[Congressional Record Volume 172, Number 100 (Monday, June 15, 2026)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2793-S2795]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
DACA
Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I thank Senator Durbin for his
leadership in fighting for Dreamers.
We will also be joined by the Senator from Nevada, Senator Cortez
Masto, who has done the same.
Senator Durbin, when your DREAM Act finally becomes law--and it
will--it will be because of your enduring commitment for all of these
years.
Fourteen years ago, the Obama administration acted to protect
Dreamers. Since 2012, the DACA action of the Obama administration has
helped roughly 835,000 people have legal protection.
For most Dreamers, the United States is the only home they have ever
known, that they ever remember, and they live as part of their
communities in all ways, just like everyone else, except for the
certainty of permanent citizenship.
In Minnesota, we are proud to be home to nearly 4,000 DACA recipients
who have already passed background checks, paid fees, and met
educational
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requirements so they can stay in the United States and continue to pay
taxes and contribute to our communities.
Dreamers serve in our military. They keep us safe as police officers
in our State. They are teachers and nurses. They run small businesses
that power our economy.
In my State, one DACA recipient is a medical assembler helping build
lifesaving devices that reduce the risk of stroke.
Another Dreamer came to this country when she was just 3 years old. A
few years ago, she got her phlebotomy certification from the Mayo
Clinic. Now she is providing critical care to patients as a medical
technician, all while serving as her family's primary breadwinner.
Another Dreamer is a driver for special needs kids and a mom of five
kids, including two with urgent medical needs.
Another Dreamer was just 10 years old when she came to Minnesota from
Mexico. She applied for DACA in 2012--just days after USCIS began
accepting applications. She earned her degree and has worked with
residents in nursing schools and elementary school children. As she
said, she ``finds purpose in helping others.''
Minnesota is better because of our Dreamers, and thousands like them
across our State continue to believe in the promise of this Nation and
work every day to contribute to it.
Since its establishment, DACA recipients have contributed an
estimated $150 billion to the U.S. economy in spending power and $40
billion in combined Federal, payroll, State, and local taxes.
In the past, President Trump has talked about working with Senators
of both parties to protect Dreamers who were brought here as children.
In December 2024, he said:
We have to do something about the Dreamers.
The last time Donald Trump was President, we actually had a
bipartisan bill led by Senator Rounds--I was part of it--that would
have invested in border security while providing a pathway to
citizenship for Dreamers. In the end, President Trump opposed the bill.
More recently, the Trump administration has dramatically delayed DACA
processing. My office has heard from Minnesotans who are filing
renewals up to 150 days--months--in advance, as recommended by the
Federal Government, by USCIS, and they are still losing their
protections solely due to delayed processing and the chaos. It is not
due to the fact that they have jobs, that they work as nurses, that
they are in the military, that they work in public safety--no, nothing
about them. Nothing about their backgrounds. Nothing about their jobs
that we need them to perform badly in our economy. It is solely because
the Trump administration can't get its act together or is messing
around with them.
Well, when they mess around with them--with those over 800,000 people
who are contributing to the United States, with all those people who
are part of our economy--they mess around with us; they mess around
with our country.
The Trump Justice Department, in an immigration court decision,
further undermined protections by holding that DACA status does not
protect people from removal procedures.
During Operation Metro Surge in Minnesota, we saw not only multiple,
multiple hundreds of constitutional violations but also DHS tearing
people who have followed the rules from their loved ones.
In January in Minnesota, ICE arrested Jorge Cordoba Hernandez at 4:30
a.m. without a warrant when he was on his way to work for a
manufacturer in Eden Prairie, MN. By 10 p.m., he was on a plane to a
detention facility in New Mexico, and he was held without bond.
Jorge was brought to the United States when he was 8 years old and
has been in DACA for 13 years--passed the test; did everything right.
When arrested, he had applied to extend his DACA, like so many of my
other constituents who have been on DACA for years and are working.
Well, he had applied to extend his DACA, and he was scheduled for a
biometrics appointment.
He is married to an American citizen and has four children--two of
whom have disabilities. He has no criminal record.
While he awaits his DACA renewal--and by the way, here is a guy, as I
said, that was on his way to work, where he is working in a good job,
paying taxes. He is married to an American citizen and has four kids--
two with disabilities. Just simply waiting for the Trump administration
to do the paperwork. He gets arrested and sent to New Mexico.
While he awaits his renewal--now released--which is delayed because
of the backlog at DHS, he is only out of detention because a Trump-
appointed Federal judge did his job and granted his habeas petition. He
is not out of detention because the Trump administration realized that
it had made a mistake. He is not out of detention because he never
should have been put there in the first place by them. He is out of
detention because someone applied the law, and that happened to be a
Trump-appointed judge who knew better than the President that appointed
him that you follow the rules in America, that you follow the law.
It is not just Dreamers and their families and neighbors who will
suffer from terminating DACA; it is also our economy. If DACA was
ended, it is estimated we would lose roughly 440,000 workers, including
37,000 healthcare professionals. Are you kidding me? When we have such
a shortage of people working in healthcare and working in our nursing
homes--such a shortage. So you are going to take away people who are
legally working because simply you just want to make some political
point or you don't want to get the paperwork done? We will lose 17,000
STEM professionals, 17,000 educators. The loss of this talent would
cost the U.S. economy an estimated $648 billion.
We cannot afford to shut out the world's talent or drive away those
who call our country home, because immigrants are truly a major
economic driver across our country. Almost half of America's Fortune
500 companies were started by people born in other countries or their
kids, and 30 percent of our country's--the United States of America--
Nobel laureates were born abroad.
It is time, as Senator Durbin has made clear, for the USCIS to
expeditiously process all applications for deferred action for
childhood arrivals and provide protections for Dreamers.
We are just weeks away from celebrating America's 250th birthday,
when a nation was born out of the dream for life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness--a nation born of immigrants, people like my
grandpa, who came in through Ellis Island, and they had a limit on
Swiss immigrants, and then he somehow found his way through Canada but
then stayed there for about a week and then made his way through
Michigan and into Wisconsin.
When, during World War II, finally they made everyone register--even
though he was married to an American citizen, my grandma, who was also
an immigrant--that is when they discovered he had kind of come in
twice. They had his hearing, and they looked at him--hard-working guy
with two kids, married to a U.S. citizen--and they said: That is fine.
And they gave him his citizenship.
That is not what this administration is doing. This administration is
looking at hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people that they are
just holding up--not just holding up their dream; holding up our dreams
for anyone who wants to send their mom to a nursing home, to find out
if they have enough staff, or to go into an emergency room in the
middle of the night and figure out if there is staff there. No.
Passing the DREAM Act is the right thing to do, but making sure that
in this very moment, we treat these people with the respect they
deserve and get these forms processed and make sure they can continue
working as functioning members of our economy is most important for
now.
Immigrant families, including Dreamers, don't diminish America. They
define America. They strengthen America. They are America.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Moreno). The Senator from Nevada.
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