[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 160 (2014), Part 8]
[Senate]
[Pages 11242-11245]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              IMMIGRATION

  Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, the crisis at our border continues 
unabated. It is a crisis that should never ever have occurred. It 
occurred as a direct result of the failure of the leadership of the 
United States, the clarity of our message, and our willingness to 
enforce simple, plain immigration laws.
  Last week, we reached the point where the President of the United 
States--who is directly responsible for sending messages and effecting 
policies that encourage the flow of immigration to the United States, 
announced he would be asking Congress--us--to cooperate with him and 
provide him with $2 billion in additional funds to deal with the 
humanitarian crisis--a crisis, as I indicated, that was produced as a 
result of his activities.
  In the same breath at that moment when he asked for more money to 
take care of the crisis, he announced he will deliberately and openly 
go around the Congress of the United States and the Constitution and 
unilaterally change immigration law again through an executive policy.
  The President said:

       . . . today, I'm beginning a new effort to fix as much of 
     our immigration system as I can on my own, without Congress. 
     As a first step, I'm directing the Secretary of Homeland 
     Security and the Attorney General [directing them] to move 
     available and appropriate resources from our interior to the 
     border.

  He further said:

       I have also directed Secretary Johnson and Attorney General 
     Holder to identify additional actions my administration can 
     take on our own, within my existing legal authorities, to do 
     what Congress refuses to do and fix as much of our 
     immigration system as we can. I expect their recommendations 
     before the end of the summer and I intend to adopt those 
     recommendations without further delay.

  The problem is that we have laws. Congress has established laws. The 
President wanted to change those laws, and Congress made a decision. 
The decision was not to change those laws, and those laws remain in 
effect. As President of the United States of America, he has the 
highest duty to see that the laws of the United States are faithfully 
executed.
  Remember now, the President is the chief law enforcement officer in 
America. The FBI answers to him, the Drug Enforcement Administration 
answers to him, the Department of Justice--he appoints the top 
officials, and they answer to him. So does Border Patrol, and so do 
Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, immigration officers 
throughout, and the Secretary of Homeland Security. It is his 
administration, and he has used powers to go beyond--that I am aware 
of--what any President has used to basically declare: I will not 
enforce the laws passed by Congress. I am going to change those laws--I 
don't have to change them; I am just going to direct my officers not to 
carry them out, not to enforce them.
  Another thing he said was that young people here would not be 
deported. He invited a number of them to the White House. As a result, 
the word got out in Central America particularly that if you come to 
the United States as a young person--a parent could bring them or 
brother and sister--and you get into the United States, you will not be 
deported; you will be allowed to stay, and you could get a permiso--
that is, you would be released on bail into some family member's 
custody and you could show up at some point in the future to have a 
hearing. I have heard it is maybe as many as 500 days before a hearing 
occurs. And who is going to go and look for these individuals when they 
don't show up for court, as is continuously happening in high numbers, 
not showing up for court?
  So to me it is disturbing that we are in this situation. And make no 
mistake about it--$2 billion is a lot of money. We work hard around 
here to try to pay for things we need to by saving money here and 
saving money there, and now the President just sends over a message: I 
am going to demand $2 billion.
  We have to take care of the children. We can't leave them in a 
circumstance where they are not fed or taken care of or in a safe 
condition. I guess we will have to find some money to do that. But the 
question is, How did it happen? Why did it happen? And $2 billion is 
more than the general fund budget of the State of Alabama, which is 
where I am from. An extra $2 billion is a lot of money--extra money 
this year. Why? Because in 2011 we had 6,000 unaccompanied children 
apprehended at the border, and this year we are projected to have 
90,000. That is why the President says we need $2 billion more--because 
the message got out, the word got out: You can come to America and, as 
a young person, you won't be deported.
  In fact--and Congress doesn't know it fully at this point, but, in 
fact, that is true. Young people coming to America unlawfully from 
Central and South America, other than Mexico, are being allowed to 
stay, and it encourages more.
  We have to have a lawful system of immigration, a system that serves 
the national interests. A lawful system means one that is carried out 
effectively and efficiently. It is wrong and it is immoral to create a 
system in which there is no law, where laws are violated willy-nilly 
and nothing is ever done about it. That is not healthy at all for any 
nation, and I would submit clearly that any nation must maintain the 
integrity of its borders. Failing to do so undermines the very 
sovereignty of that nation. No nation in the world that I am aware of 
maintains open borders. If you are not going to maintain open borders, 
then you have to set up standards for application and admission, and 
then if you establish those standards, you have to carry them out 
fairly and objectively.
  There are millions of people who have applied to come to America who 
are waiting in line, people with college degrees and relatives here, 
who have applied lawfully and are waiting their turn. And how is it 
right, how can it be justified morally, religiously, as a matter of 
public policy, as a matter of law that we just ignore them and let 
people come through by the hundreds of thousands?
  Indeed, it has been projected that unless something changes--and I 
think it could change if we have leadership--unless changes occur, we 
could have as many as 140,000 young people come next year. I guess that 
would be $4 billion extra that would have to be funded next year to 
take care of the costs. It is an unbelievable turn of events.
  My staff and I did a time line months ago, before this crisis became 
so imminent, and we documented a series of actions in which the 
President of the

