[Congressional Record Volume 172, Number 36 (Tuesday, February 24, 2026)]
[Senate]
[Pages S633-S635]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY

  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, on a separate subject, last week marked 
the season 13 premiere of late-night host John Oliver's ``Last Week 
Tonight.''
  In the 30-minute monologue, John Oliver laid into the Department of 
Homeland Security which he says ``remain[s] a massive agency with 
unclear checks on its power, boatloads of money, and sweeping 
surveillance authority.''
  John Oliver is right, but it is important to remember how we got to 
this

[[Page S634]]

point. I am old enough to remember a time before the Department of 
Homeland Security. After 9/11, Congress created what would become the 
third largest Department of the Federal Government. The creation and 
existence of this Agency was defended, in part, by proponents who 
argued that immigration was primarily a homeland security issue.
  But from the beginning, DHS and its various components have struggled 
to accomplish its many conflicting missions while spending hundreds of 
billions of dollars. In the wrong hands, this behemoth of an Agency 
could be weaponized for political purposes. Sadly, that is just what we 
are seeing today.
  I warned the Trump administration about their militarizing Federal 
immigration raids that don't target the worst of the worst by any means 
and instead amount to political theater with the intent of sowing fear 
and meeting arbitrary arrest quotas.
  This past Friday, I attended the funeral of Ofelia Giselle Torres 
Hidalgo. Tragically, she passed away at age 16 after a battle with 
cancer.
  In October of last year, her father Ruben was detained in a Home 
Depot parking lot. They crashed through his driver's side window and 
detained him. At that time, he begged them to let him go home. His 
daughter Ofelia had just returned from the hospital and was at home 
waiting for some food from her father.
  He was trying to do one more odd job so he would have some money in 
his pocket to buy that food. That is what he was up to.
  So they checked the background of Ruben Torres, and you won't be 
surprised to know he had no criminal record whatsoever. None. That 
didn't stop the ICE agents. They ended up arresting him, detaining him, 
and shipping him off to a location in Texas for 2 weeks.
  Finally, they dropped all charges against him and let him go home to 
his sick daughter and his family. He did go home, but his status on the 
immigration schedule was still uncertain.
  He managed to schedule a court hearing just 2 weeks ago. In that 
court hearing, his daughter, too weak to attend it personally, followed 
it by closed-circuit TV. The judge ruled against the government in 
their detention of Ruben Torres, and his daughter got to see her father 
finally liberated from this outrageous conduct by ICE at the very last 
minutes of her life. She died 3 days later.
  I think about that, and I think about what the President promised us. 
He was going to send ICE into our communities and make them safer. He 
was going to make sure that people who came into this country illegally 
were removed from this country if they were a danger.
  Oh, you heard him say it over and over again ``the worst of the 
worst.'' That is what we are going after. Well, Ruben Torres was not 
the worst of the worst. He was a father who had been in this country 
for 20 years, working, paying taxes, raising his family, and his kids 
had no criminal records whatsoever.
  Does a father standing by his dying daughter who is battling cancer 
sound like ``the worst of the worst'' to you? Would you arrest him and 
send him off to Texas for 2 weeks on a suspicion and then drop all 
charges against him when he is begging you for a chance to go home to 
his sick daughter before she dies?
  The political theater extends to the rest of U.S. citizens as well.
  Kyle Frankovich and Juan Munoz were arrested and detained during 
November protests outside the Chicago ICE processing center despite 
peacefully protesting in a designated free speech zone.
  According to Mr. Kyle Frankovich:

       Kristi Noem was . . . surrounded by photographers, 
     videographers, essentially just getting us in the background 
     as she walked by.

  Later, social media posts from DHS showed Kyle handcuffed, dubbing 
him a ``violent activist.'' But after being detained for hours, Kyle 
and Juan weren't charged with any crimes. They were just being used as 
camera props for Secretary Noem's appearance.
  These rogue immigration agents have not hesitated to round up 
American citizens, green card holders, and people with no prior 
criminal records. They have not hesitated to slap Americans with the 
label ``domestic terrorist.''
  Now, they are building holding facilities--detention facilities--all 
over the United States--millions of dollars to hold thousands of these 
detainees for indefinite periods of time.
  This is bound to get worse with the unprecedented funding surge of 
President Trump's ``Big Beautiful Budget Bill.'' Thanks to that bill, 
ICE--this one Agency, ICE--has more funding than the Coast Guard or 
U.S. Marine Corps--more funding than the U.S. Marine Corps, an extra 
$75 billion of taxpayer dollars to fund these ICE agents. We have seen 
plenty of them in the videotape.
  That enormous pot of funding has been used in pursuit of the 
President's mass deportation agenda, while at the same time they are 
diverting money away from fighting drug trafficking and gun violence, 
ultimately making our country less safe. The funding certainly has not 
been used to improve hiring and training. Amid a hiring surge, ICE has 
reduced training requirements, waived age limitations, and bundled 
background checks, promising $50,000 bonuses to those who sign up.
  They have sought to recruit new agents via a multimillion-dollar 
advertising campaign that evokes White nationalism leading to a real 
concern that America is intentionally enlisting unqualified people 
based on their animus toward immigrants.
  That is why Senate Democrats, with the support of the American 
people, are demanding real reforms in ICE.
  First, DHS must end roving patrols, including indiscriminate arrests 
and racial profiling. The cameraless stops have to stop. They need to 
obtain judicial warrants in order to enter private homes.
  Second, there needs to be accountability, including new use-of-force 
standards. And the masks must come off. If the mask is such a darn good 
idea, then why don't the State troopers in my State and yours wear 
them? Why don't the county sheriff's deputies wear them? Why don't our 
police wear them?
  Only ICE believes it is so unique and so vulnerable that they need 
masks. Of course, that vision of a mask-wearing policeman is a secret 
policeman that doesn't instill trust or confidence in the community.
  In a press conference claiming the end of Operation Metro Surge in 
Minnesota, border czar Tom Homan said in response to protests:

