Bring Jobs Home Act -- Motion to Proceed

Floor Speech

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HUMANE ACT

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, there is no question that immigration is one of the toughest, most divisive issues we talk about in Washington, DC, perhaps because it is an economic issue, it involves cultural considerations, and it also includes security concerns. It is not just any one of those things; it is basically all of those wrapped into one.

At the same time, I have been impressed by the fact that the ongoing border crisis that is now occurring in South Texas has produced a moment of bipartisan consensus and clarity, which are rare when we talk about immigration. For example, we all agree that the United States must continue to uphold the rule of law, with which all of us are better off--including the people who want to come to the United States as immigrants, if they can come through a legal system in an orderly way and not as a flood of humanity who have surrendered themselves to the tender mercies of the criminal organizations that funnel children and other immigrants from Central America through Mexico into South Texas.

We all agree that our policies should be one of not encouraging Central American children, and particularly their parents putting their lives at risk in the hands of these criminal organizations. We all agree that the present levels of chaos and confusion on our southern border are totally unacceptable. No one is arguing for the status quo, to my knowledge. They are unacceptable from both a security perspective and from a humanitarian perspective.

I said just a moment ago that no one is arguing that the status quo is acceptable, but I fear that unless we sit down and reason together, we are going to end with a status quo before we leave for the August recess. Unless we are successful in passing the needed policy changes that will actually address some of the causes of the current crisis--as well as appropriate money that is needed on an emergency basis to help build capacity to deal with it--the status quo is what we are going to get. That would be disappointing and it would be tragic.

So people may have good ideas, and I would love to hear them. But working together with my colleague Henry Cuellar from the House--Henry likes to call himself a Blue Dog Democrat, but he is from Laredo, TX, lives on the border and understands it very well--he and I have come up with a bipartisan, bicameral proposal that would discourage illegal immigration from Central America and elsewhere by ending the de facto policy of catch-and-release.

What I mean by that is when people are coming into the country illegally, they are detained by the Border Patrol. But we know there is a policy of de facto release once they are detained because many of them are given a notice to appear for a future court hearing and they never show up.

I had one former head of the Drug Enforcement Administration who said: Everybody knows that a notice to appear should really be retitled a ``notice to disappear'' because that is what happens.

If people are successful in navigating this glitch in our enforcement system, then they are going to keep coming and the cartels and the people who make money off of transporting people through this perilous journey will continue--as I have spoken about numerous times--from Central America through Mexico--a journey in which women are routinely sexually assaulted, the migrants are routinely kidnapped and held for ransom, and some never make it because they die of injuries or exposure.

If we don't fix that by the time we leave for our August recess, we will have failed in some of our more basic responsibilities. But more specifically, our bill would reform a 2008 human trafficking law that actually passed, essentially, by unanimous consent. Nobody dreamed that it would be exploited as it has been in a way that weakened U.S. immigration enforcement and incentivized Central American children to risk everything they have to make this perilous journey from Central America to Mexico.

I have said earlier what I believe to be the fact--the cartels are smart. I mean, these are rich, wealthy criminal organizations with a lot of shrewd and inventive people. What they have figured out is a business model to exploit this vulnerability in the 2008 law that we need to address before we leave.

I will give one sense of the problem. On Tuesday of this week, 20 unaccompanied minors from Central America had hearings scheduled before a Federal immigration court in Dallas--20 scheduled; 18 failed to show up. So roughly 10 percent showed up, and the other 18 didn't show up. We currently don't have the resources through Immigration and Customs Enforcement to locate those children and make sure they actually do appear. What happens is they are part of that 40 percent of illegal immigration, people who enter the country, just simply melt into the landscape, and we don't hear from them again, but they are still here.

Given how few unaccompanied minors actually appear for their hearings, Members of both parties have expressed their view that the 2008 law needs to be changed.

The Secretary of Homeland Security, whom I talked to as recently as yesterday, said on Tuesday: The administration has asked for a change in the law, and we are in active discussions with Congress right now about doing that.

That is a little bit mysterious to me because the majority leader has said the border is secure and he is not interested in taking up any reforms such as the HUMANE Act Congressman Cuellar and I have sponsored.

I would say to the majority leader, if you don't think that is the right solution, then where is yours? Are there other ideas that people have that are better ideas? I am game.

I think we ought to have that discussion, and we ought to be focused on trying to fix it as Secretary Johnson said is needed. I am sure there will be some differences, but that is what this place is for, to work out those differences and come up with the 80 percent solution, hopefully, and then get the job done.

But the irony of what Secretary Johnson has said is that the administration acknowledges

that change is needed. But is any change forthcoming from the majority leader?

Well, apparently it is not, because he is in the process of having us vote on a so-called clean emergency appropriations bill without any reforms attached to it. I have called this a blank check, and indeed I believe it is, because it is not responsible just to spend the money without trying to fix the problem. Indeed, if history is any guide--and I think it is--we are seeing these numbers go up every year.

In other words, it is estimated that of the 57,000 unaccompanied minors that have been detained at our southwestern border since August, that number could grow as high as 90,000 this year. Next year, the estimate is it could be as many as 145,000.

I know the Presiding Officer has read, as I have, stories in the Washington Post, the New York Times, and elsewhere about the backlash that is occurring around the country as these children are being transported and warehoused in different locations around the country. This is going to do nothing but get worse, in my view, as the numbers continue to escalate and as we don't deal with the source of the problem.

