Immigration Policies

Floor Speech

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, in recent weeks it has become impossible to deny the fact that we have a full-blown humanitarian crisis along the U.S.-Mexican border. Sadly, this crisis is directly the result of President Obama's own policies, and it involves tens of thousands of young children, some reportedly as young as 3 years old, risking their lives.

Indeed, young children are traveling through extremely dangerous territory run by brutal drug cartels that prey on the weak in the form of human trafficking, rape, and even murder. This year alone tens of thousands of unaccompanied minor children have been detained while crossing illegally into the United States. A large percentage has been found in the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas.

To give the Senate an idea of what has happened and the timeline here, as recently as 2011 there were 6,560 unaccompanied minors detained at the border between the United States and Mexico. Then in 2012 the President announced he was taking administrative action to defer deportation of a certain class of minors, most of whom had come here as young children but had since grown up, sometimes called the Dreamers. But this action in 2012 sent a message, apparently, to other people who were anxious to come to the United States. So you see in 2013, there were 24,000 unaccompanied minors. It is projected, although the number is not known, that it will rise to 60,000, or the Senator from Arizona has said he has heard as high as 90,000 potentially of these unaccompanied minors.

Mr. McCAIN. Will the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. CORNYN. I will.

Mr. McCAIN. I apologize if I am being redundant here, but how does the Senator from Texas explain to the American people how we have gone from, in 2011, when we start this chart, from 6,000, to now the projection, 3 years later, of over 60,000 and some say as many as 90,000? But let's say it is 60,000. Does this not have to be some kind of orchestrated, organized effort to account for this dramatic increase? If it is, who is doing it?

Mr. CORNYN. I would say to the Senator from Arizona, he knows a lot about this topic, living in Arizona. But I think it is a combination of factors. It is, 1, the message that was sent by the unilateral deferred action the President ordered in 2012 saying that even children who come here meeting certain criteria would be low priorities for deportation. So the message was: If you can come to America, and you get here, then you are basically not going to be sent back home.

I think it is also a combination, as the Senator knows, of the violence in the failed state status, nearly, of some of the Central American countries where most of these kids come from. But it is creating, as the Senator knows, a humanitarian crisis because we do not have the facilities to take care of this many minor children.

Here again, these are just the ones who made it. The Senator knows how dangerous the trek is from Central America up through Mexico through areas controlled by the drug cartels. Many of these children, some reportedly as young as 5 or 3 years old, are obviously very vulnerable to being preyed upon by unscrupulous characters.

Mr. McCAIN. Additionally, though, these children--when you are saying especially the very young ones, there has to be some kind of organized effort that is bringing them. The average 5-year-old or 6-year-old does not decide to leave home one day and come across the U.S.-Mexican border.

Mr. CORNYN. The Senator is exactly right. I did not answer his question. Let me try to do a better job. As the Senator knows, in years past, the migrants who came across the border typically were people looking for work. But now with the dominance of large swaths of Mexico and Central America by drug cartels, they basically are trafficking in people, in drugs, in guns, and anything that will make them a buck. Unfortunately, they have no scruples whatsoever and no concern for these young, vulnerable children. They recognize their parents are willing to pay money to them to transport them from Central America to the United States. But the problem is they have no control over what happens to those children when they are in the hands of the drug cartels and these transnational gangs as they bring them all the way from Guatemala, for example, which is 1,200 miles away from McAllen, TX. Many of these children suffer from exposure, in addition to being preyed upon by a variety of unscrupulous characters.

Mr. McCAIN. Could I ask again? So these children now, ones because of the numbers in overwhelming our facilities, are in terrible conditions for someone, a human being in the United States of America: no facilities, no bathing, diet, overcrowding, being put on transportation and taken to Arizona and dropped off at bus stops, and yet not only is that a terrific problem, at least once they are there, they are not prey to some of the things they are prey to on the 1,200-mile trip which are horrible in many circumstances given the nature of these people who are the drug smugglers and human smugglers at the same time. So is it true that the dimensions of this humanitarian tragedy/crisis are something that deserve the attention of all of us? I am surprised it has not gotten a lot more attention than it has up to now.

Mr. CORNYN. I would say to the Senator from Arizona that I am a little surprised it has not gotten more attention either. That is one reason that motivated me to come to the floor today to highlight this. Tomorrow, before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Secretary Jeh Johnson of the Department of Homeland Security will be testifying. I hope he can provide us some answers, because what we need is a comprehensive look at what are the incentives that would convince parents to send their unaccompanied children up through this horrific trip through Mexico, some 1,200 miles from Central America, to such an uncertain fate here in the United States, much less along the way. We need to know what the President's plan is to deal with this.

I know the Senator has spent a lot of time in places such as Jordan and Turkey that I have had the occasion to visit. One of our colleagues pointed out, this is like having refugee camps here in the United States, something nobody ever thought we would have.

Mr. McCAIN. I would ask one more question. Does the Senator know of any plan or any idea of what our Department of Homeland Security and our Border Patrol and people have to deal with this? Do you have any idea what they have to address this issue besides transporting children from Texas to Tucson, AZ, and dropping them off at a bus stop?

