John Cornyn

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Tennessee (Mr. Alexander), the Senator from Mississippi (Mr. Cochran), and the Senator from Kansas (Mr. Roberts). Further, if present and voting, the Senator from Tennessee (Mr. Alexander) would have voted ``nay.''

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Tennessee (Mr. Alexander), the Senator from Mississippi (Mr. Cochran), and the Senator from Kansas (Mr. Roberts). Further, if present and voting, the Senator from Tennessee (Mr. Alexander) would have voted ``yea'' and the Senator from Mississippi (Mr. Cochran) would have voted ``yea.''

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Tennessee (Mr. Alexander), the Senator from Mississippi (Mr. Cochran), and the Senator from Kansas (Mr. Roberts). Further, if present and voting, the Senator from Tennessee (Mr. Alexander) would have voted ``yes.''

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I agree, like the crisis at the border, the wildfires in the Western States represent a genuine emergency and something we should address. But inasmuch as this consent asks for money that would break the budget caps and the Budget Control Act, it is subject to a budget point of order. I must object.

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, the President has called the crisis at the border a humanitarian crisis. If that is not an emergency, I do not know what is. But as a result of the majority leader's refusal to allow us to offer any constructive suggestions to reform the law to stop this flow of humanity across our borders and actually solve the problem, the supplemental has now fallen to a budget point of order. Likewise, this unanimous consent request to fund Iron Dome and wildfires exceeds the budget caps and the Budget Control Act. It is subject to a budget point of offer. Therefore, I object.

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Tennessee (Mr. Alexander), the Senator from Mississippi (Mr. Cochran), and the Senator from Kansas (Mr. Roberts). Further, if present and voting, the Senator from Tennessee (Mr. Alexander) would have voted ``nay.''

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Tennessee (Mr. Alexander), the Senator from Mississippi (Mr. Cochran), and the Senator from Kansas (Mr. Roberts). Further, if present and voting, the Senator from Tennessee (Mr. Alexander) would have voted ``yea.''

Mr. CORNYN. The fact is, we are dysfunctional. But if the Senator has a suggestion for how we get out of this dysfunction, I would love to hear it.

Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, here is the conundrum I think we find ourselves in. The President has made a request for the money. The Secretary of Homeland Security has said he needs more authority in order to deal with the problem, and what my proposal would do is to give him that authority necessary to solve the problem. The Senator from Maryland has always been very kind and gracious, and I appreciate her response, and I know of her compassion, given her background, particularly in social work, that she has great compassion for these children, as we all do. But we have a problem and we need to solve the problem. What is so confusing to me is, when the House was considering a proposal which would combine both policy changes together with some money to deal with them, the White House issued a notice the President would veto it if it were passed. So it seems to me that--well, it is confusing, to say the least. I am not sure how we get out of this place we are in.

Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, will the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, if I may, I hold the floor, if I am not mistaken. I just have a couple concluding comments and then I will turn it back over. What we need to do is learn the lesson that we learned in 2005 and 2006. In talking with Secretary Johnson, he understands this problem very well. I know the Senator from Arizona remembers this. In 2005, we saw a surge of what were at the time called OTMs, immigrants from countries other than Mexico. Strangely enough, we saw a surge of 30,000 Brazilians who were detained at our southwestern border. What Secretary Chertoff came to learn is that a loophole they were exporting was the so-called catch and release at the time. They did not have detention facilities. What would be done is they would be released, essentially based on their own recognizance, and we would never hear from them again. They would escape into the great American landscape. Well, the same phenomenon is happening now with these unaccompanied children because of that 2008 law that needs to be addressed so that they will remain in protective custody pending any court hearing, which we would give on an expedited basis. If they have a legal claim to stay, an asylum claim, a victim of human trafficking and the like, then the judge would determine that. And those who do not would have to be returned to their home country. I think I heard the President say as much today. I certainly have heard Secretary Johnson and others say the same thing. That is what my amendment would do. I am sorry the distinguished Senator from Maryland has seen fit to object to it. I think this virtually guarantees that we will leave here today without having solved the problem, and that is a tragic circumstance.

Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, the distinguished Senator from Maryland has described the President's request and what she has proposed, the Appropriations Committee has proposed in response. The problem with the response is it does not solve the underlying problem, which is a loophole in a 2008 law, which is now being exploited as part of the business model of the cartels that smuggle children and other immigrants illegally from Central America through Mexico into South Texas. It makes no sense to me just to write a check for this surge, which I agree that there is money needed for additional judges, additional detention facilities, and the like in some dollar figure. But if you do not solve the underlying problem, we are going to be back here months later and doing this all over again. This, of course, is an emergency supplemental. We will be doing this emergency every 2 or 3 months because what we have seen over the last couple years is that the numbers of children coming into the country because of this loophole in the 2008 law I described a moment ago--the numbers have nearly doubled over the last couple of years, and there are projections that there will be not just the 57,000 unaccompanied children who have been detained so far this year but that the number could grow as high as 90,000 by the end of this year and 145,000 next year. We are going to be in deep trouble, not to mention the crisis for these children. Our capacity to deal with them at the border and in local communities there is overtaxed, and there is the fact that the Border Patrol is diverted from interdicting illegal drug traffic and other necessary activities because they are taking care of these children, who deserve to be taken care of, at least while they are in our protective custody. So this is not a solution to the problem. I know from meeting with the President--I see the distinguished majority leader and the majority whip here. We all were invited over to the White House this morning to talk to the President about national security matters. My distinct impression was the President understands the nature of the problem, and he conceded that we cannot endlessly accept people who want to come to the United States from troubled regions of the world because it would simply overtax and overwhelm our capacity to deal with it. That is why it is so important to have legal immigration. I agree that we need immigration reform. I do not agree that we need the Gang of 8 bill. But I am committed to trying to fix our broken immigration system on a step-by-step basis when we next have an opportunity to do so. But right now we have an emergency that is disproportionately affecting my State, the State of Texas, and our local communities and our State are being overwhelmed. It is the Federal Government's responsibility and the Federal Government needs to step up. That is why I agree some amount of money--I do not agree it is $2.7 billion, as an emergency, but at some level we do need to come up with the money to deal with this emergency. But we cannot just write a check because, as I said, we will continue to come back. This crisis will be unabated and, in fact, it will get worse. I mentioned earlier today the polling that I saw that miraculously said 68 percent of the American people disapprove of the way the President is handling this immigration crisis, which is a rather dramatic development. I think all that the American people expect and deserve from us is that we try to work together to solve this problem. Congressman Henry Cuellar, my friend from Laredo, TX, a Democrat, a self-described blue dog Democrat, and I have come up with one suggestion: The HUMANE Act. It is our proposal, and if anybody has a better idea, we are all ears and all willing to consider it. But so far we have heard no alternative proposals and only a request to write a check for $2.7 billion. I think it would be irresponsible for us to only appropriate money and not deal with the underlying cause. So, Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to temporarily set aside the pending amendment so I may call up my amendment No. 3747, which is at the desk.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, later on today I expect we would be voting on the emergency supplemental appropriation that the President had requested to deal with the humanitarian crisis on the Texas border. Over the past few weeks I have spoken about this and made several trips down to the valley. I will be leaving tonight along with colleagues. There is a bipartisan congressional delegation going down again to the valley and to Lackland Air Force Base where about 1200 children are currently being housed by the Department of Health and Human Services pending their placement with their relatives in the country. As part of this discussion we have been having in the search for solutions to this unexpected flood of humanity in the form of unaccompanied children coming across the southwestern