Madam Speaker, I come to the floor of the House today to talk about an issue that has been in the headlines a lot recently. Every month, more than 30,000 people come across our border, our southern border, without the benefit of a legal…
Madam Speaker, I come to the floor of the House today to talk about an issue that has been in the headlines a lot recently.
Every month, more than 30,000 people come across our border, our southern border, without the benefit of a legal status. Now, there is no doubt that there are more people in those 30,000, but 30,000 are what are identified by our Customs and Border Protection personnel on the border.
Thousands upon thousands of these are unaccompanied children. The end result is many of them reside in shelters and they are cared for by American taxpayer dollars. Some others are less fortunate, and they end up being released into dangerous situations.
I think all Americans can agree that we want our immigration system to work, and maybe we want it to be better. But as we consider this crisis on
our southern border, it is fair to ask: How did we arrive at this point?
First off, just from the numbers, America is the most generous country in the world. Through our Nation's legal immigration process, we welcome well over a million immigrants into the United States of America every year. That is more than every other nation on the face of the Earth combined. And, just to be clear, these are people who go through the correct process and follow our laws. Despite this generosity, others remain intent on entering our country without the full benefit of legal status.
Congress continues to grapple with immigration reform, and particularly the question of what to do with unaccompanied minors and those who come into this country as small children and then age into the system.
I actually asked the Congressional Research Service: How do other countries deal with this population of children, identified as Dreamers, how do other countries deal with this population?
Well, their answer was pretty short. Other countries don't. If someone is found coming into their country without the benefit of legal status--man, woman, or child--they are returned to their point of origin. They do not keep anyone in that status, in that category.
So, again, America is the most generous country in the world, and we have the most significant problem with immigration without the benefit of legal status.
Over the past couple of weeks, we have heard intense criticism of the Trump administration of a zero-tolerance policy. We have heard Members of Congress opine, both at the border and here on the floor of the House, about the misfortune of those who have crossed into our country without the benefit of citizenship. From the news, you would know that this is a terrible situation.
So, enforcement first; is that a bad thing? Well, that is what the administration is supposed to do. And there is significant proof that an enforcement first policy does deter people from subjecting themselves to harm by taking a perilous trip to the American border, whether it be by land or by sea.
For example, when General Kelly was the Secretary of Homeland Security, before he became Chief of Staff for the White House, he visited our Texas border in May of 2017. Those Border Patrol stations were virtually unoccupied at the time.
In June of 2017, a Reuters journalist, Julia Edwards Ainsley, reported on the decreased number of border crossings. She writes--and, bear in mind, this is just over a year ago:
Last fall, during the waning months of the Obama
administration, hundreds of immigrants crossed the river on
rafts at this point each day, many willingly handing
themselves over to immigration authorities in hopes of being
released into the United States to await court proceedings
that would decide their fate.
Now, the agents look out on an empty landscape. Footpaths
up from the water have started to disappear under growing
brush, with only the stray baby shoe or toothbrush serving as
reminders of that migrant flood.
The reason for the change, the agents say, is a perception
in Mexico and Central America that President Donald Trump has
ended the practice known as ``catch and release,'' in which
immigrants caught in the United States without proper
documents were released to live free, often for years, as
their cases ran through the court system.
Now, would-be border violators know ``they'll be detained
and then turned right back around,'' said one of the two
agents, Marlene Castro. ``It's not worth it anymore,'' she
said.
What had happened between the end of the Obama administration and the first year of the Trump administration? When people believe that they will encounter a border wall, or that they will be turned away at the border, people simply do not come. However, our laws are effective only if they are enforced. As General Kelly said at the time:
For changes to be permanent, Congress must change the law.
He went on to say:
If Congress does not want us to enforce the law, they
should change the law.
So, every night, when you are listening to the news, you might believe that this is the first time in American history that a Presidential administration has used an enforcement first, or a so- called ``zero-tolerance'' policy.
But let's think about this for a minute and turn the clock back to 1992.
In the early 1990s, rafts of immigrants from the country of Haiti were bound for the United States and were intercepted at sea, as authorized by a policy enacted by President George H. W. Bush's administration.
A young Governor from Arkansas was running for President against the incumbent George H.W. Bush, and, what a surprise, the campaign rhetoric became divisive. Then-Governor Clinton, time and again, spoke of his disagreement with then-President Bush's zero-tolerance immigration policy.
During his campaign, Governor Clinton often maligned President Bush for being so cruel in his treatment of Haitian refugees traveling to America by boat. The rhetoric then was the same as the rhetoric now: You have put a closed sign on the Statue of Liberty, or you have hung up a no vacancy sign on the border of the United States. During his campaign, some people feared that Governor Clinton was creating unrealistic expectations for the Haitian people, who were suffering significantly from unrest in their country.
