Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize the distinguished career of Regis Pecos, who has dedicated his career to working on behalf of his community and the people of New Mexico.

I have had the honor of knowing Regis for many years as he served as Chief of Staff to my father, Ben Lujan, Speaker of the New Mexico House of Representatives. Regis was more than just a trusted advisor, he was a friend to my father and to our whole family.

Regis has spent much of his career helping to advance the interests of the people of New Mexico, and has continually been a strong advocate for Native American communities in our state. Regis served his pueblo as both Governor and Lieutenant Governor and went on to work as Executive Director at the New Mexico Office of Indian Affairs for 16 years and under four different governors. While in this important position, he helped gain the support of the New Mexico State Legislature for the State Indian Child Welfare Act.

Regis' passion for Tribal public policy and community issues extends beyond his time in government. In 1997, he co-founded the Santa Fe Indian School Leadership Institute, an organization dedicated to creating systemic change within Tribal communities. The Leadership Institute helps create a dialogue on the important policy issues facing Indian Country and also gives youth community members important exposure and education on Native issues.

The knowledge and passion that Regis has brought to his endeavors on behalf of the people of New Mexico will be greatly missed as he leaves the Roundhouse. But I know that whatever the next chapter brings for Regis, he will always remember his deep roots and always work to build a brighter future for his community and his state. It is with great honor that I congratulate Regis on his many years of service and wish him continued success.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to commend New Mexico PBS for again receiving an American Graduate: Let's Make It Happen community service grant that will enable its stations to continue their efforts to improve graduation rates for students in New Mexico. This grant through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is part of an effort to close ``graduation gaps'' for students of different races, ethnicities, family incomes, disabilities, and those with limited English proficiency.

In today's economy, a high school diploma is a necessity and a college degree is so important to opening the doors of opportunity. In New Mexico, sadly, we have seen troubling graduation rates, with too many of our young people failing to graduate from high school. New Mexico PBS will use this grant to highlight local leaders who are helping increase graduation rates and playing a vital role in encouraging our children to complete their education. It will also work to increase understanding of the challenges facing students, working with partners to develop long-term solutions that emphasize the importance of early education.

This effort is a continuation of New Mexico PBS's mission to provide educational programs that strengthen our communities and build a brighter future for our state. I commend New Mexico PBS for its efforts and also the American Graduate program for their commitment to our young people.

Mr. Speaker, I enter into the Record the story of a young Honduran girl who resisted being robbed for $5, was clubbed over the head, dragged out by two men who cut a hole in her throat and left her in a ravine.

[From the New York Times, July 11, 2014]

The Children of the Drug Wars

(By Sonia Nazario)

Cristian Omar Reyes, an 11-year-old sixth grader in the

neighborhood of Nueva Suyapa, on the outskirts of

Tegucigalpa, tells me he has to get out of Honduras soon--

``no matter what.''

In March, his father was robbed and murdered by gangs while

working as a security guard protecting a pastry truck. His

mother used the life insurance payout to hire a smuggler to

take her to Florida. She promised to send for him quickly,

but she has not.

Three people he knows were murdered this year. Four others

were gunned down on a nearby corner in the span of two weeks

at the beginning of this year. A girl his age resisted being

robbed of $5. She was clubbed over the head and dragged off

by two men who cut a hole in her throat, stuffed her panties

in it, and left her body in a ravine across the street from

Cristian's house.

``I'm going this year,'' he tells me.

I last went to Nueva Suyapa in 2003, to write about another

boy, Luis Enrique Motino Pineda, who had grown up there and

left to find his mother in the United States. Children from

Central America have been making that journey, often without

their parents, for two decades. But lately something has

changed, and the predictable flow has turned into an exodus.

Three years ago, about 6,800 children were detained by United

States immigration authorities and placed in federal custody;

this year, as many as 90,000 children are expected to be

picked up. Around a quarter come from Honduras--more than

from anywhere else.

Children still leave Honduras to reunite with a parent, or

for better educational and economic opportunities. But, as I

learned when I returned to Nueva Suyapa last month, a vast

majority of child migrants are fleeing not poverty, but

violence. As a result, what the United States is seeing on

its borders now is not an immigration crisis. It is a refugee

crisis.

Gangs arrived in force in Honduras in the 1990s, as 18th

Street and Mara Salvatrucha members were deported in large

numbers from Los Angeles to Central America, joining

homegrown groups like Los Puchos. But the dominance in the

past few years of foreign drug cartels in Honduras,

especially ones from Mexico, has increased the reach and

viciousness of the violence. As the

United States and Colombia spent billions of dollars to

disrupt the movement of drugs up the Caribbean corridor,

traffickers rerouted inland through Honduras, and 79 percent

of cocaine-smuggling flights bound for the United States now

pass through there.

Narco groups and gangs are vying for control over this

turf, neighborhood by neighborhood, to gain more foot

soldiers for drug sales and distribution, expand their

customer base, and make money through extortion in a country

left with an especially weak, corrupt government following a

2009 coup.

Enrique's 33-year-old sister, Belky, who still lives in

Nueva Suyapa, says children began leaving en masse for the

United States three years ago. That was around the time that

the narcos started putting serious pressure on kids to work

for them. At Cristian's school, older students working with

the cartels push drugs on the younger ones--some as young as

6. If they agree, children are recruited to serve as

lookouts, make deliveries in backpacks, rob people and extort

businesses. They are given food, shoes and money in return.

Later, they might work as traffickers or hit men.

