[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 163 (2017), Part 9]
[Senate]
[Pages 12890-12902]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                                  DACA

  Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. President, I came here to the floor to talk about 
the Dreamers, and I do think that it is important to start by making 
the point that many of those Dreamers are serving in our Armed Forces 
today. They have put their lives at risk for the only country that they 
know, which is the United States of America.
  It was just shortly after the November election, when then-President-
Elect Trump told Time Magazine, when he was talking about Dreamers:

       We're going to work something out that's going to make 
     people happy and proud.

  He was referring to the Dreamers. He continues:

       They got brought here at a very young age, they've worked 
     here, they've gone to school here. Some were good students. 
     Some have wonderful jobs. And they're in never-never land 
     because they don't know what's going to happen.

  That is what President Trump said right after the election.
  Yesterday, he delivered the cruel news about what would happen 6 
months from now if this Congress doesn't act, which is that those 
Dreamers will be at risk of being thrown out of our country. They will 
be at risk of being deported from the United States of America.
  So the very President who said he was going to do something to make 
people ``happy and proud'' did something that was sad and shameful in 
our country. A majority of Americans agree that it is wrong to deport 
the Dreamers. Not just majorities of Democrats or Independents but also 
majorities of Republicans recognize that it is the wrong thing to do.
  As President Trump has acknowledged, these Dreamers were brought to 
the United States as young children. Regardless of the acts of adults 
or their parents, these children have done nothing wrong. They are our 
neighbors. They attend schools with our kids. They pledge allegiance to 
the flag every morning at school. They sing the Star-Spangled Banner. 
They play on the same sports teams.
  In fact, many of these Dreamers didn't even recognize that they did 
not have full legal status until they reached adulthood. It was the 
DACA Program that provided these young people with at least the 
assurance that the rest of the country wanted them to stay and that 
they would not be deported so long as they played by the rules, so long 
as they did what this country asked of them. That is what they are 
doing.
  Ninety-five percent of the Dreamers are in school or working at 
American businesses, large and small. They are contributing to our 
economy. Once they received that stability under DACA, 54 percent went 
out and bought their first car at local car dealerships around the 
country. Twelve percent were able to go out and make a down payment on 
their first home. When they go out to buy homes and buy cars, they are 
supporting our economy, which is why deporting these 800,000 Dreamers 
is not only the wrong thing to do from the perspective of humanity and 
being a fair country, but it is bad for our economy as well.
  As I indicated at the outset, these Dreamers participate in our Armed 
Forces and help protect the national security of our country. In my 
State of Maryland, we have 10,000 Dreamers who are contributing in many 
positive ways to our State.
  When I think of Dreamers, I think of a young man now whose name is 
Steven Acuna. He is a Maryland resident. In 2001, he was 8 years old 
when his family came to the United States from Colombia after they 
began receiving death threats. Ever since his family arrived 16 years 
ago, they have lived and worked in this country as productive and law-
abiding citizens.
  In 2012, they were denied the political asylum they had sought here. 
So they were actually at that time yanked from their Germantown, MD, 
home and locked up in a detention center on the Eastern Shore of 
Maryland. At that time, they reached out to my congressional office, 
and we joined with advocacy organizations and immigration lawyers and 
local leaders to make sure that family was not deported.
  Then, thanks to the DACA Program, that made it possible for Dreamers 
like Steven Acuna to stay in the United States legally. He just 
graduated with a bachelor's degree in chemical engineering from the 
University of Maryland. Steve aspires to be an orthopedic surgeon. Here 
is a picture of Steve Acuna with his family, celebrating his recent 
graduation from the University of Maryland and aspiring to go on to 
become a surgeon.
  The message President Trump sent to Steve Acuna and his family 
yesterday is shameful. The message he sent was this: We don't want you 
in the United States anymore.
  It would be a grave mistake--the wrong thing, morally--and it is also 
the wrong thing from the perspective of making sure we have a community 
that works for everybody and a strong local economy.
  We have invested in Steve Acuna. He wants to go on to be an 
orthopedic surgeon. Yet this administration is telling him: If Congress 
doesn't act in 6 months, you are out of here.
  So that brings us to what we are going to do here in the Senate and 
what we are going to do in the House of Representatives. President 
Trump did not have to make the decision he made yesterday. It was cruel 
and it was gratuitous, but he has made that decision. Now it is up to 
us in the Senate and in the Congress to do the right thing. In fact, 
President Trump has said to Congress: Go ahead and make sure that 
Dreamers can stay. So, on the one hand, he took an action he didn't 
have to. He put them at risk. He lit the fuse on a 6-month detonator, 
and he handed it to Congress. Now it is up to us to do the right thing, 
and it is essential that this Senate vote on the Dreamers bill in the 
coming weeks.
  We already have it in front of us. It is a bipartisan piece of 
legislation. Its primary sponsors are Senator Lindsey Graham, a 
Republican from South Carolina, and Senator Dick Durbin, a Democrat 
from the State of Illinois. We have a bipartisan bill that has been 
introduced in the Senate. Now this is the question: When are we going 
to get to vote on it? When are we going to be able to take up this 
legislation?
  Because of the action taken just yesterday by President Trump, it is 
imperative that we act right now to provide stability and confidence to 
these young men and women who have already done so much to contribute 
to our country--and many are serving today in our Armed Forces--and to 
let them and the

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country know that we can act on a bipartisan basis to do what the 
overwhelming majority of the American people--Democrats, Republicans, 
and Independents alike--want us to do.
  So let's take up the Dreamers bill. Let's take it up now. There is no 
excuse for delay. People should vote in the light of day. People should 
let their constituents know where they stand on this issue. This is a 
question not just of fairness, but it is a question of political 
accountability and transparency.
  President Trump has told Congress that we should act. In this case, 
we have an obligation at least to take a vote on this issue. I am 
absolutely confident that, when this body takes that vote, we will do 
the right thing. We will vote to protect the Dreamers and, in doing so, 
protect the commitments we as a country have made to people who have 
done nothing wrong. As a country, I hope we stand for the principle 
that people should not be punished when they have done nothing wrong, 
and when, in fact, they have done everything our country has asked of 
them.
  So let's take up the Dreamers bill with dispatch, and let's pass it 
and let's have the House pass it. It wasn't absolutely clear, but 
President Trump, in his most recent tweet, seemed to say that he is 
ready to sign what we send to him. So let's get it done.
  Thank you, Mr. President.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Lee). The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Ms. WARREN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Ms. WARREN. Mr. President, our country is in trouble. America--and 
this government right here in Washington--works great for people at the 
top, works great for corporations that can hire armies of lobbyists and 
lawyers, but for everyone else, America isn't working so well. For 
decades, expenses have gone up while wages have been flat. Economic 
opportunity is slipping away from too many Americans.
  We know how to fix what is happening--by kicking the lobbyists and 
the lawyers and the rich donors and the giant companies out of the room 
and putting working families first. The President of the United States 
isn't interested in doing that. His first major legislative initiative 
was to try to boot tens of millions of people off their health 
insurance. His second major legislative initiative is to try to give 
giant tax breaks to rich folks and enormous corporations while working 
people pay for them.
  I suppose it is not surprising that the President has no intention of 
helping working families. After all, he is a rich donor, and he 
personally profits every single day from a giant company he named after 
himself.
  Here is Donald Trump, a man who promised over and over during the 
Presidential campaign that he would be on the side of working people. 
Here is Donald Trump doing the exact opposite of what he told the 
American people he would do. It is the exact opposite of what the 
American people need him to do. Sooner or later, it is going to catch 
up with him. President Trump wants to delay that reckoning for as long 
as possible. From the day he first announced his Presidential campaign, 
it has been obvious how he plans to do it--by turning us against each 
other, by telling everyone that the real problem in America is the 
neighbor who doesn't look like you, the coworker who doesn't worship 
like you, the guy in the grocery store who doesn't sound like you.
  Nowhere has this been more obvious than on the politics of race. In 
November, President Trump named Jeff Sessions--a man considered too 
racist to be a Federal judge--as our Nation's Attorney General. In 
January, President Trump rolled out an unconstitutional Muslim ban. In 
August, after White supremacists marched in the streets, President 
Trump defended hate. Also in August, he used his first Presidential 
pardon to shield a racist former sheriff who broke the law.
  Yesterday morning, the President continued his campaign to turn us 
against each other when he decided to end the DACA Program. DACA gives 
800,000 young people who were brought to the United States as children 
the chance to live, work, get an education, and become valuable members 
of our society. The President said he would end the program. That means 
over 800,000 young people who have been here their entire lives, who 
came out of the shadows to contribute to our economy, could be deported 
to countries they barely know.
  Divide and conquer is an old story in America. It is a cold, 
political calculation. Those with money and power have used it time and 
time again to keep us fighting with each other--fighting over religion, 
fighting over race, fighting over anything that keeps us from coming 
together to fight back against a rigged system.
  President Trump wants us to turn our backs on 800,000 Dreamers, 
including nearly 8,000 Dreamers in Massachusetts. He doesn't want us to 
look at these young people and see them for who they are; he just wants 
us to see them as threats. After all, he launched his campaign by 
calling immigrants rapists and criminals, and that is exactly what he 
wants everyone else to see. I would like to introduce three Dreamers 
from Massachusetts and let the American people decide if that is true.
  Reina Guevara fled from El Salvador when she was only 11 years old. 
She is a model student. She won a scholarship, and right now she is 
working on her bachelor's degree at UMass Boston.
  Before the DACA Program allowed her to come out of the shadows, Reina 
worked up to 70 hours a week in a restaurant for a boss who sexually 
harassed her. On multiple occasions, he propositioned her to have a 
sexual relationship with him, threatening to call immigration on her if 
she refused his advances. The harassment became so frequent and so bad 
that Reina decided to quit her job, forgoing critical income. Knowing 
there was no one for her to tell, her boss refused to pay her for her 
last 2 weeks of work.
  Reina was an easy target. A woman without official immigration status 
was a woman who couldn't complain to HR when she was assaulted, 
underpaid, or made to work in dangerous conditions. A woman without 
immigration status was a woman who knew that speaking up could mean 
immediate deportation.
  When Reina entered the DACA Program, her life changed. It meant she 
could stand up for herself without being afraid that she would be 
kicked out of America.
  I asked Reina what DACA means to her. This is what she told me: 
``DACA to me means the opportunity to be the first one in my family to 
graduate with a Bachelor's Degree, to work without the fear of being 
humiliated and exploited due to my status.'' Donald Trump wants Reina 
banished from our country.
  Bruno Villegas McCubbin was 6 years old when he left his home. Like 
most parents, Bruno's mother and father wanted to keep their children 
safe. That wasn't easy when Peru's economy collapsed. Bruno's father, 
who was a traveling salesman, was forced to travel to more remote and 
more dangerous places. It got so dangerous that on one trip, Bruno said 
he was attacked by armed robbers and injured by flying glass from 
gunshots.
  After that, Bruno's parents decided they should escape to America. 
Bruno's family settled in Garden Grove, CA, where Bruno and his sister 
and his parents shared one room in his uncle's two-bedroom apartment. 
Bruno's parents, who had white-collar jobs in Peru, worked 12-hour days 
in low-wage jobs just to keep food on the table. While his parents were 
hard at work, Bruno was building dreams. He threw himself into his 
studies. When he graduated from high school, he was second in his 
class. Bruno did a lot more than just study; he founded an organization 
to help struggling students. He served as a tutor. He played the 
saxophone.
  Bruno was in high school when the DACA Program began. Today, he is a 
junior at Harvard, where he serves as a student coordinator for the 
Harvard Financial Aid Initiative, which provides