border, many of us are trying to figure out exactly what the cause of this flood is. In fact, I think it is probably more than one cause. I think perhaps it is the President's statements that he is going to defer action or refuse to enforce our current immigration laws against a certain class of immigrants that is known as the President's deferred executive action order of 2012. But there is also another cause that has been recognized on a bipartisan basis, and this is a 2008 human trafficking law that passed essentially unanimously in 2008, because we were focused on one problem; that is, human trafficking, but the unexpected consequences or unintended consequences of that created a business model that is being exploited by the transnational criminal organizations, or cartels, as they traffic in human beings coming from Central America through Mexico up to the Texas border. Together with my colleague in the House, Henry Cuellar, a Democrat, we have introduced a bipartisan, bicameral reform, something we call the HUMANE Act, and it has been cosponsored by people who have supported the so-called Gang of 8 bill in the Senate and people who opposed the Gang of 8 bill. I raise that point to note that this isn't about comprehensive immigration reform. We have a lot of work to be done. But this is actually intended to solve this immediate problem right in front of our eyes and to stop this hemorrhaging on our southwestern border. My hope is once we address that problem, we can come together in a bipartisan way and address the larger defects in our immigration system, of which there are many. This is, simply put, an attempt to tackle a national emergency. Let me briefly recapitulate what I am talking about. Since October of last year 57,000 unaccompanied children have been detained on the southwestern border. Under current law--this 2008 law I mentioned-- these children are processed by the Border Patrol and they are placed with the Department of Health and Human Services, as it turns out an average of 35 days, and then placed with a family member in the United States or, if not a family member, some sponsor. Part of the problem is that they are given a notice to appear at a future court hearing and very few of them appear. Thus, they are successful in making their way from Honduras, El Salvador, or Guatemala up through Mexico into the United States, and end up successfully immigrating to the United States illegally, outside of our broken immigration system. What we need to do in order to fix that gap in the law, that loophole which was unintended by those of us who voted to pass the 2008 law, is to require that these children be held in protective custody and given a speedy hearing in front of an immigration judge for those who want to make the claim for asylum or some other relief. But the truth is the vast majority of these children, like the adults, will not have a claim to stay under existing law and our bill doesn't change that existing law. But for those who do, they have a speedy opportunity to appear in front of a judge and make that claim. Those who do not have a valid claim will simply be returned to their home country, to their family. This morning I was invited, along with Members of the House and the Senate, to visit with the President about national security matters. He talked about Ukraine, he talked about Syria, he talked about Gaza, and all of the hot spots around the world. I used the opportunity to ask the President what he proposed that we do when this emergency supplemental bill goes down this afternoon. The reason this bill will fail is because the majority leader simply is asking us to appropriate money and do nothing to fix the problem we have attempted to address in the HUMANE Act with Congressman Cuellar that I mentioned a moment ago. In essence, the President asked for a blank check, when he himself acknowledged this morning in my presence and the presence of a bipartisan group of Senators and Congressmen that he knows we need to address this problem or it will just get worse if we don't address it. It is quite remarkable to me that the President of the United States acknowledges we have a problem we need to address. When the Secretary of Homeland Security, who is trying to use the tools available to him to solve this crisis but knows he needs more tools and more authority, at the same time the President makes that acknowledgment, and at the same time his Secretary of Homeland Security identifies the need for additional authority in order to address the problem, the President has reported he wants to actually expand this deferred action Executive order he issued in 2012 and say to the people who are coming to our country outside of our immigration laws: It is OK. You can stay here. There are no consequences associated with that. The problem with that is the message that is being sent to the cartels who traffic in human beings and make a lot of money off of it-- like I said a moment ago, this is part of their business