Unanimous Consent Request--S. Res. 132

Floor Speech

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Mr. PADILLA. Mr. President, reserving the right to object. Colleagues, what is happening at the border right now is not just another policy matter to me; it is personal.

When I see the young Latino children, alone in an unfamiliar setting, being spoken to by law enforcement and other authorities in a language that they don't understand, I actually can't help but think of my three boys. My boys are the same ages as many of the kids presenting themselves at the border seeking asylum.

They look just like those kids. I see the fear and desperation in the eyes of the children at the border, and I don't have to imagine how my boys would look and feel under such circumstances. I have tasted that already.

In 2018, we were on a family trip in Arizona--June of 2018. It was the height of Trump's cruel family separation. We took a detour to Tornillo, TX, to demand humane treatment of the children who were being intentionally separated from their parents by the previous administration.

On the way there, I tried to prepare my boys, mentally and emotionally, for what they were about to see. And it was my youngest son, Diego, who was 3 years old at the time, who turned to me and said: Dad, Donald Trump is putting kids in cages. We got to go help them.

My heart broke. Imagine how the children on the border today are feeling. Imagine how scared they must be. Consider how traumatic their young lives have already been and how anxious they are for the basic safety and comfort that so many people take for granted.

Let's think of their parents' anguish, to be so desperate to protect their children, to be so afraid for their safety, let alone their future, that they make the heartbreaking decision of sending them on a dangerous 2,000-mile journey to the U.S. border all alone, knowing that as risky and as dangerous as that journey is, it is safer than to stay in their own community.

Let's be clear. These are children. These are families, not that are well-off, trying to game the system. These are families who are desperate. Their communities have been ravaged by hurricanes, the COVID-19 pandemic, and in so many cases, decades of violence. Their families are threatened by gangs with torture and murder if they stay home. Asylum seekers aren't just seeking a better life. Many are simply just trying to stay alive.

Too many policymakers act like asylum seekers are just choosing to come here, when there is really no choice at all.

So I am deeply disappointed to see so many Members of Congress, both in the House and in the Senate, depicting desperate, young children at the border as some sort of threat to our Nation. As though 15,000 practically orphaned children trying to assimilate into our country of 330 million is some sort of existential crisis for our Nation.

The real crisis is the immigration laws that are so broken that children have to make a treacherous 2,000-mile journey to seek asylum here. The real crisis is that this situation distracts us from the more than 11 million undocumented immigrants who have been living in the United States for years, working and paying taxes in communities all across America while living in constant fear of deportation. They are our neighbors, our teachers, our nurses, our grocery store workers, our childcare providers. They are the essential workers whom we have all thanked each and every day throughout this pandemic who live in constant fear that their lives will be upended and their families ripped apart at any moment, depending on the politics of the day in Washington.

The real crisis is that we have strayed so far from our founding principles as a Nation of immigrants and that we have strayed so far from the creed emblazoned on the very statue that we erected to welcome immigrants into New York Harbor saying:

Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

So I am disappointed but, sadly, not surprised that this resolution is nothing more than a cynical attempt to perpetuate the semantic nonsense of the day. Our constituents didn't send us to the Senate or to Congress to identify problems. They sent us here to develop and enact solutions.

I am more than willing to sit down with my colleague here to try to come up with some solutions to address what is happening at the border--solutions that address the lack of resources and the broken processes left by the previous administration, solutions that recognize the fundamental humanity of these desperate children and families who simply want to live to see their next birthday, and solutions that stay true to the values of this Nation.

I ask that Senator Inhofe's request be modified as follows: that the Padilla substitute amendment at the desk to the resolution be considered and agreed to; that the resolution, as amended, be agreed to; and that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

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