[[Page 12892]]

financial aid information to promising high school students from low-
income families.
  I asked Bruno what DACA means to him. He said: ``It means the 
opportunity for many of us to work here legally and achieve the 
American Dream that this country still boasts, so we can then give back 
to our families that have sacrificed so much for us, and to the country 
that helped form us into what we are today.'' Donald Trump wants Bruno 
banished from our country.
  I could do this all night, but others want a chance to tell their 
stories as well. So I am just going to do one more: Elias Rosenfeld. 
Like Bruno, Elias was 6 years old when his parents brought him and his 
sister to the United States. He remembers hearing stories every day of 
violence in Venezuela. A gun was pulled on his mother while her car was 
at a stoplight, and his grandfather was robbed after making a bank 
withdrawal. To keep her kids safe, Elias' mother transferred to a 
company in Miami on a visa that allows executives and managers from 
other countries to work in the United States and then to apply for 
permanent resident status. But she never got the chance to apply for 
permanent resident status because when Elias was 11, his mother died of 
cancer. When he lost his mother, Elias lost his protected status 
without even knowing it.
  In high school, Elias took tough classes, including 13 advanced 
placement courses. He worked hard, and he earned nearly straight A's. 
He served in student government and on the speech and debate teams. He 
volunteered with the Children's Trust and also with the Homeless Trust. 
The activities director at Elias' high school called Elias his hero. He 
said: ``I've been teaching here for 20 years and I've never seen a 
student like this young man.''
  Elias' commitment to academic excellence earned him a Myra Kraft 
Transitional Year Program scholarship to attend Brandeis University. 
Earlier this year, Elias worked as an intern in my office. I asked 
Elias what DACA meant to him. He said it has been a ``source of 
optimism and a light of protection.'' He wrote:

       For years, before DACA arrived I would sleep in bed at 
     night with a constant fear of deportation, imagining in my 
     head the visual of ICE breaking through my door to deport 
     myself or my sister. When DACA came, this fear stopped. . . .

  But Donald Trump wants Elias banished from our country.
  America asked people like Elias, Bruno, Reina, and nearly a million 
young people all across this country to come out of the shadows. We 
made them a promise: Work hard, play by the rules, contribute to 
America, get an education, defend our country, help us build an economy 
that works, and in exchange we won't knock on your door in the middle 
of the night and rip you from your home and ship you off to a foreign 
country you barely remember.
  President Trump decided to break that promise. He is hiding behind 
Jeff Sessions and some flimsy lawyer nonsense, but he is breaking that 
promise, pure and simple. That means he is failing in his basic, moral 
duty to protect these people, these children of America.
  That is not who America is. America is not a place that punishes 
children for the sins of their fathers. America is not a place that 
boots out smart, hard-working, decent young people who have spent 
nearly all their lives here and who are a core part of our Nation's 
future.
  Donald Trump wants to turn us against each other. He wants to banish 
Reina, Bruno, Elias, and hundreds of thousands of other young people 
from our country. He says that is how we will build a better America.
  Well, Donald Trump is wrong. He wants to build a hateful and 
frightened America. But we have the chance to turn away from the hate 
and fear. We have the chance right here in Congress to take an 
important step toward building a stronger, more vibrant America. We 
have the chance to make DACA the law so that Donald Trump cannot take 
away the dreams of 800,000 young people like Reina, Bruno, and Elias. 
We can and we must pass the Dream Act now.
  Thank you, Mr. President.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Delaware.
  Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, the Senator from Massachusetts has 
delivered a powerful message, obviously, one from the heart and a 
compelling message. I want to thank her for that.
  We have a bunch of new pages here. They showed up for duty earlier 
this week, and they are generally, I think, rising juniors, probably 16 
years old or so. Most of the 800,000 people who we are talking about 
here as Dreamers came here before they were old enough to be a page, 
and many of them were not even old enough to go to kindergarten or 
first grade. They didn't come here by their own volition.
  They were, for the most part, brought here by their parents. They 
were brought here to flee horrific conditions in countries such as 
Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador, where there is violence, murder, 
and mayhem that is largely created because of our addiction to drugs in 
this country. They send us drugs trafficked through those countries 
from South America, and we send guns and money to places such as 
Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador.
  When we take into custody bad guys, people who are here illegally and 
who are also criminals, where do we send them? We send them back to 
Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador. We send them criminals, and we 
send guns and money to those three countries. The conditions that this 
toxic mix creates are ones that I wouldn't want to submit my children 
or my family to, and, frankly, a lot of the people in those three 
countries feel the same way.
  We are complicit in their misery. We are complicit in their misery, 
and that is why so many folks in those three countries, which are 
called the Northern Triangle, try to escape.
  These kids didn't come here on their own. They came here with their 
parents. Many of them, frankly, don't have any memories of where they 
were born. We are not looking for them to become American citizens. 
What DACA attempts to do is to give them some time--to give us some 
time--to be able to make their stays here legal--something short of 
citizenship.
  If your hearts aren't touched by the stories that Senator Warren just 
told us about these three young people, I want to take a little 
different approach and express why we should care. I came here to the 
Senate some years ago as a recovering Governor. I was privileged to be 
Governor of Delaware from 1993 to 2001, and people say that I am still 
a recovering Governor.
  I have focused much of my life on public service and on creating a 
nurturing environment for job creation and job preservation. 
Presidents, Governors, Senators, and mayors like to talk about the jobs 
they created and, in truth, we don't create jobs. People in our 
positions try to create a more nurturing environment for job creation, 
and that includes a quality workforce with the skills that are needed 
by employers. It includes transportation infrastructure that works. It 
includes public safety. It includes access to capital to finance the 
projects. It includes a lot of things: energy, a reasonable tax burden, 
and commonsense regulations. Those are some of the elements that create 
a nurturing environment.
  One of the top items on that list is always workforce--people who 
have the skills that employers are looking for, people who have the 
willingness to come to work and to work hard, to be trained, and to be 
promoted, in many cases, and people who are honest.
  I have not met 800 Dreamers. But at Delaware State University, which 
is a historically Black college and university in Dover, DE--they have 
been around for 125 years--there are about 40 Dreamers who are 
undergraduates there, either freshmen or sophomores, and I have met 
most of them. They are some of the most remarkable college students I 
have ever met. These are students who aren't just getting by with a 2.0 
average or 3.0 average. These are students who are on the dean's list, 
who come to school on time, who don't cut classes, who make excellent 
grades,

[[Page 12893]]