[[Page 11243]]

United States has directed his agencies to conduct their operations in 
such a way that it undermines the laws of the United States. This is 39 
pages.
  One of the first ones--and I talked about it at the time and the 
ramifications that would occur from it, and nobody paid much attention. 
Back in January of 2009 President Obama took office. He had talked to 
activist groups throughout the country and he had made a promise to 
them. Not long after he took office, immigration enforcement officers 
executed a raid--which they had been doing over a period of years and 
always been able to do--on an engine machine shop in Bellingham, WA, 
and detained 28 illegal immigrants who were using fake Social Security 
numbers and identity documents.
  Shortly thereafter, pro-amnesty groups--these activist groups--
criticized the administration for enforcing the law. An unidentified 
official at the Department of Homeland Security was quoted in the 
Washington Times as saying this about the new Secretary of Homeland 
Security: ``The secretary is not happy and this is not her policy . . . 
'' Instead of enforcing the law, the Secretary investigated the ICE 
officers, who were simply doing their jobs.
  Esther Olavarria, Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security, said on a 
phone call with employers and pro-amnesty groups that ``we're not doing 
raids or audits under this administration.'' That was a huge 
abandonment of a normal and natural law enforcement procedure to create 
a lawful system of immigration right out of the chute--a direct result, 
in my opinion, of promises made during the campaign, not for law 
enforcement reasons, not for the national interests of the United 
States.
  It goes on.
  In January 2009 the Secretary of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, 
delayed an E-Verify compliance deadline. She delayed the E-Verify 
deadline a second time. She delayed the E-Verify a third time.
  It goes on, page after page of activities in which they took steps to 
undermine law.
  In June 2010 the Obama administration sued Arizona. The State was 
trying to help enforce Federal immigration law, and they sued the State 
of Arizona. They sued any other State that attempted to do anything 
that would enhance law enforcement.
  In January 2010 the Obama administration ignored the dangerous 
``sanctuary cities'' policy. Amazingly, in this country we have cities 
that are providing sanctuary to people who are illegally in the 
country. Law enforcement arrests someone who is here illegally, they 
convict them of a crime--I was a Federal prosecutor for many years--
they hold them and then turn them over to the Federal law enforcement 
officers for deportation. But then these cities refuse to do that. 
Nothing was done about it, and this administration took no action--in 
fact, seemed to encourage it, frankly.
  In March 2011, ICE Director John Morton issued the first of a series 
of memoranda systematically weakening their enforcement deportation 
procedures, essentially implementing an ``administrative amnesty.'' He 
issued two more amnesty memos in July 2011.
  In December 2011 reports surfaced that the Obama administration would 
reduce the National Guard at the border. President Bush had beefed up 
our enforcement and sent a pretty good message that we were getting 
serious about the border. We were making some progress when he was 
doing that, but by December 2011 the Obama administration had begun to 
reduce the National Guard's presence, which has now been eliminated at 
the border.
  On June 15, 2012, President Obama bypassed Congress and in effect 
unilaterally implemented the DREAM Act--legislation that had twice or 
three times been brought before this Congress and failed to pass--
dealing with children who enter the country before the age of 16 and 
who can prove how old they were when they entered, who can prove how 
long they have been here. The legislation was poorly drafted, it was 
rejected by Congress on more than one occasion, and the President just 
said to his officers: Don't enforce it with regard to these young 
people. Don't deport anybody you apprehend who claims they entered the 
country before they were age 16 or 17 or 18.
  Who knows what year it would be.
  This was really the beginning of the message to the people in Central 
America particularly that young people weren't going to be deported--
the direct action that led to the crisis we have today--and I pointed 
that out at the time and others did.
  Chris Crane, president of the National ICE Council, wrote a letter 
last May warning: We are seeing a surge of young people.
  As I said, there are 39 pages with multiple actions on some of those 
pages--actions that were taken by the President's staff and underlings 
that undermined and weakened the ability of our immigration laws to be 
carried out effectively, consistently, and fairly. It is a terrible 
thing, and now we have this crisis today.
  According to a new report from the Los Angeles Times--which, I have 
to say, is probably one of the more knowledgeable papers, if not the 
most knowledgeable paper in America concerning immigration issues. They 
issued a report that deportation of illegal immigrant youth has fallen 
dramatically under the current administration even as the flow of 
illegal youth into the United States has exponentially increased.
  Just this weekend, they wrote this:

