Agriculture and Nutrition Act of 2018
Floor Speech
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Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I understand that the Democratic leader may be on his way, and I will yield the floor when he comes, but I do want to respond to the comments that have been made by my friend, the Senator from Illinois, the Democratic whip.
I think what he is proposing is a false choice. He says we need to do away with zero tolerance when it comes to enforcing our immigration laws. Basically, what that means is an argument for the nonenforcement of our immigration laws. We can actually enforce our immigration laws and keep families together. Indeed, we have a proposal, which I know he is very familiar with, to do precisely that--proposed by Senator Tillis and Senator Cruz. I know he and Senator Feinstein are talking to them, and hopefully they can come up with a bipartisan solution. Yet the argument that somehow this is a new phenomenon is just not borne out by the facts.
We all remember 2014, when the vast wave of unaccompanied children who came across the border from Central America was called a humanitarian crisis by President Obama. It was because we simply were not prepared to deal with the medical and other needs, feeding, housing, and taking care of these tens of thousands of children who were streaming across the border.
Central America, basically, has some very serious problems which result in there being people who flee from those countries and seek, in many cases, asylum in the United States. Yet the idea that President Trump started something new when he decided to enforce the law or that this phenomenon of children coming across the border is something new is simply not the case. It has been happening for a long time.
Back when President Obama was detaining families and was separating families, on some occasions when the accommodations were not available to deal with them together, we didn't hear a peep out of our friends on the other side of the aisle. When 1,500 unaccompanied children from Central America--those placed with sponsors here in the United States who were not American citizens, who were not even family members, and who had not had criminal background checks--were unaccounted for, as reported in a New York Times story recently, that was as a result of the flawed policies of the past in dealing with this humanitarian crisis.
We do agree on one thing; that is, that families ought to be kept together, and the President has said as much. Yet what every single Democrat across the aisle has agreed to is a bill by our friend from California Senator Feinstein, which, simply goes from zero tolerance, when it comes to violating the immigration laws, to zero enforcement.
What that bill would result in is a return to the flawed catch-and- release policies of the past because, if you can't enforce the law--if you don't have the immigration judges, if you don't prioritize these family cases--then you will have to give people notices to appear at some time in the future. Of course, most of them will not show up for their court hearings, and the cartels and human smugglers, whose business models depend on their ability to exploit these gaps in American law, will win. They will win because they will have successfully circumvented the enforcement of America's immigration laws. Those are the people who benefit the most from this.
I am very sympathetic to the circumstances of these children and their families living in Central America, but as my colleague said, we simply can't accept anybody and everybody who wants to come to the United States under any and all circumstances. That is why we have a legal system of immigration. That is why we have due process to consider asylum claims, which should be considered and should be expedited, in my view, while these family units are detained, and not simply say that we are going to go from zero tolerance of immigration law violations to zero enforcement and return to a catch- and-release policy, which is associated with huge surges in additional illegal immigration. According to Manuel Padilla, the Rio Grande Border Patrol Chief, who I was with this last Friday, that is a big mistake.
The American people understand that we need to enforce our immigration laws. They are as compassionate as we all would hope to be about keeping these families together as much as we can, but at some point we need to enforce our laws. In this case, that means family units need to be detained in a secure, safe, and humane facility, but then they need to present those claims to an immigration judge on a prioritized basis. If they don't meet the legal criteria, then we simply don't have any alternative but to return them to their home country. That is the law of the land.
So 83 percent of the children in U.S. custody now came unaccompanied because their parents sent them from Central America by themselves. Only 17 percent came as part of a family unit. This is a longstanding problem, and we need to fix it. We have legislation that can do that, and we need to pass it this week in my view.
I see the distinguished Democratic leader here.
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Mr. CORNYN. Sure.
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Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I am sorry; I did not mean to suggest that the Senator from Illinois didn't object back then, but my point is that Senator Obama--President Obama had the same policies that are now being objected to under President Trump.
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Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I would respond to my friend from Illinois that I think alternatives to detention are a reasonable thing to look at, but the point is that people need to show up for their court hearings because right now, without detention, based on catch-and- release policies, these people simply fade away into the landscape and basically win the lottery when it comes to immigrating illegally to the United States without making a legitimate asylum claim.
I would say on the representation issue that I certainly support pro bono legal counsel being allowed to represent the asylum seekers, and I believe that is the practice now. I would be reluctant to ask an American taxpayer to fund a lawyer for every immigrant who shows up at the border and makes a claim for an immigration benefit. I think that might be a bridge too far. But I do think that pro bono legal counsel makes a lot of sense. Recognition of the Minority Leader
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