who work in many cases part-time jobs to help support their time in 
school, and who are anxious to be able to make real contributions to 
our community, to our State, and to our country.
  One young man, who was from El Salvador, at a public event we had 2 
days ago on Tuesday at Delaware State University, said this to us--to 
the president of the university, Harry Williams, and their new provost, 
Tony Allen. He stood up, he held his hand over his heart, and he said: 
Every day since I was the age of 5 in kindergarten, in the school I 
held my hand over my heart and pledged allegiance to that flag. He 
said: I don't have any other flag. I don't have any other country. This 
is my country.
  We need young men and young women like him.
  I learned early this month, from the Department of Labor jobs report 
for the month of August, that one of the things it shared with us was 
that there are millions of jobs in this country that are going 
unfilled. There are millions of jobs in this country that are going 
unfilled. We have thousands of them in Delaware. Michigan probably has 
tens of thousands. I was told by one of the Ohio Senators that there 
are jobs in Ohio that are not being filled because the people who are 
applying for them don't have the skills, the work ethic, or the record. 
In some cases, they can't pass a drug test. Yet these employers in all 
of our States need workers. In a day and age when we need workers with 
the academic skills and the work skills--we need them probably more 
than ever--we are ready to pack up 800,000 of them and send them back 
to where their parents came from, where they were born.
  It is in America's naked self-interest to ensure that these young 
people are given a shot to make the kind of contributions that they are 
capable of to meet the needs of hundreds of thousands of employers in 
this country. Given that opportunity, they will make their parents 
proud, and they will make us proud. They will make our Nation stronger 
and more economically vibrant. It is in our interest to let them stay 
and to welcome them here.
  I will close with the words of Matthew 25: When I was a stranger in 
your land, did you welcome me? Think about that. When I was a stranger 
in your land, did you welcome me?
  Let's welcome these young people. Let's put them to work.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from the Connecticut.
  Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, we are here to stand this afternoon 
for close to 800,000 young men and women--10,000 of them are living in 
Connecticut--who have relied on a promise, not just any old promise but 
a promise from the United States of America.
  The promise to them was that they could come forward, share 
information about their cell phones, their addresses, their relatives, 
their workplaces, their tax information, and they would be permitted to 
live here, study here, work here, and give back to their communities.
  Now America is breaking that promise and betraying its values in the 
decision by the President of the United States to end the DACA Program. 
This decision is repugnant to the basic ideals of America. It is 
repulsive to the values that underlie the rule of law.
  I heard a commentator last night saying: You know, these DACA people, 
when they came here, they broke the law. Think of it for a moment. A 2-
year old, a 3-year old brought by their parents, maybe by a stranger, 
maybe by other relatives, is breaking the law because that relative 
then failed to go through the steps necessary for documentation. Or 
there may have been a variety of other circumstances, such as 
persecution, threatened death and injury in the country where that 
young man or woman was born.
  But we know--because it is part of the DACA Program--that they were 
minors when they came here. They made no decision to break the law. 
They have been here for their entire lives, except for a few months or 
years.
  We know also that, for almost all of them, this country is the only 
one they know, and English is usually the only language they speak. 
Their lives are here. Their friends are here and families as well. But 
most important for the United States of America that made that promise, 
their futures are here. They are, as the President of the United States 
said, terrific people. We love them, as he also said.
  The announcement that he would end their legal status here, that they 
would be deported, that they would be ejected from this country is the 
height of hypocrisy and inhumanity. It is cruel and irrational, it will 
deprive our economy of hundreds of billions of dollars over the next 10 
years, it will mean disruption in workplaces, and that is why employers 
are protesting the decision. It will mean schools will be uncertain 
about how many students there will be, and that is why university 
presidents and administrators are condemning it, but, most importantly, 
it will betray who we are as Americans--a nation of immigrants, a 
nation that keeps its promise.
  Now, let's be very clear. When the Attorney General of the United 
States says there will be an orderly wind down--I think those are the 
terms he used. There is no such thing as an orderly wind down of DACA. 
There is disruption and destruction, already chaos and confusion, 
terror among the young people who are living their lives now seemingly 
on borrowed time. It is borrowed time because the President of the 
United States has thrown a ticking timebomb into this body, in effect 
playing chicken with their lives. They are the ones whose lives will be 
blown up if that timebomb explodes. They are, indeed, voices and faces 
who have come to us in the last day or so, two of them from Connecticut 
I met with or saw.
  The first is Mirka Dominguez-Salinas. She has been in the United 
States for 16 years. She is pursuing her dream at Southern Connecticut 
State University of becoming a teacher. She was student teaching last 
week, but her future career in education has suddenly been jeopardized.
  Jonathan Gonzales, too, is a student at Southern. He has a double 
major in economics and applied mathematics. He also mentors other 
students at public schools in New Haven. He has the freedom basically 
to live as anyone else in this country, to drive to work, and his 
freedom, too, is in jeopardy.
  They have come to Washington, DC, today not only to share their 
stories but to raise their voices and represent those 10,000 others in 
Connecticut, like Vania, who was born in Mexico and brought to 
Willimantic at age 3. She thinks of Connecticut as her home. It is the 
only home she knows, where she went to school and made her friends. 
Would she be sent back to Mexico, where she knows no one, has no job or 
connection? Will she go by plane or will she be forced to walk to the 
border or maybe by car? We are talking about deportation--physical 
ejection from the country--not a vague concept of maybe in a few years. 
We are talking about deportation of 800,000 people, beginning in 6 
months, on a scale, a magnitude, and scope that is unprecedented in the 
history of the United States of America--the same country that welcomed 
my father at the age of 17, when he fled Germany to escape persecution 
and knew virtually no one, had not much more than the shirt on his back 
and spoke almost no English. Just as many of them came to this country 
at a much younger age, and this country gave them, as it did my father, 
a chance to succeed.
  There is no orderly way to wind down this program. There is only 
grief, pain and suffering for those 800,000 Dreamers but also for the 
rest of us, for our economy, for our sense of self and morality.
  As far as the rule of law is concerned, these young people are not 
the lawbreakers. It is the Attorney General of the United States who is 
wrong about the law but, more importantly, wrong to decline to defend 
the law and prejudging, instead, what the result would be if this case 
went to court, if those 10 attorneys general went to court on DACA to 
prove their case, including the U.S. Supreme Court.
  Where does Attorney General Jeff Sessions have the power to prejudge 
what the Supreme Court of the United States would do?

[[Page 12894]]

  So we have a decision ahead of us, which is to rise to the challenge, 
to diffuse that timebomb, to pass the Dream Act, to enable these young 
people who are faced with terror and anxiety to have a chance to 
continue productive and important lives and to avoid the economic 
nightmare for employers and job creators who depend on them.
  We have the opportunity and obligation now to make sure these young 
people are protected, not punished, because their futures are at stake, 
our future as a nation is at stake, and I am here to say to Jonathan, 
to Vania, to all of the Dreamers that we will fight as long and hard as 
possible to make sure the American dream is alive and well for you. 
That dream was promised to you by a great country, and great countries 
keep their promises.
  Thank you. I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Michigan.
  Ms. STABENOW. Mr. President, first, I thank my friend and colleague 
from Connecticut for his thoughtful words and thank all of my other 
colleagues who come to the floor to speak up for young people who need 
our voices right now.
  ``Through no fault of their own'' has been repeated over and over 
again. These young people, oftentimes babies, were brought to this 
country without documentation, but they were brought here. They didn't 
know what was happening to them, a 1-year-old, 2-year-old, 5-year-old, 
7- or 8-year-old. It wasn't their choice and yet they are paying the 
price for what happened.
  There is no question, we need immigration reform--no question at all. 
I was very proud and pleased to support a major effort a few years ago, 
a bipartisan effort in the Senate to do comprehensive immigration 
reform. It is something we need because our system is broken. There is 
no question. It hurts families, workers, businesses, and farmers in 
Michigan every single day, but targeting these almost 800,000 young 
people does nothing to solve that problem.
  I am anxious to work with colleagues across the aisle to address 
comprehensive reform so we have a legal system that works, but we have, 
again, about 800,000 young people right now who stepped forward and are 
covered by something called the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals 
Program, or DACA, who were told, if they would step forward, provide 
the government all of their personal information, information about 
their families, that they--as long as they were following the rules, 
they were going to school, they were going to college, they were 
serving in the military, they were doing the right thing--would be 
allowed to stay and be successful in our country.
  In Michigan alone, 10,000 young people have been approved for DACA. 
Those are some of the numbers, but we are not talking about numbers, as 
we know. We are talking about people's lives.
  We are talking about 10,000 young people in Michigan who are 
attending college, who are working as nurses or doctors and buying 
homes and building their own businesses. Maybe they are reaching out in 
some other way to be successful in the economy. They are serving in our 
military right now. Somebody serving in our military right this minute 
could lose their life for our country, the country they love, at the 
same time the President--and his administration--has turned his back on 
them. These are people raising American children of their own, with 
American family members around them. These children aren't numbers. 
Frankly, they are our neighbors.
  In Michigan, we care about our neighbors. One of our neighbors is 
named Wilfredo. He is a Dreamer who was brought to the United States 
when he was only 9 years old. Wilfredo works hard. He is a restaurant 
supply salesman. He owns a home. He is crazy about soccer, and he says 
he is crazy about his girlfriend. He told Michigan Bridge Magazine that 
they hope to get married one day, but a future that seemed so bright 
just a few days ago now has a dark cloud hanging over it. Wilfredo is 
scared. His girlfriend is scared. His family is scared. Will he be sent 
back to a country he barely remembers? What will happen to his sister 
who is an American citizen? Will he ever see her again?
  Another one of our neighbors in Michigan, Juan, shares that fear. He 
was only 1 year old, just a baby, when his parents brought him to the 
United States. For many years, Juan lived in the shadows, but that 
changed in 2012 when our country made a promise to Juan and to others 
to suddenly step forward and change their future. He was able to get a 
job, go back to school, drive, even buy a house. Juan told the Detroit 
Free Press: ``I know of no other place.'' He was brought here when he 
was 1 year old. It is not about sending him back somewhere. There is no 
going back. He doesn't know any other country. He said: ``We love this 
country and want to make this country a better place.''
  Wilfredo, Juan, and so many other young people are great examples of 
why we need comprehensive immigration reform to happen in the House and 
Senate, with the White House--not using them in a way that certainly 
does not show the best about America.
  Right now, though, until we can get comprehensive immigration reform, 
we need to pass the bipartisan Dream Act to protect the young people 
who have been hurt by this administration's actions. I know we have 
colleagues on both sides of the aisle who want to work together to do 
something, to prove that America does keep its promises.
  These Dreamers have done nothing wrong. They have done everything 
right. We need to show them we do care about them and make sure our 
country keeps its promises to them.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.
  Mr. REED. Mr. President, I rise today, along with so many of my 
colleagues--and Ms. Stabenow, who just spoke--with regard to DACA. We 
are here to oppose President Trump's unnecessary, political, and 
damaging decision to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals 
Program, the DACA Program.
  To close the door on the American dream for nearly 800,000 people who 
are American in every way but on paper goes against every measure of 
sound public policy, productive economics, and basic decency. Today, I 
join my colleagues in Congress, hundreds of American business 
executives, thousands of higher education officials and faith leaders, 
and a majority of the American people who have made their voices heard 
over the past few days to denounce President Trump's elimination of 
DACA, and call for legislative action to protect Dreamers and provide 
them a realistic and responsible pathway to citizenship.
  We must be absolutely clear about what President Trump has done, on 
his own, without any need or, in my view, legal requirement to do so. 
By his choice, in less than 6 months, the administration will begin 
forcing hundreds of thousands of Dreamers, many in their twenties and 
thirties, out of their jobs, out of our military, out of our schools, 
and out of the United States--the only country that most of them have 
ever really known.
  It is true that Dreamers were brought here as children outside the 
appropriate processes, but this was through no fault or decision of 
their own. Since then, they have pursued higher education, started 
families, worked hard, paid taxes, and stayed out of serious trouble 
with the law. Some have served honorably with our Armed Forces and put 
their lives on the line to keep us all safe. We gain nothing and lose a 
great deal by separating these young people from their jobs, their 
homes, their spouses, and children and sending them to countries they 
hardly know.
  At no point in our debates over immigration have we found a good 
reason to spend our limited immigration enforcement resources on 
Dreamers. The premise of DACA was, and continues to be, that we need 
permanent, comprehensive immigration reform--but until then, Dreamers 
who contribute to our society should be allowed to come out of the 
shadows and lead healthy, productive lives.

