Providing for Congressional Disapproval of a Rule Submitted by the Environmental Protection Agency
Floor Speech
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Ms. WARREN. Mr. President, on Friday, ISIS terrorists massacred 129 people in Paris. Just the day before, ISIS terrorists massacred 43 people in Beirut. While these are merely the latest in a series of horrific attacks launched by ISIS over the last few years, these twin tragedies have riveted the attention of the world.
These events test us. It is easy to proclaim that we are tough and brave and good-hearted when threats feel far away, but when those threats loom large and close by, our actions will strip away our tough talk and reveal who we really are. We face a choice--a choice either to lead the world by example or to turn our backs to the threats and the suffering around us. Last month Senator Shaheen, Senator Durbin, Senator Klobuchar, and I traveled to Europe to see the Syrian refugee crisis up close. I come to the Senate floor today to speak about what I saw and to try to shed some light on the choice we face.
Over the past 4 years, millions of people have fled their homes in Syria, running for their lives, searching for a future for themselves and their families. Official estimates indicate that 2 million Syrians are now living in Turkey, more than 1 million in Lebanon, and more than one-half million in Jordan. The true numbers are probably much larger.
The crisis has put an enormous economic and political strain on those countries. In late 2014, I traveled to Jordan where I visited a U.N. refugee processing center. I also met with Jordan's Foreign Minister, U.N. representatives, and American military personnel stationed in Amman. Even a year ago, it was clear that the humanitarian crisis was straining these host countries and that there was no end in sight.
In recent months, the crisis has accelerated. The steady stream of refugees fleeing Syria has become a flood, and that flood has swept across Europe. Every day refugees set out on a journey of hundreds of miles from Syria to the Turkish coast. When they arrive, they are met by human smugglers who charge $1,000 a head for a place on a shoddy, overloaded, plastic raft that is floated out to sea, hopefully in the direction of one of the Greek islands.
I visited one of those islands last month. Lesbos is only a few miles from the Turkish coast, but the risks of crossing are immense. The water is rough, the shoreline is rocky, and these overcrowded, paper-thin rafts are dangerously unsteady. Parents do their best to protect their children. Little ones are outfitted with blowup pool floaties as a substitute for lifejackets in the hope that if their rafts go down, a $1.99 pool toy will be enough to save the life of a small child--and the rafts do go down. According to some estimates, more than 500 people have died crossing the sea from Turkey to Greece so far this year.
Despite the risks, thousands make the trip every day. Greek Coast Guard officials told us that when refugees see a Coast Guard ship, they may even slash holes in their own rafts just so they will not be turned back.
I met with the mayor of Lesbos, who described how his tiny Greek island of 80,000 people has struggled to cope with those refugees who wash ashore--more than 100,000 people in October alone. Refugees are processed in reception centers on the island before boarding ferries to Athens, but Greece plainly lacks the resources necessary to handle these enormous numbers. Refugees pile into the reception centers, overflowing the facilities and sleeping in parks or beside the road. Last month, a volunteer doctor in Lesbos was quoted as saying: ``There are thousands of children here and their feet are literally rotting, they can't keep dry, they have high fevers, and they're standing in the pouring rain for days on end.'' Recently, the mayor told a local radio program that the island had run out of room to bury the dead.
Greece's overwhelmed registration system is not only a humanitarian crisis but also a security risk. In meeting after meeting, I asked Greek officials about security screening for these migrants, and time after time I heard the same answer. It was all Greece could do simply to fingerprint these individuals and write down their names before sending them off to Athens, and from there, to somewhere else in Europe. Now Greece's Interior Minister says that fingerprints taken from one of the Paris attackers may match someone who registered as a refugee at a Greek island entry point in early October. Whether this ultimately proves to be true, there is no question that a screening system that can do no more than confirm after the fact that a terrorist entered Europe is obviously not a screening system that is working.
