Energy and Water, Legislative Branch, and Military Construction and
Floor Speech
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Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, this past April, Attorney General Sessions announced a new zero tolerance policy--those were his words--for the southern border. Last month, the Chief of Staff to the President said that this new zero tolerance policy ``could be a tough deterrent. . . . The children will be taken care of--put into foster care or whatever.'' That is what he said. To justify his zero tolerance policy, Attorney General Sessions cited Romans 8, a Bible passage that was used throughout our history to justify human slavery.
The administration knew precisely what the effect of this action would be; yet they did it anyway. The result is that over 2,300 children have been separated by the U.S. Government in the name of the American people since May.
The results are the images we see of children caged in chain-link enclosures. We hear it in the young boys and girls crying for their parents--all done in the name of America. That is an image that has ricocheted all across the world, just as the image of Bull Connor's dogs tearing at Birmingham's children ricocheted across the world. It said to the world that we actually weren't upholding the high ideals that our Founders set out to create.
Well, that is terrible, but what is also terrible is that President Trump will take no responsibility for what he has done and instead takes on a cheap political tactic, which I think he thinks he can get away with. There is a lot of evidence he will get away with it because of the repetition on cable news that somehow Democrats are responsible for this. The President said:
I hate the children being taken away. The Democrats have to change their law. That's their law.
That statement is false. It has no basis in reality. And I will presume that he is not using the children as a negotiating tool. I am not going to come to the floor and make that accusation. There are people who have said that because they are searching for some logic to explain how he could say something that is so false.
He tweeted: ``The Democrats are forcing the breakup of families at the Border with their horrible and cruel legislative agenda.'' That is what he wrote. That is ridiculous, and we know it is false because until they created this zero tolerance policy, which they thought would deter other immigrants, the United States of America handled this matter in a way that managed to enforce our laws without doing hideous violence to our bedrock values as a nation.
When migrants with children cross the border unlawfully, the government has broad discretion about whether to charge the violation as a criminal offense or a civil offense, and every American administration--every American administration, including the Trump administration until 6 weeks ago, dealt with it as a civil matter and avoided the trauma of family separation by charging them for illegal entry and deporting them.
During the first 15 months of this administration, until Attorney General Sessions started this zero tolerance policy, the Trump administration--not the Obama administration--did this with nearly 100,000 immigrants who were apprehended at the U.S.-Mexico border.
In terms of the law, nothing has changed in 6 months. The only thing which has changed is the administration's policy and their decision to file criminal charges for every unlawful crossing, including cases that involved families with young children. I think that is the wrong policy.
By the way, the Attorney General doesn't make up stories about it is the Democrats' fault. He said this is what will happen because of their policy, but the President will not admit it. American citizens, thank goodness, don't want this done in their name. They don't want our history besmirched by this action and the coverup of whose responsibility it is. That is why a bipartisan group--a bipartisan group--of 75 former U.S. attorneys called for an end to the policy of family separation. It is making their exercise of prosecutorial discretion more difficult.
More than two dozen of the largest religious groups in America have asked the President to please relent, knowing he has the power to do so--Rev. Franklin Graham and nearly a dozen evangelical leaders, Republican Governors, Republican colleagues of mine who have not only said they detest the policy but that the President can change it anytime he wants.
Those are the facts. I don't know how to solve the problem of newscasters who are willing to repeat things that aren't true. That is hard to do, and it is difficult to separate fact from fiction when we have a President who is allergic to the truth.
For my own sake, at times like this, I think it is important to listen to voices like First Lady Laura Bush, who wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post last week that was so moving. It amazes me that, in 2017, any American citizen would have to write it, but thank goodness she did.
17, 2018] Laura Bush: Separating Children From Their Parents at the Border `Breaks My Heart' (By Laura Bush)
Laura Bush is a former first lady of the United States.
On Sunday, a day we as a nation set aside to honor fathers and the bonds of family, I was among the millions of Americans who watched images of children who have been torn from their parents. In the six weeks between April 19 and May 31, the Department of Homeland Security has sent nearly 2,000 children to mass detention centers or foster care. More than 100 of these children are younger than 4 years old. The reason for these separations is a zero-tolerance policy for their parents, who are accused of illegally crossing our borders.