Teachers at Cristian's school described a 12-year-old who

demanded that the school release three students one day to

help him distribute crack cocaine; he brandished a pistol and

threatened to kill a teacher when she tried to question him.

At Nueva Suyapa's only public high school, narcos ``recruit

inside the school,'' says Yadira Sauceda, a counselor there.

Until he was killed a few weeks ago, a 23-year-old

``student'' controlled the school. Each day, he was checked

by security at the door, then had someone sneak his gun to

him over the school wall. Five students, mostly 12- and 13-

year-olds, tearfully told Ms. Sauceda that the man had

ordered them to use and distribute drugs or he would kill

their parents. By March, one month into the new school year,

67 of 450 students had left the school.

Teachers must pay a ``war tax'' to teach in certain

neighborhoods, and students must pay to attend.

Carlos Baquedano Sanchez, a slender 14-year-old with hair

sticking straight up, explained how hard it was to stay away

from the cartels. He lives in a shack made of corrugated tin

in a neighborhood in Nueva Suyapa called El Infiernito--

Little Hell--and usually doesn't have anything to eat one out

of every three days. He started working in a dump when he was

7, picking out iron or copper to recycle, for $1 or $2 a day.

But bigger boys often beat him to steal his haul, and he quit

a year ago when an older man nearly killed him for a coveted

car-engine piston. Now he sells scrap wood.

But all of this was nothing, he says, compared to the

relentless pressure to join narco gangs and the constant

danger they have brought to his life. When he was 9, he

barely escaped from two narcos who were trying to rape him,

while terrified neighbors looked on. When he was 10, he was

pressured to try marijuana and crack. ``You'll feel better.

Like you are in the clouds,'' a teenager working with a gang

told him. But he resisted.

He has known eight people who were murdered and seen three

killed right in front of him. He saw a man shot three years

ago and still remembers the plums the man was holding rolling

down the street, coated in blood. Recently he witnessed two

teenage hit men shooting a pair of brothers for refusing to

hand over the keys and title to their motorcycle. Carlos hit

the dirt and prayed. The killers calmly walked down the

street. Carlos shrugs. ``Now seeing someone dead is

nothing.''

He longs to be an engineer or mechanic, but he quit school

after sixth grade, too poor and too afraid to attend. ``A lot

of kids know what can happen in school. So they leave.''

He wants to go to the United States, even though he knows

how dangerous the journey can be; a man in his neighborhood

lost both legs after falling off the top of a Mexican freight

train, and a family friend drowned in the Rio Grande. ``I

want to avoid drugs and death. The government can't pull up

its pants and help people,'' he says angrily. ``My country

has lost its way.''

Girls face particular dangers--one reason around 40 percent

of children who arrived in the United States this year were

girls, compared with 27 percent in the past. Recently three

girls were raped and killed in Nueva Suyapa, one only 8 years

old. Two 15-year-olds were abducted and raped. The kidnappers

told them that if they didn't get in the car they would kill

their entire families. Some parents no longer let their girls

go to school for fear of their being kidnapped, says Luis

Lopez, an educator with Asociacion Compartir, a nonprofit in

Nueva Suyapa.

Milagro Noemi Martinez, a petite 19-year-old with clear

green eyes, has been told repeatedly by narcos that she would

be theirs--or end up dead. Last summer, she made her first

attempt to reach the United States. ``Here there is only

evil,'' she says. ``It's better to leave than have them kill

me here.'' She headed north with her 21-year-old sister, a

friend who had also been threatened, and $170 among them. But

she was stopped and deported from Mexico. Now back in Nueva

Suyapa, she stays locked inside her mother's house. ``I hope

God protects me. I am afraid to step outside.'' Last year,

she says, six minors, as young as 15, were killed in her

neighborhood. Some were hacked apart. She plans to try the

journey again soon. Asking for help from the police or the

government is not an option in what some consider a failed

state. The drugs that pass through Honduras each year are

worth more than the country's entire gross domestic product.

Narcos have bought off police officers, politicians and

judges. In recent years, four out of five homicides were

never investigated. No one is immune to the carnage. Several

Honduran mayors have been killed. The sons of both the former

head of the police department and the head of the national

university were murdered, the latter, an investigation

showed, by the police.

``You never call the cops. The cops themselves will

retaliate and kill you,'' says Henry Carias Aguilar, a pastor

in Nueva Suyapa. A majority of small businesses in Nueva

Suyapa have shuttered because of extortion demands, while

churches have doubled in number in the past decade, as people

pray for salvation from what they see as the plague predicted

in the Bible. Taxis and homes have signs on them asking God

for mercy.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees recently

interviewed 404 children who had arrived in the United States

from Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala and Mexico; 58 percent

said their primary reason for leaving was violence. (A

similar survey in 2006, of Central American children coming

into Mexico, found that only 13 percent were fleeing

violence.) They aren't just going to the United States: Less

conflicted countries in Central America had a 712 percent

increase in asylum claims between 2008 and 2013.

``If a house is burning, people will jump out the window,''

says Michelle Brane, director of the migrant rights and

justice program at the Women's Refugee Commission.

To permanently stem this flow of children, we must address

the complex root causes of violence in Honduras, as well as

the demand for illegal drugs in the United States that is

fueling that violence.

In the meantime, however, we must recognize this as a

refugee crisis, as the United Nations just recommended. These

children are facing threats similar to the forceful

conscription of child soldiers by warlords in Sudan or during

the civil war in Bosnia. Being forced to sell drugs by narcos

is no different from being forced into military service.

Many Americans, myself included, believe in deporting

unlawful immigrants, but see a different imperative with

refugees.

