USA Freedom Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, thank you very much for recognizing me.

I also wish to thank the Presiding Officer for his leadership on environmental issues which are so immensely pressing and important for our country, and I am proud and honored to join with him in that cause, which he has helped to lead so often on the floor, but also privately amongst our colleagues and in so many ways across the country. I hope to continue our work together on that issue, and I thank him for presiding now and for continuing that leadership.

Mr. President, I am speaking today, after listening to the people of my State, on an issue that perplexes and challenges us in so many ways. The situation on our southern border perplexes us because it is a problem without easy or ready solutions. It is a challenge to America in the resources that it requires and the spirit that it evokes. Our resources are scarce. Our spirit and our inner strength are boundless. Many have expressed to me in my State of Connecticut concerns about those resources, about the limits on those resources, in facing a seemingly endless challenge, as children come to our borders and stretch the capacity of this Nation to accept them. I am sympathetic with the folks who wonder whether we are capable, very simply, of caring for these children--but I know we can--the children who are coming here because of the humanitarian crisis they face in their countries.

Our supplemental legislation, so ably guided by Senator Mikulski, provides a path for providing the resources that are necessary. This supplemental is a thoughtful and significant document that addresses this situation without either breaking the bank or sacrificing American values.

I am immensely impressed and inspired by the spirit that has been evoked, again, among citizens of Connecticut in saying: We must care for those individual children who need asylum because returning them to the countries of Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala would be a death sentence for many of them. And we must respect our law which provides for individual consideration and assessment of those children in whether they deserve and need asylum and that status of fleeing persecution and death that many of them, in fact, have faced in those lands.

We must place those individuals, according to law, with their families, if possible. Many of them have parents here, and the vast majority have some family, moms and dads, aunts and uncles. They need to be screened under the law. Their placement has to be in a safe and secure home with people, in my view, who are here legally. That screening has to be, as the law requires, to assure their safety and security as children. The United States has a responsibility to follow the law, and so do we as citizens and as lawmakers. As torn as we may be, as conflicted as we may feel, as vehement as those conflicting feelings may be felt and expressed by fellow citizens, let us uphold the law and afford due process and individual consideration to those children who, under the law, deserve that individual assessment, individual treatment, individual consideration for the status of asylum in this Nation.

People speak about these children as if they were a mass, indistinguishable, a single societal challenge or problem. A Member of the House of Representatives even referred to them as an ``invasion.'' What I saw at the border when I visited there with two of my colleagues, Senator Hirono and Senator Murkowski, joined by a third, Senator Cornyn, all friends and distinguished colleagues, hammered home for me that these children are individuals and they should be treated as such.

The vast outpouring of spirit and generosity in this country is mirrored by countless organizations--we heard about them during our visit--that want to help these children, want to volunteer and give of themselves, their time, money, goods and services, everything from blankets, to furniture, to pizza, to you name it. America is pouring out its heart for these children.

I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a letter to Secretary Johnson and Commissioner Kerlikowske from Save the Children, a Connecticut organization that has offered, very generously, its help and support in very specific and concrete ways, along with a briefing note that outlines what it perceives the children's needs at the border to be.

Let's end one doubt: the need for and the urgent justification for individual due process consideration and the full and adequate screening of these children and a fair judicial proceeding. I would describe just a few stories.

Girls are fleeing sexual violence at the hands of gangs in Honduras and El Salvador. I will give just a few examples.

Ms. L was raped by more than a dozen gang members in Honduras. After reporting the gang rape to police, her family began to receive death threats.

There are only three shelters in Honduras for rape survivors, and two of them actually operate as brothels. The one remaining shelter declined to take Ms. L because it could not protect her or the other shelter residents from gang violence. She had no choice but to flee Honduras.

Carlita is a 13-year-old who fled gang violence in El Salvador. She was kidnapped by the Zetas in Mexico, used for sex, and forced to be a drug mule for them before escaping and ultimately reaching the United States.

