Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2019--Continued

Floor Speech

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Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I come to the floor to speak about a recent tragedy that has deeply impacted my home State of Iowa and I think all of the country because cable television is well aware of this.

Yesterday, authorities announced they found the remains of a 24-year- old University of Iowa sophomore, Mollie Tibbets, of Brooklyn, IA. After searching tirelessly for months, State and local law enforcements announced the unthinkable, Mollie was murdered in cold blood.

I would like to commend the efforts of all who were involved in searching for this remarkable young woman, including the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation, the FBI, Homeland Security, and the individual members of the community who volunteered tirelessly to find Mollie.

Americans watched the news every night, all of us, holding out hope that Mollie would soon be found and returned to her family. I extend my sincerest condolences and sympathies to Rob Tibbetts, Mollie's father, and Laura Calderwood, Mollie's mother. They spent the last month and a half searching the State for their missing daughter. Rob and Laura traveled across the State, raised awareness on TV, and handed out buttons, T-shirts, and missing person fliers at the Iowa State Fair. Both Rob and Laura showed remarkable bravery in the face of tragedy.

Know that our thoughts and prayers are with you and your family during this difficult time.

For those of us in Washington, we ought to try to learn something from Mollie's character and the example she set. As Mollie's boyfriend Dalton Jack said, ``She's not just a missing person flyer.'' Mollie was an avid reader who enjoyed the choir, theater, and writing.

Mollie loved her friends and had a natural ability working with children. Her friends say she had a gift for making everyone feel like the most important person in the room. There is no doubt her nurturing character and her ability to be everyone's counselor--as a friend put it--led her to the University of Iowa to study psychology. While there, Mollie spent her summers taking classes and working at a day camp with the Grinnell Regional Medical Center, where she mentored children. It is no surprise that when Mollie went missing, over 200 people showed up for a vigil in her honor.

While we mourn the loss of Mollie Tibbetts, it is the duty of this Senator and every other Senator to act to prevent further tragedies such as this one from devastating a family and an entire community.

We now know that Mollie was murdered by a 24-year-old, undocumented immigrant who has been in the United States illegally for 4 to 7 years. That is right. For 4 to 7 years, this man was here undetected and unaccounted for. This raises questions about his immigration, employment, and criminal history, and we must receive answers.

So, today, I sent a letter to the Department of Homeland Security seeking any immigration history on this man and a briefing to better understand how he was able to get to and stay in Iowa. This isn't too different from what I have done in many cases with some undocumented person, particularly those who had been deported and returned, asking for answers when there was a tragedy such as what happened to Mollie. I think of recent cases, maybe within the last 2 years, of murders in Northern Virginia and in Maryland. The Tibbetts family, the people of Iowa as well, and I hope all of the American public feel they deserve answers.

Based on the information I do have, it seems this murder was preventable. Stricter border security measures, including increased personnel, enhanced technology, and modernized infrastructure could have prevented this man from crossing the border--in other words, secure the border.

Stronger interior enforcement and addressing weaknesses in E-Verify could have prevented this individual from working and would have allowed immigration enforcement authority to initiate removal proceedings years ago.

Earlier this week, President Trump invited officers and agents of Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement to the White House to thank them and the people under them for all they do on a daily basis to protect Americans. Recent events are a stark reminder as to how much we need these hard-working men and women.

Amidst cries from the radical far left to abolish law enforcement agencies, such as ICE, I am proud to stand in support of the brave men and women of that agency. Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement are tasked with protecting the homeland, a duty they willingly accepted on behalf of all Americans and, of course, the No. 1 responsibility, the Federal Government.

Every day, men and women of the Border Patrol and ICE, or Immigration and Customs Enforcement, put themselves in harm's way because Congress tasked them with this great responsibility.

So to my colleagues on the other side of the aisle who call for abolishing immigration enforcement, I urge caution. We have heard a lot of that lately about abolishing immigration enforcement.

Scapegoating our uniformed officers, who are simply executing the law, to launch future Presidential campaigns only moves us further away from one another and further away from a lasting solution.

