Executive Session

Floor Speech

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Mr. DURBIN. Through the Chair, I would like to ask the Senator from Texas a question. He said repeatedly that the President is not enforcing the existing law. We all acknowledge that there is a humanitarian crisis on our border, and I think we agree more than we disagree, but I do want to question the Senator's premise. Will the Senator from Texas tell me which existing law the President is not enforcing that has created this crisis?

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Mr. DURBIN. Does the Senator know the origin of the law which requires that an unaccompanied child be turned over within 72 hours by the Department of Homeland Security to the Department of Health and Human Services, specifically the Office of Refugee Resettlement? Does the Senator from Texas know who introduced that bill and who signed it into law?

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Mr. DURBIN. I say through the Presiding Officer that the bill was introduced by the Senator's former colleague from Texas, Richard Armey, and signed into law by President George W. Bush, which required what is currently taking place--that within 72 hours, unaccompanied children need to be taken out of the Department of Homeland Security--a law enforcement agency--and placed, through the Department of Health and Human Services, into some protective situation. The President is enforcing a law signed by President Bush and authored by the Congressman from Texas, Congressman Army.

I ask the Senator from Texas through the Chair, on what basis is he saying the President is not enforcing the law?

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Mr. DURBIN. If I understand what he said, the law governing this situation is a law that was authored by a Republican Congressman from Texas, signed into law by a Republican President, George W. Bush, and is currently enforced by this President. And what the Senator from Texas is suggesting is that the law in and of itself has at least a loophole or an opening that if the person doesn't appear in court--the young child or the parent with the child--then they could be lost in our system. The Senator from Texas seems to be suggesting we need to change the law or at least address the law.

I have two questions. Will the Senator concede the fact that President Obama is enforcing the law as it is written? Secondly, what would the Senator do with these children once they show up in the United States?

Let's assume you had a 12-year-old child--which is a case I heard last night--on top of a freight train for 4 days; finally made it into the United States, possibly at the hands of a coyote or smuggler--I make no excuse for them--pushed across the river, or Rio Grande, in a raft and told to report to the first person in uniform? What would the Senator have us do with the child at that point?

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Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, I went to the White House last night. The President invited Democratic Members of the Senate, and we met with Cabinet and staff members. One of the President's close advisers I met with described what she had seen in McCallum, TX, and there were tears in her eyes when she told heartbreaking stories of babies, children, and infants who are coming to this country. Many of them are in the hands of smugglers and coyotes who have gotten money from their parents or family to transport them to the border of the United States.

She told me the story of a 12-year-old boy, whom I mentioned earlier, from Guatemala. He was put on the top of a freight train and told to hang on for 4 days. For 4 days this 12-year-old boy, scared to death, was on top of this freight train as it barreled through Central America on its way to the United States. He had with him the name of a relative in the United States, and that is it. He was told that as soon as he got across the border, look for somebody in a uniform, don't show any resistance, and present yourself, which he did. He now sits in a facility in Texas.

This is a horrible humanitarian situation. The numbers that are involved here--I will give for the record the numbers that have been reported, which are worth noting. Some people may think we are talking about hundreds of children. This year, and this year alone, as of June 15, unaccompanied children apprehended by the Border Patrol: Honduras, 15,000; Guatemala, 12,000; El Salvador, 11,000; and Mexico, 12,000. Almost 80 percent of these kids come from the countries Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala.

Why are they coming here? They are coming here for a number of reasons: No. 1, there is this criminal network that gets money to transport children. They promise the families they will get them to the border. God only knows what will happen to those kids on their way. Some of them will die, some of the girls will be raped, and their lives may never be the same. It is a desperate, awful, tragic situation, and there is no getting around the fact that it is occurring.

Why are the families doing this? Why would you turn a fourth or fifth grader in your household loose to make that awful, deadly journey? Well, part of the reason is those three countries--Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala--are virtually lawless. They are three of the top five countries in the world when it comes to murder rates. There is a fear that the gangs in these countries will kill their kids anyway.

