Immigration and Interrogation of Gitmo Detainees

Floor Speech

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Mr. REID. Mr. President, I wish to follow up on a couple of statements that were made by my friend the Republican leader. Senator McConnell mentioned immigration. In the last Congress we worked very hard together in a bipartisan fashion to form a good, comprehensive immigration reform bill. We passed it, but due to the power of the tea partiers--or, as Speaker Boehner referred to them, ``the crazies''-- they didn't have a vote in the House. If they had voted on that legislation, it would have passed. Democrats would have voted for it, and there were enough Republicans who would have voted for it. That would have been a big vote out of there, but it didn't happen, so the President had to do something on immigration, and he laid the groundwork. He spoke at the State of the Union Address and basically said: Since you are not passing any legislation, I will have to use my Executive power in order to get things done. He then proceeded to prioritize what he wanted to do. He issued the order that was so important to boys and girls, called a deferred action, which allowed DREAMers to stay in the country, and that was the right thing to do. He also prioritized deportations by going after criminals, not families, and enforcing the law. He has done a very good job.

I think it is also very important to note that the administrative actions the President has taken are nothing unique. We can go back to the days of Theodore Roosevelt, a good Republican President who did a lot of stuff administratively.

On his remarks about getting involved in the fight again--I am paraphrasing what he said--that we have to get back to the interrogation we did before, we know that torture was quickly eliminated. That effort was led by a lot of people, not the least of whom was someone who has been tortured, a Member of the U.S. Senate, John McCain. He has spoken out very admirably, and as only he can, about how bad torture is. And the facts indicate that torture doesn't get any new information anyway; there are other ways to get that information.

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