Border Security and Immigration Reform Act of 2018

Floor Speech

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Ms. LOFGREN. Madam Speaker, I think it is important that we be honest about why we are here today. Every major problem in this bill that this bill purports to tackle was actually created by President Trump himself.

First, there is Trump's policy of ripping children away from their parents. He issued an order last night purporting to address this issue, but we would not need to address it in legislation if it weren't for his misguided policies. And I will point out that his remedy appears to be the same one that is in this bill, which is to put the mothers in the cages with the toddlers and to incarcerate whole families.

Then we have the DACA program that President Trump chose to eliminate. He says he cares about Dreamers, but it was his own decision that created the present danger to these young Americans in waiting.

And, finally, we have the asserted need to change our asylum laws to make it almost impossible to qualify, and to authorize the prolonged detention of asylum-seeking families with children, to ensure compliance with the laws.

I mentioned during the discussion of the rule, this is not necessary. We had a program called the Family Case Management program that, according to the inspector general for the Homeland Security Department, resulted in a 100 percent attendance rate at immigration court proceedings. And that is, in fact, what we need. We need attendance at the court hearing. And if a person prevails, they would be granted asylum, if they fail, they will be removed. What we need here is the orderly processing and application of immigration law instead of the chaos that President Trump has brought to us.

I would like to point out that this program costs $36 a day compared to over $700 a day to put a child in one of those cages. Now, those aren't my figures. Those are from DHS.

We don't need this legislation. We need the President to take action. He can do what needs to be done today by picking up the phone.

Now, he has backed off temporarily, maybe because of public pressure, but he has not addressed the issue of the Dreamers.

I don't know what the words a special path mean, but there is a new path for Dreamers in this bill. However, as has been mentioned by Mr. Nadler, for some, it could take as long as 23 years. So if you are 27 years old now, by the time you are able to apply and receive U.S. citizenship, you would be 55 years of age. I think that is a ridiculous proviso, especially, as we have all acknowledged, these are young people who are Americans in every capacity, but for their----

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Ms. LOFGREN. Madam Speaker, I would just like to say, I think that the President has taken the Dreamers, the little children, the asylum- seeking families as hostages for the anti-immigrant provisions in this bill.

It has been mentioned that we have a generous immigration system. To whom? Two-thirds of the visas go to the immediate nuclear family of Americans. So that is what we want.

To eliminate the ability of Americans to have their sons and daughters with them is simply wrong.

Madam Speaker, we should vote against this disaster of a bill.

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