Mr. President, during the last break in our schedule here in Congress in Washington, I spent 2 weeks traveling across my State-- as all of us, no doubt, did--and listening and talking to my…
Mr. President, during the last break in our schedule here in Congress in Washington, I spent 2 weeks traveling across my State-- as all of us, no doubt, did--and listening and talking to my constituents about what is on their minds, what they think we ought to be doing, and what our priorities should be.
In one city, I spoke with students and teachers about the need to improve college and career readiness for historically underrepresented populations and how a piece of legislation that we have introduced with colleagues called the GEAR UP for Success Act would better serve those students.
It was a little bit of a revelation for me, having come from a family where my parents expected me to go to college, and they themselves went to college, that if other children are growing up and don't have that experience--many times, their parents are not prepared to help counsel them on which courses they ought to begin to take as early as seventh grade in order to be prepared with the prerequisites to advance up the educational ladder and be ready for college, to get into the college of their choice. So that was an important piece of legislation. Certainly, working together with colleagues here, I hope we can reauthorize and fund those grants so that more of our young people can get the advantage that comes from that sort of counseling and tutoring and help.
I also spent a little time at Dyess Air Force Base in Abilene, TX, to talk about military readiness and the importance of the new strategic bomber--the B-21--mission that is coming to Texas and to the U.S. Air Force.
I also had a chance to talk to some of my educators and other advocates about the Jenna Quinn Law, which is designed to help give caregivers and teachers training so that they can actually recognize and report signs of child sexual abuse in the children for whom they are responsible.
It has been interesting to me because it actually follows on legislation that passed and has been successful in Texas to train teachers and caregivers on the signs of child sexual abuse so that they can help get those children the help they need, sometimes by asking questions they would never ask if they had not been trained to recognize those signs.
Jenna Quinn herself was an example--this bill is named for her--of somebody who was asked by her sister: Jenna, has somebody hurt you? And that opened up the story and, fortunately, a prosecution and began the path to healing from that trauma.
It is great to be able to talk about a number of topics as we all return home, and you can imagine, coming from Texas, with 1,200 miles of common border with Mexico, one of the things we talked about is the humanitarian crisis along the southwestern border.
Border Patrol agents in the Rio Grande Valley Sector encountered several large groups of people trying to enter the United States last week. This is just in 1 week. On Thursday, agents near La Joya responded to a report of a large group of migrants and found more than 220 people in that one group, mostly families and unaccompanied children from Central America. The very next day, they came across two additional large groups, one with 145 people and another with nearly 300. On Sunday, they apprehended a group of 170. That brings the total to more than 800 people from just 4 groups in 1 week.
These numbers represent a surge in the volume of people we see coming across the border historically. In fact, now almost all of them come from someplace other than Mexico. There is actually no new net migration from Mexico. But we see people being recruited and paying for the services of human smugglers to come from Central America and actually many other countries around the world where people realize that if they can get access to Central America and they can pay the fees to the human smugglers, they can make their way into the United States.
That is why even President Obama said in 2014 that this is a humanitarian and security crisis. In fact, the statement that President Obama made in June of 2014 when he said that came on the heels of 2 months of record-high apprehensions of unaccompanied children. Between May and June of 2014, more than 135,000 people were apprehended at the southern border. Those numbers were absolutely mind-boggling to us at the time, but those figures pale in comparison to the level of apprehensions we are seeing today.
In February and March of this year--again, a 2-month period--more than 180,000 people were apprehended at the southwestern border. So in 2014 when President Obama called it a humanitarian and security crisis, it was 135,000. Today, in February and March, it was 180,000. That is more than a 33-percent increase from the humanitarian crisis President Obama referred to in 2014. So if it was a crisis then, it has now turned into a full system failure, and all lights are blinking red.
Detention centers are at over capacity. The already understaffed Border Patrol is struggling to meet their needs. Officers and agents are pulling double duty, as law enforcement officials have become caregivers for children. Customs agents are being pulled off their duty to process migrants. NGOs--the nongovernmental organizations--and community organizations that usually help the migrants process the system are unable to keep pace. Cities and counties across the border are bearing the brunt of this massive wave of humanity.
But if you think the situation is bad now, and it is, it will only continue to get worse because we typically see higher apprehension rates in April and May than we do in February and
March. These rapidly depleting resources are being overwhelmed, as I said, and cannot keep pace.
We need to address the root of the problem, and we need to do it soon. Only Congress can pass the legislation that is needed in order to come to grips with this crisis. It is time for us to pass legislation that will provide our frontline officers and agents with the resources they need in terms of staffing, authorities, and infrastructure.
It is also important for us to plug some of the holes that are being exploited by the human smugglers and others that allow them to successfully place migrants into the United States 97 percent of the time as long as they are an unaccompanied minor or come with a family.
Fortunately, I found a partner and ally from the House body who happens to be a Democrat by the name of Henry Cuellar, who is willing to work with me on this issue. He has been my ally on a number of efforts to bring commonsense reform, when it comes to border security or trade, to Texas. We don't always agree, but we can agree on a number of things, and those are the things on which we like to work together.