model--by exploiting this loophole in the law. What sort of message does this send to the families who would send their children on this horrific journey from Central America through Mexico on the back of a train called The Beast? They are willing to send their children on this journey even though they could be injured, sexually assaulted, kidnapped or held for ransom. We don't know how many of them start the journey but don't make it because of the horrific conditions by the criminal organizations, not to mention the exposure to the hot weather and difficult environmental circumstances. By failing to address the root cause of the problem, what we are saying is: That is OK. Keep coming. Indeed, that is why it is projected that of the 57,000 unaccompanied children who have made it here so far and have been detained--by the way, they are not trying to evade detection by Border Patrol. They are turning themselves in because they realize they will be processed and placed with Health and Human Services, and essentially, by and large, they will be able to stay. That is what we need to address. Unfortunately, the House tried to work together today to pass a bill that would, I believe, have provided more money, as the President requested--not as much as he requested, but an emergency appropriation, together with the reforms to that 2008 law which would have addressed this problem. Unfortunately, because the House of Representatives could not get any Democratic support, that bill failed and so the Speaker of the House pulled the bill from the floor. As a result, they will not be able to pass any legislation to send over to the Senate. That should not cause any of our colleagues here in the Senate much joy because the fact of the matter is the House has its independent duty to act and we have our own duty to act, and we can and should do that this afternoon. We should do what the House attempted to do, which is to pass a slimmed-down appropriations bill on an emergency basis to help surge resources to the border but at the same time find a way to come together and plug the hole in this 2008 law, which is necessary to stop the problem--at least on this surgical basis. What is so confusing is to listen to the President talk in his conference room at the White House about this and acknowledge the nature of the problem, and then to see that the White House threatened to veto the legislation that the House was considering. There are a lot of mixed messages, to say the least, with regard to the President's commitment to actually enforce the law. We know that in too many instances he has simply refused to enforce the law, and our immigration law is just one of those. But to hear such mixed messages out of the White House and the administration that yes, we need to act--we should not just write a blank check. We ought to do the policy reforms with it that would solve the problem. I will just add that in talking to Secretary Johnson--I don't think I am disclosing any confidence he himself wouldn't repeat--there is actually an earlier experience we had in 2005 and 2006 which I think is very instructive and which we have discussed. Secretary Chertoff was Secretary of Homeland Security when President Bush was in the White House and we had a surge of people coming from countries other than Mexico, so-called OTMs--in this case Brazilians. In 2005, we saw a surge of 30,000 Brazilian immigrants at the southwestern border. Upon investigation, they realized the reason we saw a surge in these numbers was because of a policy known as catch and release--colloquially. In other words, people came to the country, were caught, given notice to appear at a future court hearing, and they simply disappeared and melted into the great American landscape, knowing they would successfully immigrate illegally into the United States. It is the same policy of catch and release that is causing this surge of unaccompanied minors, not to mention single adults with young children. We don't have adequate detention facilities for them, so they are released, given a bus ticket, and told to come back for their court hearing a year or more later. And they simply never show up. We have all been noticing with great concern this humanitarian crisis at the border and the conflicting and contradictory messages and actions coming out of Washington, DC. So it was not really all that surprising to me to see a new poll that was reported this morning where 68 percent of the respondents disapproved of the President's handling of the immigration issue--68 percent. According to the Washington Post this morning, no other single issue trumps immigration in terms of Presidential disapproval. That is a shocking number. Unfortunately, when I asked the President today: What happens, Mr. President, when we leave for the August recess and nothing happens to address this problem? He said: Well, one thing we are going to have to do is reprogram money from other programs and use that money to address this