[[Page 12895]]

  Rather than pursuing these young Americans, our immigration 
enforcement resources should focus on practical measures that make us 
safe, not wasteful and symbolic projects like a border wall. We should 
improve surveillance of the border and the apprehension of more illegal 
entrants. We should incentivize legal immigration and make it feasible 
for people to come here and pursue better opportunities. I am eager to 
work with my colleagues to craft a tough but fair, and comprehensive 
immigration reform package that incorporates good ideas from both sides 
of the aisle. Until then, however, we accomplish nothing by forcing 
hundreds of thousands of families to live in fear, and regret ever 
trusting our country enough to register for DACA in the first place.
  Too much of this debate is driven by President Trump's apparent 
refusal to accept basic truths about who his actions affect and what 
his decisions mean for our country. His administration's rhetoric 
suggests that deporting Dreamers will make us safer and somehow restore 
the rule of ``law and order,'' but these are the facts of the matter: 
first, today, unauthorized immigration continues to decline, as it has 
every year, since its peak in 2007. Second--and not without 
controversy--President Obama's administration deported a record 5 
million undocumented immigrants, particularly violent felons. These 
were important steps, but we have learned that enforcement alone does 
not solve practical problems for people like Dreamers, and their 
families and employers.
  Moreover, deporting Dreamers does nothing to make us safer. Dreamers 
qualify for DACA precisely because they have not committed serious 
crimes, and conflating them with criminals only feeds the false premise 
that immigrants are prone to criminality when all of the evidence shows 
that the opposite is true. In fact, studies from the National Bureau of 
Economic Research and the conservative Cato Institute have concluded 
that immigrants tend to commit fewer crimes than do people born in the 
United States, and U.S. Census data shows that, among adult males, 
immigrants are one-half to one-fifth as likely to be incarcerated here.
  Just as insidious is the persistent myth that Dreamers are somehow 
harming our economy or taking jobs from American citizens. We can and 
should debate what kind of immigration reform would best support our 
economy, but there is no credible support for the argument that 
Dreamers harm our economy or that deporting them would create jobs for 
anyone. The fact is that, according to the Center for American 
Progress, ending DACA would result in an estimated loss of over $460 
billion from our GDP over the next decade, including an annual loss of 
over $60 million per year in my home State of Rhode Island.
  We know from experience that deporting employed immigrants does not 
raise wages. In fact, many jobs lost tend to go unfilled. And, because 
of President Trump's actions, families of Dreamers will sit at their 
kitchen tables in the coming months and struggle needlessly with 
questions of how to feed their children and keep roofs over their heads 
now that the administration has forced mom or dad out of work, or out 
of the country. These are American families, and doing this to them is 
the opposite of putting America first.
  It is our responsibility to protect our country from economic harm 
and to uphold our ideals and commitments, and that means keeping faith 
with Dreamers and their families. We should put ourselves in their 
shoes and remember how each of our families came to this Nation and 
worked to achieve the American dream for themselves, their children, 
and their children's children.
  I applaud Senators Graham and Durbin for introducing the bipartisan 
Dream Act of 2017. I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to 
support this important legislation on our way to a meaningful debate on 
comprehensive immigration reform. I hope that we can find the will to 
come together and swiftly pass this legislation to strengthen our 
Nation, keep our economy growing, and keep faith with our best ideals.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Tillis). The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I am here to speak about President 
Trump's decision to shut down the DACA Program, the so-called Dream 
program that allows children who were brought here by their parents, 
often at a very young age, and who grew up here and are now, as far as 
they know, full Americans--this is their home--to not be thrown out of 
their adopted country and sent home to a place that they do not know, 
all because of what their parents did when they were still children. We 
don't even hold children accountable for contracts they enter into. You 
have to be an adult to be held accountable for a contract you enter 
into. Yet, apparently, this President is willing to take these 
children, break up their families, and send them to a country they do 
not know, all because of a decision that was made by their parents, in 
some cases when these kids were infants.
  I have spoken to these kids, who are generally called Dreamers, who 
have no memory of living anyplace other than this country. I don't know 
about the Presiding Officer, but it is hard for me to scroll back and 
come up with any concrete memories of when I was 1 or 2 or 3 years old. 
These are kids who grew up in American schools. They grew up in 
American families. They grew up playing American sports. They grew up 
as a part of our culture. But now, for reasons that really defy humane 
explanation, the President wants to cast a cloud over about 800,000 
children--now turned into young adults in many cases and many more who 
are right behind them in the program--who were looking forward to this 
as something they could do when they came of age to get their full-on 
DACA permit.
  We have over 1,000 people who are approved under the DACA Program in 
Rhode Island. We are pretty proud of them. They have served in the 
military. They have had jobs around the country.
  Ninety-one percent of DACA recipients are employed, pay taxes, and 
contribute to Social Security. When we had the immigration debate, that 
is what we said we wanted people to do: Pay your taxes, get a job, pay 
into Social Security, support yourself, and support the system around 
you. Well, they have done that. But because of a decision they did not 
even make--a decision that under American law they would be incapable 
of making because they were not adults--this shadow of punishment and 
family disruption has been put over them by perhaps the least humane 
person ever to hold the office of President of the United States. And 
if this doesn't prove that proposition, there are plenty more that do.
  I understand that our leader has urged Speaker Ryan and Majority 
Leader McConnell to get Senator Durbin's and Senator Graham's Dream Act 
up for a vote. I think it will pass. I think it will pass with more 
than 60 votes. I think we, at least--the decent Members of the Senate--
can lift that cloud of fear, threat, and anxiety. I think we should. I 
think we should do it soon. And if Majority Leader McConnell is not 
interested in bringing this to the floor, I understand that Senator 
Schumer has made it pretty clear that he is going to insist on 
attaching this bill to some other measure as we move forward this year. 
I completely support him.
  This President said that he loves these kids and wants to approach 
this issue with a big heart. Huh. The White House, which, the last I 
heard, the President of the United States runs, put out talking points 
telling these kids to get ready to depart. Get ready for departure from 
this country. Really? That is the big heart--to threaten 800,000 kids 
who have played by the

[[Page 12896]]

rules, who have done what the Government of the United States asked 
them to do, to get ready to depart? Because of what--some crime they 
committed? No. They committed no crime, but because their parents 
brought them here as kids.
  Jean came here from Peru. He was brought to the United States by his 
parents when he was a few months old. He is 23 now. If he were to go 
back to Peru, he would have to move to a village where he has never 
lived, that is not in a safe area, that he does not know because he has 
been here for over 20 years--22 and change if he is 23 now.
  Rodrigo Pimental came here from Portugal at 10 months old. Rhode 
Island has a very vibrant Portuguese community, of which we are really 
proud. His parents came to join that community, pursue a better life, 
start a small business, and succeed. Rodrigo doesn't even remember 
Portugal. He has a computer science degree--a college computer science 
degree. He says the United States is his home. What is the gain for our 
country in telling Rodrigo Pimental, with his computer science degree 
from college, that he needs to go back to Portugal because at 10 months 
old his parents brought him here in search of a better life? Where the 
heck is the justice or the decency in that?
  These are all Rhode Island kids whom I am talking about. There are 
hundreds of thousands of stories around the country.
  Lesdin Salazar from Guatemala was brought to the United States by her 
parents at age 7. We are going to break up that family and send her 
back to Guatemala because why? Because at age 7 she didn't successfully 
talk her parents out of bringing her here? Or maybe she should have 
left her parents then: Oh, parents, boy, it would be illegal to go to 
the United States without the proper paperwork. I can't be a part of 
that. I am staying in Guatemala. You go.
  Is that the expectation we have for a 7-year-old, that we would now 
punish her with deportation and with breaking up her family? That is 
the big heart of this President?
  I will tell my colleagues about one of her memories. She doesn't 
remember much of Guatemala, but she does remember sitting in her living 
room with her parents watching President Obama announce the DACA 
Program. She says that her family cried tears of joy when that 
happened--at last, a path forward from the problem that was not of her 
own making. She does not understand why the United States is giving so 
many children an education here and then sending them back to other 
countries, breaking up their families, and I don't, either. It makes no 
sense.
  Krissia Rivera came to Rhode Island from El Salvador. She came when 
she was 8. Oh, so maybe that is old enough that she could have broken 
up with her parents back then or talked them out of coming here. She 
lived first in Maryland. Interestingly, she went to the same school the 
President's son now attends. She came to Rhode Island and graduated 
from college. She is currently in medical school at Brown University--
obviously somebody we want to get out of our country. She is scared. 
She feels exposed.
  I would like to have one person come to the Senate floor and tell me 
what Krissia Rivera did at age 8 that was so wrong that we are willing 
to take somebody who will have a Brown University medical school degree 
and throw them out of our country for no reason. Explain that to me.
  I will tell my colleagues, there is a lot that is embarrassing about 
the way our President behaves. This is pretty bad, particularly in the 
wake of the way he behaved after Nazi flags were paraded through 
Charlottesville, VA--the city of Thomas Jefferson's great university. 
He spent the next couple of days winking at White supremacist Nazi 
types, equating their behavior with the behavior of the protesters who 
came out. I would hope that if neo-Nazis were walking through 
Providence, I would go out and protest. Am I as wrong as the Nazis? I 
don't think so. But President Trump appears to think so--it was just 
two sides having an evenhanded dispute. I don't think so.
  When the President reacted to Charlottesville the way he did, he was 
winking at the worst impulses in our society: bigotry, hatred, 
discrimination of people based on color and religion--things that we 
have fought back against for generations. Fighting back against those 
evils is part of what makes us Americans. But does President Trump 
fight back against those evils? No. Just a little wink, a little pat on 
the head along the way: Keep it up, boys; I don't mind that much. No 
difference between you and the people who come out because they are 
outraged to see Nazi flags flying in Charlottesville, VA.
  And now this. And now this. Who the hell is President Trump talking 
to when he does this? Who gets the wink this time? If this isn't 
another wink to bigotry and hatred and discrimination, I don't know 
what is. No one can explain to me why an 8-year-old, who is such a good 
person that she will come to a new country and come all the way to 
Brown University's medical school, is to be punished for not having 
broken up with her parents at age 8 when they brought her to this 
country. It makes no sense.
  I see the distinguished senior Senator from Illinois here on the 
floor. The battle for the DACA Program and for the Dream Act has been a 
cause of his political life. There is no person in this Chamber to whom 
more credit is due for this program than Senator Durbin. So with great 
respect, as well as affection, I will yield the floor to him.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Illinois.
  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I want to thank my colleague Senator 
Whitehouse for his kind words.
  I come to the floor to join in with a dozen or more of my colleagues 
who were here earlier to talk about the situation we now face. Senator 
Whitehouse is correct--this is an issue that is very personal to me. It 
is one that dates back to the year 2001, 16 years ago. It was a time 
when we received a call in my office in the city of Chicago, and the 
person on the other end was with a program called the Merit music 
program. She said: I have a problem with one of my students, and I need 
your help.
  The Merit music program is a special opportunity for young people in 
Chicago's public schools, particularly from low-income families, to be 
trained on a musical instrument, free of charge, and some amazing 
things happen. Every student who is part of the Merit music program 
goes to college--every single one of them. They learn self-esteem, they 
learn a musical instrument, and it shows. Their lives are transformed.
  She told us the story of one of these students. Her name is Tereza 
Lee. Tereza Lee was born in Korea and brought to the United States by 
her mom and dad when she was 2 years old. They came through Brazil 
before they came to Chicago, but they settled in Chicago. Her mom and 
dad raised her and her brother and sister. They were not well-off at 
all. In fact, they were poor.
  Mom worked in a dry cleaner establishment, which is fairly common in 
Chicago; Korean Americans probably work there more than any other 
group. Her father was an aspiring preacher who wanted to open a church 
for the Korean population, but it never seemed to materialize. Mom 
worked extra hard, and the kids went to public schools.
  At age 12, Tereza Lee heard about the Merit music program, signed up 
for it, went in, and fell in love with playing the piano. She turned 
out to be a prodigy. She was extraordinary.
  By the time she was ready to graduate from high school, they said: 
You have to apply to a music school.
  Well, she wasn't sure. Nobody she knew had gone to college. But she 
started to fill out the application and ran into the question about her 
Social Security number. She turned to her mother and said: What am I 
supposed to do about this?
  Her mother said: I don't know. After we brought you to the United 
States at the age of 2, we didn't file any papers.
  What could they do? They reached out to the Merit music program, and 
the Merit music program said: Let's call Durbin's office.