To put their efforts into perspective, let's take a look at some data. During fiscal year 2017, ICE arrested more than 127,000 aliens with criminal convictions or charges. ICE made 5,225 administrative arrests of suspected gang members. Last year, the criminal aliens arrested by ICE were responsible for more than 76,000 dangerous drug offenses, 48,000 assault offenses, 11,000 weapon offenses, 5,000 sexual offenses, 2,000 kidnapping offenses, and 1,800 homicide offenses. Those statistics are just for ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations.

Last year, ICE Homeland Security Investigations made over 4,800 gang- related arrests. ICE also targets illicit drug flows, human trafficking operations, and transnational criminal and terrorist organizations.

ICE is part of our broader national security apparatus and often works hand in hand with their partners at the Department of Justice, including the Drug Enforcement Administration, FBI, and hundreds of Federal prosecutors.

In 2017, ICE identified or rescued 904 sexually exploited children and 518 victims of human trafficking. ICE seized more than 980,000 pounds of narcotics just last year, including 2,370 pounds of fentanyl and almost 7,000 pounds of heroin.

To my colleagues who have spoken strongly about combating the moral stain of human trafficking or about ending the opioid epidemic gripping our country, I ask: How is ICE anything but an indispensable partner in this fight? How can we expect to combat the flow of lethal narcotics without the brave men and women of the Border Patrol and ICE?

Just last week, I sent a letter to Secretaries Nielsen and Pompeo about an Iraqi national who lied about his active membership in ISIS and al-Qaida in Iraq so he could claim refugee status and settle safely in Sacramento, CA. ICE played a very vital role in his arrest.

This weekend, ICE deported a Nazi prison guard who was living in Queens, NY, and yesterday ICE was immediately there on the scene in Brooklyn, IA, when State and local authorities determined the suspect was a foreign national.

Congress has been dancing around the issue of securing our borders and strengthening interior enforcement for far too long. We have told voters we will fix the problem, but we don't seem to get the bills passed. Stories like those of Kate Steinle, Sarah Root, Kayla Cuevas, and now Mollie Tibbetts continue to appear in the news, and we ought to come to the conclusion that enough is enough. Sarah's Law

Mr. President, I urge the Senate to put partisanship aside and support Sarah's Law. That is a bill that some of us from the Midwest have introduced, but we also would like to see justice for Kate Steinle's murder because people who have been deported, coming back to the United States to do this killing--just for coming back and violating our law over and over and over by crossing into the country without papers, they should have mandatory sentences.

Sarah's Law is a bill I introduced with Senator Ernst in honor of a fellow Iowan, Sarah Root, who was killed by an undocumented immigrant driving drunk and was three times over the legal limit.

Sarah's Law is a commonsense bill that requires the Federal Government to take custody of anyone who entered the country illegally, violated the terms of their immigration status, and had their visas revoked and is thereafter charged with killing or seriously harming another person. It also requires ICE to make reasonable efforts to identify and provide relevant information to crime victims and their families.

I end thinking about Mollie's death, but you can continue to think about Sarah Root, Kate Steinle, and others. We haven't responded to it very well. We can and we must do better. Nomination of Brett Kavanaugh

Mr. President, if I may, I want to continue to speak but on another subject.

Over the past day, several of my colleagues issued statements calling for Judge Kavanaugh's confirmation hearing to be delayed. A lot of these colleagues have written me very personal letters calling for Judge Kavanaugh's hearing to be delayed. Some of them have written me very personal letters about coverups or hiding or handling documents in ways they perceive to be different from what other committee chairmen have done. In regard to the delay of the hearing, they claim that it is because President Trump's former lawyer recently pleaded guilty to criminal violations of campaign finance law, allegedly at President Trump's direction.

I am not going to delay Judge Kavanaugh's nomination hearing. There is no precedent for delaying a hearing in these circumstances. In fact, it is just the opposite. There is clear precedent pointing in the other direction. I will give my colleagues at least one.