The United States should immediately create emergency

refugee centers inside our borders, tent cities--operated by

the United Nations and other relief groups like the

International Rescue Committee--where immigrant children

could be held for 60 to 90 days instead of being released.

The government would post immigration judges at these centers

and adjudicate children's cases there.

To ensure this isn't a sham process, asylum officers and

judges must be trained in child-sensitive interviewing

techniques to help elicit information from fearful,

traumatized youngsters. All children must also be represented

by a volunteer or government-funded lawyer. Kids in Need of

Defense, a nonprofit that recruits pro bono lawyers to

represent immigrant children and whose board I serve on,

estimates that 40 percent to 60 percent of these children

potentially qualify to stay under current immigration laws--

and do, if they have a lawyer by their side. The vast

majority do not. The only way to ensure we are not hurtling

children back to circumstances that could cost them their

lives is by providing them with real due process.

Judges, who currently deny seven in 10 applications for

asylum by people who are in deportation proceedings, must

better understand the conditions these children are facing.

They should be more open to considering relief for those

fleeing gang recruitment or threats by criminal organizations

when they come from countries like Honduras that are clearly

unwilling or unable to protect them.

If many children don't meet strict asylum criteria but face

significant dangers if they return, the United States should

consider allowing them to stay using humanitarian parole

procedures we have employed in the past, for Cambodians and

Haitians. It may be possible to transfer children and

resettle them in other safe countries willing to share the

burden. We should also make it easier for children to apply

as refugees when they are still in Central America, as we

have done for people in Iraq, Cuba, countries in the former

Soviet Union, Vietnam and Haiti. Those who showed a well-

founded fear of persecution wouldn't have to make the

perilous journey north alone.

Of course, many migrant children come for economic reasons,

and not because they fear for their lives. In those cases,

they should quickly be deported if they have at least one

parent in their country of origin. By deporting them directly

from the refugee centers, the United States would discourage

future non-refugees by showing that immigrants cannot be

caught and released, and then avoid deportation by ignoring

court orders to attend immigration hearings.

Instead of advocating such a humane, practical approach,

the Obama administration wants to intercept and return

children en route. On Tuesday the president asked for $3.7

billion in emergency funding. Some money would be spent on

new detention facilities and more immigration judges, but the

main goal seems to be to strengthen border control and speed

up deportations. He also asked Congress to grant powers that

could eliminate legal protections for children from Central

America in order to expedite removals, a change that

Republicans in Congress have also advocated.

This would allow life-or-death decisions to be made within

hours by Homeland Security officials, even though studies

have shown that border patrol agents fail to adequately

screen Mexican children to see if they are being sexually

exploited by traffickers or fear persecution, as the agents

are supposed to do. Why would they start asking Central

American children key questions needed to prove refugee

status?

The United States expects other countries to take in

hundreds of thousands of refugees on humanitarian grounds.

Countries neighboring Syria have absorbed nearly 3 million

people. Jordan has accepted in two days what the United

States has received in an entire month during the height of

this immigration flow--more than 9,000 children in May. The

United States should also increase to pre-9/11 levels the

number of refugees we accept to 90,000 from the current

70,000 per year and, unlike in recent years, actually admit

that many.

By sending these children away, ``you are handing them a

death sentence,'' says Jose Arnulfo Ochoa Ochoa, an expert in

Honduras with World Vision International, a Christian

humanitarian aid group. This abrogates international

conventions we have signed and undermines our credibility as

a humane country. It would be a disgrace if this wealthy

nation turned its back on the 52,000 children who have

arrived since October, many of them legitimate refugees.

This is not how a great nation treats children.

Mr. Speaker, I have a parliamentary inquiry.

Mr. Speaker, again, if there is discretion that can be shared, that was directly from the article that I asked to be entered into the Record. On many occasions I have been on this floor and been part of many debates in the 5 years I have been honored to serve with the Congress and have used the exact same approach and have never been charged. Is there any discretion that the Speaker can give us direction on?

Mr. Speaker, I have a further parliamentary inquiry.

Mr. Speaker, with that being said to debate, even though the same practices are used by Members, rulings can change by the Chair on this particular issue?

Mr. Speaker, for clarification, that is exactly what I did, which is I read a statement from the article.

I am confused, Mr. Speaker. I am just maybe a junior Member from a small farm in New Mexico, but it seems that if I am reading from the article directly, that I don't appear to be violating any rules to be charged time.

Mr. Speaker, I have a further parliamentary inquiry.

Mr. Speaker, this was not an embellishment. This was a direct quote from the article. It appears to me that my understanding of an embellishment are my own words being added.

Mr. Speaker, last week, we were part of a conversation and debate around strengthening antihuman trafficking laws. We all came to this floor, and Democrats and Republicans found a way to talk to one another and talk to the American public about what we should do to protect these children that are in harm's way, not just fleeing street violence, but being brutally murdered and raped, Mr. Speaker.

This week, what my Republican colleagues are doing is coming out of a conference and weakening antihuman trafficking laws.

Mr. Speaker, at this point, all I can say is God help this Congress if it is now our policy to weaken human trafficking laws. It is a sad, sad day, Mr. Speaker, and I certainly hope that my colleagues take a chance to look at this and look into their hearts and pray on that and come to the floor and do the right thing.

Mr. Speaker, I submit the following article:

[From the New York Times, July 11, 2014]

The Children of the Drug Wars: A Refugee Crisis, Not an Immigration

Crisis

(By Sonia Nazario)

Cristian Omar Reyes, an 11-year-old sixth grader in the

neighborhood of Nueva Suyapa, on the outskirts of

Tegucigalpa, tells me he has to get out of Honduras soon--

``no matter what.''

