Providing for Congressional Disapproval Under Chapter 8 of Title United States Code, of the Rule Submitted By the Bureau of Land Management Relating to ``Central Yukon Record of Decision and Approved Resource Management Plan''

Floor Speech

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Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I want to thank my colleague from Illinois Senator Duckworth for inviting me to join her on the floor to discuss what is happening in our State.

Before I do, I want to make sure it is well known for those who follow this debate to explain how she became my Senate colleague.

There was a day some 20 years ago when I was given two tickets to the Presidential State of the Union Address, and my staff had asked me if there was any particular guest I would like to invite. I said: No, why don't you call out to Walter Reed military hospital and see if there is an Illinois veteran who can come and join us. They told me, shortly after that, that they had found someone who was coming.

I didn't know that person. Her name was Tammy Duckworth. She was in full dress uniform when she came into my office, merely a few weeks since her helicopter had been shot down over in Iraq, and she had gone through some terrible surgeries and was recovering. But she came into my office with a large smile on her face and her husband Brian pushing her wheelchair.

That was how we met. She was my guest at the State of the Union Address.

We became friends. I became an ombudsman for Walter Reed. She had soldiers calling me from all over the United States asking for help. I didn't regret it one bit. I was honored to do it.

So I worked up the courage to ask her if she would consider running for Congress, and she said to me: I would have to talk it over with Brian.

I thought, I have got a live one here. She sounds like she is interested, which she was.

Her first try for office was not successful for Congress, but she later became head of the Veterans' Administration for the State of Illinois and then ran successfully to serve with me as a Member of the House. When there was a vacancy available for the U.S. Senate seat, I not only encouraged her but endorsed her and did everything I could to help. I am honored to have her as my colleague.

She is an extraordinary person, has more bravery than any 10 people I know, and she has shown her devotion for this country by serving in the Guard for over 20 years--23 years?--23 years in the Guard.

So when it comes to issues involving the Guard, there is no better expert that has ever served in the U.S. Senate. Illinois is lucky; America is lucky to have Tammy Duckworth, and I am lucky to be able to join her today.

We are proud of our heritage in the State of Illinois. We call it the ``Land of Lincoln,'' and I recall an incident that is worth repeating.

In 1858, Abraham Lincoln gave a speech in Edwardsville, IL. That is downstate near St. Louis. In this speech, he asked:

What constitutes the bulwark of our liberty and independence?

Lincoln emphasized that it was not America's army or the power of our weapons. The founder of the Republican Party Abraham Lincoln said:

[It is] the preservation of the spirit which prizes liberty as the heritage of all men, in all lands, everywhere.

This is what is responsible for the maintenance of our freedoms. How the Republican Party has changed from those early days.

Yesterday, President Trump deployed 500 National Guard troops to our State of Illinois. The President ignored the pleas from elected officials across Illinois that these deployments were unnecessary and unwanted and a dangerous escalation of a situation the President himself has created.

Leaders of the chamber of commerce and businesses in our State held a press conference and begged the President: Don't send in the troops. You are sitting here peddling a message which is not true. It is not unsafe in Illinois. People there are proud to be part of that State. We know we are not perfect. Like every other place, we can be better and safer. But the use of Guard troops from Illinois or even from Texas is totally unnecessary and creates unwanted pressure.

That message was clear from the business leaders in my State, but President Donald Trump didn't care what they had to say. He wanted to deploy our Nation's military to Illinois to spread fear and sow chaos. And in both those efforts, sad to say, he succeeded.

The President has no legal basis for deploying Federal troops to Illinois against the wishes of the Illinois Governor. There is no rebellion or insurrection happening in our State. Americans have the right, under the First Amendment, to protest this administration's cruel and misguided immigration policy. There is no room for violence whatsoever in this exchange of information and points of view, but it is part of our constitutional guarantee.

There is no argument, as some of my colleagues claimed during our Judiciary Committee markup meeting this morning, that this is anything like the civil rights-era abuses of the National Guard by multiple Presidents to enforce desegregation laws when segregationist Governors in the South were defying Federal law and court orders.

President Dwight David Eisenhower, a general himself, federalized the Arkansas National Guard after the Governor outright refused to comply with the law and was preventing the Little Rock Nine from entering the previously all-White Central High School, following the Supreme Court's ruling in Brown v. Board of Education.

There is no argument and no evidence whatsoever that the Governor of Illinois is disobeying any Federal law or court order. There is no historical analogy between the situation in the 1960s and the situation in Illinois today.

In fact, the current administration has sued Illinois to attempt to commandeer State law and force Illinois to implement this administration's immigration policies. Courts have repeatedly found that Illinois does not have a responsibility to implement Federal immigration laws.

There is no statute or provision in the Constitution that allows the President to use the National Guard as props in his political theater or to suppress constitutionally protected dissent against his inhumane immigration crackdown.

In addition, the Trump administration has recklessly surged hundreds of Federal law enforcement officers who are employing increasingly aggressive tactics against immigrants and their families and those suspected of being immigrants. They have said quite boldly: We are looking for people who look like this, subject to jurisdiction.

They have pulled FBI, DEA, and ATF agents from their assignments to carry out the President's immigration agenda, taking them away from the mission to combat crimes like terrorism, gun violence, human trafficking, and drug smuggling.

