Providing for Further Consideration of H.R. Department of Defense Appropriations Act, and Providing for Proceedings During the Period From June Through July 2018

Floor Speech

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Mrs. TORRES. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding me the customary 30 minutes, and I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, this rule makes in order 29 amendments to H.R. 6157, the Department of Defense Appropriations Act for fiscal year 2019. The underlying legislation is the product of bipartisan negotiations, which have been going on for months. Bipartisan negotiations are a really good thing, and I am glad that, on this one issue, we are finding ways to work together.

In particular, I want to recognize the work that Representative Aguilar, Representative Hurd, and many of our colleagues on both sides of the aisle have been doing to create a path forward and look for a solution to President Trump's self-created Dreamer crisis. That is what we are supposed to be doing here: working together to solve problems.

Unfortunately, this Republican leadership doesn't believe in working with the other side. They are only interested in negotiating with their own. So it is not surprising that it isn't going very well. That is why they pulled their own immigration bill last week.

Maybe the Republican leadership, which has blocked the bipartisan Dream Act time and time again, and which has blocked the bipartisan USA Act time and time again, should trust their Members to craft and vote on compromise legislation.

But they don't have the courage or the vision to do that, do they?

Now we have another crisis, which, again, the President has created, a crisis that has outraged our constituents. Thousands of children, even infants and toddlers, are ripped from their parents at our southern border, children who have done absolutely nothing wrong, children who did not choose to come here on their own, kids too young to know the name of the country that they came from, too young to know what asylum is, too young to know what illegal entry means. Some of these kids only know two words: ``mom'' and ``dad.''

We have heard the recordings of these children crying out for their parents while being made fun of. Many of us have visited the detention centers, and it is heartbreaking and it is unnecessary.

So, while I congratulate the Appropriations Committee for their hard work on the defense bill, I have to remind the Speaker that we have 95 days to finish our work for funding the Federal Government. But I would challenge my colleagues to imagine one day, a single day, without their child, unsure if they would ever see them again.

We have some time to do the defense bill, but on the issue of family separation, we cannot afford to wait another day. Congress should be addressing this crisis today. It is not going to be easy. This administration clearly did not think through this policy that they have created.

Right now, we have children in HHS care, but where are their parents? Some are in custody of the U.S. Marshals or ICE, already deported, or maybe some are free on bond.

HHS said yesterday that they were not reuniting kids with their parents who are in detention. What does that mean? Are they going to be free? If not, what is the plan?

Let's look at the best-case scenario: a parent who gets out on bond and goes to HHS and asks for their child is told, ``Show us your documents. Prove you are really the parent,'' and this parent who has been in custody has nothing.

Where is the plan to help these parents obtain their documents? Where are these plans to help these children reunite with their parents?

Does the administration even know where all the parents are and how they are supposed to be reunited with their kids?

How are they keeping track of the babies, the babies who are simply too young to even know their name?

We have many unanswered questions. We should be making sure those kids get to their parents, making sure that every single one of those children is accounted for. That is doing our job.

Instead, we are passing another appropriations bill with the full knowledge that we will probably do what we have done every year that I have been here: We will pass a CR at the end of the fiscal year, and then we will probably pass another CR, and then another, and then another, and then another, because we can't legislate together.

This rule makes in order 29 amendments, but not a single one of them deals with the issues of the kids. Why not allow a vote on the amendment I offered with Representative Schiff to prohibit detaining children at military facilities?

Why not allow a vote on my amendment to block certain Cabinet members from using military aircraft until the children are reunited? Is it more important for Scott Pruitt to get on a plane than for a baby from El Salvador to get back into his mother's arms? or the amendment offered by my colleague on the Rules Committee, Mr. Polis? Representative Polis' amendment would have prohibited the Department of Defense from transferring resources to the Department of Justice to carry out prosecution of migrant families.

Don't our troops need these resources? Shouldn't our military be focused on keeping us safe from ISIS and North Korea, not toddlers and babies?

And why is the Republican leadership afraid to allow us to have a vote? I guess babies are too controversial for the Republican caucus. I guess keeping families together is a poison pill amendment.

By refusing Congress a vote, this House is giving up its responsibility to make immigration laws, plain and simple. This House should be a check on the administration. That is the way the system is supposed to work. But we are not doing that. Instead, by refusing to let us have a vote on the floor, the Republican House majority is endorsing President Trump's family jails.

Mr. Speaker, this House majority owns this crisis. Let me be clear: A vote for this rule is a vote for more of President Trump's cruelty to these babies. It is a vote to keep innocent children from their parents.

This House has the power to reunite these families. This House has the power to end separation. This House has the power to stop hateful immigration policies.