In March, his father was robbed and murdered by gangs while

working as a security guard protecting a pastry truck. His

mother used the life insurance payout to hire a smuggler to

take her to Florida. She promised to send for him quickly,

but she has not.

Three people he knows were murdered this year. Four others

were gunned down on a nearby corner in the span of two weeks

at the beginning of this year. A girl his age resisted being

robbed of $5. She was clubbed over the head and dragged off

by two men who cut a hole in her throat, stuffed her panties

in it, and left her body in a ravine across the street from

Cristian's house.

``I'm going this year,'' he tells me.

I last went to Nueva Suyapa in 2003, to write about another

boy, Luis Enrique Motino Pineda, who had grown up there and

left to find his mother in the United States. Children from

Central America have been making that journey, often without

their parents, for two decades. But lately something has

changed, and the predictable flow has turned into an exodus.

Three years ago, about 6,800 children were detained by United

States immigration authorities and placed in federal custody;

this year, as many as 90,000 children are expected to be

picked up. Around a quarter come from Honduras--more than

from anywhere else.

Children still leave Honduras to reunite with a parent, or

for better educational and economic opportunities. But, as I

learned when I returned to Nueva Suyapa last month, a vast

majority of child migrants are fleeing not poverty, but

violence. As a result, what the United States is seeing on

its borders now is not an immigration crisis. It is a refugee

crisis.

Gangs arrived in force in Honduras in the 1990s, as 18th

Street and Mara Salvatrucha members were deported in large

numbers from Los Angeles to Central America, joining

homegrown groups like Los Puchos. But the dominance in the

past few years of foreign drug cartels in Honduras,

especially ones from Mexico, has increased the reach and

viciousness of the violence. As the United States and

Colombia spent billions of dollars to disrupt the movement of

drugs up the Caribbean corridor, traffickers rerouted inland

through Honduras, and 79 percent of cocaine-smuggling flights

bound for the United States now pass through there.

Narco groups and gangs are vying for control over this

turf, neighborhood by neighborhood, to gain more foot

soldiers for drug sales and distribution, expand their

customer base, and make money through extortion in a country

left with an especially weak, corrupt government following a

2009 coup.

Enrique's 33-year-old sister, Belky, who still lives in

Nueva Suyapa, says children began leaving en masse for the

United States three years ago. That was around the time that

the narcos started putting serious pressure on kids to work

for them. At Cristian's school, older students working with

the cartels push drugs on the younger ones--some as young as

6. If they agree, children are recruited to serve as

lookouts, make deliveries in backpacks, rob people and extort

businesses. They are given food, shoes and money in return.

Later, they might work as traffickers or hit men.

Teachers at Cristian's school described a 12-year-old who

demanded that the school release three students one day to

help him distribute crack cocaine; he brandished a pistol and

threatened to kill a teacher when she tried to question him.

At Nueva Suyapa's only public high school, narcos ``recruit

inside the school,'' says Yadira Sauceda, a counselor there.

Until he was killed a few weeks ago, a 23-year-old

``student'' controlled the school. Each day, he was checked

by security at the door, then had someone sneak his gun to

him over the school wall. Five students, mostly 12- and 13-

year-olds, tearfully told Ms. Sauceda that the man had

ordered them to use and distribute drugs or he would kill

their parents. By March, one month into the new school year,

67 of 450 students had left the school.

Teachers must pay a ``war tax'' to teach in certain

neighborhoods, and students must pay to attend.

Carlos Baquedano Sanchez, a slender 14-year-old with hair

sticking straight up, explained how hard it was to stay away

from the cartels. He lives in a shack made of corrugated tin

in a neighborhood in Nueva Suyapa called El Infiernito--

Little Hell--and usually doesn't have anything to eat one out

of every three days. He started working in a dump when he was

7, picking out iron or copper to recycle, for $1 or $2 a day.

But bigger boys often beat him to steal his haul, and he quit

a year ago when an older man nearly killed him for a coveted

car-engine piston. Now he sells scrap wood.

But all of this was nothing, he says, compared to the

relentless pressure to join narco gangs and the constant

danger they have brought to his life. When he was 9, he

barely escaped from two narcos who were trying to rape him,

while terrified neighbors looked on. When he was 10, he was

pressured to try marijuana and crack. ``You'll feel better.

Like you are in the clouds,'' a teenager working with a gang

told him. But he resisted.

He has known eight people who were murdered and seen three

killed right in front of him. He saw a man shot three years

ago and still remembers the plums the man was holding rolling

down the street, coated in blood. Recently he witnessed two

teenage hit men shooting a pair of brothers for refusing to

hand over the keys and title to their motorcycle. Carlos hit

the dirt and prayed. The killers calmly walked down the

street. Carlos shrugs. ``Now seeing someone dead is

nothing.''

He longs to be an engineer or mechanic, but he quit school

after sixth grade, too poor and too afraid to attend. ``A lot

of kids know what can happen in school. So they leave.''

He wants to go to the United States, even though he knows

how dangerous the journey can be; a man in his neighborhood

lost both legs after falling off the top of a Mexican freight

train, and a family friend drowned in the Rio Grande. ``I

want to avoid drugs and death. The government can't pull up

its pants and help people,'' he says angrily. ``My country

has lost its way.''

