Executive Session

Floor Speech

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Mr. KAINE. Madam President, I rise today to talk about an experience that I had on Sunday. Sunday was the day, July 14, that President Trump had preannounced that massive deportation and immigration raids were about to begin. It looks like those raids maybe didn't start on Sunday, but the communities of immigrants in Virginia and elsewhere, who have been experiencing tremendous fear, had that fear dramatically accelerated by the announcement.

On Sunday, my wife and I, who live in Richmond, went to a town called Kilmarnock, about an hour and 10 minutes away from us, where my wife's parents are in a nursing home. They are 95 and 93 years old. We went down to spend the day with my in-laws and to take my mother-in-law to church at the local Episcopal church where she has long been a member.

I was struck by the readings. It was a day of fear for many immigrant communities, and the readings that occurred in the Episcopal church, which are readings that are delivered in Catholic and Presbyterian and other churches on a set schedule, struck me as I was thinking about the fear in these communities.

For the Old Testament reading, normally, in most churches around the globe, Catholics and Episcopals read from Deuteronomy, but for some reason, the pastor of this church--it was his goodbye ceremony, and he was leaving after serving for an interim--had switched the Old Testament reading and instead put in a reading from the Old Testament Book of Amos, Chapter 7, verses 7 through 9.

This is what he showed me: The Lord was standing by a wall that had been built true to plumb, with a plumbline in his hand. And the Lord asked me, ``What do you see, Amos?''

``A plumbline,'' I replied.

Then the Lord said, ``Look, I am setting a plumbline among my people Israel; I will spare them no longer.''

A plumbline is a device used when you are constructing something. It is just a weight on a string, nonmagnetized, and it will show up and down so that you can build something that is square and that has a solid foundation.

It is a reading about principles and values and what is a solid foundation.

The Gospel reading that we heard in our tiny church in Kilmarnock and around the world was the Good Samaritan story. Jesus is being pestered by a lawyer: What do I do to inherit eternal life?

And Jesus said: You know the answer. Tell me the answer.

And the lawyer does. He is smart.

Love God and love your neighbor as yourself.

Jesus says: Fine. You know the answer. Just live that way.

But the lawyer, either to trap Jesus or because he was confused or he was trying to figure it out, says: But who is my neighbor?

And then Jesus tells the story of a person beaten on the road to Jericho and lying at the side of the road. Some passed by pretending not to notice, though they do notice. Some noticed and sort of half go over to help but don't do anything. But one person, a Samaritan--and in the Bible, Samaritans were despised minorities because they didn't worship like other people did--actually is the one who actually goes and helps.

As everyone knows, in the story he takes care of the person who is beaten. He takes him to an inn and pays the innkeeper and says: I will even pay you more. I will settle up. Make sure that you nurse him back to health.

This Samaritan was the one who was the neighbor. When Jesus then goes back to the lawyer and says: Which was the one who was the neighbor to the person who was beaten, the lawyer was so infected by the prejudice of his day that he can't even say ``the Samaritan.'' Again, Samaritans were despised people, much like refugees or migrants or migrant kids seem today to be despised people. The lawyer couldn't even make his lips say the word ``Samaritan.'' Who is the neighbor to the person who was beaten? He can't even answer the question--the Samaritan. But he does know the answer, and instead he says: The one who showed him mercy.

Those were the readings that we heard--that the Lord will set a plumbline to try to determine whether the nation--in that instance, Israel--was behaving properly or not, and in terms of what the plumbline is, what is the moral standard. The Lord is encouraging us to be neighbors, and not just to the people like us, not just to the people who are our next-door neighbors but even to people who are down on their luck, beaten, despised, and hurting.

Sunday was also another day. It was Woody Guthrie's birthday. Woody Guthrie was a great American songwriter known for ``This Land is Your Land'' and so many other songs that are part of who we are as a people.

Woody Guthrie wrote a song in 1948 called ``Plane Wreck at Los Gatos,'' and the song is more commonly known by the name ``Deportee.'' We lived this history before.

In 1948 in California, there was an effort to deport so many people. There are times when we desperately want immigrants here to do the work, and then there are phases where they get deported.

Woody Guthrie was listening to the radio. This is a man born on July 14, the day that the President announced that the deportation raids would start. Woody Guthrie was listening to the radio in January of 1948, and he heard a story about a plane that was taking deportees back to Mexico. The plane crashed in Los Gatos Canyon, near L.A., and the pilot and some others were killed, and 32 deportees were killed.

Woody Guthrie was struck that when the story was told on the radio, they mentioned the names of the pilot and the copilot and the others who were working on the plane, but as for the 32 deportees who were killed, their names weren't mentioned. They were ``just deportees.''