Earlier today, Henry Cuellar and I introduced the HUMANE Act, which will make important and long-overdue reforms to our immigration system, and it includes commonsense provisions that Republicans and Democrats can and should agree on.
First, it closes a major loophole that is often exploited by the human smugglers when they bring families into the United States across the border illegally. This is called generically the Flores Settlement Agreement. That name comes from a 1997 agreement that determined that the Department of Homeland Security can only detain unaccompanied children for 20 days before releasing them to the Department of Health and Human Services.
While this was unquestionably well-intentioned at the beginning, it has morphed into a much bigger problem because in 2016, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals expanded the Flores holding, effectively applying the settlement not just to unaccompanied children but also to families and turning it into a pull factor for illegal immigrants hoping to game the system.
I am grateful for the support of my friend and ally Congressman Cuellar because we recognize that rather than single adults arriving at the border alone, many people are now bringing children with them so they can pose as a family. They realize they can bring a child-- anybody's child--and pose as a family unit so they can be released after 20 days. Children are literally being kidnapped to serve as a free ticket into the United States. Sadly, many are abused along the way, and many arrive at our border in very ill health. We simply cannot stand by and do nothing and let this continue to occur.
I know today I read in one of our newspapers that the San Antonio Chamber of Commerce said that because Customs agents are being redeployed to deal with children and families, handing out juice boxes and diapers, that there has been a huge slowdown in cross-border commerce and trade. Because of the unique nature of the supply chains that apply to manufacturing both in Mexico and the United States, they estimate that as much as $800 million a day is being lost because now our infrastructure and our staffing at our borders are being overwhelmed.
So the HUMANE Act would clarify that the Flores Settlement Agreement only applies to unaccompanied children and not to families, and it would provide greater time for processing and immigration proceedings to take place before the families are released from custody.
Secondly, this legislation would require that all unaccompanied children are processed the same, regardless of the country of their origin, because under current law, children from Mexico and Canada can be promptly returned home if they don't have a legitimate claim, but processes for other countries move much more slowly, if at all. Put simply, we should make every effort to safely return these children to their home countries as quickly as possible if they don't qualify for an immigration benefit, just as we do now for those from Mexico and Canada.
It would also require all children to undergo biometric and DNA screening to establish family relationships and ensure that they are, in fact, traveling with relatives rather than human smugglers.
To better protect children who are released to Health and Human Services, this bill would place prohibitions on certain individuals who could be serving as guardians. For example, no child should be released to the custody of a sex offender or a human trafficker.
Third, the HUMANE Act would enable family units to stay together-- something, I would think, that all of us should agree on--and streamline the process for those in custody.
Consistent with the recommendations from the bipartisan DHS Homeland Security Advisory Council, the bill would require DHS to establish at least four regional processing centers along the southern border to house and process families. This would literally serve as a one-stop shop, with DHS personnel from Customs and Border Protection, ICE, USCIS, and FEMA assisting migrants and working to process their claims.
Under this legislation, asylum officers and immigration judges would be forward-deployed to adjudicate claims and expedite the entire process, which we hope would begin to ease the burden on our current debilitating immigration court backlog.
In addition to those changes, the legislation also includes provisions to make commonsense improvements, like additional Customs and Border Patrol personnel, and training for our CBP and ICE employees who work with children.
While we know this will not fix all of the problems that exist in our immigration system, we believe it is an important start to change the calculation when it comes to people who say: I know I don't qualify for asylum, but I am going to try anyway, and I am going to pay a human smuggler $5,000, $6,000, $7,000, or $8,000 to try to get me from my home in Central America into the United States because right now, 97 percent of the time, it works.
This is also a huge bonanza to these cartels that are commodity agnostic. They trade in drugs. They traffic children, women, and, yes, they move migrants across the border for money. This will put a big dent in their profits, as we should want to do.
It will also send a message to those who do not have valid claims: Don't even try.
So it will have a deterrent value, which I think will begin to help us control the huge surge of humanity coming across now, which were, as I said, 76,000 in February and 103,000 in March. We are going to see those numbers continue to go up and up and up, further overwhelming our capacity to deal with this humanitarian crisis unless we do something, like this legislation that Congressman Cuellar and I have introduced.
I am grateful for the support and cooperation of my friend and colleague from the House. I am sure there are people in his party who will say he has done too much, just as there are people in my party who will say we haven't done enough. But around here, you have to start somewhere, and where you start is where you can find common cause and agreement and begin to build consensus to solve problems.
Hopefully, if we are successful in passing this legislation, this will not only address this humanitarian crisis, but it will maybe establish a downpayment of goodwill and demonstrate our ability to solve some of our other problems here in the Congress, particularly those that relate to our broken immigration system.
I hope we will soon have the opportunity to consider this text in the Judiciary Committee--I talked to Chairman Graham, who seemed willing to do that--and bring more members into the debate so we can provide relief for those struggling to manage the crisis.
