Department of Homeland Security

Floor Speech

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Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, on a separate subject, last week marked the season 13 premiere of late-night host John Oliver's ``Last Week Tonight.''

In the 30-minute monologue, John Oliver laid into the Department of Homeland Security which he says ``remain[s] a massive agency with unclear checks on its power, boatloads of money, and sweeping surveillance authority.''

John Oliver is right, but it is important to remember how we got to this point. I am old enough to remember a time before the Department of Homeland Security. After 9/11, Congress created what would become the third largest Department of the Federal Government. The creation and existence of this Agency was defended, in part, by proponents who argued that immigration was primarily a homeland security issue.

But from the beginning, DHS and its various components have struggled to accomplish its many conflicting missions while spending hundreds of billions of dollars. In the wrong hands, this behemoth of an Agency could be weaponized for political purposes. Sadly, that is just what we are seeing today.

I warned the Trump administration about their militarizing Federal immigration raids that don't target the worst of the worst by any means and instead amount to political theater with the intent of sowing fear and meeting arbitrary arrest quotas.

This past Friday, I attended the funeral of Ofelia Giselle Torres Hidalgo. Tragically, she passed away at age 16 after a battle with cancer.

In October of last year, her father Ruben was detained in a Home Depot parking lot. They crashed through his driver's side window and detained him. At that time, he begged them to let him go home. His daughter Ofelia had just returned from the hospital and was at home waiting for some food from her father.

He was trying to do one more odd job so he would have some money in his pocket to buy that food. That is what he was up to.

So they checked the background of Ruben Torres, and you won't be surprised to know he had no criminal record whatsoever. None. That didn't stop the ICE agents. They ended up arresting him, detaining him, and shipping him off to a location in Texas for 2 weeks.

Finally, they dropped all charges against him and let him go home to his sick daughter and his family. He did go home, but his status on the immigration schedule was still uncertain.

He managed to schedule a court hearing just 2 weeks ago. In that court hearing, his daughter, too weak to attend it personally, followed it by closed-circuit TV. The judge ruled against the government in their detention of Ruben Torres, and his daughter got to see her father finally liberated from this outrageous conduct by ICE at the very last minutes of her life. She died 3 days later.

I think about that, and I think about what the President promised us. He was going to send ICE into our communities and make them safer. He was going to make sure that people who came into this country illegally were removed from this country if they were a danger.

Oh, you heard him say it over and over again ``the worst of the worst.'' That is what we are going after. Well, Ruben Torres was not the worst of the worst. He was a father who had been in this country for 20 years, working, paying taxes, raising his family, and his kids had no criminal records whatsoever.

Does a father standing by his dying daughter who is battling cancer sound like ``the worst of the worst'' to you? Would you arrest him and send him off to Texas for 2 weeks on a suspicion and then drop all charges against him when he is begging you for a chance to go home to his sick daughter before she dies?

The political theater extends to the rest of U.S. citizens as well.

Kyle Frankovich and Juan Munoz were arrested and detained during November protests outside the Chicago ICE processing center despite peacefully protesting in a designated free speech zone.

According to Mr. Kyle Frankovich:

Kristi Noem was . . . surrounded by photographers, videographers, essentially just getting us in the background as she walked by.

Later, social media posts from DHS showed Kyle handcuffed, dubbing him a ``violent activist.'' But after being detained for hours, Kyle and Juan weren't charged with any crimes. They were just being used as camera props for Secretary Noem's appearance.

These rogue immigration agents have not hesitated to round up American citizens, green card holders, and people with no prior criminal records. They have not hesitated to slap Americans with the label ``domestic terrorist.''

Now, they are building holding facilities--detention facilities--all over the United States--millions of dollars to hold thousands of these detainees for indefinite periods of time.

This is bound to get worse with the unprecedented funding surge of President Trump's ``Big Beautiful Budget Bill.'' Thanks to that bill, ICE--this one Agency, ICE--has more funding than the Coast Guard or U.S. Marine Corps--more funding than the U.S. Marine Corps, an extra $75 billion of taxpayer dollars to fund these ICE agents. We have seen plenty of them in the videotape.

That enormous pot of funding has been used in pursuit of the President's mass deportation agenda, while at the same time they are diverting money away from fighting drug trafficking and gun violence, ultimately making our country less safe. The funding certainly has not been used to improve hiring and training. Amid a hiring surge, ICE has reduced training requirements, waived age limitations, and bundled background checks, promising $50,000 bonuses to those who sign up.

They have sought to recruit new agents via a multimillion-dollar advertising campaign that evokes White nationalism leading to a real concern that America is intentionally enlisting unqualified people based on their animus toward immigrants.