As Douglas Farah wrote in the New York Times article titled ``Clinton Inspires Hope and Fear in Haiti'' on November 28, 1992:
It was Mr. Clinton who helped create the expectation of an
exodus from Haiti when he condemned the Bush administration
for a ``cruel policy of returning Haitian refugees to a
brutal dictatorship without an asylum hearing.''
Now, we all know that Governor Clinton won the Presidential election in 1992. From Governor Clinton's promises, the people of Haiti expected to be welcomed into the United States with open arms. The problem is that after winning the White House, President-elect Clinton had a change of heart.
Now, I will read from some of President-elect Clinton's remarks, and this was spoken directly to the people of Haiti over the radio on Voice of America.
For Haitians who do seek to leave Haiti, boat departure is
a terrible and dangerous choice. I've been deeply concerned
by reports that many of you are preparing to travel by boat
to the United States. And, I fear that boat departures in the
near future would result in further tragic losses of life.
For this reason, the practice of returning those who flee
Haiti by boat will continue for the time being after I become
President. Those who do leave Haiti for the United States by
boat will be stopped and directly returned by the United
States Coast Guard.
To avoid the human tragedy of a boat exodus, I wanted to
convey this message directly to the Haitian people: Leaving
by boat is not the route to freedom.
Now, this dramatic change of heart did not go without notice. On January 17, 1993, the Chicago Tribune columnist Stephen Chapman wrote:
The President-elect has a terrible time making up his mind
and keeping it made up. A lot of Haitians are disappointed to
find he's something less than a man of his word. They're not
the only ones.
As you can see from this story, border security is not a new debate. Zero-tolerance policies do go back far longer than the current administration.
Now, just before I leave this topic, I want to thank the Library of Congress and the National Archives for their work in helping me track down this now long-forgotten radio address. But I do think it is useful as we consider our current situation, and I am grateful to them for their work to uncover this recording from their archives.
It actually was easier to find evidence of the zero-tolerance policy in effect during the Carter administration.
There was a phenomena known as the Mariel boatlift. Fidel Castro, solving a problem he had internally in his country, opened the doors to his prisons and some of his asylums. He sent criminals and patients suffering from mental diseases through the straits of Florida and he left Jimmy Carter's administration to grapple with a Cuban refugee crisis.
In a 1997 interview, former Deputy Secretary of State John A. Bushnell recalled a meeting with President Carter in which he and other key advisers discussed possible solutions to the Cuban refugee problem. He said:
I remember sitting in that windowless conference room of
the National Security Council with Secretary of State Muskie,
the Chief of Naval Operations, the Director of the CIA, the
head of the Coast Guard, the head of Immigration and
Naturalization Service, and several other senior officials
debating how to stop this flow of Cubans. National Security
Advisor Brzezinski chaired until President
Carter came in toward the end of the meeting.
There was a long discussion of how Coast Guard and Navy
ships might physically stop the Cuban boats, either from
leaving the United States or returning. The Navy and the
Coast Guard, represented at this meeting by admirals, asked:
``How can we do this?''
It was suggested that these boats could be rammed or shot
at. The Navy and Coast Guard said that it would be very
difficult to stop these boats physically from leaving the
United States or from returning without major loss of life
among the boat crews and passengers.
I guess Secretary Muskie was something of a sailor. He
certainly knew a lot more about boats than I did. He was
suggesting ways of maneuvering boats to block passage, which
struck me as sort of wild. It sounded to me as if he had in
mind a picket line of Coast Guard and Navy boats going across
the straits of Florida to stop the movement of these small
boats with refugees. This naval discussion went on for a long
time, but was inconclusive.
Well, from this interview, we understand that President Carter's administration was contemplating how to physically stop Cuban boats from coming to the United States.
More recently, President Obama's administration faced a crisis in 2014. There was a flood of unaccompanied minors who came across our southern border from countries like Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala. There is no question that President Obama's dangerous catch and release policies helped to bring us to this point.
President Carter, President Clinton, President Obama, they all learned the same lesson. It is inhumane and dangerous to encourage anyone to attempt a harrowing journey by land or sea in order to reach America's borders.
But I do want to emphasize some important points moving forward.
First off, under the jurisdiction of the Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health, we do oversee the Health and Human Services Office of Refugee Resettlement. Over the last 5 years, I have made 10 trips to the border to visit these Office of Refugee Resettlement facilities. In the last few weeks, I had the opportunity to visit shelters in Tornillo and McAllen and Brownsville, all on the Texas border.
I can tell you this: The shelters are in excellent condition. The men and women of the Office of Refugee Resettlement and the men and women who work in the nonprofit organizations who help in those endeavors, they do an excellent job. The children receive professional care from the exemplary HHS employees. Children were living in a healthy environment. Children were playing on a soccer field with artificial turf. In McAllen, at Casa Padre, I witnessed the same thing.