Here are the lyrics to the Woody Guthrie song written based on an incident in January 1948, but our history repeats itself. The crops are all in and the peaches are rott'ning, The oranges piled in their creosote dumps; They're flying `em back to the Mexican border To pay all their money to wade back again Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye, Rosalita, Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria; You won't have your names when you ride the big airplane, All they will call you will be ``deportees'' My father's own father, he waded that river, They took all the money he made in his life; My brothers and sisters come working the fruit trees, And they rode the truck till they took down and died. Some of us are illegal, and some are not wanted, Our work contract's out and we have to move on; Six hundred miles to that Mexican border. They chase us like outlaws, like rustlers, like thieves. We died in your hills, we died in your deserts, We died in your valleys and died on your plains. We died `neath your trees and we died in your bushes, Both sides of the river, we died just the same. The sky plane caught fire over Los Gatos Canyon, A fireball of lightning, and shook all our hills, Who are all these friends, all scattered like dry leaves, The radio says, ``They are just deportees.'' Is this the best way we can grow our big orchards? Is this the best way we can grow our good fruit? To fall like dry leaves to rot on my topsoil And be called by no name except ``deportees''?

Along with several other colleagues earlier this week, I filed a bill called the Stop Cruelty to Migrant Children Act. It is a bill that has 40-plus cosponsors. It would do a number of things. It would set safety, health, and nutrition standards in these facilities whose pictures we are seeing--pictures that set an embarrassing example of a nation that should want to set a good example.

It would set minimum standards for food, nutrition, and healthcare. It would guarantee that children in these facilities would receive three meals a day and that the meals would be of adequate nutritional value. It would end the practice of family separation, unless ordered by a court, so the presumption would be that families could not be separated. It would provide additional resources for lawyers so that people can follow the rule of law and present evidence and present a case for asylum or refugee status, if there is a case to be presented. It would allow the restart of programs like the Family Case Management Program, which was a successful program that enabled people to be placed in community settings, not cages or jails or institutions, and have management to make sure that they then come to court dates on time.

The bill has a number of provisions that I think are worthy, but the thing that is the most important about the bill to me and why I agreed to cosponsor it is that I just think it puts our country in a position where we are setting the right example, not the wrong example. It puts our country in a position where if the plumbline of right and wrong is applied to us, we are on the right side of that judgment. It puts us in a position where as we are being directed to be good neighbors-- including to people who are hurting, including to people who are suffering--we would be able to look ourselves in the mirror and look the world in the eye and say: The United States believes that we are good neighbors, and we are behaving in a neighborly way toward people.

These issues are of massive importance to the individuals involved. There was a story earlier this week about a border agent inquiring of a young girl: You are going to be separated. Your parents are going to be separated, and you have to decide whether you go with your mother or your father.

Why make a child of tender years make that choice? The young girl's name was Sofia. Many of us know the Virginia author, William Styron, and his book ``Sophie's Choice.'' Sophie is forced to make an existential choice between her children in a concentration camp in Poland during World War II. That is the choice. That is the existential choice in the heart of that novel.

When tiny Sofia is being told: We are separating your mother and father, and you have to choose between them, should a child have to do that? None of us would tolerate that for our own family members. None of us would tolerate that for a member of our community. So is it fair to do that to a child of tender years because she happens to be somebody who has come from Central America?

These issues are of immense importance to those involved, to the Sophies, to the father and daughter who tried to get across a river a few weeks ago and drowned as they were trying to do it. They had come thousands of miles, and they were so close. All they wanted to do was apply for asylum legally: Can you accept my application? We are not trying to sneak across. We want to apply legally and have the laws of your country apply to us if we can justify that we should come. Please do that.

When they reached the border, we are taking so few applications now that they waited and they waited and they waited, and they eventually tried to cross a river and were drowned in the process--that heartbreaking picture of them having come so far and being so close that they could touch the bank. They almost got to touch the bank of this Nation they had dreamed might offer them a better life.

Their case, had they been able to apply, may or may not have been accepted. There is no guarantee they would have met the standards, but all they wanted was the opportunity to apply to enter this greatest Nation on Earth.

So I will just conclude and say I hope, in the days ahead--and I know there are discussions going on between Members of this body and between Members of this body and the White House about what we might do. I just want us to do something we can look in the mirror and be proud of. I want us to do something that we can use as an example for ourselves and for others. I want the plumbline that separates good and bad behavior and foundations that are morally strong versus those that are shaky and weak to judge us fairly. I want us to be neighborly. I want us to be neighborly in the best traditions of whom we have always been.

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