Executive Calendar
Floor Speech
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Mr. CRUZ. Mr. President, I rise in support of the brave men and women of our Immigration Customs Enforcement agency. These are law enforcement officers who risk their lives every day to keep this country safe.
Rising in support of law enforcement used to be a bipartisan issue. It used to be an issue that brought us together, that unified us. Sadly, as we have seen in the preceding minutes, that is no longer the case.
I rise today to urge my Democratic colleagues to say no to the reckless and radical voices within their party that are pulling their party so far out of the mainstream and so far out of touch with the American people that it is barely recognizable. For a long time, when Democrats were debating immigration issues, they used to say ``Well, of course, we support enforcing the laws,'' almost as an obligatory throwaway. Instead, we are here today, debating the abolishing of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, the exact antithesis of where most congressional Democrats claimed they were. All of this started because a few weeks ago, a longtime Democratic incumbent, a Member of the House, found himself beaten in a primary in New York State by an avowed socialist. As a result, many of my colleagues on the Democratic side of the aisle are suddenly terrified of their left flank. Because her campaign focused on abolishing ICE--abolishing the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, more incumbent Democrats have said that they, too, are open to abolishing ICE.
I call on this body to pull back from the abyss. On immigration there are areas of good-faith disagreement that this body has debated and will continue to debate. I have long characterized my views on immigration as being able to be summed up in four words: legal, good; illegal, bad. I think the vast majority of Texans and the vast majority of Americans agree with that. There are a host of immigration policies that ought to be commonsense bipartisan policies.
The Presiding Officer has shown great leadership in fighting against sanctuary cities, fighting against jurisdictions that defy Federal immigration law and that release violent criminals without being willing to turn them over to immigration officials. Those violent criminals, in turn, go on far too often to commit even more violent crimes.
I am the author of Kate's Law, a commonsense proposal which says that aggravated felons who repeatedly enter the country illegally should face a mandatory minimum prison sentence. It was named for Kate Steinle, a beautiful young woman, 28 years old, murdered on a California pier by an illegal immigrant who had been deported over and over and over again and had been in and out of jail over and over and over again and had multiple felony convictions. Yet, because San Francisco is a sanctuary city, they released him yet again, and he committed murder.
Kate Steinle would be alive if we could come together on Kate's Law, if we could come together on ending sanctuary cities. Yet it turns out that in today's hyperpolarized world, even that is not extreme enough for the modern Democratic Party. Multiple leaders of their party are advocating abolishing the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.
What does ICE do? ICE men and women--I have met with a great many of them in my home State of Texas. I have met with a great many Border Patrol agents. I have joined them on their midnight muster. I have gone out on patrol with them as they risk their lives securing our border and risk their lives keeping us safe in the interior.
Criminal aliens arrested by ICE in fiscal year 2017 were responsible for more than 76,000 dangerous drug offenses; yet many Democrats are saying: Abolish their role. They were responsible for over 48,000 assault offenses. They were responsible for over 11,000 weapons offenses. They were responsible for over 5,000 sexual assault offenses. They were responsible for over 2,000 kidnapping offenses, and they were responsible for over 1,800 homicide offenses.
Yet the approach of the modern Democratic Party is not to find a reasonable, commonsense common ground. It is, instead, to say: Abolish the agency that has arrested criminals responsible for over 1,800 murders.
When it comes to drugs--the volume they are dealing with in fighting the narcotics traffickers--ICE in fiscal year 2017 seized more than 980,000 pounds of narcotics. ICE seized approximately 2,370 pounds of fentanyl, approximately 6,967 pounds of heroin. Yet, today, too many elected Democrats are afraid that they, too, might face a socialist primary and that their far left is so angry, hates President Trump so much, that their position is not that we should enforce the immigration laws; their position is not that they will stand with law enforcement. Their position has become to abolish the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, the agency charged with enforcing our immigration laws.
This is not a reasonable position and a public policy debate upon which reasonable minds might differ. There are many of those in the immigration world. This is not one of them. This is a radical and reckless position.
Yet, this resolution--by the way, this resolution says not a word about the issue of family separation. We have heard some of the speeches from my Democratic colleagues focused on family separation. I can state that every Member of this body, Democrat and Republican, agrees that families should not be separated.
Indeed, I have introduced legislation to prohibit family separation, to ensure that children stay with their parents--the best place for a kid is with his or her mom or dad--but to do so in a way that also respects the rule of law, that doesn't return to the failed policy of catch-and-release that only encourages more and more illegal immigration, that only puts more and more children--little boys and girls--in a position of being physically and sexually assaulted by human traffickers.
No one who cares about humanity, no one who cares about compassion should want to incentivize putting little children in the control of global, transnational drug cartels and human traffickers.
For the past several weeks, I have been negotiating with Democratic Members of this body, trying to see if we could reach common ground to unite and say that we will not separate families, but at the same time, we will respect the rule of law and not return to catch-and-release in a way that incentivizes illegal immigration.
We will find out if any Democrats are willing to find common ground. All 100 could join together on ending family release and ending it today, but too many on the Democratic side want to condition ending family release on essentially mandating the release of every illegal alien in custody--those apprehended with children, mandating their release. That is not a reasonable position. That is not a position the American people support, and, critically, this resolution before the Senate says not a word about it.
This resolution does not address that question. Instead, this resolution says that those ICE agents--the ICE agents who right now may be kicking down the door on a meth house and facing violent drug lords, firing weapons at them, risking their lives to keep us safe--we stand with those law enforcement agencies, even if we may disagree on the parameters of illegal immigration.
I am one who believes we should welcome and embrace legal immigrants--those who follow the rules and wait in line like my father in 1957, when he came as an immigrant from Cuba seeking freedom. Those are debates we can have.
We ought to be coming together in the spirit of bipartisan agreement to stand with law enforcement. I call upon the responsible members of the Democratic Party--and, surely, there must be some left. Surely, in the Democratic Party, there are some voices that are willing to stand up to the reckless and radical left and say: No, we should not abolish the agency charged with enforcing our immigration laws, charged with protecting us from vicious and violent criminals.
The fact that Senate Democrats are today objecting to this resolution shows just how captive they are to the fury that rages against President Trump.
Everyone in this Chamber has, at one time or another, had something the President has said or done that we all disagreed with. That is part of the political process, but the rage and fury on the far left is a qualitatively different matter. It is a rage that is demanding Democrats to go after, to undercut, to attack law enforcement agents who keep us safe. That is a mistake. It is a disservice to this institution. It is a disservice to the legacy of many distinguished Senators and a disservice to the American people and the Constitution that we are sworn to protect.
I urge this body to pass this commonsense resolution, standing with law enforcement, enforcing our borders, and stopping violent criminals, murderers, kidnappers, and rapists that ICE arrests every year. Abolishing law enforcement puts all of us at peril. I call upon my Democratic colleagues to reject that radical and reckless position.
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