Mr. CORNYN. I would say to the Senator, I know some of it entails warehousing children at places such as Lackland Air Force Base, and the last report I saw, about 1,000 of them are located there. I am not sure what the plan is going forward. I assume some of it will be to try to reunite them with family members here in the United States. But if they do not have family members, then they are going to basically become wards of the State. I am not aware of any plan.

The reason why I came to the floor today is to express the very concerns the Senator from Arizona has expressed about the causes and the effects of such a poorly thought out policy, which basically sends the message that anybody who can make it here, particularly minors, can come into the United States and we are totally unprepared, in my view, to deal with this humanitarian crisis. We need to be prepared.

Mr. McCAIN. In other words, by making the decision the President of the United States made on deferred action, if you believe those numbers and they are accurate, that triggered a mass movement into the United States of America. So it is not an accident that these numbers have gone from 13,000 up to 60,000 or 90,000, depending on who you talk to. It is not an accident. So if it is a matter of policy, then that policy needs to be reviewed. Rather than cure the symptom, which we have to do because it is a humanitarian crisis, the humanitarian crisis is not going to be over until we address the root of the problem. Is that correct?

Mr. CORNYN. I agree with the Senator from Arizona. I think this is not a coincidence. There is, in my view, very much of a cause-and-effect relationship between this poorly thought out unilateral action by the President, without much knowledge of or thought given to the consequences.

As the Senator from Arizona knows, because he has certainly fought the fight to fix our broken immigration laws, and I have been involved in many of those myself, this is a direct result of the President basically trying to go it alone and basically trying to send a message, a political message, but one that gives very little thought to the very real-world human consequences of his political actions.

The Senator from Arizona was talking a little bit about this trip from Central America. I would show my colleagues, as we know, Mexico has had a lot of security issues that have been dealt with by the last administration, President Calderon's administration, and now are continuing to be dealt with by the current administration in Mexico. But the Zetas, some of the hardest core of the drug cartels, essentially control large portions of this region of eastern Mexico. If you look from Guatemala, from Central America right at the bottom of Mexico here, the pathway these children would have to make all of the way up through Mexico into South Texas, into the Rio Grande Valley, essentially is through territory controlled by the Zetas, the drug cartel.

One question that is horrible to contemplate is how many of the children who started this long 1,200 mile or so trek actually made it to the end of their journey, and how many fell out along the way as a result of illness, as a result of criminal activity, such as kidnapping, how many were assaulted along the way. This is a crisis that needs to be addressed.

I would point out to my colleagues, I have in my hand--and I ask unanimous consent that this document be printed in the Record following my remarks. I would read from it. This is a release from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection dated May 12, 2014. As of May 12, 2014, nearly 180 sex offenders were arrested in the Rio Grande Valley sector alone. That is so far in 2014. Can you imagine that amidst the 47,000 children who have been detained since October of last year coming across the border, that mixed into this pot of people were we know at least 180 convicted sex offenders.
This article continues to point out that:

Additionally, agents have arrested more than 50 members of the Mara Salvatrucha gang, or MS-13, a notorious transnational criminal gang that started in Los Angeles, and about 14 members of the 18th Street gang.

For my colleagues' information, many of them have heard about a train that goes up through Mexico that many of the migrants from Central America take in order to help them make their journey. This train is called the Beast, sometimes called the Beast of Death.

The stories, and indeed the books, that have been written about this chronicle how horrendous this trip is. We can see in this picture there are young people and older people sitting on top of this train, riding it as far as they can, helping them make their journey up that eastern coast of Mexico from Central America, the 1,200 miles they would take to get from Guatemala City to South Texas. Many of them travel on this train known as the Beast.

The stories of what has happened here, of people who have lost their lives, people who have been decapitated when the train has gone through tunnels, people who tried to jump on a moving train only to lose limbs after a fall under the train, will chill your blood.

But the fact is the administration, and indeed the entire Federal Government, needs to deal with this crisis and needs to deal not only with the causes of it but what the effects are and particularly the humanitarian crisis involving this growing number of unaccompanied children.

Federal, State, and local authorities along the border have completely been overwhelmed by the influx. You can imagine that the Border Patrol, which is in the business of processing these children as they are detained and handing them off to Health and Human Services and other agencies, their attention has been diverted from their primary mission of border security because they have had to lend a hand to deal with the humanitarian crisis.

With so many children arriving day after day and with so many of them lacking any identification documents, it has been tremendously difficult to figure out exactly who they are, why they left home, where they have family, and where they should be sent while their case is being processed.

We don't know how many of them have been victims of human trafficking, for example, how many of them might qualify as refugees under U.S. law, how many of them are actually over the age of 18, and how many of them might have a criminal record.

Can anyone at the White House or in the administration say with certainty the children being released from U.S. custody are leaving with an actual family member?

The Senator from Arizona alluded to children being shipped from Texas to Arizona where they were left at bus stops and elsewhere, basically with a request that they reappear at a given time. But, of course, 90 percent, I am told, never show up back at their court appointment.