       President Obama and his aides have repeatedly sought to 
     dispel the rumors driving thousands of children and teens 
     from Central America to cross the U.S. border each month with 
     the expectation they will be given a permiso and allowed to 
     stay.
       But under the Obama administration, those reports have 
     proved increasingly true.

  Data from the paper shows that the number of illegal youth from 
Central America who were apprehended averaged around 4,000 per year 
over the last decade. So the newspaper points out that over the last 
decade we have apprehended about 4,000 youth per year. Some reports 
suggest that the number could reach 90,000 this year--an increase of 
more than 2,000 percent. Yet since 2008 deportation of illegal youth 
has dropped roughly 80 percent. So we have an 80 percent drop in the 
deportation while we have seen a 2000 percent increase in the number 
coming unlawfully. Does this not tell us something? Is this acceptable? 
Isn't this a guarantee that we will see more people attempt to come to 
America unlawfully in the future? In May of last year, 2013, Chris 
Crane, the president of the ICE union, wrote a letter and he warned 
about the increasing number of young people coming in as a result of 
the President's unilateral imposition of rules to block enforcement of 
immigration law with regard to young people. In October 2013 numbers 
were already beginning to surge. That was obvious.
  In January of this year, the Department of Homeland Security laid out 
proposals for bids for a contract to private companies that would 
handle as many as 65,000 young people coming into the country 
unlawfully. So in January they were well aware of what was happening. 
Was any action taken in May of last year or October of last year or 
January of this year to confront honestly what it was that was causing 
such an increase of immigration from our Latin American countries and 
Central America, primarily? The answer is no. So now what we have is an 
emergency demand for $2 billion to deal with the crisis--just a sad 
event, really. I wish it hadn't happened.
  But you cannot play games with law enforcement. I spent too many 
years as a federal prosecutor--almost 15, really. You have to have 
clarity of law. People have to understand it, and they have to believe 
that if they violate the law they will be apprehended. So we have this 
bizarre event where noncitizens can come into the country in violation 
of our laws, plain and simple, and they are given amnesty and forgiven 
and not prosecuted. But a citizen who doesn't pay a few dollars of our 
taxes or violates a speeding ticket or gets a DUI can go to jail. So 
how can this possibly be justified in any moral or legal sense? I just 
don't think it can.
  The situation is so bad and so sad that we had Secretary of Homeland 
Security Jeh Johnson before the Judiciary Committee, of which I am a 
member, and I pressed him. He said: Well, we don't want young people 
coming to

[[Page 11244]]

America because it is dangerous. I said: ``What about it being a 
violation of the law?'' He sort of avoided that. I asked him again and 
I pressed him. He finally said: Well, it would be against the law. But 
he didn't clearly state that if you come to the United States 
unlawfully you will be deported if you are apprehended. He didn't deny 
that people who come to the country today--young people--if they are 
entering in they are given to HHS, they are released to the custody of 
some adult relative that may show up or housed by the government and 
eventually are unlikely to ever leave the country under their policies.
  The moderator of ``Meet The Press'' pressed him about this. Mr. 
Gregory said:

       Critics say you are not stemming the tide fast enough. This 
     number's going to grow wherever it ends up. The bottom line 
     is what happens now? Are you prepared to deport these 
     children, young mothers. . . . Are you prepared to deport 
     them?