[[Page 12897]]

  They called my office and contacted my caseworker, whose name is 
Clarisol Duque. She is now my chief of staff, but back then she was a 
caseworker. She looked up the law. She called the INS, and they said: 
The law is very clear. Tereza Lee from Korea is undocumented. She is in 
the United States. Although she is now 17 or 18 years old, she never 
filed the appropriate papers, and under the laws of the United States 
of America, the recourse is for her to return to the last country she 
was in--Brazil--to wait 10 years, and apply to come back to the United 
States--10 years.
  I thought to myself, and so did my caseworker: Why would you do this 
to this young girl? She did nothing wrong. In fact, she is a pretty 
amazing story of success from a poor family.
  I sat down and said: Let's write a law to deal with it, and we wrote 
the DREAM Act. My original cosponsor of the DREAM Act was Orrin Hatch 
of Utah. This goes back, as I said, 16 years ago, so when I stand here 
today and talk about this issue, it is an issue I have come to know in 
a lot of different ways. Most importantly, I have come to know the 
young people whose lives have been affected by our laws as they 
currently exist.
  Over the years, an interesting thing has happened. After I wrote the 
DREAM Act and would go around Chicago and tell the story of this new 
bill that I had just introduced, there would be a lot of young people, 
mainly Hispanic youngsters, who would listen to me and not react very 
much at all. Then, many times, I would go out to my car to go back home 
at the end of the night, and in the darkness, standing by my car, would 
be one or two young people. They would look in both directions to make 
sure no one could hear them, and they would whisper to me: Senator, I 
am a Dreamer.
  These were undocumented children--teenagers, adolescents--who had 
been taught early in life to be extremely careful: Never, ever admit 
that you are undocumented; never, ever get involved with the law 
because you could be deported tomorrow morning, and your family might 
be deported with you. So they grew up in fear--fear of what might 
happen with a knock on the door.
  So now comes this politician, this Senator, who says: I am going to 
change the law. I am going to make it right for you.
  Well, many of their parents were skeptical. They didn't believe it. 
Politicians say a lot of things. But these young people did something 
very interesting. Their approach to this evolved from standing in the 
darkness and whispering ``I am a Dreamer,'' listening to their parents 
tell them ``Don't say out loud that you are undocumented''; they, of 
course, did exactly what their parents didn't want them to do. They 
started standing up and saying publicly: I am a Dreamer. I want to tell 
you who I am and my story.
  They wore T-shirts and buttons, and they rallied, and there was no 
question that they were going to come and tell their stories. As they 
told their stories to me, I decided the best thing I could do was to 
tell their stories on the floor of the U.S. Senate. So I started 
telling them. With their permission and a color photograph, I would 
tell the stories of these young people. Each one of them, standing at 
this desk and other places in the Chamber, usually captured the 
attention of the people who would gather because each one of these 
stories was so compelling. They were compelling stories because here 
were young people who had all the odds against them.
  I remember when I was a teenager, in my insecurity, wondering what I 
would ever do and afraid of doing the wrong thing. Then I think of 
these young people, who have the decks stacked against them. They have 
been told they are not legal in this country, and there are people who 
would like to see them gone tomorrow. Yet these young people started 
emerging and telling the stories, and I started repeating them. Then 
some amazing stories started emerging about what they were doing with 
their lives.
  You see, if you are undocumented in this country, you don't qualify 
for a lot of things most Americans take for granted--Pell grants to go 
to college. Students from low-income families receive up to $5,000 or 
more a year to go to college. Undocumented students, Dreamers, receive 
nothing--nothing--from the Federal Government.
  The same thing is true about student loans. For the most part, unless 
there is a State program, these undocumented students can't qualify for 
any government student loans. They have to find some other way. They 
usually have to work their way through college--or whatever their 
aspirations might be.
  Over the years, this bill was heard before committees and was voted 
on from time to time in the House and in the Senate. Unfortunately, we 
never could quite find that moment when the bill could pass the Senate 
and the House in the same year and the same session. It never came 
together. There was a time when we passed it with a majority vote in 
the Senate, but under our rules we needed 60 votes. So we fell just 
short of being able to move the bill forward.
  Along the way, I had a colleague in the U.S. Senate named Barack 
Obama, my junior Senator. He was a cosponsor of my DREAM Act. Of 
course, he went on to bigger and better things and became the President 
of the United States. I am very proud of him for his achievement. But I 
didn't waste any time after he was elected President calling him and 
saying: Help me. We have to do something to help these young people.
  I wrote him a letter, cosigned by Republican Senator Dick Lugar of 
Indiana, asking him to think of a way he might be able to protect the 
Dreamers from being deported until we passed the law. I didn't get a 
response.
  A year passed--a year. I sent a second letter, this time with 23 
Senators signing it, urging President Obama to do something, and he 
did. He created the DACA program.
  The DACA Program was basically an opportunity for young people to 
come forward, to register with the government, pay a filing fee, submit 
to a criminal background check, and then see if they qualified for a 2-
year protection from deportation and a 2-year opportunity to legally 
work in the United States.
  Well, I was just reminded: August 15, 2012, was the first day to sign 
up. I joined with my friend and colleague, Congressman Luis Gutierrez, 
of Chicago. We decided we would create a sign-up, an opportunity at 
Navy Pier, a historic place in the city, and invite young people who 
qualified for DACA--Dreamers--to come in and sign up. We got volunteer 
immigration lawyers who wouldn't charge these young people anything, 
and we sent out the notices to every group we could think of: Come on 
in if you are eligible to sign up for DACA.
  Congressman Gutierrez and I didn't know how many would show up. We 
were afraid it might be 200 or 300 people, and we didn't know if we 
could handle any more than that with the volunteer attorneys we had.
  Then something happened. It was amazing. At midnight, the night 
before, they started queueing up outside of Navy Pier, families--mom, 
dad, and that young son or daughter who qualified for DACA--and they 
waited in the dark all night for the chance to sign up. When it was 
over, it wasn't hundreds, but thousands--thousands--who came to Navy 
Pier. We couldn't handle them. We had to set up workshops all over the 
city afterward to give them their chance to sign up.
  It was a big risk for them. This was the first time in their lives 
they were going to trust the Government of the United States with 
information that they had carefully kept personal, confidential, and 
secret. They were going to trust this government by signing up for a 
program because the President of the United States had said: It will 
protect you. They had the $500 or $600 they needed for the filing fee. 
They were prepared for all the background checks. At the end of the 
day, after 5 or 6 years of DACA, 780,000 young people have signed up 
for this protection.
  What has happened to these young people is nothing short of amazing. 
I could go on for a long time about the