Girls face particular dangers--one reason around 40 percent

of children who arrived in the United States this year were

girls, compared with 27 percent in the past. Recently three

girls were raped and killed in Nueva Suyapa, one only 8 years

old. Two 15-year-olds were abducted and raped. The kidnappers

told them that if they didn't get in the car they would kill

their entire families. Some parents no longer let their girls

go to school for fear of their being kidnapped, says Luis

Lopez, an educator with Asociacion Compartir, a nonprofit in

Nueva Suyapa.

Milagro Noemi Martinez, a petite 19-year-old with clear

green eyes, has been told repeatedly by narcos that she would

be theirs--or end up dead. Last summer, she made her first

attempt to reach the United States ``Here there is only

evil,'' she says. ``It's better to leave than have them kill

me here.'' She headed north with her 21-year-old sister, a

friend who had also been threatened, and $170 among them. But

she was stopped and deported from Mexico. Now back in Nueva

Suyapa, she stays locked inside her mother's house. ``I hope

God protects me. I am afraid to step outside.'' Last year,

she

says, six minors, as young as 15, were killed in her

neighborhood. Some were hacked apart. She plans to try the

journey again soon. Asking for help from the police or the

government is not an option in what some consider a failed

state. The drugs that pass through Honduras each year are

worth more than the country's entire gross domestic product.

Narcos have bought off police officers, politicians and

judges. In recent years, four out of five homicides were

never investigated. No one is immune to the carnage. Several

Honduran mayors have been killed. The sons of both the former

head of the police department and the head of the national

university were murdered, the latter, an investigation

showed, by the police.

``You never call the cops. The cops themselves will

retaliate and kill you,'' says Henry Carias Aguilar, a pastor

in Nueva Suyapa. A majority of small businesses in Nueva

Suyapa have shuttered because of extortion demands, while

churches have doubled in number in the past decade, as people

pray for salvation from what they see as the plague predicted

in the Bible. Taxis and homes have signs on them asking God

for mercy.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees recently

interviewed 404 children who had arrived in the United States

from Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala and Mexico; 58 percent

said their primary reason for leaving was violence. (A

similar survey in 2006, of Central American children coming

into Mexico, found that only 13 percent were fleeing

violence.) They aren't just going to the United States: Less

conflicted countries in Central America had a 712 percent

increase in asylum claims between 2008 and 2013.

``If a house is burning, people will jump out the window,''

says Michelle Brane, director of the migrant rights and

justice program at the Women's Refugee Commission.

To permanently stem this flow of children, we must address

the complex root causes of violence in Honduras, as well as

the demand for illegal drugs in the United States that is

fueling that violence.

In the meantime, however, we must recognize this as a

refugee crisis, as the United Nations just recommended. These

children are facing threats similar to the forceful

conscription of child soldiers by warlords in Sudan or during

the civil war in Bosnia. Being forced to sell drugs by narcos

is no different from being forced into military service.

Many Americans, myself included, believe in deporting

unlawful immigrants, but see a different imperative with

refugees.

The United States should immediately create emergency

refugee centers inside our borders, tent cities--operated by

the United Nations and other relief groups like the

International Rescue Committee--where immigrant children

could be held for 60 to 90 days instead of being released.

The government would post immigration judges at these centers

and adjudicate children's cases there.

To ensure this isn't a sham process, asylum officers and

judges must be trained in child-sensitive interviewing

techniques to help elicit information from fearful,

traumatized youngsters. All children must also be represented

by a volunteer or government-funded lawyer. Kids in Need of

Defense, a nonprofit that recruits pro bono lawyers to

represent immigrant children and whose board I serve on,

estimates that 40 percent to 60 percent of these children

potentially qualify to stay under current immigration laws--

and do, if they have a lawyer by their side. The vast

majority do not. The only way to ensure we are not hurtling

children back to circumstances that could cost them their

lives is by providing them with real due process.

Judges, who currently deny seven in 10 applications for

asylum by people who are in deportation proceedings, must

better understand the conditions these children are facing.

They should be more open to considering relief for those

fleeing gang recruitment or threats by criminal organizations

when they come from countries like Honduras that are clearly

unwilling or unable to protect them.

If many children don't meet strict asylum criteria but face

significant dangers if they return, the United States should

consider allowing them to stay using humanitarian parole

procedures we have employed in the past, for Cambodians and

Haitians. It may be possible to transfer children and

resettle them in other safe countries willing to share the

burden. We should also make it easier for children to apply

as refugees when they are still in Central America, as we

have done for people in Iraq, Cuba, countries in the former

Soviet Union, Vietnam and Haiti. Those who showed a well-

founded fear of persecution wouldn't have to make the

perilous journey north alone.

Of course, many migrant children come for economic reasons,

and not because they fear for their lives. In those cases,

they should quickly be deported if they have at least one

parent in their country of origin. By deporting them directly

from the refugee centers, the United States would discourage

future non-refugees by showing that immigrants cannot be

caught and released, and then avoid deportation by ignoring

court orders to attend immigration hearings.

Instead of advocating such a humane, practical approach,

the Obama administration wants to intercept and return

children en route. On Tuesday the president asked for $3.7

billion in emergency funding. Some money would be spent on

new detention facilities and more immigration judges, but the

main goal seems to be to strengthen border control and speed

up deportations. He also asked Congress to grant powers that

could eliminate legal protections for children from Central

America in order to expedite removals, a change that

Republicans in Congress have also advocated.

