[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 162 (2016), Part 3]
[Senate]
[Page 3668]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




            IMMIGRATION AND INTERROGATION OF GITMO DETAINEES

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I wish to follow up on a couple of 
statements that were made by my friend the Republican leader. Senator 
McConnell mentioned immigration. In the last Congress we worked very 
hard together in a bipartisan fashion to form a good, comprehensive 
immigration reform bill. We passed it, but due to the power of the tea 
partiers--or, as Speaker Boehner referred to them, ``the crazies''--
they didn't have a vote in the House. If they had voted on that 
legislation, it would have passed. Democrats would have voted for it, 
and there were enough Republicans who would have voted for it. That 
would have been a big vote out of there, but it didn't happen, so the 
President had to do something on immigration, and he laid the 
groundwork. He spoke at the State of the Union Address and basically 
said: Since you are not passing any legislation, I will have to use my 
Executive power in order to get things done. He then proceeded to 
prioritize what he wanted to do. He issued the order that was so 
important to boys and girls, called a deferred action, which allowed 
DREAMers to stay in the country, and that was the right thing to do. He 
also prioritized deportations by going after criminals, not families, 
and enforcing the law. He has done a very good job.
  I think it is also very important to note that the administrative 
actions the President has taken are nothing unique. We can go back to 
the days of Theodore Roosevelt, a good Republican President who did a 
lot of stuff administratively.
  On his remarks about getting involved in the fight again--I am 
paraphrasing what he said--that we have to get back to the 
interrogation we did before, we know that torture was quickly 
eliminated. That effort was led by a lot of people, not the least of 
whom was someone who has been tortured, a Member of the U.S. Senate, 
John McCain. He has spoken out very admirably, and as only he can, 
about how bad torture is. And the facts indicate that torture doesn't 
get any new information anyway; there are other ways to get that 
information.

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