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Floor Speech

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Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, there is a pamphlet that is circulated to tourists and students alike entitled ``How Laws Are Made,'' and it tells the basic process under our Federal Constitution for enacting legislation. It talks about committee hearings; it talks about votes in committee, votes on the floor--in the Senate, then in the House; conference committees, agreements, a lot of other votes. Finally, the measure is sent to the President, if it is successful, for his signature or his veto. That is the ordinary process.

You will not see what is happening on this floor of the Senate in the pamphlet to describe how laws are made. It is such an unusual thing. Here we are in the Senate, basically trying to say: I ask unanimous consent to ignore the Constitution as written and the laws as described and go ahead and pass this bill anyway.

Well, you might say there are times when that is needed--and it is-- but when it comes to the issue of immigration, there is a much broader consideration.

The fact of the matter is, it has been almost 35 years since we have passed an immigration reform bill--35 years. I don't know how many times the Senator from Utah has voted for an immigration bill--perhaps not--but the point is, we have tried and can't bring the measure to the floor. There is resistance and objection, primarily from the Republican side of the aisle, for any type of comprehensive reform.

But there comes a time when there is a glimmer of hope. Once in a while, something happens around here, and you think things are going to be different. That happened not that long ago, a few months back.

We had a conservative Republican Senator from Oklahoma named James Lankford. James and I disagree on so many issues, but I respect him so very much when it comes to his legislative commitment. He sat down with Chris Murphy, a Democratic Senator from the State of Connecticut, and they said: Can we, Republican and Democrat together, come up with a measure that won't solve every problem with immigration, but at least it will move us forward?

What are we going to include in that?

Well, we are going to include provisions that dictate what happens when someone presents himself to the border: who would be considered in a fast fashion and who would not be.

We are going to put more Border Patrol agents on the border. They wrote a provision that the Border Patrol agents' union--thousands of men and women who risk their lives--endorsed.

Well, what are we going to do about fentanyl and narcotics that are coming into the United States as well? They added more provisions and then more law enforcement to stop the flow of narcotics.

There were provisions in that bill which I didn't like, but by and large, I had to say that was a good bill. It really was a bipartisan effort to solve some of the major problems we have.

Some on the Republican side said: Unless you pass this bipartisan bill, we are not going to allow other business to occur.

It was a pretty serious showdown moment. So we were prepared to do it. A lot of us were prepared to vote for this measure. It was bipartisan, it made real progress, and it really addressed the flow of people coming across the border.

What happened next is important. What happened next is one person stepped up and said: Stop. That person was Donald Trump, the former President of the United States. He said: I don't want this bipartisan measure that Senator Lankford and Senator Murphy have crafted to pass in the Senate.

Critics said: Wait a minute, former President. If we don't do this, we won't do anything. We won't be able to address this measure significantly or constructively before the next election.

He said: So be it. Blame it on me, Donald Trump said. Kill this bill.

The word went out on the Republican side: Stop where you are. No measure is to pass, not even this bipartisan measure.

When it turned out that only a handful of Republicans were willing to defy Donald Trump, the measure died. That was the end of it.

You have to ask yourself, did we miss an opportunity there? The answer is, we certainly did--a bipartisan opportunity to do something constructive. And the decision was made by Donald Trump that he would rather have this issue going into the election in 2024 than to have any solution, bipartisan solution, which might inure to the credit of the Democrats as well as the Republicans. That was the end of the conversation.

So we find ourselves on the floor today with a measure that is being suggested on it by unanimous consent that, of course, did not go through committee and has not been reviewed, and it unfortunately has some serious flaws. Instead, this bill targets the most vulnerable people seeking safety and protection in the United States: children traveling without a parent or guardian, families with minor children, and asylum seekers fleeing persecution.

The bill that is before us--the unanimous consent request--would strip away protections for unaccompanied children. It would deport many of them back into the hands of smugglers, keep others in detention for up to a month, and keep them separated from adults who could care for them. This bill would require families to be detained--a failed policy that has disastrous effects on children and doesn't make the border any safer.

This bill would also create multiple new restrictions on asylum, undermining our longstanding commitment to refugees seeking safety, such as the people in Ukraine. Many of them were refugees to the United States, once attacked by Vladimir Putin, and I believe most Americans agree that providing protection for them and their families is the right thing to do.

The Biden administration is doing what it can under our outdated immigration laws to secure the border, and encounters between the ports of entry have decreased by more than 50 percent. Yes, there are too many flowing over the borders at various times, but we have seen dramatic reductions in those who are coming across our border now, and we could have seen more with this bipartisan bill, which Donald Trump and his loyalists ended up killing.

The administration has dramatically increased deportations, made tough changes in our asylum system, and improved access to lawful pathways to citizenship, but ultimately it is Congress's responsibility to reform our broken immigration system, which has not been updated, as I said earlier, in 35 years.

To resolve our challenges at the border, we need immigration reform that will actually fix our broken immigration system and provide the necessary resources to DHS to secure the border. Rather than providing additional resources, improving infrastructure, or adding more lawful pathways, this bill would undermine fundamental American values and put families and children at risk.

Recently, a bipartisan group of Senators had a tough border deal put together. I want to commend Senator Lankford for his courage in stepping up, particularly when Donald Trump was opposed to it. I wish the majority of Republicans would have stood behind their Senator from Oklahoma, but the Senator from Utah and others decided they wouldn't. They would rather take these opportunities to come to the floor and try the unanimous consent route.

Donald Trump was crystal clear. He said: Blame it on me if the bill fails. The bill failed, and I am blaming it on him just as he has. He doesn't want a solution; he wants an issue in November.

The time is long past due for my Senate Republican colleagues to stop partisan bickering, get behind James Lankford's effort, and work on a bipartisan basis to pass the immigration legislation the American people deserve.

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