[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 14]
[Senate]
[Pages 18911-18912]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                               HUMANE ACT

  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, there is another subject I want to raise 
because it is a matter of great concern. It is not only because I come 
from Texas and we see thousands and thousands of unaccompanied minor 
children continuing to cross our border, but you will recall in the 
summer of 2014, I believe the President himself talked about the 
humanitarian crisis as a result of the thousands and thousands of 
unaccompanied children--some with a single parent--who were streaming 
across the border in an overload of the capacity of local communities 
in the Rio Grande Valley and elsewhere to be able to deal with these 
children in a humane and acceptable sort of way.
  While the memory here in Washington, DC, may have faded about this 
humanitarian crisis, I can tell you that most Texans remember it 
vividly. The picture was stark: tens of thousands of unaccompanied 
children coming from Central American countries that had set out to 
cross Mexico and to cross the border into the United States. Virtually 
all of these children had seen their lives placed in the hands of 
violent criminals to get here. To say the journey was a perilous one is 
a gross understatement.
  We recently had a hearing of the international drug enforcement 
caucus in the Senate. I asked one of the witnesses: Isn't it the case 
that the same criminal organizations that smuggle people into the 
United States for economic reasons are the same people who smuggle 
children for human trafficking purposes, that these are the same people 
and the same organizations that smuggle illegal drugs and perhaps 
dangerous and other hazardous materials into the United States? Without 
hesitation, the witness said yes.
  It may have been some bygone era when an individual coyote, as we 
call them in South Texas, smuggled people in for the fee they could 
charge, but now this is big business. This is a business model that is 
being exploited day in and day out by the transnational criminal 
organizations, but that all seems to be lost on the administration.
  I saw how this tragedy was unfolding firsthand in McAllen where I 
visited these children who made the journey--sometimes alone--only to 
end up here in this country by themselves, looking for a friendly face 
or somebody who might help them. It was heartbreaking to see young 
children without their parents and extremely heartbreaking to hear the 
horrific stories about the trips they made. Again, coming from Central 
America, across Mexico, perhaps on the back of a train they called The 
Beast, physically assaulted, some murdered and many robbed and 
otherwise mistreated.
  The pressing question in that summer of 2014 was, Why now and why 
here? Why was all of this happening? How could we stem the tide of this 
seemingly endless migration of unaccompanied children from Central 
America?
  You don't have to look much further than the President's own 
Department of Homeland Security. One internal memo analyzing the surge 
of child and female migrants flooding the southwest border stated: 
``The main reason the subjects chose this particular time to migrate to 
the United States was to

[[Page 18912]]