A young girl from one of these countries said: I ran. I didn't know what else to do because I was told one of the members of the gang wanted to take me on as a girlfriend. I know what happens to girls who become girlfriends. They are raped, killed, and left in a plastic bag on the side of the road.

Sadly, that is the reality of life for those children in some of these countries.

The United States is at the end of this journey and trying to decide the humane thing to do when an infant, a toddler, a 10-year-old, or a 12-year-old, shows up.

There is no easy answer.

The one point I wish to make and clarify--and I hope I did it in the course of my colloquy with my friend and colleague from Texas--this is not a question about whether President Obama has dreamed up a new law or is not enforcing an existing law. The President is enforcing the existing law in America, and here is what it says: When an unaccompanied child shows up on our border and our Border Patrol takes this child into custody, within 72 hours--we give them some time because it is not easy--we need to put this child in a different place outside of a law enforcement agency. Technically, we need to take them out of the police station part of the world and put them in some part of the world that is best for a child. That is what they are required to do under a law introduced by a Republican Texas Congressman, Dick Armey, and signed into law by a Republican President, George W. Bush. What President Obama is doing is enforcing a law which President Bush signed and was supported by Republicans.

So, please, for a second, can we stop the partisanship on this? Let's view this not as a political crisis but a humanitarian crisis, and let's acknowledge the obvious. The President has tried in his capacity to deal with the immigration issue. He has done more than he wanted to do as President. Last night at a gathering the President said: Does anyone think I believe Executive orders are the best way to govern America? No. It is better to do it by law. But let me tell my colleagues why he is forced into Executive orders.

It was 365 days ago, on the floor of this Senate, that we passed a comprehensive immigration reform bill. It was one of my prouder moments as a Senator. There were eight of us who wrote the bill and it took us months: four Republicans, including John McCain, who was just on the floor, my friend Marco Rubio of Florida, Jeff Flake of Arizona, and--I am thinking for a second; I blanked on it, but I will think of the other one in just a second--Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. So the four Republicans, and on our side of the table we had Chuck Schumer of New York, myself, Bob Menendez of New Jersey, and Michael Bennet of Colorado.

We went at it for months and we wrote the bill. We brought the bill to the floor, and we covered virtually every aspect of our broken immigration system, start to finish. It wasn't easy, but we covered it all. The bill passed on the floor of the Senate. It got 68 votes. We had 14 Republicans joining the Democrats in passing the bill. It was supported by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. It was supported by the labor unions, the faith community. Grover Norquist, one of the most conservative Republicans in our country, supported it publicly and said it was a good idea, and we passed it.

We sent it to the House of Representatives 1 year ago. What has happened to comprehensive immigration reform since we sent it 1 year ago to the House of Representatives? Nothing. Nothing. They refuse to call up the bill for consideration.

So when Members come to the floor and talk about how broken our immigration system is, I agree. Many of us tried to fix it, and we did it the way we

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should have--in a bipartisan fashion, give and take, compromise.
We are sending, under this new bill, more enforcement to the border between Texas and Mexico than we have ever seen before. I said somewhat jokingly that the people at the border can reach out and touch hands, there will be so many of them--figuratively--at our border. That was the price the Republicans insisted on: border enforcement. All right. What we insisted on was to take the 11 million undocumented in America today, and if they have been here for at least 2 years, give them a chance. Let them come forward, register with the United States who they are, where they live, where they work, who is in their household. Let them pay their taxes, let them pay a fine, and let them learn English. If they do those things, we will do a criminal background check to make sure they are no threat to anyone in this country, and we will watch them. We will watch them for 13 years--13 years. Then they have a chance at legalization.

That is what our bill says. They go to the back of the line and they wait 13 years while they pay their fines. It is tough. Some of them will not make it to the end of the road, but it is there. It gives them a chance.