Ms. H survived multiple rapes in Honduras. After she fled she was kidnapped by a Mexican gang and raped and tortured. She eventually reached the United States.

Ms. N and Ms. O, ages 15 and 8, fled El Salvador. Their older female cousins had been forced to work as sex slaves for gang leaders. The gangs threatened to kill Ms. N and were placed in removal proceedings.

Ms. E fled El Salvador when she was 8 years old. Gang members had kidnapped her and two older sisters. The girl's mother did not want her 8-year-old daughter to suffer the same fate, so she arranged for her daughter to be brought to the United States.

Many gangs use sexual violence as a part of the price or rent demanded of girls.

Ms. X fled an area of El Salvador controlled by gangs. Her brother was killed for refusing to join a gang that forcibly tried to recruit him. She was raped by two men, became pregnant as a result, and then was required to pay ``renta'' to the rapists, which increased over time. She fled El Salvador and was attacked by Mexican robbers during her journey, before arriving in the United States.

Many of these girls are victims of forced prostitution and human trafficking. I have other stories that will be printed in the Record. These stories come from personal experiences of advocates and others who have interviewed them at length as well as our own officials. Many of these girls are sexually assaulted during the treacherous journey northward. Those stories are not imagined or fictionalize; they are graphic and dramatic. Rape is so prevalent that many girls begin the journey by taking birth control injections before they leave home from Central America as a precaution against pregnancy.

I refer to these stories because they illustrate and illuminate the need for a thoughtful humanitarian approach, especially to these young girls whose stories are so real and so inspiring, not just in the treacherous journey they overcome, not just in the torture and abuse they suffer, but in the dignity and self-worth and strength and resoluteness they continue to have. A thoughtful humanitarian approach is what is required. It is the approach that this supplemental exemplifies in providing resources.

There is an oath that doctors take:

``First do no harm.'' Let that be the approach of this body in approving basic amounts of money, reduced by the chairman of the Appropriations Committee, so that it meets appropriately and frugally the needs of these children to be placed in humane circumstances with families who are screened for their safety and security and their being here legally.

I will close with one last experience. In one interview I watched at the border, I saw a 7-year-old girl crying quietly as she tried to answer the questions of an armed border guard. The border guard did his best. He was obviously caring in his approach. But neither his training nor the experience of any border guard equips them really to play this role with a 7-year-old-girl. They are in uniform, a police uniform, which for this girl's whole life has meant fear, potential rape, bodily harm. These children have learned from hard experience that that fear is often justified. They are distrustful of adults generally and authority figures in particular.

Nobody could watch this scene without feeling a sense of compassion for those guards and, of course, most especially the girl, separated from her family, sitting on a bench, her legs swinging free because she was not big enough to reach the floor. The look on her face revealed not just terror but a fervent desire to please, inspired by fear. She could not communicate openly with the border guard.

What she needed was someone trained and equipped to elicit the facts of her background, the reason she had fled, the motivation for her escape, the facts and her feelings about it. That kind of individual assessment is the reason we have the law passed by Congress in 2008, unanimously. This Trafficking Victims Protection Act was designed for these girls and boys coming from noncontiguous countries facing those fears, those threatening conditions if they were to be returned. They face a near certain death, many of them, if they are returned without the individual assessment and consideration. Call it due process, call it judicial, call it humane questioning--the title matters less than what happens.

I know this Nation cannot be expected to rescue all of the children of the world from all of the harsh and inhumane conditions they may face. We are not limitless in our capacity to do good. But I know and I believe we have the resources to do what is just and right under the law considering every one of those children and every one of the potential threats they face if they are returned to their countries.

It is an American value that we follow the rule of law, that we grant asylum under the law to people who deserve it and need it. That much we can do. I know we have the resources to do it. I believe we have the will to do it. The heart of America and its citizens is big. We are a big country. We are not limitless in our resources, but we are boundless in our capacity for generosity and doing what is right.

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