hole and this surge needed at the southwestern border. I was disappointed the President didn't say what I was hoping he would say, and that is: I am going to call majority leader Harry Reid, and I am going to tell him he needs to allow a vote on some of the amendments we are going to offer, such as the Humane Act, on this emergency supplemental, and give the Senate an opportunity to vote for a solution and not just another blank check. Unfortunately, I didn't hear that commitment from the President. As a result, this afternoon we are going to leave this city and go back home without doing anything to address what the President himself has called a humanitarian crisis. The problem is just going to get worse. As long as the magnet exists, as long as this business model that the cartels have figured out continues to be lucrative and they continue to make money exploiting it and we don't do anything to fix it, the numbers will get worse and worse. And as we see children being placed in literally warehouse-type settings around the country, we are going to continue to see more and more backlash from the American people as they realize the Federal Government is failing in its most basic function, which is to secure our border and enforce our laws. Unfortunately, this is what Presidential abdication of duty looks like. The President identified a national emergency, but has done virtually nothing to address it. Indeed, he said: We have a problem, and we need to fix it. He then threatened to veto the very legislation the House proposed would fix it. This is what happens when a President openly and proudly is contemptuous of his obligation to faithfully enforce the law of the land by not only issuing an Executive order in 2012 that is beyond his legal authority to do but also by saying that because Congress has not done what I want them to do as far as reforming our immigration laws, I am going to further expand my Executive order and refuse to enforce the law with regard to more and more people. That is not a secret. It is well reported in the newspapers and on television, and it is not lost on the people who make money exploiting this system nor the people who want to come to the United States outside of our immigration laws. Sadly, I can only conclude that although the President plainly knows what we need to do, as do his cabinet members, and although prominent Democrats have plainly identified what we need to do to fix the problem, when he doesn't demand that the majority leader allow a vote and a solution to that problem, I can only conclude that he is listening to his political advisers and not making the best judgment that is in the best interest of the American people. I can't explain it any other way. So on in one last attempt this afternoon to address this crisis, I, along with several of my colleagues, am introducing an alternative to this blank check that the President has requested and Majority Leader Reid will set for a vote. It will include many of the reforms I mentioned earlier in the Humane Act, but specifically our legislation would treat all unaccompanied minors the same under the law. It would correct that loophole in the 2008 law that treats unaccompanied minors from Mexico differently from unaccompanied children from noncontiguous countries. It would give Federal, State, and local authorities the resources they need in order to manage the crisis. It would improve our detention capacity so we would end this catch and release which is being exploited, and it would ensure safe repatriation by filing for protective custody for all those children who don't qualify for an immigration benefit under current law. Our bill would prevent the Obama administration also from unilaterally creating yet another deferred action program that would further add gasoline to this fire and cause these numbers to continue to grow and the humanitarian crisis to expand. In other words, our bill would help resolve the current crisis and would help prevent a similar crisis from occurring in the future. Under the Senate procedures, the only person who can make the decision whether the Senate will have an opportunity to vote on such a reform is the majority leader, and he has already announced that he intends not to allow us to offer that reform. So I expect we will end up leaving here today having done nothing, in spite of the fact there is bipartisan and bicameral recognition that we are experiencing a crisis and the President and his own cabinet have identified the causes but refuse to do anything about them. To me that is the very definition of dysfunction and the very reason that the American people are absolutely disgusted with the refusal of Congress and the executive branch to do what we know needs to be done--and it is a tragedy. I hope the majority leader will reconsider and give us a chance to vote on this reform to help solve the problem, and then we can move on and address other important problems that face our country. I yield the floor.

Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, the unanimous consent would be the Senator from Oregon, the Senator from Kansas, the Senator from Texas, and the Senator from Vermont.

Mr. CORNYN. I ask unanimous consent that following the remarks of the Senator from Oregon, the Senator from Kansas be recognized, following that I then be recognized, and then Senator Sanders from Vermont would be following me.

Mr. CORNYN. If the Senator would yield for a unanimous consent request.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Mississippi (Mr. Cochran), the Senator from Arizona (Mr. McCain), and the Senator from Kansas (Mr. Roberts).

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Mississippi (Mr. Cochran), the Senator from Arizona (Mr. McCain), and the Senator from Kansas (Mr. Roberts).

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, 1 month ago President Obama gave an interview with ABC News in which he was asked about the massive influx of unaccompanied minors--mainly from Central America--who are crossing the southwestern American border, most notably into Texas where we have seen 57,000 unaccompanied children since October. Unless any of my colleagues think this problem will just go away, let me remind everyone some of the projections are that if we don't do anything to deal with the causes or deal with the remedy to this growing humanitarian problem, it will get worse. Indeed, some estimates are that as many as 90,000 unaccompanied minors will come this year alone, and the number could well rise to 145,000 next year. That would tend to track the historical trend we have seen--both the combination of the impression that the Obama administration is less than serious about enforcing our immigration laws, as well as this loophole in the 2008 human trafficking law that is being exploited by the cartels which is helping them make money. This is part of their business model because they charge by the head, by the child, by the person, and then they bring them through these smuggling corridors from Central America, through Mexico, into South Texas. It is a great business model for them. The problem is it is a horrific experience for the immigrants who subject themselves to the tender mercies of the cartels that care nothing about them as human beings. They rape the women, kidnap the migrants, and then hold them for ransom. We know--because of the perils of that journey on the top of that train called The Beast--that many immigrants are severely injured, some losing limbs, and others are killed or die from exposure as a result of the process from Central America. I say to my colleagues who think doing nothing is an option that people are losing their lives, people are being injured, and women are being assaulted. These migrants are being held for ransom and kidnapped. It is not compassionate to allow this to continue, but that is what illegal immigration looks like in 2014. For those people who come into the country legally, they obviously don't have to turn themselves over to the cartels--these transnational criminal organizations that traffic in drugs and people. These drug cartels are despicable and they will prey on these migrants and those who want to come to the United States. As long as it happens outside of the legal system, they are going to continue to be victimized. About 1 month ago the President said: ``The problem is that under current law, once these kids come across the border, there's a system in which we're supposed to process them, take care of them, until we can send them back.'' That is what the President of the United States said 1 month ago. Of course he was referring to a 2008 law that I referenced earlier and has been talked about a number of times. This was a law that was passed by essentially unanimous consent and acclimation. It was a human trafficking law, but unfortunately what we didn't know at the time is that the creative minds of the cartels would learn to exploit a loophole in the law, which treats migrants, particularly unaccompanied children, from contiguous countries differently than we treat migrant children coming from Mexico. Specifically what happens is they are released after being processed by the Border Patrol, and they are given a notice to appear at a future court date. They are then released into the custody of a family member, many of whom are not legally present in the United States themselves. What we have seen from experience is that many of them don't show up for their court hearings. We don't have sufficient resources committed to make sure people do appear, so they melt into the great American landscape and have essentially succeeded in coming to the United States--outside of our legal immigration system--and staying here. As long as this loophole continues to exist, they will keep coming. The President was referring to this human trafficking statute that has become an effective magnet for illegal immigration, and it is not just children who are taking advantage of it. I talked to the Secretary of Homeland Security yesterday morning. We have seen a huge surge in parents with young children as well. They are exploiting the same loophole because we don't have adequate detention facilities to keep them safe pending any court hearing and pending repatriation back to their country of origin unless they have a valid claim for asylum or some other claim for immigration relief. The loophole that is in the 2008 law is effectively part of the cartel business model. We have colleagues who believe the compassionate response is to do nothing to close that loophole, and I hope they will come to understand it is the opposite of compassion to allow this loophole to exist and allow the cartels to continue to use these children and other migrants as a commodity by smuggling them into the United