Regardless of what you are hearing on the news and from our friends on the other side of the dais here in the House of Representatives, the Department of Health and Human Services is providing outstanding care to the minors in its custody.
This was not always the case. Back in 2014, I made other trips to ORR facilities early in what was then the Obama administration's unaccompanied alien minors crisis. The children, when I visited the shelters in 2014, they didn't have access to a doctor. There were no medical personnel.
Today, they have access to the full range of medical facilities and mental health resources, and the children are being screened for communicable diseases. This is important. These children are likely to be placed with families in the United States. They are likely to attend schools with those families where they are placed. Certainly illnesses such as tuberculosis need to be screened for and ruled out before those children are placed with families in the interior of the United States.
Today, children have a way to contact back to the Department of Health and Human Services, or the office of oversight, the Office of Refugee Resettlement after they have been placed.
In 2014, when I visited those shelters, there was no way--if a child ended up in a situation that was not just not agreeable, but perhaps dangerous for the child, they were not given any means of contacting back to ORR once they left Federal custody. And, unfortunately, we know now that some children were not placed in loving homes but, rather, fell victims to trafficking or other abuse.
Now, because of the House Republicans who serve on the Energy and Commerce Committee, if children need help after they leave a shelter, they do, indeed, have a lifeline. These are helpful resources for those who are entrusted to Federal care.
This afternoon, I want to thank and commend Secretary Alex Azar and his team at Health and Human Services for their work, yes, to reunite children with verified family members and for children who have come across the border without any other visible means of support, who are then taken care of by the men and women of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, and, of course, the generosity of the American taxpayer.
The people at HHS are taking the appropriate care to ensure that children released from their custody will be placed safely.
My primary goal still remains to secure the border. Yes, this would be a problem that would be much better prevented than managed after it occurs, but there remains a problem with unaccompanied minors crossing the border without the benefit of citizenship. All the time that that does occur, we must do our best to ensure that they are safe when they are in the custody of the men and women of Health and Human Services.
Again, I want to stress, when it comes to immigration, the United States of America is the most generous country in the world. But is it okay, is it all right for us to allow 30,000 people to enter our country illegally each month?
Is it okay, is it all right to allow 13,000 children to enter our country illegally each month?
Is it all right for us to subject these innocent children to a dangerous journey?
Is it all right for us to continue to encourage and monetize child traffickers and coyotes who bring these children across central Mexico?
President Trump has said that the highest sovereign duty of the President is to defend this Nation, and that includes the defense of the borders. Quite simply, sovereign countries must define and defend their borders.
I believe that America is a country worth defending, so, ultimately, we are going to have to solve this problem.
From experiences, both recent and throughout history, we do know that rhetoric matters, and President Trump's enforcement first policy should not come as a surprise to anyone. As the President, current President campaigned, he promised to end the catch and release program and restore order on the southern border.
The traffickers and coyotes in Central America use our words, our words spoken here on the floor of this House, in Washington, D.C. They use our words to prey on the disadvantaged in Central American countries, and they encourage families to put their children on top of a freight train, a train called La Bestia, from southern Mexico to the Rio Grande, and subject their children to violence of the cartels or worse. And these are children, some of whom will never arrive in the United States because of the dangers on that journey. When we say, or even suggest, that children could receive amnesty at the border, we put innocent lives at risk.
We can be compassionate and we can provide a secure border at the same time. These two concepts are not mutually exclusive.
In 1980, I previously quoted former Deputy Secretary of State John A. Bushnell, and let me quote him again. He recalled that Congress, that year, appropriated over $400 million to assist holding and settling Cuban refugees in the United States. Reflecting on that time, here's what he said:
``I used this appropriation as a key example of why foreign aid through the Caribbean Group was a good investment. It was much better to help our neighbors build a good economic future for themselves at home than to have a flood of desperate refugees, which would cost more money to settle.''
Madam Speaker, I would ask my colleagues in the House if it would not be wise to consider former Deputy Secretary of State John Bushnell's reasoning. Perhaps our foreign aid to countries such as Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, and even Mexico, should be tied to how they care for their children.
Here is the deal: Why should we reward those countries whose children
are fleeing for their safety to the United States of America? It is certainly something to consider, particularly as we consider the foreign operations appropriations that we will likely have on the floor of the House when this House reconvenes in September.
As we have heard today, it is simply irresponsible. It is inhumane for the American Government to incentivize anyone, to subject their citizens, the children of their citizens, to this perilous journey to our border.
This was a lesson that President Clinton learned; it was a lesson that President Carter learned; and it was a lesson that President Obama learned; and, unfortunately, each of them learned it a little bit late.
But we have an opportunity. We could end this broken pattern. We could find a solution. First is to secure the borders, and second is to use our foreign aid to encourage those countries to take care of their children first and to not count on the generosity of the American taxpayer to continue to do the job that they refuse to do at home.
Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.