I live in a border state. I appreciate the need to enforce and protect our international boundaries, but this zero- tolerance policy is cruel. It is immoral. And it breaks my heart.
Our government should not be in the business of warehousing children in converted box stores or making plans to place them in tent cities in the desert outside of El Paso. These images are eerily reminiscent of the internment camps for U.S. citizens and noncitizens of Japanese descent during World War II, now considered to have been one of the most shameful episodes in U.S. history. We also know that this treatment inflicts trauma; those who have been interned have been twice as likely to suffer cardiovascular disease or die prematurely than those who were not interned.
Americans pride ourselves on being a moral nation, on being the nation that sends humanitarian relief to places devastated by natural disasters or famine or war. We pride ourselves on believing that people should be seen for the content of their character, not the color of their skin. We pride ourselves on acceptance. If we are truly that country, then it is our obligation to reunite these detained children with their parents--and to stop separating parents and children in the first place.
People on all sides agree that our immigration system isn't working, but the injustice of zero tolerance is not the answer. I moved away from Washington almost a decade ago, but I know there are good people at all levels of government who can do better to fix this.
Recently, Colleen Kraft, who heads the American Academy of Pediatrics, visited a shelter run by the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement. She reported that while there were beds, toys, crayons, a playground and diaper changes, the people working at the shelter had been instructed not to pick up or touch the children to comfort them. Imagine not being able to pick up a child who is not yet out of diapers.
Twenty-nine years ago, my mother-in-law, Barbara Bush, visited Grandma's House, a home for children with HIV/AIDS in Washington. Back then, at the height of the HIV/AIDS crisis, the disease was a death sentence, and most babies born with it were considered ``untouchables.'' During her visit, Barbara--who was the first lady at the time--picked up a fussy, dying baby named Donovan and snuggled him against her shoulder to soothe him. My mother-in-law never viewed her embrace of that fragile child as courageous. She simply saw it as the right thing to do in a world that can be arbitrary, unkind and even cruel. She, who after the death of her 3- year-old daughter knew what it was to lose a child, believed that every child is deserving of human kindness, compassion and love.
In 2018, can we not as a nation find a kinder, more compassionate and more moral answer to this current crisis? I, for one, believe we can.
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Mr. BENNET. This is what she wrote:
I live in a border state.
She lives in Texas.
I appreciate the need to enforce and protect our international boundaries, but this zero-tolerance policy is cruel. It is immoral. And it breaks my heart.
Our government should not be in the business of warehousing children in converted box stores or making plans to place them in tent cities in the desert outside of El Paso.
I am going to read that again. Mrs. Bush wrote: ``Our government should not be in the business of warehousing children in converted box stores or making plans to place them in tent cities in the desert outside of El Paso.'' No, it shouldn't. She wrote:
These images are eerily reminiscent of the [Japanese American] internment camps . . . of World War II, now considered to have been one of the most shameful episodes in U.S. history.
We now have another one confronting us right now. That episode was shameful. At the time, America was in the midst of a great world war, the second in a generation. The country had just emerged from the largest economic depression in our country's history. There was deep anxiety about jobs and national security, and that anxiety manifested in what became a terrible injustice perpetrated by the U.S. Government against Japanese Americans.
President Roosevelt's order called for the relocation of Japanese Americans into prison-like camps. Many Governors throughout the West opposed the camps at the time not because they were unjust but because it was out of bigotry of Japanese Americans. They didn't want them in their State, even if they were locked up in a prison.
Kansas Governor Payne Ratner declared that they ``are not wanted and not welcome.'' Wyoming Governor Nels Smith threatened that Japanese who come to his State would be found ``hanging from every pine tree.''
An exception to that was Colorado Governor Ralph Carr, a Republican. Speaking to a crowd of farmers, Carr said:
If you harm them, you must first harm me. I was brought up in small towns where I knew the shame and dishonor of race hatred.