       If you want certain laws reformed, [then] take it up with 
     Congress.

  Well, he is right. Congress ought to take this up on the agenda 
quickly.
  He also said:

       ICE . . . is enforcing laws enacted by Congress and signed 
     by the President.

  If they are, it is time for us in Congress to change them.
  Let me be clear: It is not legal to deploy paramilitary DHS agents to 
tear gas Americans in the streets or shoot innocent people, nor to 
allow immigration agents to break into homes without a judicial warrant 
or detain U.S. citizens based on their race.
  Is there any standard when it comes to too much government that the 
Republicans are embarrassed about?
  It is true that our system needs reform. Time and time again, 
Democrats in Congress have tried to pass laws that bring meaningful 
fixes to the immigration system.
  Thirteen years ago, I was part of a Gang of 8, with John McCain, 
Lindsey Graham, Jeff Flake, and Marco Rubio on the Republican side; 
myself, Schumer, Menendez, and Bennet on the Democrat side. We worked 
for months every night of every week until we had it done, the 
comprehensive immigration reform.
  It had the support of business; it had the support of labor; it had 
the support of the White House, and we brought it to the floor of the 
U.S. Senate. It had more than 65 votes in favor of it. I believe there 
were 15 Republicans who voted for it.
  It was a good bill. It would have avoided all the mess that we are 
facing today. What happened to that bill? It was sent to the 
Republican-controlled House where they refused to even consider it, 
wouldn't even bring it up for debate or amendment. They stopped it 
cold, and they have done nothing ever since.
  That serious bipartisan effort would have fixed our immigration 
system. It

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was blocked by Republican obstructionists in the House of 
Representatives.
  That bill included bipartisan provisions to secure our border and 
deport dangerous individuals. It provided the solution that many 
undocumented immigrants need today. For those who have no serious 
criminal convictions, paid their taxes, and followed all the rules, 
they are offered a path to citizenship.
  It was over 20 years ago when I introduced a bill known as the DREAM 
Act. The DREAM Act said if you were brought to this country as a child, 
an infant, a toddler, and you were raised in America, pledged 
allegiance to that flag in your classroom every day, you deserved a 
chance to earn your way to citizenship. That is the DREAM Act in a 
nutshell.
  That has never become law. It is passed in the Senate occasionally, 
but not in the House; passed in the House but not in the Senate. Here 
it sits today.
  My guest at the State of the Union tonight is a young woman named 
Tereza Lee. She lives in the city of New York now, but when I first ran 
across her, she was in Chicago. She was brought to the United States by 
her Korean family and raised by a father who wanted to be a minister at 
a Korean church in Chicago.
  As he would visit these churches, it was Tereza that would go from 
one church to the next hammering away at the local piano which was 
always on board at these churches. Over time, she became part of the 
Merit music program and became an accomplished pianist.
  There reached a point where she graduated from high school, and they 
said: You ought to go to one of the best schools, Julliard or Manhattan 
conservatory. She started to fill out the application, but didn't know 
what to put when it asked for citizenship.
  So she called our office--or at least a friend did--and said: What 
should Tereza put to fill in the blank? We basically checked and found 
out that because she was undocumented and overstayed a tourist visa at 
the age of 2--at the age of 2--that she had to leave the United States 
for 10 years and apply to come back in.
  It didn't sound right to me. How could she be held legally liable for 
this situation? It was her parents' decision not to file the papers.
  So I introduced the DREAM Act. We had a good run on it with over a 
half a million people protected by a version of it that was passed into 
law by Executive order by President Obama.
  Whatever happened to Tereza Lee? Well, some families in Chicago 
thought she was pretty good, and she was. She went to college in 
Manhattan in the city of New York and played in Carnegie Hall. She went 
on to get a master's and a PhD in music and is now recognized as one of 
the outstanding teachers of music to kids from lower-income families in 
New York.
  It is an amazing story. She got married to a jazz musician from the 
United States. They have three children. She is an American citizen 
today.
  She got her chance because people cared. President Obama passed DACA 
which gave hundreds of thousands of young people just like her a chance 
to earn their way to citizenship.
  Isn't that part of a good immigration system? It should be.
  If it had become law, we wouldn't be here today. The provisions that 
were included in the overall comprehensive immigration bill would have 
avoided the conflicts we are facing.
  The American people are calling for reform today. The time to rein in 
this terror campaign is now. Congress must act.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority whip.

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