So when Members come to the floornd criticize our current immigration system, I say to them, there was a repair to that system, there was a fix to that system. It passed the Senate 1 year ago and Speaker Boehner refuses to call it to the floor of the House. I don't know why.

Well, I do know why: Because it would pass. There would be enough Republicans joining Democrats to pass it and we would finally have done something on the issue of immigration.

Now we have before us a resolution by the senior Senator from Texas and he suggests we should take it up. The first part of the resolution says the President has to make it clear the DACA Executive order does not apply to the new people coming across the border. Well, that is a fact. Those who are coming across the border today can't qualify to become legal in the United States--not under any existing Executive order or under the proposed comprehensive immigration reform we passed in the Senate. They can't become citizens. The President saying it personally? I am sure the President would say it personally because he sent the Vice President out to Central America to visit the countries and tell the leaders there: There is a mistake if your people believe they can stay in this country legally. They cannot.

Secondly, he said we have to discourage this migration. I am for that. Who isn't for that? We need to discourage the exploitation of these children and their families and do it in every manner possible. So there is nothing in that suggestion that I think isn't already being done.

The third thing is to fully enforce existing law. The point I tried to make to the Senator from Texas is the President is fully enforcing existing laws. If people want to change the laws, let's have that debate, but to argue the President is not enforcing existing laws is not correct. He is. Those laws may need to be changed or addressed, but he is dealing with them.

I wish to say a word, if I can, about an issue which has come up on the floor and one that is near and dear to my heart. It was 13 years ago when I got a call to my Chicago office. There was a Korean-American mother who had an 18-year-old daughter who was a musical prodigy. She played classical piano in high school and she had been offered a scholarship to the Manhattan School of Music. Her family was a poor immigrant family and this was the chance of a lifetime. When the mother and daughter sat down to fill out the application to go to the Manhattan School of Music, there was a question which asked, What is your citizenship? She turned to her mother and asked, What do I put there? And her mother said, I don't know. We brought you here under a visitor's visa when you were 2 years old and we never filed any papers. The daughter said, What are we going to do? The mother said, We will call DURBIN. So they called our office.

We looked into the law and the law was clear. The law was clear. This 18-year-old girl under our law had to

leave the United States for 10 years and then apply to come back in. Where was she going to go? Her family was here. So the mother said to me, What can we do? I told her, Under the law, almost nothing. So that is when I introduced the DREAM Act.

The DREAM Act says if a person is brought here as a child, an infant, under the age of 16, and they completed high school and had no criminal record of any substance at all, if they served in our military or went 2 years to college, they had a chance to become an American citizen. That was the DREAM Act. I introduced it 13 years ago--13 years ago. It has passed the House, but it didn't pass the Senate that year. It has passed the Senate as part of comprehensive immigration reform, but it hasn't passed the House.

So several years ago I wrote to the President. I said to the President, with 22 other Senators, Would you consider issuing an Executive order saying you will not deport these DREAM children, these DREAMers--because they are eligible under bills that have passed both the House and Senate--give them a suspension of deportation and allow them to stay in the United States without fear of being deported? He signed the Executive order. So almost 600,000 have stepped forward and they have agreed they will submit the information to our government and, in turn, they will be spared deportation.

They are getting on with their lives. They are going to school and getting jobs. Amazing things are happening for them. There are great stories, and I come to the floor and tell them all the time, but we still don't have the final law. We have the President's Executive order which gives them a break now, but we still don't have the final law to resolve it.

I wish to tell a story about one of those DREAMers today. This is Marie Gonzalez Deel and her parents Marvin and Marina Gonzalez. Marvin and Marina brought Marie from Costa Rica to the United States in 1991 when Maria was 5 years old. They came to the United States legally on temporary visas and settled in Jefferson City, MO. A lawyer said to them, Put down roots, get a job, and you have a chance to become a citizen.

The Gonzalez family bought a house, paid their taxes, and were active members of their church. Marvin was a mail courier for the Missouri Governor. Marina taught Spanish at a local school, and Maria was at the top of her high school class. They thought they had done everything right, but then Maria's family was placed in deportation proceedings. The community of Jefferson City was angry that a good family such as this who was part of their community was facing deportation. They rallied around them.