This would allow life-or-death decisions to be made within

hours by Homeland Security officials, even though studies

have shown that border patrol agents fail to adequately

screen Mexican children to see if they are being sexually

exploited by traffickers or fear persecution, as the agents

are supposed to do. Why would they start asking Central

American children key questions needed to prove refugee

status?

The United States expects other countries to take in

hundreds of thousands of refugees on humanitarian grounds.

Countries neighboring Syria have absorbed nearly 3 million

people. Jordan has accepted in two days what the United

States has received in an entire month during the height of

this immigration flow--more than 9,000 children in May. The

United States should also increase to pre-9/11 levels the

number of refugees we accept to 90,000 from the current

70,000 per year and, unlike in recent years, actually admit

that many.

By sending these children away, ``you are handing them a

death sentence,'' says Jose Arnulfo Ochoa Ochoa, an expert in

Honduras with World Vision International, a Christian

humanitarian aid group. This abrogates international

conventions we have signed and undermines our credibility as

a humane country. It would be a disgrace if this wealthy

nation turned its back on the 52,000 children who have

arrived since October, many of them legitimate refugees.

This is not how a great nation treats children.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of this legislation and many other bills we are considering that deal with human and sex trafficking--an important issue, a critical issue, that especially relates to protecting children who are too often victims of abuse and violence. I commend the Speaker for bringing these bills up for a vote.

Mr. Speaker, as I was watching the debate this evening, I couldn't help but come back to the floor. I hope all of my colleagues that are speaking tonight on the importance of passing these human trafficking bills will join us next week to talk about the importance of protecting children.

It was with alarm, Mr. Speaker, that I read a letter that Speaker Boehner penned to President Barack Obama that appears that my Republican colleagues, when they left a meeting earlier this afternoon, are asking to take away the very protections from children during a law that was passed in 2008 that we are asking to protect these children tonight.

So I come today to ask my colleagues to read the transcripts, to hear the debate this evening, and to think about it, to go home this weekend and, whatever faith that we may be, that we pray about it and we talk to our pastors and our religious leaders about it because these kids that we are going to be talking about next week are the very children that need protections as well.

The motivation to pass these bills today is the same motivation that moved this body to pass legislation that became law in 2008, to protect children. This law has since become the subject of much condemnation for many of my Republican colleagues as we discuss the humanitarian crisis on the border.

We are here on this floor debating legislation to protect children, yet many of my colleagues want to take away due process from children who are trying to escape unimaginable violence in Central America. In Honduras, the murder capital of the world, the violence was captured in a story recently--and I apologize for the graphic nature of this story.

This is a story from The New York Times:

During a recent late-night visit to the San Pedro Sula

morgue, more than 60 bodies, all victims of violence, were

seen piled in a heap, each wrapped in a brown plastic bag.

While picking bullets out of a 15-year-old boy shot 15 times,

technicians discussed how they regularly received corpses of

children under 10 and sometimes as young as 2. Last week, in

nearby Santa Barbara, an 11-year-old had his throat slit by

other children because he did not pay a 50-cent extortion

fee.

The doctor at the morgue said: before, we saw children being killed because they were at the scene when gangs were coming to prey on families and they just happened to be there; now, we are seeing kids kill kids.

There are hundreds of other stories like this.

Mr. Speaker, I beg and I plead of my colleagues, each and every one of us that may or may not have been here when the law passed, but those of us that are here now, these are kids. I know that you and I, Mr. Speaker, that we love children, and we want to make sure that they are not victims of these horrific crimes.

Please, please, take this weekend and ask the Speaker to remove the provisions that will take away the due process from these children. As we pass these bills together, let us not forget what brought this Congress together in 2008, to protect these children.

Let us show the same compassion that is a driving force of these bills tonight.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor MANA, a National Latina Organization, whose members will be in our nation's Capital from July 24 to July 26, 2014, to celebrate its 40th anniversary.

MANA was founded in 1974 as the Mexican American Women's National Association, as a national grassroots membership organization with chapters, individual members, and affiliates across the country. The organization has evolved to encompass Hispanic women from all ethnic and cultural backgrounds and is the oldest and largest Hispanic women's organization in the country. The MANA mission is to empower Latinas through leadership development, community service, and advocacy.

For 40 years, MANA has been a powerful voice for Latinas across the country to share their concerns, as well as their successes, as women, professionals, heads of households, educators, and trailblazers. Through its chapters and affiliates, MANA's expansive network has made the organization a leader for reaching the Latino community at the grassroots level. Each local chapter is supported by the commitment of passionate volunteers who are dedicated to the educational, health, political, and economic advancement of Hispanics in their respective communities, implementing the shared mission and vision of the national MANA office, headquartered in Washington, DC.

Throughout its rich history, MANA has established a number of programs to fulfill the mission of the organization and empower Latinas from every walk of life. The AvanZamos Initiative is a national effort to provide leadership development for adult Latinas.

Through training in the areas of financial literacy, mentoring, advocacy and leadership development at the annual MANA Latina Leadership Institute, Latina leaders from across the country are given the skills to help shape the lives of future generations in positive and upwardly mobile directions. The MANA Las Primeras Awards Gala honors Latinas who demonstrate important ``firsts'' in their fields with a national impact on the Hispanic community--highlighting Latinas' important contributions across the country. The Hermanitas Initiative is significant mentoring program in the United States developed specifically for Hispanic youth. The program empowers Latina adolescents by promoting educational achievement and personal enrichment; developing leadership abilities; encouraging cultural identity and awareness; and modeling proactive community involvement.