[[Page 12898]]

success stories of the DACA recipients once they got that protection, 
once they could work.
  I love to tell the story about Loyola University Chicago Stritch 
School of Medicine. That school decided they were going to open up 
competition for their medical school to DACA-protected young people--
not a special spot for them or a set-aside of quotas or numbers. No, 
they had to compete with everyone else. But that medical school said: 
These young people now deserve a chance.
  As a result of that decision, there are 28 medical students at Loyola 
Stritch School of Medicine in Chicago, and they are there because there 
was no place else that would accept them. This college of medicine 
said: If you are DACA protected, we will let you compete to come to our 
school.
  The word spread around the country like lightning. Some of the best 
and brightest young people finally got their chance, and they were 
accepted to this medical school. They are impressive.
  Remember what I said: They don't qualify for government loans. 
Medical school is expensive. My State, under Governor Patrick Quinn and 
now continued under Governor Bruce Rauner, a Democrat and Republican, 
set up a loan for them--but with a catch. Our State loans them enough 
money to go to medical school at Loyola, as long as they promise to 
give 1 year of medical practice for each year that we loan the money--1 
year of medical practice in the inner cities in Chicago, in Waukegan, 
in East St. Louis, or in rural areas where they can't find doctors, and 
they anxiously do so. They anxiously do so because this is their 
chance. I tell that story because it is one that is particularly 
poignant.
  When President Trump and Attorney General Sessions yesterday decided 
to put an end to DACA, they put into question whether these young 
people will ever finish medical school. You can't go to medical school 
and be an intern and work if you cannot legally work in the United 
States. They can legally work because of DACA. When DACA disappears, 
their right to legally work disappears. Their ability to be interns and 
work in the medical school disappears as well.
  What is going to happen to them? Is that the end of their medical 
education? Loyola stuck its neck out and gave them a chance. Filling 
those slots will be impossible. Second- and third-year students--you 
just can't fill those slots. It will be a real loss--a loss of great 
talent and great opportunity.
  When President Trump made this announcement with Attorney General 
Sessions yesterday, I was really troubled. I have had only one face-to-
face conversation with the President. It was his Inauguration Day. It 
is no surprise that I didn't support him, but I went up and shook hands 
with him, congratulated him on being elected President, and I said: I 
want to thank you for the kind things you have said about Dreamers.
  He looked me in the eye and he said: Don't worry about those 
Dreamers. We are going to take care of the Dreamers.
  I listened then and so many times afterward when he publicly said 
something very similar. He said at one point: We love the Dreamers. We 
are going to take care of those kids--over and over and over again. And 
I was convinced--I want to be convinced--it was a genuine sentiment in 
his heart that he was expressing.
  He has said some harsh things when it comes to immigration. I think 
they are fundamentally unfair things--calling Mexican immigrants 
murderers, rapists; travel bans against people of the Muslim religion. 
Those things are, in my mind, inconsistent with the values of this 
country. But he said them, and many people found them appealing.
  Yet he always had a special comment when it came to Dreamers and 
DACA, and I thought maybe--just maybe--he is going to give them a 
break.
  He did until yesterday. His announcement that he is going to put an 
end to DACA in 6 months--that is going to cause a lot of problems for a 
lot of innocent people. The good thing that has happened--if there is 
any good to come of this--is that all across America now, there is a 
sensitivity, an understanding, an appreciation of who these young 
people are. It is almost amazing to me that many folks can miss the 
whole debate for a decade or more, but when you start talking about 
removing this protection under law, people wake up, stand up, and speak 
up.
  In my city of Chicago, which I am honored to represent, John Rowe is 
an executive. He is of the opposite political faith. I know it. I like 
him. He likes me. He is retired now and a very generous man--he and his 
wife--and helps a lot of young people. In Chicago, he has been the 
leader in gathering over 120 Chicago business leaders who support DACA 
and the DREAM Act. They are gathering thousands like them around the 
United States, business leaders. If you saw the news accounts this 
morning, leaders of Google and Facebook and others are coming out 
against President Trump's decision to end DACA.
  They are not alone. In addition to that, there is an extraordinary 
outpouring of support for DACA and Dreamers from the faith community 
across the United States. I am proud that the Roman Catholic cardinal 
in Chicago, Blase Cupich, has been outspoken in supporting immigration 
and supporting the Dreamers and those protected by DACA. It is not the 
only religion where the leaders have said that. In faiths--Jewish, 
Protestant, Catholic, Muslim religions--you find the support coming 
forward. It is an indication to me of the growing support across 
America.
  When 76 percent of the American people agree on anything, we ought to 
stand up and take notice. And 76 percent of the American people believe 
we ought to treat these DACA-protected people and Dreamers fairly, 
justly. That is what we should do.
  Yesterday on the floor, I talked about Jesus Contreras. Jesus 
Contreras was brought to the United States at the age of 6, and his 
family settled in Houston, TX. He went to Lone Star College down there. 
Again, he is undocumented, a Dreamer. He finished a course in 
paramedics. He became a licensed, certified paramedic because of DACA. 
He happened to be there, of course, when Hurricane Harvey hit, and he 
worked night and day saving lives, trying to help the victims of the 
hurricane.
  There were thousands just like him, but the important part of this 
story is that this young man is one of those undocumented folks who 
really care about the people of Houston, the people of Texas, and 
America. He calls this home, and he wrote me a letter and told me that. 
I read it on the floor yesterday.
  There are others. I want to tell you about one today. I am going to 
try to pronounce her name correctly. Ximena Magana. I probably missed 
that, but I am close. At 9 years of age, she came to the United States 
from Mexico City. She was raised in Houston and lives there today.
  In high school, Ximena served in the U.S. Army Junior Reserve Officer 
Training Corps. It is better known as Junior ROTC. She was the 
battalion commander of her high school Junior ROTC Program. Under her 
leadership, Ximena's battalion was named the best in the Houston 
Independent School District.
  Ximena was the captain of her high school soccer team and a regular 
volunteer at the Houston Food Bank. Currently, she is majoring in 
communications at the University of Houston. She interned with U.S. 
Representative Sheila Jackson Lee and Houston City Council Member 
Robert Gallegos.
  Due to Ximena's community service, she was asked by the mayor of 
Houston to serve as the youngest member of the Mayor's Hispanic 
Advisory Board. She is the first DACA recipient to serve on that board.
  Last week, in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey, Ximena stepped in to 
help her community, just as she has always done. She volunteered at 
shelters, helping people with FEMA and Red Cross applications. She was 
joined by many other DACA recipients.
  She wrote me a letter. She asked for only one thing--for President 
Trump to come and visit Houston and meet the DACA volunteers, to meet 
those heroes, to look in their eyes, to hear

[[Page 12899]]

their stories before he made his decision about whether they had a 
future in the United States.
  Ximena and so many others have so much to give to this country. 
Without DACA, she faces deportation. This President, who said ``We love 
the Dreamers,'' with his decision yesterday, has said that we are going 
to deport the Dreamers. Ending the protection of DACA will mean they 
will be subject to deportation any minute of any day. They would send 
her back to Mexico, where she hasn't lived since she was 9. If that 
happened, would America be a stronger country or a better country? The 
answer is clear.
  When we introduced the Dream Act, Senator Lindsey Graham, who is my 
cosponsor and a great ally and friend in this, a Republican from South 
Carolina, said: ``The moment of reckoning is coming.'' That moment is 
here. Republican leaders in Congress have to make a decision about 
Ximena and thousands just like her. Are we going to be a fair and just 
society? Are we going to give these young people a chance for a future? 
Are we going to tell them ``No thanks. You are not welcome. Leave''? 
One of the President's appointees to the voter fraud commission, the 
secretary of state of the State of Kansas, said that this morning. He 
said that after the President's decision when it comes to eliminating 
DACA, it is time for them to leave this country. I think he is wrong.
  These people, just like this young lady, deserve a chance to be part 
of our future. How many times has she stood before that great American 
flag and pledged allegiance, sang the national anthem--the only one she 
really knows--and believed this was her country, her flag, her future? 
And now we are going to tell her ``No thanks, Ximena. As good as you 
are, as much as you have done, America doesn't need you''? I don't 
think so.
  As for this Senator, I am going to do everything in my power to 
protect those Dreamers and give them a chance to not only live legally 
in America but to become full-fledged citizens of this country.
  To all of the Dreamers who are listening to this debate, don't 
despair. You had the courage to come out of the shadows and to stop 
whispering and to stand up and tell the world who you are. Because you 
did that, we are in a stronger position today to help you realize your 
dream, to become part of the future of America.
  I am joined this evening by a number of visitors in my office. We 
invited them to come and hear me say a few words on the floor. We 
really lured them in with pizza. They had a little snack upstairs with 
me, and they are listening to this speech. They are the Dreamers from 
Georgetown University, my alma mater.
  As we said, we learned of their stories and talked about this. I 
thought it was a pretty big deal when I transferred from Saint Louis 
University to come here to Georgetown as a sophomore so many years ago. 
It was kind of a bold thing. I had never been to Washington. I never 
visited the campus, and I came to the university. What I did was 
nothing compared to what they have done. They have fought against much 
greater odds. They have shown more determination and maturity than I 
ever had at their age. All they are asking for is a chance to graduate 
from that great university and become part of this great Nation.
  Here is what we need to do. We need to make sure that we don't leave 
this Senate, this House of Representatives this month or in the next 
few weeks without passing the Dream Act. All I am asking for--all any 
of us are asking for--bring it to the floor. Bring it to the floor for 
a vote. I have confidence that we can find 60 votes in the Senate to 
pass it. I think at this moment in history we can.
  I open my office door and my heart to those of good faith who want to 
join us in this effort from the Republican side. From the bottom of my 
heart, I thank Senator Graham, Senator Flake, Senator Murkowski, and 
Senator Gardner--four Republican Senators who have made this, thank 
goodness, a bipartisan effort in the Senate. We need to do the same 
thing in the House of Representatives. We need to say once and for all: 
Your dream of becoming part of the future of America is going to be a 
reality because we are going to step up today, some day soon, and make 
it a reality.
  Finally, I ask the President of the United States--as disappointed as 
I was by your announcement yesterday, as disappointed as I was after 
believing that perhaps it might end differently, we still need your 
help, Mr. President. If you truly do love these Dreamers, if you do 
believe these young people deserve a chance, we need you to step up and 
speak up and join us. Let us pass this measure on a bipartisan basis. 
Join us in passing this measure. Whatever you are thinking about DACA, 
whether it was constitutional or illegal, let's put that behind us. 
Let's pass a real law, and let's have a signing ceremony that says on a 
bipartisan basis we are going to give these young people across America 
their day of justice, their day of opportunity, their chance to make 
this an even greater nation.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts.
  Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, I join with the Senator from Illinois, and 
I thank him for his great leadership on this issue. He has been doing 
this for a long time. His partnership with Senator Lindsey Graham is 
inspiring.
  I want to begin by thanking Senator Durbin and Senator Graham for 
leading this effort and making it bipartisan and making it possible for 
us to talk about an issue as Americans and not as Democrats and 
Republicans and having a discussion about who falls into the category 
of being an American who is entitled to the benefits of being in this 
country.
  For the last 5 years, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals--or 
DACA--Program has created security and opportunity for young immigrants 
across this country. Now, the futures of some 800,000 young people--
7,900 of them in Massachusetts--have been needlessly put in jeopardy 
because President Donald Trump feels the need to keep an ill-considered 
campaign promise made to his base and to break another one made to the 
best and brightest of our young people by repealing DACA. And because 
the House of Representatives has refused to debate and hold a vote on 
comprehensive immigration reform legislation, our immigration system 
remains tragically broken.
  Yesterday, I met one of these Dreamers, Diana Ortiz. Her mother 
brought her to the United States nearly 20 years ago. Diana studied 
history at Pomona College in California, and she recently received a 
master's degree of divinity from the Harvard Divinity School. She hopes 
to become a U.S. citizen. Diana literally wants to do God's work here 
on Earth.
  DACA has provided Diana and more than a million other young 
immigrants safety, security, dignity, respect, and opportunity. These 
are young people who play, study, work, and live next door to us each 
and every day.
  What will the repeal of DACA mean for the Dreamers and for our 
country? It will mean bad news for our economy. Many of these Dreamers 
have started their own businesses and are beginning their careers. Over 
the course of the past 5 years of the program, 91 percent of the 
Dreamers have found gainful employment. Removing DACA recipients from 
the workforce would reduce our gross domestic product by more than $460 
billion over a decade and would cut contributions to Medicare and 
Social Security by more than $24 billion over that same 10-year period.
  It will mean misplaced criminal justice priorities, with law 
enforcement focusing not on targeting drug dealers, human traffickers, 
and the real criminals in our society, but on the Dreamers instead. 
These young people are not the so-called ``bad hombres'' that President 
Trump said would be the focus of his administration.
  Most tragically, it will mean unnecessary pain and suffering for 
countless young people and families across Massachusetts and across the 
United States whose futures will be uncertain. Instead of going to 
sleep tonight knowing they will be able to live their lives in peace 
and plan for the future, they