But this House won't act. Because of that, thousands of families may be destroyed forever. We must defeat this rule and give this House an opportunity to act.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to oppose the rule, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I absolutely agree that a primary duty of this Congress is to fund the military, absolutely. There are military families serving in our Nation and abroad that deserve to get paid.

So I would like to take this moment of privilege to remind this Congress that, before I got here, my son, who joined the United States Air Force, was going to have his pay withheld. I remember him telling me, Mr. Speaker:

Mom, I signed up to serve our great Nation in the United States Air Force, and I signed up to defend and protect my country. I did not sign up to defend and protect the men of my country, but I signed up to protect all of the people in my country. And I resent Congress withholding my pay or tying my pay to the reproductive rights of women.

So let's keep all of those things in mind when we talk about the priorities of this Congress.

Mr. Speaker, I just want to add that I absolutely agree with my colleague from the other side of the aisle on one thing, and that is that we should be absolutely focused and work together on the issues on which we agree, such as the USA Act.

Mr. Speaker, why aren't we allowed to have a vote on the floor when that is bipartisan legislation created by a bipartisan group of Members?

If we want to talk about the rule of law, Mr. Speaker, we can't talk from both ends. Either we support the rule of law or we don't. Yet this Republican Congress, time and time and time again, has been complicit with President Trump and his family's conflicts of interest when it comes to dealing with China, when it comes to dealing with our trade agreements, when it comes to dealing with Russia and now possibly North Korea.

Mr. Speaker, the Trump administration has ripped thousands of children from their parents' arms at the border, sending them all over the country. Separating children from their parent poses ongoing psychological harm and trauma, yet the government has no clear plans to reunite those families. For that reason, if we defeat the previous question, I will offer an amendment to the rule to bring up Representative Bass' bill, H.R. 6236, the Family Unity Rights and Protection Act, which would require the Federal Government to reunite families which have been forcibly separated at the border.

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Mrs. TORRES. Bass) to discuss this proposal.

Let me remind this body of a brief history of our Nation.

During World War II, this country chose to round up Japanese American citizens and put them in internment camps across the country.

Some were held in my hometown at the Los Angeles County Fairgrounds, in Pomona, California.

In 1944, the Supreme Court ruled in Korematsu v. United States that the government had every right to incarcerate families in the best interest of our national security. It was wrong and immoral then, and it is wrong and immoral now, and we look back at Japanese internment as a dark moment in our history.

Just yesterday, the Supreme Court finally rejected the ruling and admitted that it was clearly unconstitutional to forcibly place Japanese Americans in concentration camps--74 years later. That is how long it took for our court system to catch up with the reality and to right a horrible wrong.

We are facing a similar dark period in our country now with what is happening at our southern borders. How long will it take this time for us to realize that what this administration is doing at our southern borders is morally repugnant, wrong, and illegal?

How long before we realize that what we are doing is causing emotional harm to families, especially to the children? How long before we consider how history will remember this moment and judge us?

What national security threat are we facing today that warrants such a barbaric response towards families and children? They are exactly that: children, families, babies.

They are coming to our borders pleading for help and protection. They are fleeing kidnapping, rape, murder, and threats. They are not MS-13; they are fleeing MS-13. They want to work and raise their children in peace. Is that so terrible?

This administration is deliberately choosing to inflict trauma onto thousands of children, holding children hostage, using child abuse as a scare tactic to deter families from coming here seeking refuge.

There are still more than 2,000 children separated from their families at this present moment. President Trump may have signed his executive order last week, but he failed to implement a plan to reunite these families--no plan to reunite these families.

We are doing nothing to fix this problem today. And let's be clear: Speaker Ryan's bill, which we may or may not consider this week, does nothing to fix this problem either. All his bill does is pave the way for long-term incarceration of families in prison-like facilities. It would be replacing one form of child abuse for another.

I visited some of these detention centers at our borders. The horrendous conditions we are exposing families to are completely unacceptable.

Where are we, as a nation, when we place children in cage-like cells, inside warehouses, with nothing but an emergency thermal blanket and a thin mat between them and the cold concrete floor, with a toilet in the middle of the cell? Criminally prosecuting every individual, every child, who crosses between a port of entry, who poses no threat to our country, is not only inhumane, it makes us less secure.

We have a limited number of prosecutors. We have to make choices. If you prosecute one crime, it means you are not prosecuting another. So when we send our prosecutors after every single border crosser, who benefits? Let me tell you who benefits. The murderers, the rapists, the drug traffickers, the drug dealers, the pimps, the muggers, and the human traffickers, that is who will benefit from this. We are taking away from where law enforcement agencies need the most and are wasting by traumatizing defenseless families. How does this make us safe?

This administration's impulsive zero-tolerance policy is harming our moral credibility. It is harming our national security. Most of all, it is harming innocent babies.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to oppose the previous question and the rule, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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Mrs. TORRES. Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

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