  Isn't that a good question to the man that heads Homeland Security, 
whose responsibility it is to enforce our immigration law?
  Now, I will acknowledge I opposed Mr. Johnson's confirmation. I don't 
think he had ever met an immigration officer in his life or a Border 
Patrol officer in his life and never had any experience in this. He was 
active politically with counsel for Department of Defense, but he had 
no experience in these matters. So did Mr. Johnson give us straight 
answers to this question? His answer was this:

       Our message to those who come here illegally: Our border is 
     not open to illegal migration. And we are taking a number of 
     steps to address it, including turning people around faster. 
     We've already dramatically reduced the turnaround time, the 
     deportation time. For the adults we're asking this week for a 
     supplement for Congress, from Congress, to bring on 
     additional capacity. And we're cracking down on the smuggling 
     organizations.

  Mr. Gregory said:

       Do they need to be deported? Or I've seen some reporting 
     suggesting that more than half of them could end up staying 
     in the United States.

  That is a plain question.
  Secretary Johnson said:

       The law requires that, when DHS identifies somebody as a 
     child, as an unaccompanied child, we turn them over to the 
     Department of Health and Human Services. But there is a 
     deportation proceeding that is commenced against the child. 
     Now that proceeding can take some time. And so we are looking 
     at options, added flexibility, to deal with the children in 
     particular, but in a humanitarian and fair way.

  Mr. Gregory:

       Well, I'm sorry. . . . I mean it sounds like a very careful 
     response. Are they going to be deported or not?

  Secretary Johnson:

       There is a deportation proceeding that is commenced against 
     illegal migrants, including children. We are looking at ways 
     to create additional options for dealing with the children in 
     particular, consistent with our laws and values.

  Mr. Gregory: ``I'm trying to get an answer to, `Will most of them end 
up staying, in your judgment?'''
  Mr. Johnson:

       I think we need to find more efficient effective ways to 
     turn this tide around, generally. And we've already begun to 
     do that.

  Mr. Gregory:

       But what does that mean? Are you saying it is impractical 
     to deport all of them who are here now?

  Secretary Johnson, our chief law enforcement officer, still does not 
say they will be deported.

       I'm saying that we've already dramatically reduced the 
     turnaround time for adults and we are in the process of doing 
     that for the adults with the kids. We're looking at 
     additional options for the kids in particular.

  Mr. Gregory:

       To deport them or to settle them here in America? Is the 
     goal of the administration to settle as many of these kids in 
     America as possible? What about those who are here now? What 
     is the goal of the administration, to settle them in America 
     or deport them . . . ?