States. This situation has also overloaded the capacity of many of our local communities that have big hearts and want to treat these migrants, particularly the children, with compassion, but they have become overwhelmed. We have seen, as these children have been warehoused in other parts of the country, many communities are starting to feel the backlash. While people have big hearts and believe we ought to try to help people in need, particularly children, they realize that ultimately they are the ones who will have to pick up the tab for health care, education, and the like. They are also concerned about whether they will actually be able to assimilate these immigrants, which has always been the American way, and the way we have done that is through legal immigration and an orderly immigration process which complies with the rule of law. We are a nation of immigrants and we should be proud of that, but we should not be proud of this uncontrolled flow of people coming into the country, exploiting this gap in the 2008 law, making money for the cartels, and exposing these migrants to horrific treatment, some of whom don't even make it here. We should not consider that compassion; it is not. It is the opposite of compassion. We ought to try to do something to fix it, and we have it within our capacity to do so. Earlier this week the White House Domestic Policy Council Director Cecilia Munoz said the administration was ``absolutely interested'' in reforming this law to create an efficient repatriation process for the unaccompanied minors. Good for them. I hope that is the case, but unfortunately I get the sense that the people who understand this gap in this 2008 law--this flaw or this loophole--have not been able to win the argument with the political folks at the White House who don't want to be seen repatriating these children back to their home country because they are worried about the upcoming election. Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson has repeatedly emphasized to me in private as well as publicly the need to change this law and to establish a more efficient system of removal to one's home country. To be sure, there are going to be valid claims for asylum. If someone is a victim of human trafficking, they can get a T visa, they call it, so they can cooperate with law enforcement in the United States. If you are like the young boy whom I saw in McAllen, TX, 2 weeks ago--I asked him where his parents were. He said they were dead. That young boy could qualify for a special immigrant visa as a minor child having been abandoned or who is an orphan. So there are ways valid claims for relief can be processed, but right now these claims are not being made because people are just melting into the great American landscape, and they keep coming. So Jeh Johnson understands this, Cecilia Munoz said she understands this, and the President has said he understands it, and it has also had bipartisan support. The senior Senator from Missouri Mrs. McCaskill has acknowledged this issue, the senior Senator from Delaware, who happens to be chairman of the Homeland Security Committee Senator Carper, and the junior Senator from West Virginia Mr. Manchin have all publicly acknowledged it, as well as Democratic representatives in the border district in Arizona, and the No. 3 Member of the House Democratic leadership. All of them have acknowledged what the problem is and what we need to do to fix it. Let's review: President Obama described the border situation as a crisis, and I agree with that; it is. He described the 2008 law, which I have talked about, as a problem, which it is. Some leading Republicans and leading Democrats and senior members of the administration believe that reforming this 2008 law is part of the solution and would help resolve the crisis, which it would. They called upon Congress to make the necessary changes, which we should. At a time of intense political gridlock in Washington, we actually do have some bipartisan agreement on what we need to do to help address the problem. Yet none of these critical reforms can happen in the Senate unless the majority leader allows a vote on the bill I anticipate will come over from the House which will contain a solution to this problem. We have seen a bipartisan group of political leaders contend it is necessary, if we are actually going to address it, but so far my impression is the majority leader is not going to allow us to have that vote. Indeed, the majority leader, the majority whip, and the chairman of the Judiciary Committee have all said they reject the need for changing this 2008 law that I have described. The majority leader has gone so far as to say the border is secure. It may look secure from Nevada, where he is from, but it is not secure in Texas, where I live, and it just defies reality. I wish the majority leader and the President would actually come visit the border. I wish they would visit these processing centers, meet these children, and congratulate the Border Patrol for doing a great job under very difficult circumstances, but so far they have declined. I hope they will reconsider. Ms. Collins, the Senator from Maine, is getting a bipartisan codel to go down to McAllen on Friday, and I look forward to accompanying her on that trip. But if people can make that one trip--at least one trip-- they would learn for themselves that the border is not secure. This isn't a trick. Sometimes I get the feeling that some of my friends in the Senate think we are going to always claim the border is insecure, so we are never going to do the other parts of immigration reform that they want to do or that need to be done. As a matter of fact, in 2011 the President notably said: Well, people won't be satisfied until we create a moat and fill it full of alligators. He ridiculed those who said the