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Floor Speech

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Mr. SCHATZ. What is wrong with that?

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Mr. SCHATZ. Is that a request?

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Mr. SCHATZ. Mr. President, I want to read excerpts of a letter of March 17 to Senators Collins and Britt from the border czar and the Director of Legislative Affairs for the Trump administration. I won't read the whole thing, except to point out that there are five substantive areas in which the administration expressed a willingness to enact reforms.

Now, that sounds kind of encouraging, but I want to read the five points. I will summarize.

The first is, we will expand the use of body-worn cameras by DHS law enforcement undertaking immigration enforcement operations.

Fine. Let's codify that. I think the retention of data is important. I think the last time we talked about body-worn cameras, there was a willingness to fund body-worn cameras. There was a willingness to indicate that it was the policy that people should wear body-worn cameras, but there was not yet a willingness to codify that requirement in Federal law. But that is workable.

The second thing is, the administration will limit civil immigration enforcement activities in certain sensitive locations, like hospitals and schools--like hospitals and schools.

There are more sensitive locations than hospitals and schools-- churches, synagogues, mosques, polling locations. There are multiple sensitive locations where we have just decided--until now--as a society that that is not a good place for law enforcement, especially a roving patrol, to be. The government should not be in a church or a synagogue or a mosque or a temple. The government should not be in a hospital conducting immigration enforcement. The government should not be in a polling location or near a polling location conducting immigration enforcement.

So the idea of limiting civil immigration enforcement activities at certain sensitive locations is a reasonable start; however, I would like to rule out all of the sensitive locations and not just say ``like hospitals and schools.''

Now, here is where it gets a little--like, those are fine. That is workable. That is negotiable.

I want to take you through the next three bullet points.

This is the third bullet point, which starts with ``The administration will adhere to current law that affords Congress oversight of DHS detention facilities.'' It is literally saying: We have five concessions we are willing to make, and one of them is to adhere to current law.

What in the hell is happening to this country where it is a concession from one political party to the other to adhere to Federal statutory law? That is not a concession. That is not something we have to negotiate for. That is not a show of good faith.

It is also a concession that they were not adhering to current law until now.

This is an offer. We offer that we are going to follow the law.

The fourth point is that the administration will enforce the use of visible officer identification.

I think that is also referring to a current Federal statute.

By the way, the question of masks is a little sticky. There is no question in my mind that masks are being overused, and if there is no reason that ICE officers and ICE officers alone all have to not reveal their face, their badge number, even what Agency they work for--the reason people trust their local police department is because when something happens, you see their face.

Hello, I am Officer So-and-So. How can I be useful?

There are some very narrow circumstances--an undercover operation or if an agent has been doxed--where you may want to protect their privacy, but that is not the norm, and it has become the norm within ICE.

Here is the final bullet point: The administration will adhere to existing law and practice of not deporting any U.S. citizens.

That is a concession? We are not going to deport any U.S. citizens in violation of Federal law? That is a give to us? That is not a give to anybody; that is the Federal law. And this was what was sent as a ``Look, we are working on it.''

So all of this is to say that we are not that close to a deal on ICE. It is not that discussions are not ongoing. It is not they are not people of good faith trying to figure out how to both fund this Agency and reform this Agency. Those conversations are going on. But there is not a serious person in this building who thinks a deal is imminent. There is not an imminent deal.

By the way, even if we had conceptional agreement, it takes time to draft legislative text, vet legislative text, and get House and Senate Republicans and Democrats and the White House on board. We are not that close.

In the meantime, TSA workers are not getting paid. In the meantime, the Coast Guard has experienced a lapse in appropriations. In the meantime, FEMA has a lapse in appropriations. In the meantime, CISA, which does our cyber security in the middle of a war, has a lapse in appropriations.

So all I am asking--all we are asking is release the hostages. These government Agencies did nothing to deserve being defunded.

By the way, that is exactly what we did about 6 weeks ago, is we decided: We are just not in agreement about DHS, so let's fund the rest of the government.

Ninety-six percent of the government is now funded. We funded the Department of Defense. We funded the State Department. We funded the National Institutes of Health. We funded the Centers for Disease Control. We funded the Department of Energy, the Department of the Interior. We funded all of those Departments because they have nothing to do with the current debate.

So what I am saying is that we are not there yet on ICE, but why in the heck would we punish TSA? Why in the heck would we punish the Coast Guard? Why would we do that?

So I am completely flabbergasted at the position of the Republicans, and I respect the person who is about to object, and we are going to engage in all of this. But let's just be really clear on what their position is: They won't fund TSA, they won't fund Coast Guard, they won't fund FEMA, and they won't fund Cybersecurity unless we attach ICE to it.

Let's just be adults, continue our negotiation about ICE, and release the hostages. These are American citizens working for the government, working for the public without a paycheck, and we could solve this right this moment.

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Mr. SCHATZ. Mr. President, first of all, I didn't get a chance to thank the Senator from Oklahoma for keeping the Senate the Senate last week. There was a moment where there was an exchange of views, and actually, the majority leader had a perfect right to kind of monopolize the time and make it so that it would have been six Republicans in a row and we would have been just standing there, but he is the one that said: Look, it is the Senate, we have to have a debate, and caused us to take turns.

That seems like a small thing, but it is not a small thing because we ought to be hard on the issues and easy on each other. And I just appreciate his steadfastness in being decent while being extremely conservative at the same time.

I will just make a couple of final points. On HSI, in particular, I think a lot of us would feel more comfortable carving that out if it weren't for the fact that so many of these HSI people are actually being taken off of their current assignment to help conduct immigration enforcement.

And so people are literally being taken off of preventing child pornography, preventing arms trafficking and drug smuggling, and they are now in these immigration enforcement actions. Three hundred remain in Minnesota. There is a little bit of the devil being in the details as it relates to getting our arms around this because we don't want whatever we do to only apply to the narrow question of the appropriations bill.

For instance, when Members said: I have a right under the appropriations law to go and visit this detention center, the people of the detention center who turned away Members of Congress said: We are not funded by the appropriations bill; we are funded by the OBBBA. Different pot of money, different set of rules that attach.

And so whatever agreement that we achieve, if we achieve one, we can't mess around with color of money and detailees from HSI or CBP. As these operations manifest themselves on the ground, nobody is tracking what the color of money is.

So all of the reforms that we are talking about have to attach to OBBBA money, have to attach to detailees from either the FBI or HSI or any other Federal law enforcement Agency. We are trying to actually get this Agency under control.

But my basic problem is, this is cordial, this is constructive, but you and I both know we are not that close, and people have to make their rent and their mortgage now.

And so the idea that nothing is agreed to until everything is agreed to sounds good in diplomacy, but the practical effect is that our coastguardsmen and women, our TSA, our FEMA employees, our CISA employees are going to miss paychecks because we are still in an argument about a very, very narrow swath of the Federal Government.
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Mr. SCHATZ. Mr. President, I will be brief. I always enjoy our exchanges, and this one, I think, was particularly constructive on substance. I will just say, my job is to count, and the votes do not exist for what the Senator from Oklahoma is asking for. They just don't exist, not if I wanted it, not if Senator Schumer wanted it.

The votes are not there. I think that one of the things that I have tried to convey to my Republican colleagues is the depth of feeling, not because there is some group demanding that we be tough on this, but because American citizens have been deported, American citizens have been killed at the hands of this Agency.

It doesn't mean everybody in this Agency is not trying their best. It does mean that this Agency is in desperate need of reform, and we do not have the votes to extend funding for this Agency without reforms, whether it is 1 day, 1 month, or 1 year.
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