The burden of dealing with Syrian refugees cannot fall on Greece alone. Greece and the other border countries dealing with this crisis need money and expertise to screen out security threats. Europe needs to provide that assistance as quickly as possible, and if we are serious about preventing another tragedy like the one in Paris, the United States must help. We must build adequate procedures to make sure that refugees, especially those who have entered Europe through this slipshod screening process, can enter the United States only after they have been thoroughly vetted and we are fully confident that they do not pose a risk to our Nation or our people.
The security threat is real and it must be addressed, but on our visit to Lesbos, we also had the chance to meet with refugees processed at the Moria reception center to see who most of them really are. From the outside, with its barbed wire and guard towers, Moria looks like a prison. At the entrance, the words ``Freedom For All'' are etched into the concrete encircling the facility, but speaking with refugees inside feels more like a 21st-century Ellis Island. We met doctors, teachers, civil engineers, and college students. We met young, educated, middle-class Syrians seeking freedom and opportunity for themselves and their families. They were seeking a safe refuge from ISIS, just like the rest of us.
The most heartbreaking cases are the unaccompanied children. These boys and girls are separated from the other refugees in a fenced-in outdoor dormitory area. I met a young girl in that fenced-in area--younger than my own granddaughters, sent out on this perilous journey alone. When I asked how old she was, she shyly held up seven fingers. I wondered, What could possibly possess parents to hand a 7-year-old girl and a wad of cash to human smugglers? What could possibly possess them to send a beloved child across the treacherous seas with no more protection than a pool floatie? What could make them send a child on a journey knowing that crime rings of sex slavery and organ harvesting prey on these children? What could possess them to send a little girl out alone with only the wildest, vaguest hope that she might make it through alive and find something--anything--better on the other side?
Today, we all know why parents would send a child on a journey alone. The events of the last week in Paris and in Beirut drive it home. The terrorists of ISIS--enemies of Islam and of all modern civilization, butchers who rape, torture, and execute women and children, who blow themselves up in a lunatic effort to kill as many people as possible--these terrorists have spent years torturing the people of Syria.
And what about the Syrian Government? President Bashar al-Assad has spent years bombing his own people. Day after day, month after month, year after year, Syrian civilians have been caught in the middle, subjected to suicide attacks, car bombings, and hotel bombings at the hands of ISIS or Assad or this faction or that faction--each assault more senseless than the last. Day after day, month after month, year after year, mothers, fathers, children, and grandparents are slaughtered.
In the wake of the murders in Paris and in Beirut last week, people in America, in Europe, and throughout the world are fearful. Millions of Syrians are fearful as well, terrified by the reality of their daily lives, terrified that their last avenue of escape from the horrors of ISIS will be closed, and terrified that the world will turn its back on them and their children.
Some politicians have already moved in that direction, proposing to close our country for people fleeing the massacre in Syria, but with millions of Syrian refugees already in Europe, already carrying European passports, already able to travel to the United States--and with more moving across Europe every day--that is not a real plan to keep us safe, and that is not who we are. We are a country of immigrants and refugees, a country made strong by our diversity, a country founded by those crossing the sea, fleeing religious persecution and seeking religious freedom. We are not a nation that delivers children back into the hands of ISIS murderers because some politician doesn't like their religion, and we are not a nation that backs down out of fear.
Our first responsibility is to protect this country. We must embrace that fundamental obligation, but we do not make ourselves safer by ignoring our common humanity and turning away from our moral obligation.
ISIS has shown itself to the world. We cannot and we will not abandon the people of France to this butchery, we cannot and we will not abandon the people of Lebanon to this butchery, and we cannot and we must not abandon the people of Syria to this butchery. The terrorists in Paris and in Beirut remind us that the hate of a few can alter the lives of many. Now we have a chance to affirm a different message--a message that we are a courageous people who will stand strong in the face of terrorism. We have the courage to affirm our commitment to a world of open minds and open hearts. This must be our choice--the same choice that has been made over and over again by every generation of Americans. This is always our choice. It is the reason the people of Syria and people all around this world look to us for hope. It is the reason ISIS despises us, and it is the reason we will defeat them.
Thank you, Mr. President.
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