Protect Women's Health from Corporate Interference Act
Floor Speech
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Mr. HEINRICH. Mr. President, let me start by thanking my colleague from Maryland for her leadership on the Appropriations Committee and her leadership on this difficult issue. She said something in caucus the other day that really struck me. She said: Every Senator has an opinion on this, but not every Senator has the facts. Facts matter. They make for good policy.
Last week I had the opportunity, along with Secretary Johnson, to visit a temporary facility for refugee mothers and their children that is in my home State of New Mexico. The holding area at this facility in Artesia, NM, is one of several ways that DHS is increasing its capacity to process the increasing number of families with children from Central America who are crossing our southwest border.
On Monday, 40 individuals were repatriated back to Honduras. It is reported that more mothers and their children will be sent back to their countries of origin.
While I was at this facility, I saw firsthand the remarkable interagency effort that it took to take a Federal law enforcement training center, a campus, and turn it into a safe and humane place for families to stay while their cases are being processed.
But that is not all I saw while I was there. I watched a young boy play soccer with his little brother, both of them clearly happy to be in the kind of secure environment where they could just be kids. I saw a lot of mothers. I saw mothers whose faces were worried, who reflected the clear concern about what the future would be for them and for their children. What I did not see at that facility--I did not see cartel mules. I did not see drug runners. I did not see criminals or gang members. Those were mothers and little kids. Most of those families come from one of the most violent regions in the world today.
This current crisis is of grave concern to all of us. I know I have heard from a number of my constituents who wanted to know what they can do to help. I have to give great credit to our local chamber of commerce in Artesia, NM, as they worked hard as they received hundreds of donations from compassionate New Mexicans across the State hoping to make a difference in these people's lives. They understand that this is first a humanitarian crisis. They also understand that we are a nation of laws, that our immigration system has been broken for a long time and needs to be fixed.
The Senate worked for months to address this, but the Republican-led House of Representatives refuses to even debate immigration reform, much less allow a vote on it. Instead, Republicans claim that the President's immigration policies, including deferred action for childhood arrivals--or DACA, as it is known--caused a crisis at the border. That could not be further from the truth. The increase in unaccompanied children started before President Obama created the DACA program 2 years ago. The United Nations High Commission on Refugees has documented an increased number of asylum seekers from El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala since 2009--a full 5 years ago. What is more, children crossing the border would not be eligible for DACA. In fact, they would not be eligible for the Senate version of immigration reform.
These asylum seekers are not only fleeing to the United States but also to the other neighboring countries in the region. They are fleeing to Panama, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Belize. In fact, those countries saw a 712-percent spike in asylum cases from El Salvador, from Honduras, and Guatemala from 2008 to 2013, further demonstrating that children are not coming to the United States to apply for DACA. They are coming because their lives are at risk back home.
In interviews with over 400 children, the United Nations High Commission on Refugees found that no less than 58 percent of them were forcibly displaced because they suffered or faced harm that indicated a potential or actual need for international protection--an increase of more than 400 percent from 2006.
Less than 1 percent of these kids spoke of immigration reform or some new program or policy as the basis for coming to the United States. In fact, out of the 404 children who were interviewed, there were only 4--4 children who expressed a reason for coming that related to some part of the U.S. immigration system.
The reality is, as we heard from Senator Mikulski, what is driving children to our borders is unimaginable violence, corruption, extreme poverty, and instability in their home countries.
This picture was taken in Tegucigalpa in Honduras. This is frankly an all-too-common sight in Honduras today. Not only is the poverty unimaginable, but the violence we have seen is like nothing in recent history. Honduras has now the world's highest murder rate, with over 90 murders per 100,000 persons annually. Last year approximately 1,000 young people under the age of 23 in Honduras were murdered--murdered in a nation of only 8 million, 1,000 young people.
In a report published by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, they found that 93 percent of crimes perpetrated against youth in Honduras go unpunished--completely unpunished.
The National Observatory of Violence reported that violent deaths of women increased by 246 percent between 2005 and 2012.
This is all the more unsettling to me because I know firsthand that Honduras did not always look this way. In the 1990s I traveled to Honduras with my wife Julie. We were on our honeymoon. We flew into San Pedro Sula. The only time I felt any fear was trying to drive in a city that moves a lot faster than I do when I try to drive on country roads in New Mexico. But we never had any fear for violence when we were in Honduras. We traveled around the country. We went to many places off the beaten path.
That is very different today. Today San Pedro Sula is a city synonymous with murder.
To understand just how bad it is, you can look at pictures like this one of literally body bags getting ready to go to mass graves from murders happening in these neighborhoods in San Pedro Sula. You can read a recent article in the New York Times by Frances Robles that tells the chilling story of Cristian, an 11-year-old sixth grader from Honduras who lost his father in March after he was robbed and murdered by gangs while working as a security guard protecting a pastry truck. It is kind of hard to imagine needing a security guard to protect a pastry truck. Three people he knows were murdered this year alone, and four others were gunned down on a nearby corner in the span of 2 weeks at the beginning of the year. A girl his age resisted being robbed of the sum of $5. She was clubbed over the head, dragged off by two men who cut a hole in her throat and stuffed her underwear in it and left her body in a ravine across the street from Cristian's house.
