DACA

Floor Speech

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Mr. President, I came here to the floor to talk about the Dreamers, and I do think that it is important to start by making the point that many of those Dreamers are serving in our Armed Forces today. They have put their lives at risk for the only country that they know, which is the United States of America.

It was just shortly after the November election, when then-President-Elect Trump told Time Magazine, when he was talking about Dreamers:

We're going to work something out that's going to make people happy and proud.

He was referring to the Dreamers. He continues:

They got brought here at a very young age, they've worked here, they've gone to school here. Some were good students. Some have wonderful jobs. And they're in never-never land because they don't know what's going to happen.

That is what President Trump said right after the election.

Yesterday, he delivered the cruel news about what would happen 6 months from now if this Congress doesn't act, which is that those Dreamers will be at risk of being thrown out of our country. They will be at risk of being deported from the United States of America.

So the very President who said he was going to do something to make people ``happy and proud'' did something that was sad and shameful in our country. A majority of Americans agree that it is wrong to deport the Dreamers. Not just majorities of Democrats or Independents but also majorities of Republicans recognize that it is the wrong thing to do.

As President Trump has acknowledged, these Dreamers were brought to the United States as young children.
Regardless of the acts of adults or their parents, these children have done nothing wrong. They are our neighbors. They attend schools with our kids. They pledge allegiance to the flag every morning at school.
They sing the Star-Spangled Banner. They play on the same sports teams.

In fact, many of these Dreamers didn't even recognize that they did not have full legal status until they reached adulthood. It was the DACA Program that provided these young people with at least the assurance that the rest of the country wanted them to stay and that they would not be deported so long as they played by the rules, so long as they did what this country asked of them. That is what they are doing.

Ninety-five percent of the Dreamers are in school or working at American businesses, large and small. They are contributing to our economy. Once they received that stability under DACA, 54 percent went out and bought their first car at local car dealerships around the country. Twelve percent were able to go out and make a down payment on their first home. When they go out to buy homes and buy cars, they are supporting our economy, which is why deporting these 800,000 Dreamers is not only the wrong thing to do from the perspective of humanity and being a fair country, but it is bad for our economy as well.

As I indicated at the outset, these Dreamers participate in our Armed Forces and help protect the national security of our country. In my State of Maryland, we have 10,000 Dreamers who are contributing in many positive ways to our State.

When I think of Dreamers, I think of a young man now whose name is Steven Acuna. He is a Maryland resident. In 2001, he was 8 years old when his family came to the United States from Colombia after they began receiving death threats. Ever since his family arrived 16 years ago, they have lived and worked in this country as productive and law- abiding citizens.

In 2012, they were denied the political asylum they had sought here. So they were actually at that time yanked from their Germantown, MD, home and locked up in a detention center on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. At that time, they reached out to my congressional office, and we joined with advocacy organizations and immigration lawyers and local leaders to make sure that family was not deported.

Then, thanks to the DACA Program, that made it possible for Dreamers like Steven Acuna to stay in the United States legally. He just graduated with a bachelor's degree in chemical engineering from the University of Maryland. Steve aspires to be an orthopedic surgeon. Here is a picture of Steve Acuna with his family, celebrating his recent graduation from the University of Maryland and aspiring to go on to become a surgeon.

The message President Trump sent to Steve Acuna and his family yesterday is shameful. The message he sent was this: We don't want you in the United States anymore.

It would be a grave mistake--the wrong thing, morally--and it is also the wrong thing from the perspective of making sure we have a community that works for everybody and a strong local economy.

We have invested in Steve Acuna. He wants to go on to be an orthopedic surgeon. Yet this administration is telling him: If Congress doesn't act in 6 months, you are out of here.

So that brings us to what we are going to do here in the Senate and what we are going to do in the House of Representatives. President Trump did not have to make the decision he made yesterday. It was cruel and it was gratuitous, but he has made that decision. Now it is up to us in the Senate and in the Congress to do the right thing. In fact, President Trump has said to Congress: Go ahead and make sure that Dreamers can stay. So, on the one hand, he took an action he didn't have to. He put them at risk. He lit the fuse on a 6-month detonator, and he handed it to Congress. Now it is up to us to do the right thing, and it is essential that this Senate vote on the Dreamers bill in the coming weeks.

We already have it in front of us. It is a bipartisan piece of legislation. Its primary sponsors are Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican from South Carolina, and Senator Dick Durbin, a Democrat from the State of Illinois. We have a bipartisan bill that has been introduced in the Senate. Now this is the question: When are we going to get to vote on it? When are we going to be able to take up this legislation?

Because of the action taken just yesterday by President Trump, it is imperative that we act right now to provide stability and confidence to these young men and women who have already done so much to contribute to our country--and many are serving today in our Armed Forces--and to let them and the country know that we can act on a bipartisan basis to do what the overwhelming majority of the American people--Democrats, Republicans, and Independents alike--want us to do.

So let's take up the Dreamers bill. Let's take it up now. There is no excuse for delay. People should vote in the light of day. People should let their constituents know where they stand on this issue. This is a question not just of fairness, but it is a question of political accountability and transparency.

President Trump has told Congress that we should act. In this case, we have an obligation at least to take a vote on this issue. I am absolutely confident that, when this body takes that vote, we will do the right thing. We will vote to protect the Dreamers and, in doing so, protect the commitments we as a country have made to people who have done nothing wrong. As a country, I hope we stand for the principle that people should not be punished when they have done nothing wrong, and when, in fact, they have done everything our country has asked of them.

So let's take up the Dreamers bill with dispatch, and let's pass it and let's have the House pass it. It wasn't absolutely clear, but President Trump, in his most recent tweet, seemed to say that he is ready to sign what we send to him. So let's get it done.

Thank you, Mr. President.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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