Rep. Gutierrez Reacts to Cornyn-Cuellar Bill to Deport Children and Throw Money at Border Security

Press Release

Today, Rep. Luis V. Gutiérrez (D-IL) reacted to the pending introduction of a bill by Senator John Cornyn of Texas and Rep. Henry Cuellar of Texas to curtail the rights of children captured at the border who are fleeing violence in Central America.

The following is a statement by Rep. Luis Gutiérrez, a Democrat who represents the Fourth District of Illinois, is a Member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, a Member of the Judiciary Committee and the Subcommittee on Immigration and Border Security, and is the Chairman of the Immigration Task Force of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.

"Senator Cornyn has led the opposition to every single immigration reform proposal he has ever seen and he is exploiting children, wrapping himself in a thin blanket of feigned compassion, and he has gotten a Democrat to stand with him. This is not the middle ground, this is the deportation-only agenda dressed up in sheep's clothing. More of the same is not a solution.

"The backbone and commitment to justice of the strongest and most generous nation in the world is trembling at the presence of 50,000 children and responding by taking away legal rights from vulnerable children. It is shameful.

"We could fortify the U.S. Mexico border like the Berlin Wall of the past and it still would not change the fact that kids are fleeing their home countries because of danger and violence. The Congress has an important decision to make, right here, right now: As our nation faces a refugee crisis of desperate children fleeing for their lives and the Western Hemisphere faces massive displacement of children and families, do we want to create a border with Mexico that rivals the militarization of the border between North and South Korea? Is that our response, to shut out our neighbors and stick our heads in the sand?

"Or do we rise to the challenge, as Americans have always done, follow the laws we have in place to sort out legitimate claims for asylum and safeguard against sex-trafficking and respond with leadership, compassion and solutions that will actually work. This will not help establish democracy and the rule of law in Central America, this will not crackdown on the smugglers, but this will send children back into harm's way by curtailing basic humanitarian protections enshrined in decades of American law.

"The children and most of the other people crossing our southern border are being caught -- they are being apprehended and put into a legal process that multiple Congresses on multiple occasions approved so that we protect the rights of children who are in great danger. But now we have politicians with a political agenda to spend more tax money on the border using the plight of these children to say this is a border security crisis, this is a crisis of too many rights for undeserving children, and to respond to the mob, not to our values as a nation."

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