Finally, I salute the commitment of the founders of MANA--Blandina (Bambi) Cardenas, Organizing Chair; Bettie Baca, Organizing Vice Chair; and Evangeline (Vangie) Elizondo, the First Board President. Their early efforts were the building blocks for what MANA has become today.

It is my honor to congratulate MANA, a National Latina Organization, for 40 years of success in strengthening the Latina community in the United States.

Madam Chair, for over 70 years, our national laboratories have worked to ensure the security of our Nation. We have a responsibility to be good stewards of the environment in relation to the historic and ongoing radiological work at these laboratories.

At Los Alamos, there are legal obligations, including the 3706 campaign to remove transuranic, or TRU, waste and the broader 2005 consent order between the DOE and the State of New Mexico to remediate legacy waste at Los Alamos.

Two major wildfires near Los Alamos National Lab have highlighted the importance of removing aboveground waste from this facility. The DOE was nearing its completion of the 3706 campaign when the Nation's only repository for TRU waste, the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, experienced, first, a fire and then a radiological release.

As we work to restore WIPP operations, we must ensure that our national laboratories have the resources to meet their legal obligations for environmental remediation. We also must recognize our moral obligation to these communities that have served our great Nation.

It is with this intention that I request the chair to work with me and Representatives from other affected communities, as this bill moves forward to conference, to ensure that adequate and appropriate funds are available not only for the restoration operations of WIPP, but also for legally-mandated environmental remediation efforts at Los Alamos and at other affected national laboratories.

I thank you for this time to address this important issue. I look forward to working with you to find a solution, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. Chairman, I rise to amend the Energy and Water Appropriations bill to increase the construction account by $15 million to ensure local governments like the city of Rio Rancho, the county of Bernalillo, and the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District get reimbursed for work they have done in conjunction with the Army Corps of Engineers. The Army Corps of Engineers works with local governments in New Mexico to construct levies, implement flood control measures, and other important infrastructure for the safety of the public.

More specifically, the city of Rio Rancho entered into a reimbursement contract with the Army Corps of Engineers and has not been paid back for several years due to the lack of appropriations. The same goes for the county of Bernalillo, the Middle Rio Grande

Conservancy District, and other communities across the United States.

This delay in reimbursement has led to interruptions in financing for other city projects and also has the potential to hurt the credit rating of these entities if they do not recover these funds via reimbursement, as stated in their contracts with the Federal Government.

By increasing the dollar amount in this account, which includes a number of programs and accounts that are critical to local governments--like engineering, construction, technical assistance, flood control, and environmental infrastructure--we can get these entities reimbursed and get these liabilities off the books of the Army Corps of Engineers to get other projects going.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, this increase has zero impact on the budget and, in fact, would save money by reducing liability for the Federal Government.

Mr. Chairman, local governments have been left holding an IOU from the Federal Government for doing work based on the good faith written agreements with the Army Corps of Engineers.

Mr. Chairman, I understand there may be opposition from some of my colleagues, but I am hoping that I can persuade the chairman to support me in this effort.

Under section 593 of the Water Resources Development Act of 1999, the city of Rio Rancho and other local governments entered into agreements with the Army Corps of Engineers. When city and local governments enter into reimbursement contracts, they expect to be reimbursed. They have annual budgets with the expectations they will get paid back. Congress should live up to these obligations in the authority given to the agency by Congress.

Mr. Chairman, I understand the constraints that the subcommittee dealt with, with the allocations given to them. But we need to make sure that we are working to make these local governments whole with the agreements and contracts they have with the Federal Government.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I would like to pose a question either to the chairman or the ranking member:

With local governments like this entering into agreements with the Army Corps of Engineers and doing work like this, is there something that could be done associated with trying to get an assessment of those, and maybe we can chip away at those reimbursements in a timely manner? Is that something that we might be able to work on?

Mr. Chairman, I would yield to anyone who might be able to respond to that.

Mr. Chairman, my question is:

With local governments, like the ones in New Mexico and other parts of the United States, that have entered into agreements with the Army Corps of Engineers or others for reimbursement in a timely manner, is there a way that we might be able to chip away or work at this? I would be willing to withdraw the amendment if I could get an assurance that this is something that we can look at and work at.

I have offered this amendment in years past. And, again, there are local governments across the United States that are waiting for reimbursement, and I think it is something that would be good for us to take a look at.

I yield to the gentleman from Idaho.

Mr. Chairman, would that be agreeable or amenable to the ranking member?

I yield to the gentlewoman from Ohio.

Thank you very much.

Mr. Chairman, I want to thank the staff for their time and their effort and the courtesy of the chairman and the ranking member.

I will not offer this amendment today and we will see if we might be able to work together, Mr. Chairman, and if not, we will come back next year and we will see what we can do. Maybe we will need to take a vote. But I appreciate everyone's courtesy today.

Mr. Chair, I ask unanimous consent to withdraw my amendment.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to bring up H.R. 15 to demand a vote on the bipartisan immigration reform bill that honors our American values.

Mr. Chairman, it is with great disappointment that I come to the floor today in opposition to this attempt by my Republican colleagues to undermine the Antiquities Act, a law that has resulted in the protection and preservation of some of our Nation's most cherished lands. The Grand Canyon, Zion National Park, the Cesar Chavez National Monument, and many more have all been protected under the Antiquities Act by Presidents of both parties.

This issue hits close to home for me and my constituents. Last March, President Obama designated the Rio Grande del Norte in northern New Mexico as a national monument under the Antiquities Act. The result was years of work and the community coming together to find consensus on a path forward that respects our traditions and respects our culture. Protecting the Rio Grande del Norte had broad support and a strong coalition worked with the administration and Secretary Salazar to show that protecting this land needed to be a top priority. Whether it is for recreation, farming, or sustaining a way of life, the Rio Grande del Norte impacts all those who visit and all those who live off the sustenance it provides.

