Nominations

Floor Speech

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Mr. HEINRICH. Mr. President, earlier today, we were asked to vote on the confirmation of Chad Wolf to serve as the Under Secretary for Strategy, Policy, and Plans at the Department of Homeland Security. Mr. Wolf has been serving in that role on an acting basis since February.

Because of the way the Trump administration functions, or fails to function, what we were really being asked to do today was to confirm Mr. Wolf to a position so the President can then promote him to Acting DHS Secretary. This comes on top of most appointed positions at the agency going unfilled or only filled with similarly temporary acting roles.

Before we all throw our hands up in the air and simply add this vote to the growing list of broken norms and incompetent actions on the part of the Trump White House, I would like us to consider what is at stake in this particular case. I beg us to take seriously the human toll that has been incurred because of this administration's willful chaos at the Department of Homeland Security.

The Department of Homeland Security is the Nation's third largest Federal agency, behind only the Pentagon and the VA. The agency oversees disaster relief, transportation safety, counterterrorism, and immigration and border security. According to a report in the Washington Post, Mr. Wolf is the favored pick of senior Trump adviser Stephen Miller to take over as Acting Homeland Security Secretary. That should tell us about everything we need to know.

Stephen Miller has been the lead architect of the White House's immoral and anti-immigration policies over the last 3 years. The Senate should have taken this vote as a reason to examine how this administration has spent the last 3 years flouting our Nation's laws and our Nation's values through its intentional chaos at the Department of Homeland Security.

We should do our jobs and give an honest accounting of this administration's inhumane and, frankly, ineffective policies--policies, it should be said, that Mr. Wolf has been right in the middle of each step of the way. Instead, the Senate voted to confirm Mr. Wolf in this sham process to a position we weren't even sure he will serve in. This is shameful.

Now that the Senate has confirmed Mr. Wolf to the Under Secretary position and as we anticipate Mr. Trump moving him into the Acting Secretary role, I ask my colleagues to please consider his record. We know Mr. Wolf played a central role in authoring and implementing the family separation policy. We don't fully understand how much he did to implement President Trump's other harmful immigration policies because the Department of Homeland Security has stonewalled and refused to provide key documents to the Senate on his tenure before we took the vote this morning.

However, given his major role with Secretary Nielsen, it seems safe to assume that Mr. Wolf was involved in many of the administration's policy failures. Under these policies, thousands of children, as young as infants and toddlers, arriving at our Nation's southern border have been separated from their families. We have seen migrant families and children held in appalling, overcrowded, some say prisonlike--I would say prison facilities--immigration detention facilities like those in Clint, TX, that we saw in the media.

The Trump administration has also throttled major ports of entry where refugees present themselves for asylum as is actually dictated by current U.S. law. This has resulted in huge groups going instead to remote and dangerous stretches of the southern border. We have tragically seen that result in the deaths of several children in New Mexico near some of our remote ports of entry that lack even the most basic medical infrastructure.

We have seen President Trump play politics with the lives of thousands of refugees and asylum seekers, mothers, fathers, and children who are desperately seeking refuge and the prospect of a better life in this country.

We have seen the President even go so far as shutting down the government and stealing billions of dollars of congressionally appropriated funds from the military to pay for his wasteful and candidly ineffective border wall.

Finally, President Trump's decision to terminate the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Program, or DACA, has thrown Dreamers across this country deep into fear and uncertainty. The stakes of that decision have been shown in oral arguments before the Supreme Court this very week.

Dreamers are among our best and brightest--our best and brightest students, teachers, and even veterans. They only know this Nation as their home in many cases, and today I am meeting with a Dreamer named Samuel, who lives in Las Cruces, NM.

Samuel came to the United States from Mexico with his family when he was 11 years old. He has called Las Cruces his hometown for the last 13 years. As a DACA recipient, Samuel was able to study accounting at New Mexico State University and help provide for his family.

Dreamers like Samuel want to give back to their communities and the only Nation they know as home. They are American in every way except on paper, and because of President Trump, Dreamers like Samuel face a deeply fearful future.

Whenever we debate immigration, frankly, it becomes a little personal for me, and that is because, like most--all of us in this Nation of immigrants--my family's story in America began with a search for a better life. My father came to the United States with his family from Germany as a young boy. They were fleeing the government of a racist, populist dictator who was first elected democratically and then used race and scapegoating to cement his grip on power. I always wonder how different my own life would be if America had turned my father away or separated him from his family.

This is not some abstract question for the mothers, fathers, and children who are desperately seeking refuge and the prospect of a better life in America today. I know that so many Americans watching this administration's immigration policies know in their hearts what America truly stands for as a nation built by many generations of immigrants like my father. That includes local officials, first responders, and volunteers in communities like Deming, Las Cruces, and Albuquerque, NM, who over the last year provided shelter, food, and help to asylum seekers who had nowhere else to turn. It includes the thousands of Americans who marched in the streets and demanded an end to family separation, and it includes millions of Americans who want our leaders in Washington to finally affirm the incredible value that immigrants provide for our country.

I want all of you to know that I stand with you. You are on the right and just side of history.

I will keep calling on us to hold this administration accountable to our American values, and I will keep calling on Congress to uphold our end of the bargain and finally act to reform our broken immigration system. That should start by passing the Dream Act.

We also need to address the root causes of migration from Central America, including extreme poverty, criminal gangs, and violence. We must make smart investments in real border security and economic development in our border communities. We need to provide the necessary medical and humanitarian resources to our border region, particularly for the rugged, back-country terrain we have in my State.

I will never stop fighting for policies that respect the dignity of immigrants, recognize the real needs of our vibrant border communities, and live up to our true American values.

Unfortunately, I don't think we will ever have a productive path forward on any of these urgent matters with this President and his administration. That is true no matter who President Trump ultimately shuffles into the role of Acting Homeland Security Secretary, but it is especially true if the President chooses Chad Wolf.

When Senator Rosen questioned Mr. Wolf in the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee about the role he played in family separation and other cruel immigration policies, Mr. Wolf said: ``My job wasn't to determine if it was the right or wrong policy.'' In other words, folks, he was just following orders.

I think it is clear that the Trump administration has shown an appalling disregard for basic human dignity. Now the Senate has confirmed someone who will simply rubberstamp the continued failures of this administration.

I should also note that the current pending vote on the floor is for a judicial nominee, Steven Menashi, who has also played a role in the administration's shameful immigration policies. As a counsel in the Trump administration, Mr. Menashi has acknowledged that he advised Stephen Miller on immigration policy, and he has a long record of opposing the basic human and civil rights of people of color, women, LGBTQ Americans, and immigrants.

As the general counsel at the Department of Education under Betsy DeVos, he played a leading role in trying to deny debt relief to students defrauded by for-profit colleges.

I can't believe that we as the Senate can allow these types of appointments to keep going forward. We should not let this go on. This is not who we are as a country, and this is not the America that I know and love.

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