  Secretary Johnson: ``There is a deportation proceeding pending 
against everyone who comes into the country illegally and apprehended 
at the border.''
  Look, this is a top law enforcement officer. This is the top law 
enforcement officer with regard to immigration in America. He is the 
Secretary of Homeland Security and answers directly to the President of 
the United States. He could not say: Do not come to America unlawfully. 
It violates our laws. We cannot accept that. If you do so you will be 
deported. If you bring children, you both are going to be deported. Why 
couldn't he say that? He couldn't say it because they have had no 
serious policy to effectuate the law which is current law since he has 
been in office and before, really. They just don't want to say it. It 
is just stunning to me that you cannot have clarity and leadership in 
the top people in our government, and I am concerned about it.
  So this Congress is going to have to wrestle with how to participate 
in doing something positive about the unlawfulness at our border. I 
wish we had a partner in the chief law enforcement officer of America, 
the President of the United States and his assistant, Secretary Jeh 
Johnson, but we do not. They have no intention of enforcing the law 
effectively and consistently. It demeans the respect this Nation should 
have in the world. It undermines one of the most remarkable valuable 
characteristics of America, and that is our commitment to the rule of 
law. It is a direct affront to the rule of law. They directly undermine 
the sovereignty of our Nation. If you don't control your border, you 
don't control your sovereignty, and it is just wrong. It is not right. 
We are not able to accept everybody that would like to come to 
America--we just cannot.
  We have the most generous immigration system in the world. We admit a 
million each year under lawful application processes. We admit another 
600,000-plus under the guest worker program to come and take jobs that 
we need to put Americans in. Over half a million of these are not just 
farm workers--only 20 percent of that 600,000-plus are farm workers. 
Most of them are taking jobs throughout the economy. At this point in 
time with high unemployment and falling wages, this is not a policy 
that serves our national interest. We just simply cannot do that. It 
makes businesses happy. They like an overflow of workers that helps 
keep wages lower, but it is not the right thing to be doing for working 
Americans.
  So as a nation we have a challenge, and Congress is going to have to 
assert itself. Congress passes laws. The President executes the laws. 
It is his duty to see that the laws are faithfully executed, and they 
are not being faithfully executed. In fact, they are being eviscerated 
by policy after policy after policy.
  One of the top immigration officials declared: ``If somebody gets 
into America and passes the border, they are virtually unlikely ever to 
be deported, adult or child.''
  This is a direct result of the President's policies. We do not need 
to continue them. In the course of this crisis, I hope we will act with 
concern for those young people who are here, but I hope we will use 
this opportunity as a Congress to assert our legitimate rights as the 
lawmaking branch, and in a bipartisan way, the Republicans and 
Democrats will defend and assert to the President that he must enforce 
the laws that we, the Congress, pass. He does not get to on his own 
execute alterations in the fundamental law of America.
  There was an internal memorandum, I believe, and this internal 
memorandum from the Department of Homeland Security said people with 
children were asked why they were coming. You have heard it said 
because there is more violence and crime in Central America this year 
than last year. That is not so. They interviewed these people and what 
did they tell them? According to this memorandum 95 percent of them 
said they came because they heard if they came to America with children 
they would be able to stay and they would be given a permiso--in other 
words, released on bail--and they wouldn't have to come back for a 
hearing and they would be in the country.
  The stories are quite clear from the investigative officers that 
people are crossing the border with children and they go right up to 
the Border Patrol

[[Page 11245]]

officers and turn themselves in. The Border Patrol officers turn them 
over to Homeland Security, and Homeland Security doesn't deport them. 
They set them up for some sort of trial or hearing, which may take up 
to 500 days. Then they find a place for them and they take care of 
them. It is just the kind of process that makes no sense for a serious 
Nation. That is all I am saying.
  Why are we seeing this large number again? It is because they believe 
it works. And in fact it is working. In fact, young people who are 
coming in with their parents or brothers or uncles or aunts are coming 
into the country and both of them are staying. Nobody is really being 
deported, and they don't intend to leave.
  The President created this policy, and now it has caused a national 
crisis. I hope we can do better. I hope in the course of the discussion 
we can improve on our law and find some strength for the President and 
put some strength behind our law enforcement in America.
  Chairman Goodlatte, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee in the 
House, has made a strong statement. He said he simply cannot provide 
money until we have clarity that we are going to be taking action in 
this country that will keep this from happening in the future. We 
certainly need to do that, and if we do, I am more optimistic than a 
lot of people.
  I truly believe if we follow up aggressively and start promptly 
reporting people who come here illegally instead of talking about it 
and not releasing them on bail on permisos, the word will get out in 
Central America just as it got out that they could come and stay. The 
message that will get out will tell them: Don't come here or you will 
take a risk. You will lose your money, you will lose everything you 
invested in this attempt, and you will be sent back. If we do that, the 
numbers will start to fall, and we might be surprised how fast those 
numbers would fall. It would be good for public policy and the rule of 
law.
  I thank the Chair, yield the floor, and note the absence of a quorum.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.

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