It is one of the crown jewels of our State, and if it were not for the Antiquities Act, this majestic land that represents our culture and drives the local economy would not have received the protections that will ensure its vitality for future generations. This attack on the Antiquities Act is an attack on the preservation of lands that are a part of who we are, our rich history as a diverse Nation, and our ability to enjoy these lands in the future. I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on this bill.

Mr. Speaker, due to a meeting with constituents from New Mexico, I was not able to be present for a vote on the House floor on December 12, 2013.

Had I been present for rollcall vote No. 641, on motion to suspend the rules and agree to H. Res. 441, providing for concurrence by the House in the Senate amendments to H.R. 3304, with an amendment, I would have voted ``aye.''

Mr. Speaker, November is Pancreatic Cancer Awareness Month, which is when we bring awareness to a disease that takes the lives of too many men and women.

Pancreatic cancer is the 10th most commonly diagnosed cancer in men and the ninth most in women, but it is the fourth leading cause of cancer deaths. Sadly, it is estimated this year that 73 percent of patients with this disease will die within the first year of diagnosis.

While these statistics are daunting, I believe that Pancreatic Cancer Awareness Month is a time for hope. It is a time when we stand up and call attention to this disease and when we call for more research to find better methods of early detection. It is a time to share the stories of those we have lost in the hope that they will help spur action and move us closer to more effective treatments.

Mr. Speaker, pancreatic cancer patients and their families are among the countless Americans who are demanding that we fix sequestration, which has reduced funding for the National Institutes of Health and the National Cancer Institute and which has held back progress toward lifesaving medical research. It is critical that we all work together to fight this terrible disease.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in opposition to this piecemeal approach to fund the government that fails to meet our trust responsibility to our Native American brothers and sisters.

I wonder if they bothered to consult with tribes before bringing up a bill that cuts tribal programs even more than they have already been cut and locks in sequester cuts that are hurting tribes in my district and across the country.

Mr. Speaker, it seems clear to me that Republicans are not listening to anyone these days, because if they were, they would know that tribes do not support this piecemeal course of action.

Navajo Nation President Ben Shelly called this approach ``insulting'' and said Tribal Nations want a comprehensive resolution as well as an end to sequestration.

By taking a piecemeal approach to fund our government, this bill fails to restore many critical services that are important to tribal communities.

In fact, it makes the problems facing Indian Country worse, not better.

Rather than vote on this piecemeal bill that is opposed by Native American communities, we should vote on a clean funding bill that opens the entire government, get to work ending sequestration, and fully fund tribal programs to meet our trust responsibilities.

Navajo President Shelly Urges Lawmakers to Pass a Clean Spending Bill

Shiprock, NM.--Navajo Nation President Ben Shelly strongly

urged the U.S. House of Representatives to pass a clean

spending measure that would stop the federal government

shutdown.

The president said it must be done and that a continued

piecemeal approach is not right and is hurting the Navajo

people.

``The current piecemeal approach House Republicans are

using to fragment tribal communities from the rest of the

country is insulting. Tribal Nations, like the majority of

Americans want a comprehensive resolution,'' said President

Shelly.

Meanwhile, the Bureau of Indian Affairs is furloughing

roughly a third of its workers, most of whom live in tribal

regions and serve Native people daily.

``Our funding for basic programs that provide support to

working families will soon dry up. And nearly 3,000 employees

who work on Indian Affairs for Interior will be furloughed.

We strongly urge GOP leaders to work with the true majority

in the House: the bipartisan group of lawmakers that stands

ready to restart the government. Allowing a vote on a clean

funding bill is the right way to help our tribes and our

communities move forward,'' President Shelly added.

Mr. Speaker, funding for the NNSA is critically important to my State of New Mexico, for we are home to both Los Alamos and Sandia National Labs. However, this bill denies these national security labs the funding they need as it locks in the deep cuts of sequester for 2 more months.

There is not a Member of this body--Democrat or Republican--that says they like the sequester, Mr. Speaker, but my Republican colleagues refuse to lift it. They say they want to keep the government open, but they place conditions on it.

This piecemeal approach in this bill to the Department of Energy and to the NNSA is picking winners and losers with employees that are going to be furloughed. This is a shame, and it is a sham--this Republican charade that is going to go home to my State of New Mexico and direct the Directors of the labs to tell employees who is going to go home without a paycheck and who will not--because there is still not assurance that the Secretary of Energy, through the Department of Energy, will make these employees whole through allowable costs that will be accepted. Enough is enough.

Mr. Speaker, this is a shame. Let's do the right thing and open the government.

Mr. Speaker, words do have meaning. Instead of working together to do our jobs and resolve these critical issues, Republicans have taken a decidedly different approach, one they seem to have been looking forward to for some time, to make another desperate attempt to stop the Affordable Care Act. The government shutdown could be the most damaging thing to hit our economy since the budget sequestration they imposed on Americans.

I would say to my colleague that I just heard from, the prayer this morning is so appropriate, a prayer of St. Francis: make me a keeper of your peace.

There are people who are hurting and in trouble. Let us look inside to the moral obligations that we have and see what we can do to come together.

Please, let us vote on the continuing resolution passed by the Senate. These are the Republican budget numbers the Democrats have agreed to compromise with. Please, listen to St. Francis. Look inside and see what we can do together.