Terrorism Risk Insurance Program Authorization Act - Motion to Proceed

Floor Speech

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Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I would say to the distinguished senior Senator from Arizona that the administration has been sending mixed messages. First they called this a humanitarian crisis. Then they called it--I think the Senator said--a ``situation.'' They are sort of walking this back. But I just wanted to remind my colleagues from Arizona of what the President said a few years ago in El Paso when people said we needed better border security measures in place.

He ridiculed people. The Senators may remember this. He said--this is the President talking in El Paso in May 2011--he said:

You know, they said we needed to triple the Border Patrol. Now they are going to say we need to quadruple the Border Patrol, or they will want a higher fence, or maybe they will need a moat, or maybe they want alligators in the moat. They will never be satisfied. I understand that. That is politics.

But the truth is, the measures we put in place are getting results. The truth is, they are not getting the kind of results the American people expect--nor these children who are being subjected to horrific conditions as they are smuggled from Central America up through Mexico to the United States. One of the most puzzling things to me--I see my colleague from Texas here. I know Governor Perry has implored the President to come visit the border.

Now he said: Well, I will invite the Governor to an immigration roundtable--where I doubt the Governor will get in a word because the President will probably just deliver another lecture. He is pretty good at that. But that is 500 miles from where the problem is. How can you have a humanitarian crisis, as the White House has called this, and not want to go see it for yourself? Maybe you will actually learn something.

I agree with the Senator from Arizona. In the bill the administration sent over, they stripped out all of the reforms that would actually go to solve the very problem we all know needs to be solved here and instead asked for a blank check.

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Mr. CORNYN. The Senator is exactly right. What we need is a legal system of immigration, not an illegal system, because the people who control illegal immigration are the cartels and the coyotes the Senator mentioned earlier and the criminal gangs. By the way, they have discovered a new business model. They treat these children as commodities, and they hold them for ransom. They sexually assault the young women, as the Senator pointed out.

We do not know how many of these children start this perilous journey from Central America, some 1,200 miles away, and never make it to the United States because they simply die along the way. So this is a horrific situation.

I know both the Senators from Arizona might want to speak to this. The President has acknowledged that even under the Senate immigration bill that passed the Senate, none of these children would qualify. I would ask maybe the junior Senator from Arizona if he would care to comment.

How did this situation get created where even under the law that the President has advocated for, the Senate immigration bill, none of these children would be able to stay?

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Mr. CORNYN. If I may, the junior Senator from Texas had visited Lackland Air Force Base recently and observed some of these 1,200--if I am not mistaken--children who are being essentially warehoused because we do not have any other place to put them. If he might comment on what we are going to do if the numbers continue to grow at the level they are growing now. I know in 2011 there were about 6,000 unaccompanied minors detained at the southwestern border.

This year since October, it is somewhere in the 50,000 range. If that number continues to escalate, where are we going to put all of these kids?

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Mr. CORNYN. If I could ask a question, really, of all three.

I think we have described the catastrophe that continues to unfold and indeed grow. I know, speaking for myself--and I venture to say, I bet, for all four of us--we are actually interested in trying to solve this problem.

The President sent over an appropriations request that is essentially a blank check. The junior Senator from Arizona appropriately acknowledged that the majority of the money is for health and human resources to continue to warehouse these kids with no actual solution.

The Senator from Arizona said we need to change that 2008 law. I agree with that. We need to make sure the children are detained and then get whatever process they are entitled to, perhaps even appear before an immigration judge--that is something we should talk about--before they are repatriated.

But I want to ask the senior Senator from Arizona, because of his long distinguished service on the Armed Services Committee, I was troubled to read and hear some of the testimony of General Kelly, the head of Southern Command, who is the combatant commander for the world south of the Texas border, Mexico and into Central and South America--or actually I guess Mexico is Northern Command. But he said they sit and watch 75 percent of the cartel activity involving illegal drugs and they simply don't have the assets to do anything about it.

I asked him: Do you think trying to figure out how to adequately fund and resource Southern Command, how to get our U.S. military to perhaps work more closely with the Central American military forces and the Mexican military forces, is that part of the solution to this problem?

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Mr. CORNYN. I would say to the Senator I have been in Brooks County near Falfurrias, TX, to see some of the rescue beacons they have there with some of the language written in Chinese. This is in Brooks County near Falfurrias, TX, where I guarantee nobody who lives there speaks Chinese--or not many people.

So the Senator's point is well taken. Out of the 414,000 people detained coming across the southwestern border last year, they came from 100 different countries. Most of them were from Mexico and Central America, but the Senator is exactly right; we have seen a huge influx from Central America up through Mexico, and that is the primary source today.

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Mr. CORNYN. I would ask the junior Senator from Texas, surely the President understands the facts as we have laid them out here, the problems with the 2008 law, really, the flaw in that law. They have created a business model out of it because they realized these immigrants who come across will not be detained, either the children or many adults, women traveling with minor children, because there are not adequate detention facilities.

I wonder if the Senator has an opinion why, if the President--surrounded as he is with some pretty smart policy people, people such as Secretary Jeh Johnson, the Secretary of Homeland Security, whom I have had a conversation with about this very topic--hasn't sent over a request to actually fix the problem, as opposed to continuing to warehouse people?

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Mr. CORNYN. I would ask the senior Senator of Arizona, who is also a national well-known security expert but who also knows a little bit about this big world we live in, what is it we can do with some of the money slated to go to countries such as Honduras, Guatemala, and even Mexico?

Historically, we have had a successful partnership, for example, with the Colombian Government to help them build their capacity under Plan Colombia. Admittedly, that is a different scenario.

In Mexico we have the Merida Initiative, where we train and provide equipment to help build their police and law enforcement capability.

Are there things we ought to try to tie the money that goes to these countries to right now that would be productive programs and help solve the problem at its source?

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Mr. CORNYN. I think the senior Senator has accurately described how the cartels have figured out how to game the system.

Indeed, with all the advertising we do down in Central America saying ``don't come,'' as the junior Senator from Arizona indicated, as long as they get a call saying ``I made it'' and the cartels realize that for every migrant child they shuttle up through the smuggling corridors it is going to be another $5,000 or more in the bank, there is every incentive to continue.

But I ask the senior Senator and perhaps our other colleagues--the President has said that he has a pen and he has a phone, and he is going to do things without Congress. He said that because he is frustrated. I know we all have experienced a level of frustration during the immigration debates from time to time and over the years. But he says he is going to consider issuing another order relative to deportation policy, which strikes me as doubling down on his message that he is not going to enforce the law; he is going to try to circumvent the law and basically welcome more people here outside of legal avenues. So I ask my colleagues, doesn't that make things worse, not better?

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