``I grew to despise it,'' Carr said, pointing to the crowd, ``because it threatened the happiness of you and you and you.'' Carr spoke out about that injustice. He gave voice to vulnerable people when it was politically unpopular. In fact, he lost his political career as a result of what he said. His courage may not have won him much notice or applause at the time, but he is in the honor roll of history, and we hold him up as an example of our responsibility to stand for justice and to stand against cruelty. His example should inspire us, but it also should make us wonder what would have happened had he not been there.
Like Governor Carr, all of us have to choose whether we are going to stand against a policy of locking up children. We shouldn't do it. We didn't do it. The Bush administration didn't do it. The Obama administration didn't do it. The Trump administration didn't do it, until this so-called zero tolerance policy was put in place. Now, the U.S. Government has essentially jailed a bunch of children who can't see their parents. This isn't helping the national security of the United States.
Our immigration system is broken. Sitting in that chair before the President was the Senator from Florida. He and I worked together in the Gang of 8 to write an immigration bill that passed the Senate with almost 70 votes in 2013. It spent $40 billion on border security. It had internal security. It created a visa system so we could see who was here lawfully and who had overstayed their visa and kick out the people who were causing trouble. I sometimes think he doesn't actually want a wall; he just wants the issue of a wall.
We could be working with countries in our hemisphere to try to resolve the issues they face--violence, corruption, absence of rule of law, very limited economic opportunities for people--so people could stay there instead of trying to come to the United States just so their kids can survive. That would be a useful thing for us to engage in.
A couple years ago when we had the kids coming to the border, I asked myself--I am the parent of three daughters: What would it take for me to send one of my daughters, when they are 13 years old, with a drug smuggler 1,500 miles to the U.S. border? What fear would I have had to do that?
I went down there. I think the President should go down there. I went to Mexico and El Salvador and Honduras, and I met in the backyard of our Embassy with a bunch of young people who had either tried to get into this country and failed or tried to get into this country and succeeded. It was very clear they are absolutely terrorized by the gang violence down there, by the insistence on the part of gangs that these kids join gangs, and by the complete abject lack of economic opportunity. There is none. That could affect the national security of the United States, and we should have an interest in trying to make it better.
I would put my record on immigration and border security up against any single person in this Chamber because I helped write and pass a bill that spent $40 billion on border security for the United States. Our dysfunction in the House of Representatives caused us not to pass the bill there. Now, we have reached a level of even more dysfunction because the President is making up what is actually causing the problem at the border and enjoys the political theater of going over to the House of Representatives and having a conversation with people about how we are going to solve a problem he created and that his administration created and that Republicans and Democrats in this Chamber alike know he created.
Let me close just by saying that we live in a democratic republic--I have said that on the floor--and a democracy will not last very long if the government is separated from the people. We are a self-governing enterprise. In order to do that well, in order to put America's children in the position they deserve to be put in, in order to honor the heritage our parents and grandparents passed on to us, in order to assure America's leadership role in the world, we have to seek the truth as citizens. It is a fundamental responsibility that each of us has.
We don't have to agree with each other about much, but we have to find a way to ascertain the truth and then govern toward that and figure out ways of moving the country forward. With an episode like this, I get more and more worried we are reaching a point where it is going to be hard to pull back from the brink.
When we are living in a time when our President tells us that our allies threaten our national security, we need to ascertain the truth of that statement. When we are told trade wars are easy to win, and we end up paying more for steel than the people we are fighting a trade war with, we need to figure out what the truth actually is. When somebody runs for office saying they are going to have a beautiful healthcare plan that is going to cover everybody in America at a really low price, we ought to check and see whether that is happening. When somebody tells you--even though it is repeated over and over and over again on one cable TV station in America--that he is going to pay off the debt in 7 years and then comes to Washington and gives us the largest deficit we have seen outside of wartime or recession, we owe it to our children to ascertain the truth of the matter.
We owe it to our children to do that, and we owe it to the world to treat the children on our southern border with some dignity--the dignity any human being would deserve.
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