take advantage of the `new' U.S. `Law' that grants a `free pass' or 
permit.'' I think they call them permisos in Spanish. In other words, 
they came here because of the widespread perception that these 
unaccompanied children and women traveling with children would be 
allowed to stay here in defiance of our immigration laws, even after 
they crossed the border illegally.
  A similar study by the Department of Homeland Security's Office of 
Science and Technology Directorate concluded that the unaccompanied 
minors ``are aware of the relative lack of consequences they will 
receive when apprehended at the U.S. border.'' Apparently, at the time, 
these minors and their parents believed there would be no or little 
consequence to illegally coming into the United States, and tragically, 
sadly, they were right.
  In the wake of that crisis last summer, it became clear that the 
President's failed immigration policies, including his deferred action 
program and his overall lack of seriousness when it came to immigration 
enforcement, played a role in inducing thousands of families to risk 
their lives to travel to the United States.
  Until recently, we had perhaps been lulled into the misconception 
that this flood of migrants had stopped. But over the weekend, I was 
startled by news reports--perhaps I shouldn't have been surprised but I 
was--that suggest this downward trend has started to reverse and in a 
big way. According to these reports, smugglers were again bringing 
hundreds of women and children into the United States across the Rio 
Grande.
  One from the New York Times noted that according to official data, 
``border Patrol apprehensions of migrant families . . . have increased 
150 percent'' from last year. The number of unaccompanied children has 
more than doubled.
  The bottom line is that, clearly, there is virtually nothing being 
done to deter these children and their families from illegally crossing 
the border and little or no consequences when they do.
  I have to point out that the administration has done virtually 
nothing to make sure these children are not exposed to the same 
criminal organizations operating in this country. In fact, current law 
requires these children to be released by the Department of Health and 
Human Services to sponsors without any assurance or systemic 
protections that they are being sent to a safe environment. There are 
no criminal background checks. They are not required to be actual 
family members, and they could well be some extension of the same 
criminal organizations that smuggled them into the United States in the 
first place.
  It is shocking to me that the Senate would not be moved to act on 
this because, of course, we passed a large anti-human trafficking law 
this last spring with a 99-to-0 vote. But to sit quietly while these 
children continue to stream across our border and are placed in the 
hands of potentially dangerous individuals is unacceptable.
  Earlier this year, four individuals were indicted for their 
involvement in a trafficking ring that smuggled unaccompanied 
Guatemalan children into the country and forced them into slave labor 
at a farm in Ohio. These children were not only forced to work long 
hours, but they were abused and threatened and exploited. Many of them 
could have been spared if the Federal Government and Health and Human 
Services had an adequate system for screening and vetting the sponsors 
of these unaccompanied minors.
  We have to do a better job of protecting these children, which is why 
I recently joined a letter with the chairman of the Senate Judiciary 
Committee demanding answers from the Department of Homeland Security 
and the Department of Health and Human Services.
  It is clear that the Federal Government needs to step up and create a 
more effective review process before releasing these children to 
strangers and perhaps criminals. Our government has a duty to protect 
them once they are here and to ensure that they are no longer preyed 
upon by criminals and human traffickers.
  Given the administration's inability to deter illegal immigration and 
the Federal Government's failure to deal with them reasonably, 
rationally, and humanely when they get here, we have every reason to 
believe that illegal immigration surges of this nature will continue 
and will grow until we reform this system. That is why I intend to 
introduce a piece of legislation called the HUMANE Act, which will 
reform the system to end the practice of automatic catch-and-release to 
nongovernmental sponsors. It would enhance the screening of these 
children to determine if they are victims of crime or in need of some 
specialized care. It will make sure they get a swift and fair court 
determination on whether or not they are eligible for any protected 
status under our immigration laws.
  The HUMANE Act would also help ensure that if these children are in 
need of humanitarian assistance, they will never be released to sex 
offenders, criminals, or others who will seek to harm them. Of course, 
preventing these surges is not just a humanitarian issue; it is a 
national security issue as well. By tying up our law enforcement, 
customs, and other security officials with humanitarian care 
obligations, the cartels and other transnational criminal organizations 
create an environment where it is much easier to traffic drugs, 
weapons, and other contraband.
  We know there are increasing ties between terrorist organizations and 
drug cartels, so the threat that they will work together to exploit 
another humanitarian crisis is very real. For instance, last year 
before the Senate Armed Services Committee, SOUTHCOM's commander, John 
Kelly, stated that he was ``troubled by the financial and operational 
overlap between criminal and terrorist networks in the [Central 
American] region.''
  He went on to say: ``Although the extent of criminal-terrorist 
cooperation is unclear, what is clear is that terrorists and militant 
organizations easily tap into the international illicit marketplace to 
underwrite their activities and obtain arms and funding to conduct 
operations.''
  I am not just talking about economic migrants. I am talking about 
immigrants from around the world who can potentially get through our 
southern border virtually at will. I am talking about transnational 
criminal organizations determined to spread violence and import 
narcotics into the United States.
  I hope the administration will take these most recent reports 
seriously, before we experience once again the horrifying humanitarian 
disaster we experienced in 2014. But nothing short of real improvements 
to border security and our laws will work.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maryland.

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