This is a very dangerous situation where the American people are demanding we act on our best judgment, trying to work together in a bicameral, bipartisan way. But so far at least, the majority leader, the Democratic leader has rejected any changes in the 2008 law--even along the lines that Secretary Johnson, Secretary of Homeland Security, has suggested.

I have actually heard there are proposals, legislative language that has been floated among our Democratic colleagues in the Senate. But under orders of the White House, none of that has been shared with anyone on this side of the aisle. I hope that changes because we need to be sharing ideas. We need to be working toward a consensus here because we have basically the rest of this week and next week, then we are out of here, and the problem is not going to get better. It is only going to get worse. We could use some help from the President, using some of his political capital--the power and the authority that only the resident of the White House has--to try to work together with Congress to get something done.

Seven weeks ago he called this an urgent, humanitarian crisis, but for some reason unknown to me, the President has still refused to go to the border himself to witness what is happening there. I worry he is living in a bubble--which I think all Presidents are prone to do unless they are careful and fight against it--that does not allow him to appreciate the seriousness of this situation and how bad it will continue to grow.

I was in McAllen, TX, last Friday, and I was pleased to see a number of our colleagues had traveled down to the border: Senator Murkowski of Alaska, Senator Hirono of Hawaii, Senator Blumenthal of Connecticut, and other Members of the House--from California, Colorado, and Texas. I am grateful to them for coming down to the site of this huge crisis and trying to help work with us to try to figure out what needs to be done in order to resolve it.

I wish the President would take the same opportunity to see with his own eyes what his fellow Democrats saw. When I was in McAllen and then in Mission, TX--which is close to McAllen--last Friday, they made crystal clear to me and Congressman Cuellar that they didn't care if we were Republicans or Democrats. As a matter of fact, that part of our State is heavily Democratic. What they cared about is whether we were serious about offering a meaningful solution to this crisis.

Can you imagine what impact there is on the local communities and on the State of Texas? I mean, this isn't broadly spread along the entire border, this is concentrated on the Rio Grande Valley in South Texas. It is overwhelming the capacity of those local communities and of our State to deal with it.

This is why our Governor, in the absence of any Federal response, thought it was important to get more boots on the ground in the form of the National Guard. That is not a permanent solution by any means, but at least Governor Perry is willing to do something when the President is apparently not willing to use any political capital to get a meaningful response from Washington, DC.

I would say that it is obvious to any fairminded observer that the status quo along the border is unacceptable and unsustainable. But the response of the majority leader appears to be: Let's just spend some more money on an emergency basis. But I dare to say that if the majority leader wants us to spend $2.7 billion on an emergency basis now, we are going to be back at the end of the year doing it again. We are going to be back in 6 months doing it again. We are going to be back in another 6 months doing it again.

In other words, unless you are dealing with the source of the problem, we are going to continue to hemorrhage money to try to deal with this crisis when we should be all about deterring people from coming into our country when they have no realistic hope of being able to stay under our current laws.

As former Border Patrol Deputy Chief Ron Coburn recently reported: Not only has the Border Patrol's morale been lower than ever--we have Border Patrol who are being diverted from their law enforcement responsibilities in order to change diapers and to feed children. You can imagine what advantage the cartels and drug are taking when the Border Patrol is being relieved of their duties at the border and is busy trying to process these immigrant children through these various centers.

Well, they are having a field day. They are laughing at the Federal Government's ineptitude. Our current policies are emboldening transnational gangs, jeopardizing public safety, and making a mockery of United States sovereignty.

By contrast, the HUMANE Act that Congressman Cuellar and I have offered would accelerate the removal process for unaccompanied minors who have no valid basis for staying. It would give those who have a valid basis for staying a timely hearing in front of an immigration judge so they can make their case. And if they can make their case under current law, then they will be able to stay. But it would strongly deter and discourage illegal migration, and it would help restore something that is sorely needed, which is some order in the rule of law in a situation that is characterized now by sheer chaos.

Just to clarify, this isn't about comprehensive immigration reform. We still have a lot of work we need to do beyond this. This is what we can do now together on a bipartisan basis that needs to be done on a timely basis. It is a narrowly targeted measure designed to alleviate a national crisis--nothing more, nothing less. I would think that would be something we would all agree is worth doing.

I would point out that some of the cosponsors of the HUMANE Act include Members who voted for the Gang of 8 immigration bill coming out of the Senate and Members who voted against it. So this is one of those rare points of bipartisanship and clarity as to what the problem is and what we need to do to fix it that is bringing people together on a bipartisan basis.

Our legislation transcends the typical left-right, Democratic-Republican immigration debate. It is a genuine bipartisan solution to a genuine emergency, and it deserves a vote. I hope the majority leader will reconsider his earlier position that all he wants us to do is write a blank check without any real reform.

The majority leader may not particularly like the legislation Congressman Cuellar and I have introduced, but if he doesn't like it, doesn't it make sense that he would offer something different, something he thinks maybe would be a better solution? I would be glad to take a look at it.

If you don't like our plan, fine. But I would ask, Where is your plan? Because if you don't offer one and if you block a vote on sensible reforms, all you are doing is guaranteeing that the current border crisis will continue.

Again, I urge the President and the majority leader to come down to South Texas, like so many of our other colleagues have done, and take a look for themselves. The very least they could do is say thank you to the Border Patrol and other Federal officers, such as FEMA, who are trying to deal with this crisis. Unless we take action here in Washington, the problems are only going to get worse.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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