For that matter, can the administration say with certainty that none of these children have been handed over to an adult with a criminal record? The answer to both of these questions is no.

In short, this is a complete mess, and the use of resources available to Texas and U.S. officials are under enormous strain. The administration estimates that roughly 60,000 of these unaccompanied children will be apprehended this fiscal year. Perhaps twice that many may be apprehended next year.

We can see the trend here and, of course, all we know from this chart is what it was before the President's deferred action announcement, and we know what it is now. But the trendline is undeniable and appears to be growing at an exponential rate. The crisis we are facing now represents a tragic and painful example of the law of unintended consequences.

Two years ago when the President stood in the Rose Garden and announced a unilateral administrative change in U.S. immigration policy, he probably thought he was doing a good thing. But between that policy change and his broader failure to uphold our immigration laws--indeed his statement that he essentially will not enforce broad swaths of those laws--the President has created an extremely dangerous incentive for children and their parents to cross into the United States under these sorts of treacherous and horrific circumstances.

In other words, the policies that were supposed to be adopted for humanitarian purposes to help these children have created a genuine humanitarian disaster for these same supposed beneficiaries of this unilateral policy. While there is widespread violence and poverty in Central America, sadly, that is not something entirely new, and it is not the cause of our current crisis.

President Obama's immigration policies, primarily his policy of nonenforcement, have encouraged untold numbers of parents and children to make a shockingly dangerous journey through the interior of Mexico riding the Beast, some of whom have been subjected to unknown horrors and treatment at the hands of the very same people who were paid to transport them.

The stories I have read indicate that at stops along the way people are held up at gunpoint. If they don't turn over money to their would-be assailant, then they are threatened with being shot and even killed.

While we may have a rough idea of how many children are actually crossing into America, we will never know with certainty how many actually start that journey and never make it, how many die along the way, are kidnapped or perhaps sexually abused or otherwise mistreated because of the lawless conditions under which this takes place. But we do know the massive surge in unaccompanied minors is directly attributable to actions taken or not taken by the administration.

Therefore, I would implore President Obama to immediately do five things:

No. 1, he should immediately declare that the so-called deferred action program--which I referred to earlier that he unilaterally ordered in 2012--does not apply to the children currently arriving at the border. One aspect of enforcement is deterrence, and so deterring the children from ever starting that long, dangerous trek has to be part of the solution.

No. 2, the President should immediately discourage people in Central America and elsewhere from sending their children on such a dangerous journey.

No. 3, the President should immediately begin to enforce all U.S. immigration laws and engage with the Congress in any changes he thinks are warranted and not simply ignore the ones he finds convenient or politically expedient.

No. 4, he should immediately take steps to ensure that Texas and other U.S. border States have the resources they need to address this ongoing humanitarian crisis.

No. 5, he should immediately start working with the Mexican Government to improve security at Mexico's southern border. This is a 500-mile border between Mexico and Guatemala that, if it were better secured, would deter many of these children and other migrants from coming through Mexico and subjecting themselves to these dangerous conditions in the first place.

If the President did all five of those, not only would it help us resolve the current crisis, but it would also help us prevent similar crises from erupting in the future.

These children are being preyed on by drug cartels and human traffickers, and they are at high risk of being kidnapped, raped or even killed while traveling this long dangerous journey to the United States. But sadly, when they arrive here, we still have no way of guaranteeing their safety because of the lack of an adequate plan to deal with this humanitarian crisis.

President Obama effectively created this problem and now he has an opportunity to work with us to fix it. I can only hope he does the right thing.

I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the U.S. Customs and Border Protection document I referred to earlier.

The majority of the sex offenders have convictions for sexual assault crimes involving children. Some of the more heinous offenses include: sexual assault of a child; sodomy, lewd or lascivious acts with a child under 14; aggravated sexual assault of a child; and aggravated indecent assault and corruption of a minor. The sex offenders have convictions for crimes that occurred in states from coast to coast as well as in the Rio Grande Valley.

In addition to the arrests of convicted sex offenders, agents apprehended three illegal immigrants over the weekend who have arrest warrants for sex-related crimes. They include a Mexican national wanted in FortWorth on a continuous child sex abuse charge; a Salvadoran wanted by the Loudan County Sheriff's Office in Virginia on a charge of adultery/fornication: incest with a child between 13-17 years of age; and another Mexican national wanted by the Travis County Sheriff's Office on a charge of indecency with a child/sexual contact The three men were turned over to the Hidalgo County Sheriff's Office pending extradition.

Additionally, agents have arrested more than 50 members of the Mara Salvatrucha gang, or MS-13, a notorious transnational criminal gang that started in Los Angeles, and about 14 members of the 18th Street gang.

The Rio Grande Valley Sector is part of the South Texas Campaign, which leverages federal, state and local resources to combat transnational criminal organizations. To report suspicious activity, call the sector's toll-free telephone number at 800-863-9382.

Mr. CORNYN. I yield the floor.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source