How does this make America safer?

We all know the litany that Donald Trump has repeated over and over again at political rallies and meetings since he was reelected as President. He is trying to stop murderers, rapists, terrorists, criminally insane people, and sexual predators from coming into this country.

Look what is happening with this mass deportation effort that he has authored. Over 70 percent of those who have been detained by ICE so far--over 70 percent--have no criminal record whatsoever, none whosoever.

This is not about stopping crime. This is about going after immigrants. If the Trump administration truly wanted to help my city of Chicago and our State of Illinois, it wouldn't defy Illinois-elected leaders; it would work with us. It would restore the millions of dollars that it suspended in crime prevention and public safety grants.

How can this President say with a straight face that he wants to reduce crime in our State and cut back the very programs law enforcement counts on to train and be prepared and effective in the field when reducing crime? He has chosen to put boots and guns on the street and call in the military from Texas.

At the end of the day, these deployments are about President Trump and Stephen Miller's personal agenda to send troops primarily into blue cities and to deport immigrants without any criminal history at the expense of national security and public safety.

Nearly a quarter of all FBI agents--a quarter of them, one out of four--are now focused on immigration. How can this possibly make America safer? The tactics that are being used by ICE and others in support of the President's mission are outrageous.

On Tuesday, September 30, there was a raid in the middle of the night on an apartment house in South Shore in the city of Chicago. Three hundred ICE agents flew in Black Hawk helicopters and rappelled down to the roof of an apartment building. It was a scene made for the movies. That is exactly what it was.

They ransacked apartments that people were living in, crashed down their doors and pulled them out of bed and lined them up on the street. They bound the children with ties--plastic ties or handcuffs--and they decided to make it all a movie production for television and video.

It was supposedly to stop drug activities by gangs. No evidence whatsoever has been produced of that. It was a horrible scene. I am sure these children will never forget as long as they live being pulled out of bed in the middle of the night and watching their parents being interrogated, arrested, and detained.

That is the idea of this administration in enforcing the law. It just goes too far. Steve Miller, the President's domestic adviser, is the architect of this travesty. For any of you who may not think these deployments may not affect you, it is just Illinois' problem, you are wrong.

The very act undermines our Constitution and belief in liberty above all. As President Lincoln warned us in that same speech, ``Destroy this spirit [of liberty] and you have planted the seeds of despotism at your own doors.''

While the Guard is in Illinois now, it could be in your State next; it could be your family taken from their homes and their beds in the middle of the night in an indiscriminate raid.

Does it sound preposterous? The 2,200 South Shore apartment building people can tell you it is not preposterous. It is actually what happened--have tear gas and guns pointed at you for speaking out.

Congress must act and speak out against this increasingly authoritarian administration. We are a coequal branch of government, and it is time we act like one. I implore my Republican colleagues--and I know they are loyal to President Trump--I implore them to join Senator Duckworth and me and describe these deployments for what they are; they are an illegal, immoral power grab by a President determined to consolidate his power and stifle any dissents.

If we here in this Senate Chamber, fortunate enough to represent the people in this country, will not stand up, then who will?

Once again, I want to thank my colleague Senator Duckworth for calling us down to the Senate floor to raise this issue. She and I are hoping, if the Senate schedule allows, we will be able to get back to Illinois this weekend and then have an opportunity to learn even more about this grave situation.

In the meantime, I ask people involved to show courage, to understand that the odds are against them, and the people who are trying to harass them are well-armed and can be very serious with what they do. But America's values will prevail over this President and this situation, and my State of Illinois will return to a situation where it is not being invaded by the Guard of other States.

Incidentally, I will close by saying this: I have no animus against members of the Guard, either in Illinois or in Texas. They are good men and women who put their hands in the air and swore an oath to our Constitution to serve our country. They are in a situation where they are being used, unfortunately, for a bad situation with this President, but we need them, and I continue to look forward to working with them in the future.

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Mr. DURBIN. Cortez Masto) is necessarily absent.

The result was announced--yeas 50, nays 46, as follows: [Rollcall Vote No. 560 Leg.] YEAS--50 Banks Barrasso Blackburn Boozman Britt Budd Capito Cassidy Collins Cornyn Cramer Crapo Curtis Daines Ernst Fischer Graham Grassley Hagerty Hawley Hoeven Husted Hyde-Smith Johnson Justice Kennedy Lankford Lee Lummis Marshall McCormick Moody Moran Moreno Mullin Murkowski Paul Ricketts Risch Rounds Schmitt Scott (FL) Scott (SC) Sheehy Sullivan Thune Tillis Tuberville Wicker Young NAYS--46 Alsobrooks Baldwin Bennet Blumenthal Blunt Rochester Booker Cantwell Coons Duckworth Durbin Fetterman Gallego Gillibrand Hassan Heinrich Hickenlooper Hirono Kaine Kelly Kim King Klobuchar Lujan Markey Merkley Murphy Murray Ossoff Padilla Peters Reed Rosen Sanders Schatz Schiff Schumer Shaheen Slotkin Smith Van Hollen Warner Warnock Warren Welch Whitehouse Wyden NOT VOTING--4 Cortez Masto Cotton Cruz

McConnell

The joint resoluton (H.J. Res. 106) passed.

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