[[Page 12900]]

are again left with uncertainty, vulnerable to deportation and unable 
to work legally.
  This is heartbreaking. It is unjust, and it is just plain evil. We 
should not punish these young people who have no other home than the 
United States of America. We should not go back on the word we gave 
when we told these young people to come out of the shadows.
  These Dreamers are engineers. They are police officers, teachers, and 
students, many in our great Massachusetts universities. They serve 
bravely in our military right now--in the Army, Navy, Air Force, and 
Marines. They are our best and our brightest, and they are making the 
most of the opportunities that the United States has always provided 
immigrant communities.
  I stand here this evening as a testament to the future that any 
family can achieve in this country. When I announced for the Senate 4 
years ago, I decided--really, for the first time in my life--to go up 
and ring the doorbell of the house that my father grew up in. You 
pretty much grow up where your mother tells your father he is going to 
live. So my mother was from Malden, and my father was from Lawrence, 
and we grew up in Malden.
  My father always said: Well, Lawrence is just this great city. So I 
went up to ring the doorbell at 88 Phillips Street in Lawrence, in the 
shadow of the old south mill. It is a triple decker; that is, a three-
family home, stacked one on top of the other. My father grew up on the 
first floor of 88 Phillips, with five brothers and sisters and a mother 
and father in this very tiny space.
  I rang the doorbell to see who lived there now, and the door opened. 
It was a Dominican family with their children. The accents were 
different, but the aspirations are just the same for that family as it 
existed for the Markeys.
  Now, my father graduated from Lawrence High School, from the 
vocational program, and his son is a U.S. Senator from the State of 
Massachusetts. That was a dream that my father had or his father and 
mother had to be here in America and to give opportunities, not so much 
for themselves but for the next generation.
  Well, that is what we are talking about. We are talking about these 
young people whose parents brought them here to give them a better 
chance, but the children didn't have a choice in whether or not they 
would come here. They saw the promise that hard work, education, and 
opportunity--helped a little bit by the government--worked for the 
people.
  So that is really what we are talking about, and that is why I 
believe it is a new level of inhumanity for President Trump to betray 
the foundational values of this Nation by repealing DACA. He is no 
better than Pontius Pilate by having Attorney General Jeff Sessions 
make the announcement yesterday. President Trump is providing 
absolutely no leadership for his party or the American people on an 
issue that even he says is an important one, and I can only hope that 
he recognizes and understands the cruelty that repealing DACA will 
inflict on innocent young families, innocent young people all across 
this country.
  So if President Trump wants to take away these protections, then, 
Congress must act. The ball is in the court of the Republican 
leadership in the House and in the Senate. Speaker Paul Ryan and Leader 
Mitch McConnell can either listen to a growing chorus of their own 
colleagues and to the business leaders and CEOs--including Apple, 
Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook, General Motors--and to academic leaders 
and countless college and university presidents who all support DACA, 
or they can side with the forces of intolerance and injustice.
  Congress should pass the Dream Act so that individuals who were 
brought here at a young age can earn citizenship by serving in the 
military or pursing higher education.
  Ultimately, the House of Representatives must also debate and vote on 
comprehensive immigration reform. I have long supported a pathway to 
citizenship for the 11 million immigrants who are living here in the 
shadows.
  We are the United States of America. We are a nation of immigrants. 
We are called on not simply to tolerate but to celebrate our immigrant 
communities, to understand not only the need but the value of our 
immigrant communities, to embrace not just the differences but the 
diversity of our immigrant communities.
  President Franklin Delano Roosevelt said: ``Remember, remember always 
that all of us, and you and I especially, are descended from immigrants 
and revolutionists.'' No one knows that better than the Commonwealth of 
Massachusetts. We have always believed that no matter who you are or 
where you come from, you can achieve the American dream. We recognize 
that our economy and our security are stronger because of the immigrant 
families who have enriched our Nation since its founding.
  That is why this decision from the Trump administration cannot stand. 
We will not let it. With Congress now back in session, Republicans 
should prepare to have a historic debate--a debate about the fairness 
that we should extend to all of these young people. There are going to 
be voices, calls, marches, and protests all demanding protections for 
these innocent Dreamers.
  I pledge my support to the 800,000 Dreamers all across our country, 
and I will not stop fighting for them. We will not stop fighting for 
them. Millions of people are going to stand up. I believe that the 
American dream for all of these young people is achievable, and it must 
be here in the Senate that the realization of that dream begins.
  Thank you, Mr. President.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon.
  Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I want you to imagine for a moment that 
you are an 11-year-old child. Your mother tells you to pack some things 
because you are going on a trip. So you pick out four or five of your 
favorite toys and you put them into a backpack. You put in a bottle of 
water and some rosary beads as well.
  You walk out through the door of your home into the night with your 
mom. You don't know what is going on. You are just doing what you were 
told. You hold your mother's hand, and you walk in silence.
  Soon you are walking with 20 others through the Mexican desert. You 
are tired and hungry and carrying everything that matters to you on 
your back. The sweat is pouring off. The prickly bushes scrape your 
body. You are overcome by dehydration, and you faint.
  Someone comes to your aid. They give you some water from their 
canteen. You come to and you keep going. Eventually, on this journey, 
you make it into the United States of America, into Arizona.
  Then, out of the blue, the years pass and you grow up. Fourteen years 
pass and now you are 25 years old. You have spent more than half your 
life in the United States of America. You are studying and going to 
college to get your degree in economics or working full time at the 
local bank to save money.
  You have made friends and built a life for yourself, and things are 
going well. Then, all of a sudden, your future--everything you had 
planned for in life--is thrown into doubt. The President of the United 
States has just said that he views you as a criminal because of the 
decision your mother made well more than a decade before. Just remember 
what you did. You followed what your mom said: Put some things into a 
backpack, and we are going out into the night.
  It doesn't matter to President Trump that you had no choice in that 
decision. It doesn't matter to him all you have had to overcome. It 
doesn't matter how you have invested so seriously in being a productive 
part of your community. In the eyes of the President of the United 
States, you are a criminal.
  It really shouldn't be too hard to imagine that story because the 
story close to that is the story of some 800,000 people living in the 
United States--young men and women who came here as children, having 
nothing to do with the decision themselves.

