Unanimous Consent Request--S. 884

Floor Speech

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Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, we face a challenge at the border; there is no question about it.

It really strikes me as strange--maybe unusual--for Members of the Senate from the other side of the aisle to come and yearn for those wonderful days of the Trump administration when it came to the issue of immigration and border policy.

Remember when we had the longest government shutdown in history, paralyzing immigration courts and other Agencies? It was, of course, a shutdown that was sanctioned by the President of the United States over his immigration demands.

Under President Trump, the Department of Homeland Security, incidentally, experienced unprecedented leadership problems. The Department of Homeland Security lurched from one Secretary or Acting Secretary to the next. Listen to this: There were six different Secretaries in that Agency in 4 years, only two Senate-confirmed--more Agency heads in the last 4 years under President Trump than in the 13- year history of the Department of Homeland Security prior to President Trump. They couldn't keep anybody on the job. They quit. They were fired. Nobody could agree with this President's bizarre ideas on what to do with immigration. Are we longing for a return to those days?

President Trump unlawfully diverted billions of dollars in Department of Defense funds to build a wasteful, ineffective border wall, which was supposed to be paid for by the Mexicans, if I remember, and then he created a humanitarian crisis at the border with a policy known as zero tolerance--zero tolerance.

I remember when Attorney General Sessions came before the American people and actually quoted the Bible to justify the forcible removal of infants, toddlers, and children from their parents' arms. Over 2,200 children were physically separated from their parents as part of the zero tolerance policy.

It wasn't until a Federal court judge in Southern California finally said to the Trump administration, ``I demand that you account for these children, and I demand that you reunite them with their parents'' that they set out to do it. Today, years later, years after zero tolerance, there are still hundreds of children separated at that time who have never been reunited with their parents.

Do we want to return to those wonderful days of the Trump administration immigration policy? I don't think so. Children in cages, children lost, adrift on the bureaucratic sea, doesn't speak well of America's values.

President Trump tried to end asylum protections for children and other vulnerable migrants. He cut aid to Central America, directly harming efforts to fight poverty and violence in the region. More refugees were driven to our border because the President shut down legal avenues for immigration and blocked all assistance to stabilize the Northern Triangle countries, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras.

Now comes the Senator from Utah--and he and I have worked on legislation together in the past. I know that we can find bipartisan solutions. I don't think this approach is one of them, but perhaps it is the beginning of a conversation.

The President's former Republican allies in Congress claim that the real cause, the real problem behind immigration policy is humanitarian protection for children. They claim that we can protect children by overturning these humanitarian protections, either that have been entered into in a consent decree in court or by law, and subjecting children at the border to indefinite detention and deportation without adequate due process. But there is no evidence that this will deter desperate families from fleeing to our border.

There is one thing the Senator from Utah and I certainly agree on. Many of these children and families are being horribly, horribly exploited by coyotes and kidnappers and very bad people. Many of these people and their children are suffering in unimaginable ways because of this.

I renew the plea that has been given across Central America by this administration: Don't send your people to our border. Don't send your children to our border.

It is not something we should encourage under the circumstances. It has to be orderly, and this is not in many respects.

There is no evidence that ending this humanitarian protection for children will deter desperate families fleeing to our border.

The bill before us today includes no assurances that children will be humanely treated or that they will be safe from violence once they are deported. This notion that once these children come across the border or are taken into custody by the U.S. Government, that sometime--2 weeks, 4 weeks, 6 weeks--later they are turned loose again does not dispense our moral obligation. We want these children to be safe, and that is what the laws are, the Flores decision and others.

This bill does nothing to address root causes that are causing migrants to flee the Northern Triangle in record numbers. If people were migrating because of so-called legal loopholes, they would be coming to our southern border from all over the region.

Instead, the vast majority come from three countries: Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala. Those countries have the highest homicide rates, some of them, in the world, and girls face a constant threat of sexual violence with little prosecution from local authorities. We are doing desperate things because of the desperate situations in these countries.

We are told by the Senator that we have to overturn the bipartisan Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, which passed by unanimous consent in the Senate and was signed into law by Republican President George W. Bush. But the TVPRA ensures that the United States meets its international obligations to protect unaccompanied children seeking safe haven in our country. It was a response to bipartisan concern that children apprehended by the Border Patrol were being returned to countries where they might be exploited even more.

Under TVPRA, unaccompanied children from the Northern Triangle are transferred to the Department of Health and Human Services and placed in deportation proceedings, which gives them a chance to finally make their case to a judge.

Consider Samuel and Amelie, siblings ages 3 and 6, from Honduras. They arrived in the United States traumatized, ages 3 and 6. They said nothing--silent. After being transferred to HHS, Amelie revealed that both children had been raped by drug cartel members. Without TVPRA protection, Samuel and Amelie would have been returned to Honduras and almost certain further exploitation.

Democrats are trying to work on a bipartisan repair of this immigration system. It is long overdue.

In 2019, after President Trump finally agreed to end the longest government shutdown in history, Congress passed an omnibus appropriations bill that included $414 million for humanitarian assistance at the border and then passed an emergency supplemental for $4.6 billion of additional funding to alleviate overcrowding in detention facilities.

In 2018, Senate Democrats supported a bipartisan agreement, including robust border security funding and dozens of provisions to strengthen border security, but President Trump threatened to veto it and, instead, pushed for his hardline plan with the largest cut in legal immigration in almost a century.

When it comes to refugees, after World War II, when the United States sadly turned away hundreds and thousands of ultimate victims of the Holocaust and would not accept their refugee status, we set out to prove to the world that we had learned a valuable lesson, and we led the world in offering refugee status until President Trump, who brought the numbers down to record low levels. That does not speak well for the United States, or it shouldn't be a source of pride for anyone reflecting this administration.

We need comprehensive immigration reform. I support it. Eight years ago, in 2013, I was part of the Gang of 8, a bipartisan group of four Republican and four Democratic Senators. We produced comprehensive immigration reform legislation that passed the Senate 68 to 32. The Senator from Utah voted against it. Unfortunately, Republicans who controlled the House of Representatives refused to consider it.

So here is my invitation to the Senator from Utah and to everyone else interested. Let us sit down again and write that bill. Let's do it in a fashion that really does bring reform to our system.

I just talked at a bipartisan meeting on the subject earlier. One of the Senators from a border State said: People in my State don't expect the Federal Government to do anything because it has been so many years since they have done anything.

It is time for us to prove them wrong. We have the authority. We have the opportunity. We have the challenge.

Making this sort of request on the floor, I know, is symbolic, but I have to say that it is not the symbolism we should follow, and I object.

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