overturn DACA and 
deport these Dreamers back to countries they left as infants, toddlers, 
and children--countries they may not even remember.
  Now this program is hanging by a thread in the courts due to legal 
challenges from Republican States' attorneys general, and many 
Dreamers--even those who have protections under DACA--have been caught 
up in deportation raids by the Trump administration.
  What does a person in DACA have to do to qualify for that status? 
First, they have to report themselves to our government; second, submit 
themselves to a background check so that if there is any evidence of 
criminal wrongdoing, it is going to come out, and they will be 
disqualified. They have to pay a substantial fee, and every 2 years, 
they have to go through that process again--and again and again. That 
is what DACA is.
  So when we hear stories on the floor about immigrants committing 
crimes and such, let's make it clear that Dreamers are cleared by 
review and investigation by our government before they can ever qualify 
for the program, and every 2 years, they have to submit their names 
again for review.
  I want to tell you about one of these Dreamers. She is a college 
student with a merit scholarship. She was deported from the United 
States without due process 2 weeks ago. This is the 150th story of a 
Dreamer that I have highlighted on the Senate floor. I had hoped that 
we would have passed the DREAM Act long before I reached this 
milestone.
  Any Lucia Lopez Belloza was brought to the United States from 
Honduras when she was 8 years old. Any worked hard in high school. She 
was an honor student. In her free time, she volunteered as a tutor in 
algebra. Her hard work ultimately paid off. This year, she received a 
merit scholarship to study at Babson College in Massachusetts.
  Like a lot of college students, Any planned to visit her family 
during the Thanksgiving holiday. Her dad's employer in Texas paid for 
her travel home to surprise her dad at work. But when Ms. Lopez Belloza 
arrived at Boston's Logan Airport, she was told there was a problem 
with her ticket. When she went to customer service, she was surrounded 
by Federal agents and shackled.
  The next day, a Federal district court judge issued an order blocking 
her transfer or deportation for 72 hours. Despite this court order, the 
Trump administration quickly deported her to Honduras, the country she 
had not been to since she was a little girl. She had nothing but the 
few belongings she had brought with her for the Thanksgiving holiday at 
home with her family in Texas.
  You will remember the President's campaign rallies and how often he 
stood before cheering crowds and said that it was time to stop the 
rapists, murderers, terrorists, and the criminally insane from flowing 
into this Nation--the worst of the worst. He repeated it over and over 
again.
  Does this young lady look like the worst of the worst? The answer is 
clearly no. Ms. Lopez Belloza is one of countless Dreamers who have 
great potential to make this a better country. They are not asking for 
a free ride; they are hard-working and determined.
  Think of the odds against her as she was growing up. She came to know 
that she didn't have legal status in this country. Her family is a 
hard-working family with limited income, and the prospects of her ever 
getting admitted to a college were limited. Yet she was damned 
determined to do it, and she did. It is that kind of determination and 
talent and skill that should be part of this country's future. She is 
going to be someday, I am sure, a leader in America--a small business 
owner, a teacher, a doctor. I am not certain what it will be.
  The vast majority of Americans, including most Republicans, agree 
that Dreamers like her should have a path to citizenship--to earn her 
way to citizenship, to work hard and prove that she is part of 
America's future.
  This is not just the right thing to do for Dreamers and their 
families; it is the right thing to do for America. One study found that 
if DACA were rescinded, the Federal Government would lose $60 billion 
in tax revenue and that U.S. economic growth would shrink.
  The time to pass the DREAM Act is now. That is why I am proud to 
announce that I will be reintroducing the DREAM Act this week on a 
bipartisan basis with my good friend and colleague Senator Lisa 
Murkowski, a Republican from Alaska.
  While I have introduced the DREAM Act in every Congress since 2001, 
this one is different. This is my last year in the Senate. This is my 
last opportunity as a Senator to make it a law.
  Over the years, I have met hundreds of amazing Dreamers who are 
American in every sense of the word except on paper.
  To those Dreamers who have been with me in this fight, I promise to 
do everything in my power to fight for you and your future every day 
that I am here. As I have said to you many times, I am not giving up on 
you; don't give up on me.
  To Senator Murkowski, thank you. It took courage to cosponsor this 
bill, and I will never forget it.

[[Page S8460]]

  Can we get to work on a bipartisan basis and agree that if we are 
going to keep safe borders, we also want to make sure that the right 
immigrants are here for our future?
  Any is one of those people. Without due process, she was sent back to 
Honduras. Her fate is still uncertain despite a court order. But there 
are hundreds of thousands like her who, with enough determination, hard 
work, and opportunity, can make America a greater nation. She is my 
150th Dreamer. I hope she is part of America for years to come.

  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Moreno). The Senator from Alaska.
  Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for up 
to 15 minutes prior to the scheduled rollcall vote.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.