[[Page 12901]]

  This particular story that I have read to you is the true story of an 
Oregonian. It is a story that belongs to Hugo, one of 11,000 Dreamers 
living in Oregon today. Like the hundreds of thousands of others 
brought to this country as children through no fault of their own, 
Hugo's future was thrown into complete chaos by the President--thrown 
into chaos when Attorney General Sessions, acting on orders from 
President Trump, announced the cruel and heartless decision to end the 
Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Program, or the DACA Program. We 
know this program best as a program for Dreamers, those young men and 
women who are seeking to do everything they can to have productive 
lives, to contribute to their community, to establish a financial 
foundation, and to contribute back to America--those young men and 
women who know no other nation, who speak no other language, who 
contribute to society, and who are American in every way that matters. 
But that is not the viewpoint President Trump has, and so we in the 
Senate have to act.
  The United States is and always has been a nation of immigrants. 
Unless one is a Native American, each of us--every one of us--is either 
an immigrant or descended from immigrants who were fleeing famine, 
immigrants who were fleeing political persecution, immigrants who were 
fleeing religious persecution, immigrants who were simply seeking a 
better life, greater opportunity, greater freedom for their family. 
That is the foundation on which America has been based.
  Our Founding Fathers recognized just how vital immigration was to the 
growth and strength of our budding Nation. After all, it was James 
Madison, the author of our Constitution and our fourth President, who 
declared during the Constitutional Convention that ``America was 
indebted to immigration for her settlement and prosperity.'' He 
continued: ``That part of America which had encouraged immigration most 
has advanced most rapidly. . . .''
  Now, we have always had debates and discussions about immigration. At 
times, we have been shortsighted in banning or limiting one group or 
another in a generation only to turn around and welcome them with open 
arms in the next generation. Time and again, we have overcome our 
prejudices. We have remained true to the loving and compassionate 
Nation we are, a Nation that has welcomed others to our shores.
  If we want to know the true nature of our country, we only need to 
look to the Statute of Liberty, where there, below the feet of Lady 
Liberty, are inscribed those words: ``Give me your tired, your poor, 
your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.'' I think that line from 
the poet Emma Lazarus resonates so powerfully because we know that so 
many of our lives are connected through our parents, grandparents, and 
great grandparents to that experience of coming to America's shores 
poor and tired and yearning to breathe free.
  Generation after generation of immigrants saw Lady Liberty, this 
welcoming symbol of freedom and opportunity, as their first glimpse of 
America. It has inspired hope and given people across the world 
permission to dream.
  But if we end DACA, if we crush the dreams of these young men and 
women, we might as well take away those words off of the pedestal of 
Lady Liberty because we will no longer be that compassionate Nation. We 
will no longer be that welcoming Nation that has played such an 
instrumental role in each of our histories.
  I can't think of anything more damaging to the well-being or the 
future of our great Nation because we know that when people come here 
and add their distinctive cultures, beliefs, and backgrounds to the 
melting pot of America, we become a stronger country and a stronger 
people.
  This is especially true of our Dreamers, the 800,000 men and women 
for whom America is the only home they know, the 800,000 who came here 
as young children, the 800,000 who went to school here and made their 
friends here and grew up here and invested in creating a future here, 
the young men and women whom we promised, if they came out of the 
shadows, if they did everything else right, if they obeyed the laws and 
met the rigorous requirements asked of them, that we would protect and 
look after them in this Dreamer Program--people such as Hugo Nicolas, 
whose story I just shared, and Zaira Flores, another Dreamer who came 
to America as a child who grew up in this country and is now giving 
back to our country.
  Zaira came when she was just 6 years old. Her younger brother was in 
need of medical attention, and he couldn't get that medical attention 
back home in Mexico, but he got it here in America. He underwent years 
of treatment and surgery, and thereupon Zaira's family decided that 
this was their home. Two decades have passed. Two decades have passed, 
and now 26-year-old Zaira Flores works for the State of Oregon. She is 
a bilingual counselor and volunteer coordinator who assesses social 
services and disability programs for older adults. Zaira didn't make 
the decision to come here or to stay here. She didn't have a say in the 
matter. She doesn't remember her life back in Mexico.
  Attorney General Sessions and President Trump may say she is a 
criminal, but I say she is a contributing member of Oregon who has done 
everything right to build a solid life, a contributing member to our 
country, and we need to pass the Dream Act to make sure she can 
continue to make these substantial contributions. It is the only right 
thing to do for her, but it is also the right thing to do for our 
community, for Zaira and Hugo and the hundreds of thousands of 
talented, driven young men and women just like them who embody the 
American dream. They have risen up from humble beginnings. They have 
overcome adversity to thrive. Aren't these exactly the kinds of 
individuals we want in our Nation? We ought to be celebrating these 
Dreamers for all they are doing, not punishing them for choices made by 
their parents.
  The eviction of 800,000 Dreamers just doesn't hurt them, it doesn't 
just punish them, it doesn't just damage their families, it hurts all 
of us because as punishing as it would be to send Dreamers back to 
countries they have never known, all of us will pay a price if this is 
allowed to happen. We will pay the price economically in the estimated 
$460 billion the economy would lose over the next 10 years, and we 
would pay the price morally as our Nation's standing as a beacon of 
hope and opportunity is tarnished in the eyes of the world.
  If President Trump will not do the right thing, if he is willing to 
turn his back on these 800,000 young men and women, then it is up to 
all of us in Congress to stand up for them. It is what many of my 
Republican colleagues, both here in the Senate and over in the House, 
have said they want to accomplish, including Speaker Ryan and Majority 
Leader McConnell. It is what President Trump's friends in the business 
sector have said they want. Just this past weekend, more than 400 
industry leaders signed a letter pledging their support for DACA and 
urging the President to continue it. It is what nearly three-quarters 
of the American people say they want to see happen in the most recent 
polls.
  So let's listen to our business leaders, let's listen to our 
colleagues on both sides of the aisle, let's listen to the American 
people, let's listen to our hearts and our minds on this issue before 
us, and let's act expeditiously--not in 6 months, with days to spare 
before President Trump's clock runs out. Let's act within 6 days. Let's 
act quickly because for every single day that passes now, these 
individuals and their extended families are in a whirl of pain and 
uncertainty. That simply isn't right. Let's protect these Dreamers who 
are here through no fault of their own, who have contributed an 
enormous amount to our country, and who are American in every single 
way that matters.
  To paraphrase President Madison, we are a nation that is indebted to 
immigration for our incredible success. We cannot--we must not renege 
on that debt by turning our backs on the Dreamers. It would undermine 
our Nation's moral standing. It would hurt

[[Page 12902]]

our economy. It is cruel. It is mean. It is absolutely just plain 
wrong. Let's get that bill on this floor and let's pass it 
expeditiously.
  Thank you.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I think I will shock nobody by telling 
the Chair that I disagree with almost every policy President Trump has 
brought forth.
  No, I do not believe that we should throw 23 million Americans off of 
health insurance and give hundreds of billions of dollars in tax breaks 
to the top 2 percent. No. I happen to believe that at a time of massive 
income and wealth inequality, it is high time for the wealthiest people 
in this country and for large, profitable corporations to start paying 
their fair share of taxes.
  No, I do not believe, as President Trump does, that we should cut 
Pell grants and food stamps and afterschool programs and Medicaid and 
nutrition programs for pregnant women and heating assistance programs. 
I believe that in the wealthiest country in the history of the world, 
we must protect those who are the most vulnerable.
  No, I do not believe, as President Trump does, that climate change is 
a hoax. I believe it is the greatest environmental crisis facing our 
planet and that it is already causing devastating harm throughout our 
Nation and throughout the world and on and on it goes.
  There is very little in public policy on which I agree with the 
President, but there is one area in which my disagreement with 
President Trump goes much deeper than public policy. The truth is, 
every President in recent history, including conservative Presidents 
like George W. Bush and liberals like Barack Obama, has understood that 
one of the prime functions of being President of the United States is 
to bring the people of our country together, whether you are Black or 
whether you are White or whether you are Latino or whether you are 
Asian American or whether you are Native American. Every President has 
instinctively understood that one of the prime responsibilities of a 
President is to bring our people together as proud Americans.
  Unfortunately and tragically, this is something Donald Trump does not 
understand. At a time when this country faces so many serious crises, 
whether it is the high cost of healthcare, whether it is climate 
change, whether it is the proliferation of low-wage jobs and a 
starvation minimum wage, whether it is the huge national debt we face, 
whether it is inadequate educational opportunities, whether it is a 
broken criminal justice system, instead of bringing our people together 
to address those important issues and trying to solve them, what this 
President is doing, uniquely in modern history, is trying to divide us 
up by the color of our skin, by our sexual orientation, by the country 
we were born in, by our religion.
  Instead of bringing us together to solve the many problems we face as 
a people, he is trying to divide us up in order to gain political 
support from a segment of our population. He is trying to divide us up 
based on the color of our skin, which is what his attacks on 
affirmative action are all about. He is trying to divide us up based on 
religion, which is what his Muslim ban is all about. We are not 
supposed to like Muslims. He is trying to divide us up based on sexual 
orientation, which is what his attacks on transgender individuals 
serving in the military is about. We are supposed to hate transgender 
people and discriminate against them, and he is trying to divide us up 
based on our country of origin and our immigration status.
  In my view, Trump's decision to end the DACA Program for some 800,000 
young people is the cruelest and most ugly Presidential act in the 
modern history of this country. I cannot think of one single act which 
is uglier and more cruel.
  These are 800,000 young people--often exemplary young people--the 
kind of kids we are proud of. These are kids who know this country--the 
United States of America--as their only home. In fact, many of these 
young people know English as their only language. These are young 
people who today are in college, they are in law school, they are in 
medical school, and they are proudly serving in the U.S. military.
  What this President has done is to take away the legal status by 
which these young people can work and find jobs, go to school, and live 
without fear. If they don't have that legal status, it means that 
anytime they walk down the street, they are frightened they could be 
arrested and deported from this country and separated from their 
families.
  This act, on the part of Donald Trump, is an abomination, and 
Congress must reject Trump's action and pass DACA into law.
  This is exactly what the American people want us to do. A recent 
poll--I think it came out yesterday--done by Morning Consult and 
Politico reports that 76 percent of those who were polled said the 
government should allow immigrants brought to the United States 
illegally as children to remain here--76 percent. Eighty-four percent 
of Democrats support the Dreamers having legal status, while 69 percent 
of Republicans surveyed also favor such a policy.
  In another poll in April of 2017, 73 percent of Trump supporters said 
Dreamers should be allowed to stay in the United States and become 
legal residents. In other words--and I say this to the young people who 
are in DACA--please do not think for one moment that you are being 
deserted by the people of this country. You are not. You are being 
attacked by a President of the United States who chooses to divide us 
up, and you are today's victims. Tomorrow it may well be another 
minority group.
  So this is a pivotal moment in American history, and we need to tell 
those young people that we will not see their legal status removed. We 
will not see them thrown out of the only country they have ever known. 
We need strong, bipartisan support to pass the Dream Act, and I hope we 
will do that as soon as possible.
  Thank you, Mr. President.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Gardner). The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. GARDNER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Scott). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.

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