That is why Senate Democrats, with the support of the American people, are demanding real reforms in ICE.

First, DHS must end roving patrols, including indiscriminate arrests and racial profiling. The cameraless stops have to stop. They need to obtain judicial warrants in order to enter private homes.

Second, there needs to be accountability, including new use-of-force standards. And the masks must come off. If the mask is such a darn good idea, then why don't the State troopers in my State and yours wear them? Why don't the county sheriff's deputies wear them? Why don't our police wear them?

Only ICE believes it is so unique and so vulnerable that they need masks. Of course, that vision of a mask-wearing policeman is a secret policeman that doesn't instill trust or confidence in the community.

In a press conference claiming the end of Operation Metro Surge in Minnesota, border czar Tom Homan said in response to protests:

If you want certain laws reformed, [then] take it up with Congress.

Well, he is right. Congress ought to take this up on the agenda quickly.

He also said:

ICE . . . is enforcing laws enacted by Congress and signed by the President.

If they are, it is time for us in Congress to change them.

Let me be clear: It is not legal to deploy paramilitary DHS agents to tear gas Americans in the streets or shoot innocent people, nor to allow immigration agents to break into homes without a judicial warrant or detain U.S. citizens based on their race.

Is there any standard when it comes to too much government that the Republicans are embarrassed about?

It is true that our system needs reform. Time and time again, Democrats in Congress have tried to pass laws that bring meaningful fixes to the immigration system.

Thirteen years ago, I was part of a Gang of 8, with John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Jeff Flake, and Marco Rubio on the Republican side; myself, Schumer, Menendez, and Bennet on the Democrat side. We worked for months every night of every week until we had it done, the comprehensive immigration reform.

It had the support of business; it had the support of labor; it had the support of the White House, and we brought it to the floor of the U.S. Senate. It had more than 65 votes in favor of it. I believe there were 15 Republicans who voted for it.

It was a good bill. It would have avoided all the mess that we are facing today. What happened to that bill? It was sent to the Republican-controlled House where they refused to even consider it, wouldn't even bring it up for debate or amendment. They stopped it cold, and they have done nothing ever since.

That serious bipartisan effort would have fixed our immigration system. It was blocked by Republican obstructionists in the House of Representatives.

That bill included bipartisan provisions to secure our border and deport dangerous individuals. It provided the solution that many undocumented immigrants need today. For those who have no serious criminal convictions, paid their taxes, and followed all the rules, they are offered a path to citizenship.

It was over 20 years ago when I introduced a bill known as the DREAM Act. The DREAM Act said if you were brought to this country as a child, an infant, a toddler, and you were raised in America, pledged allegiance to that flag in your classroom every day, you deserved a chance to earn your way to citizenship. That is the DREAM Act in a nutshell.

That has never become law. It is passed in the Senate occasionally, but not in the House; passed in the House but not in the Senate. Here it sits today.

My guest at the State of the Union tonight is a young woman named Tereza Lee. She lives in the city of New York now, but when I first ran across her, she was in Chicago. She was brought to the United States by her Korean family and raised by a father who wanted to be a minister at a Korean church in Chicago.

As he would visit these churches, it was Tereza that would go from one church to the next hammering away at the local piano which was always on board at these churches. Over time, she became part of the Merit music program and became an accomplished pianist.

There reached a point where she graduated from high school, and they said: You ought to go to one of the best schools, Julliard or Manhattan conservatory. She started to fill out the application, but didn't know what to put when it asked for citizenship.

So she called our office--or at least a friend did--and said: What should Tereza put to fill in the blank? We basically checked and found out that because she was undocumented and overstayed a tourist visa at the age of 2--at the age of 2--that she had to leave the United States for 10 years and apply to come back in.

It didn't sound right to me. How could she be held legally liable for this situation? It was her parents' decision not to file the papers.

So I introduced the DREAM Act. We had a good run on it with over a half a million people protected by a version of it that was passed into law by Executive order by President Obama.

Whatever happened to Tereza Lee? Well, some families in Chicago thought she was pretty good, and she was. She went to college in Manhattan in the city of New York and played in Carnegie Hall. She went on to get a master's and a PhD in music and is now recognized as one of the outstanding teachers of music to kids from lower-income families in New York.

It is an amazing story. She got married to a jazz musician from the United States. They have three children. She is an American citizen today.

She got her chance because people cared. President Obama passed DACA which gave hundreds of thousands of young people just like her a chance to earn their way to citizenship.

Isn't that part of a good immigration system? It should be.

If it had become law, we wouldn't be here today. The provisions that were included in the overall comprehensive immigration bill would have avoided the conflicts we are facing.

The American people are calling for reform today. The time to rein in this terror campaign is now. Congress must act.

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