Then there is Anthony, a 13-year-old from Honduras, who disappeared from his gang-ridden neighborhood. His younger brother Kenneth hopped on his green bike to search for him, starting his hunt at a notorious gang hangout in the neighborhood. They were found within days of each other, both dead. Anthony, 13, and a friend had been shot in the head.
Kenneth, age 7, had been tortured and beaten with sticks and rocks. They were among seven children murdered in the La Pradera neighborhood of San Pedro Sula in April alone--in 1 month.
El Salvador and Guatemala are the world's fourth and fifth highest in murders. The Center for Gender and Refugee Studies found that in 2011, El Salvador had the highest rate of gender-motivated killings of women in the entire world. In Guatemala, the Department of State reports widespread human rights problems, including institutional corruption, particularly in the police, in judicial sectors, kidnapping, drug trafficking, execution, and often lethal violence against women.
We have a human crisis at our southern border that requires an immediate but compassionate response. Yet instead of supporting the supplemental which seeks to address the root causes of the crisis and protect these vulnerable children, Republicans are trying to use the crisis to promote fear and their border-enforcement-only agenda.
Recently, a Republican Governor suggested that the President send the National Guard to ``secure the border once and for all'' and that ``the border between the U.S. and Mexico is less secure today than at any time in the recent past.'' As I mentioned at the beginning of my remarks, facts are stubborn. This is simply not the case. In fact, the notion that lax border policies are somehow responsible for this latest crisis is not just a myth; it is a, well, full misrepresentation driven by politicians who would rather create a political issue than to solve a very real problem.
The border today is more secure than it has ever been. There are more Border Patrol agents on the ground. There are more resources. There is more technology deployed on the border than at any time in our Nation's history--at any time. In fiscal year 2012, the Federal Government spent almost $18 billion--$17.9 billion--on immigration enforcement. That is $3.5 billion more than the budgets of all the other Federal law enforcement agencies combined--$3.5 billion more than the FBI's budget, plus the DEA's budget, the ATF budget, plus the Secret Service, plus the U.S. Marshals Service. These resources have made a difference. From fiscal year 2009 to 2012, the Department of Homeland Security seized 71 percent more currency, 39 percent more narcotics, 189 percent more weapons along the southwest border as compared to the last 4 years of the Bush administration.
It is important to remember that this crisis from refugees in Central America is not about children and families sneaking across our border like criminals. As we heard from the Senator from Maryland, many of these refugees seek out the first Border Patrol agent they can find in order to turn themselves in. Many of these children have walked across the border or across the Rio Grande with identification literally safety-pinned to their shirts. But that image does not serve the political interests of those who prefer a border crisis to a refugee crisis.
Let's step back and remember that the Senate passed a comprehensive immigration bill more than a year ago now--a bill that included incredibly important provisions to further strengthen our border but that would also protect refugee children and crack down on the smugglers and the transnational criminal organizations that are at the root of the current crisis.
Notably, this bill was widely supported by both Democrats and Republicans in the Senate Chamber.
Public support and good economics have not been enough to convince the House leaders to hold a vote on immigration reform, but they cannot turn a blind eye to the current humanitarian crisis along our Nation's southern border.
Instead of attacking the President, Senate Republicans should work with them to address the issue, and they should demand that their colleagues in the House act to fix our broken immigration system.
Additionally, passing the $3.7 billion supplemental sends a clear signal that we are aggressively stemming the flow of children and families from Central America while continuing to treat these refugee children humanely and as required under the law. This situation is an emergency and we need emergency funding.
Our immigrant communities have helped to write the economic, social, and cultural history of America. I know this firsthand. My own father is an immigrant who came to this country as a boy from Nazi Germany in the 1930s.
As a nation we value the twin promises of both freedom and opportunity. Those ideals are important no matter where you are born.
The fact is, our immigration system is broken. Those of us who represent border communities understand the challenge we face, but there are solutions--solutions before us that are pragmatic, bipartisan, and uphold our American values.
I am familiar with the promise America represents for families. I know how hard immigrants work, how much they believe in this country, and how much they are willing to give back to this country.
A small group of faith leaders from New Mexico penned an op-ed in the Albuquerque Journal over the weekend. In sharing their thoughts on this humanitarian crisis they wrote:
While the current situation raises the issues in powerful ways, expressing hatred toward, fear of, or anger with women and children serves nothing to resolve national debate. Rather, it engenders a destructive spirit of mistrust. Let us seek to understand the immigrant's reasons for coming and to work collaboratively for just and reasonable immigration reform.
I could not agree more with these faith leaders.
It is time to fix our broken immigration system once and for all. Our short-term solution is to approve the President's emergency supplemental request now, and as part of our long-term solution we need House Republicans to put the Senate's immigration reform bill on the floor for a vote.
Our Nation will be the better for it.
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