I first met Marie in 2005. She was one of the first DREAMers to tell her story publicly. Back then it was a pretty courageous thing to do. It still is. At my request, the Department of Homeland Security granted her a stay of deportation, but 9 years ago Maria's parents were deported back to Costa Rica.

In 2008, Marie graduated from Westminster College in Missouri with a degree in political science and business, but her parents couldn't be there to see her. They had been deported back to Costa Rica. In 2009, Marie married her college sweetheart and planned a second ceremony in Costa Rica so her parents could be a part of it. On Thanksgiving, 2010, she and her husband flew to Costa Rica. As my colleagues can see from this picture, they were elated to see one another for the first time in 5 years.

Just a few hours later, Marvin, her father, who had prostate cancer, collapsed. He was rushed to the hospital. He passed away later that same day--the day this photograph was taken. Luckily, they got to see him before he passed away. The family held a funeral the next day and carried on with the Costa Rica wedding the following day with an empty chair at the head of the table where Marie's father would have been seated.

Today Marie is the proud mother of an 11-month-old baby girl, Araceli. In March 2014, Marie became a citizen of the United States. Here is what she wrote to me in a letter:

I was very blessed and thankful to get the opportunity to stay in the United States on a temporary visa to be able to finish my education, get a job, find my soul mate, and eventually become a citizen, though at the cost of not spending that time with my family and feeling alone for so long. My family was torn apart when I was 18 and will never be able to be reunited. My immigration struggle continues until the day I can once again have my mom at my side. I hope other families don't have to endure this pain.
There are 11 million stories in America, many of them just like this. Hard-working men and women, law-abiding families, viable parts of our churches and our communities, who had the courage to leave everything behind and come to this great Nation. Those of us who are immigrants to this country, which includes the Presiding Officer and myself--at least my mother--thank our lucky stars we were given this chance. My mother was an immigrant to this country and her son is a U.S. Senator from Illinois. She was brought here at the age of 2. Her naturalization certificate is in my office upstairs. I am very proud of it. It is a reminder to me and a reminder to anyone who visits me that this is a nation of immigrants. We are a nation that thrives with the diversity of our immigration and the energy they bring, the courage they bring, leaving everything behind to come to this country. That is the family of the Presiding Officer, and that was my family. That is our story, but that is America's story. That is who we are.

Have we reached the point where we cannot even discuss future immigration in the House of Representatives? Have we reached a point where we cannot even bring the matter to the floor for a vote? Are we going to ignore what that means to this family and millions just like them, what it means to the thousands of kids presenting themselves at the border?

We are better than that. America is better than that. When we embrace our diversity, when we embrace immigration as part of who we are in America, we will be stronger for it and not just in the creation of new businesses and jobs. These immigrants are some of the hardest working people in America. They take the toughest jobs that a lot of Americans would not touch, but they know that is what an immigrant does.

What is their dream? That their babies, their sons and daughters, are going to have a better life. Thank goodness that story has been repeated over and over and over. That defines who we are in America.

Now--1 year later--the House of Representatives is about to throw up its hands and walk away from even addressing immigration issues. What a heartbreaking situation. What an abdication of responsibility.

I know there is a partisan difference between the House and the Senate, but I honestly believe that if the Speaker had the political courage to call the comprehensive immigration bill--the bipartisan bill that passed the Senate--we would find enough Republican House Members who would stand and vote with the Democrats and pass it. Sure, there will be critics of the Speaker--he shouldn't have done it--but that is what leadership calls for, for the Speaker to have that courage and get it done. I hope he will.

One year is long time to wait--and for these families, years and years, some of them with broken dreams that will never be fulfilled, families who have been split up and try to survive. But that is our responsibility, not just for DREAMers but for our country, to make sure we renew this commitment to our diversity and to immigration.

I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

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