Border Security and Immigration Reform Act of 2018

Floor Speech

Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to this fake DACA bill, a bill that we just found out 10 minutes ago that we are not going to even vote on tomorrow. So all this time, all of the comments we have heard from the other side about how important it is for us to do our work, well, they have now decided it must not be too important. We are not going to vote on it.

So again, this is a fake DACA bill. Obviously, someone has lost their nerve, because we are not going to even vote on it. So I have trouble believing that President Trump did not know that his unilateral decision to implement the zero-tolerance policy in April would result in thousands of children being ripped from their parents' arms.

Over the past 6 weeks, Americans have grown more and more alarmed by the images and voices of children who, with little or no warning or explanation, were separated from their loving parents. For weeks, both the President and the Secretary of Homeland Security, Kirstjen Nielsen, repeatedly refused to accept responsibility for creating this humanitarian disaster.

They blamed immigration laws. They blamed the Democrats. They blamed Congress. They blamed parents for the dangerous journey north to seek safe haven for themselves and their children.

None of this was true. The lies did not fly. That dog didn't hunt.

This past weekend, several of us in the Democratic Caucus flew down to the border to see for ourselves what was happening to the families. The President, seeing the news stories of suffering children and families, succumbed to his base desire for better press and finally acknowledged what we all know: He is responsible for the family separation crisis.

The executive order he signed yesterday doubled down on zero tolerance and provides no relief to the families who have been separated. Like the executive order, H.R. 6136 does not resolve the family separation crisis. This does nothing to stop CBP's unfettered ability to separate families in various situations, including for those seeking asylum at ports of entry.

The solution H.R. 6136 offers is to detain children indefinitely with their parents while they wait to be prosecuted in facilities that do not have to comply with court-ordered requirements for clean drinking water, toilets, and medical assistance. It ignores the 2016 findings of the Department of Homeland Security's own advisory committee that studied the question of family detention. In it, the experts concluded that family detention is neither appropriate nor necessary for families, and that it is never in the best interest of children.

Mr. Speaker, it is time for Congress to take a stand against the cruel, inhumane immigration enforcement policies of the Trump administration by voting down H.R. 6136. We can send a strong message to the President to stop family separation.

Mr. Speaker, many Members came into this week expecting to consider and vote on a measure that trades border wall funding for a Dreamer fix. H.R. 6136 is not that bill.

This legislation would compel the expenditure of billions of taxpayers' dollars for decades to come on an unnecessary border wall, while maintaining the cruel zero-tolerance policy, limiting access to asylum, shrinking legal immigration, ending the diversity visa lottery program, and abolishing protections for unaccompanied children.

There is nothing profamily or prosecurity about this bill. This is a fake DACA bill. There were no hearings, no witnesses, no stakeholder engagement, no markup, not even a CBO score. Now we find out at this hour that we have been debating a bill that we won't even vote on tomorrow. I wonder why. It is probably because some other people have found out that this is a fake DACA bill and probably not worth the paper it is printed on. But we shall see.

Mr. Speaker, for these reasons, I urge a ``no'' vote, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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