In 1994, President Clinton nominated Justice Breyer to the Supreme Court. At that time, President Clinton was under investigation by Independent Counsel Robert Fiske in connection with the Whitewater land deal. Indeed, President Clinton's own records were under grand jury subpoena. Yet the Senate confirmed Justice Breyer by a vote of 87 to 9 during all of that.

In fact, President Clinton was under investigation for much of his Presidency and was even impeached for committing perjury. Obviously, he wasn't convicted. But through all of this, the Senate didn't stop confirming his lifetime appointments to the bench. President Trump is not even close to being in the same legal situation as President Clinton, but obviously some people around here think he is.

So my colleagues' plea to delay the hearing rings very false considering the precedent I just gave, and maybe historians can give us more precedents.

So I want to tell my colleagues why liberal outside groups and Senate Democratic leaders decided to oppose the President's Supreme Court nominee by any means necessary. They even said so. Some even announced their opposition before Judge Kavanaugh was nominated. The minority leader said he would fight Judge Kavanaugh with everything he has.

Members of the Judiciary Committee announced their opposition before giving Judge Kavanaugh any consideration whatsoever. One Member said that voting for Judge Kavanaugh is ``complicit in evil.'' Another Member said that Judge Kavanaugh threatens ``destruction of the Constitution of the United States.''

The goal has always been the same: to delay the confirmation process as much as possible and hope that the Democrats take over the U.S. Senate in the midterm elections.

The Ranking Member's hometown newspaper reported on this strategy recently, and the headline called it an attempt to stall. The strategies may change, but the goal to obstruct the confirmation process remains unchanged. First, Democratic leaders tried to apply the Biden rule, which bars confirmations in Presidential elections and which many Democrats previously said doesn't even exist. They tried to apply it even to midterm elections. When they used it, it was applied just to Presidential elections.

Now, when this strategy failed, because it was completely and flatly false, they changed strategies. They tried pushing for an unprecedented disclosure of Judge Kavanaugh's executive branch documents, even though we have already received more pages of such documents than any previous Supreme Court nominee. This is on top of Judge Kavanaugh's 12-year judicial track record and other more relevant publicly available materials.

Now they are trying to latch on to the legal troubles of President Trump's former associates, but, as I just explained, there is no precedent or logical reason for the Senate to decline to proceed on Judge Kavanaugh's nomination in these circumstances. It is just another attempt to block Judge Kavanaugh's confirmation by any means necessary.

On a related note, we are working to make available as many of the documents relevant to Judge Kavanaugh's nomination to the Supreme Court when we receive them--to make them publicly available as soon as possible.

It is common practice--I hope everyone knows--to receive documents with a restriction called ``Committee Confidential'' until we can assure ourselves that we will not disclose sensitive, confidential information to the public in violation of the Presidential Records Act. Chairman Leahy, who is here on the floor with me, did so during Justice Kagan's confirmation process, and I am doing the same. This gives Judiciary Committee members a jump start on reviewing documents because, otherwise, if you had to wait until they were all cleared, you wouldn't even be reading them yet.

The goal is to make as many publicly available as possible as soon as possible.

I have promised to work with President Bush and President Trump to waive committee confidentiality, when the law requires it, for specific documents that my colleagues would like to use at the confirmation hearings. This is also consistent with how the Judiciary Committee has handled this issue in the past. And, of course, all of my Senate colleagues are welcome to review committee-confidential documents at their convenience. Simply get in touch with my staff. The staff there will make sure that they have full access to the range of committee- confidential documents.

One of my colleagues tweeted, and I am not going to name this colleague because there is no point in embarrassing anybody to make a very strong point here about how ridiculous some of this argument has become. This is the tweet:

Chairman Grassley unilaterally deemed Kavanaugh records Committee Confidential. Penalty for release could include `expulsion' from the Senate, which hasn't happened since the Civil War, for disloyalty to the Union. GOP is going that far to keep them secret.

I hope all of my colleagues see the absurdity of that tweet.

Now, that person is kind of acting like the Senate has never received committee-confidential documents before. It is common practice, and it has happened in previous Supreme Court nominations, even under Democratic chairmen.

So to sum up, it is so regrettable that some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have politicized this process so much, but also, at the same time, they have short memories.

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