border is not secure. Yet last year alone 414,000 people were detained on the southwestern border, 414,000 from 100 different countries--100 different countries--most of them admittedly from Mexico and Central America and South America. But people should come visit in Falfurrias, TX. They have a Border Patrol stop there where many migrants are let out of the vehicle by their coyote, which is a human smuggler, and forced to walk around this checkpoint in 100-degree-plus weather. Colleagues will find that some of them die from exposure. People can imagine coming from Central America or South America and coming in that hot weather under those conditions. Some of them literally die. So the Border Patrol has established rescue beacons, they call them, where if the immigrant says ``I have to get some help,'' they can actually hit the button on this rescue beacon, and the Border Patrol will come and find them and make sure they get some medical care. Those rescue beacons are in English, they are in Spanish, and they are in Chinese. I assure my colleagues there are not many native Chinese speakers in Brooks County, TX. The point is, to anybody who will listen, the border is not secure. It is a national security challenge in addition to our other issues. I ask people to talk to GEN John Kelly, who is head of Southern Command, who says right now 75 percent of the illegal drug traffic coming from Central and South America into the United States--they have to sit and watch because they don't have the adequate resources to stop it. It is the same cartels that are smuggling those drugs that are the criminal organizations that are smuggling the people. They are trafficking in human beings, and they will transport any commodity, any weapon, any person, anything into the United States as long as they can make money off of it. It is just the way they do business. It is enormously frustrating to hear the majority leader declare the border is secure in spite of the facts and in spite of the bipartisan acknowledgment that we need to fix this 2008 loophole in order to help solve this problem. But there are people who have shown some courage, people such as Secretary Johnson and others, other Democrats who have said, despite the majority leader's pronouncement that we should actually do something, we should actually solve the problem, and we have it within our ability to do that. I wish to particularly acknowledge the courage of my friend and colleague Henry Cuellar from Texas. He is a proud blue dog Democrat, as he reminds me almost every time I see him, and he has partnered with me in bipartisan bicameral legislation that would actually fix this flaw in the 2008 law. If we could just get a vote on it here in the Senate, maybe we would have a chance to fix the problem and do what the President acknowledged was the problem in the first place. I am hopeful we can achieve a breakthrough, but we have about 2 more days that we will be in session before the August recess. My constituents back home don't understand why in the world we would leave without fixing this problem, without addressing this humanitarian crisis, because they see the numbers as we see the numbers. They are going to continue to grow and the crisis will get worse unless we act in a sensible way. The only way we are going to get that breakthrough is if we get some leadership here in the Senate and the majority leader allows a vote on either what the House is going to send us on Thursday or allow an amendment, which I am proud to offer, which has broad support here in the Senate. But leadership requires more than just giving a speech or an interview and then heading off to the next fundraiser. It requires thoughtful, persistent engagement and a willingness to spend political capital. We know all of this is controversial. We get that. But it strikes me that when you are getting attacked from the right and the left, that means you are probably doing something that could at least have the potential for being a bipartisan consensus, which, as we know, is the only way anything gets done here because none of us get everything we want. I would love it if I could get everything I want, but that is not democracy. That is not our system. That is not our constitutional form of government. I hope the President would tell the majority leader that he believes this 2008 law is a problem, as he said a month ago on ABC News, and I hope he will offer support for his own Secretary of Homeland Security, who I know understands the nature of the problem, but unfortunately I fear he is being outvoted by the political advisers at the White House, not the people making public policy. The folks in my State and particularly in the region of South Texas and the Rio Grande Valley are watching and waiting and hoping that Washington will act to resolve this ongoing crisis. But we can't act unless the majority leader allows us to act. That is the nature of this institution. He won't allow a vote unless President Obama steps up and leads in order to do what he has acknowledged is the right thing to do and what we must do in order to address this problem. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I wish to make some remarks about the ongoing humanitarian crisis that is occurring on our southern border in Texas. I have spoken on this subject a number of times. Before I do that, I would like to say a word about a decorated U.S. Marine Corps veteran, an award-winning journalist, and a courageous seventh- generation Texan by the name of Austin Tice. In 2012 Austin went to Syria as a civilian. He went to report on the brutal civil war that has now claimed the lives of more than 170,000 Syrians, caused a huge refugee crisis in Turkey, Lebanon, and in other countries in that region and has destabilized that entire region. Austin was a strong believer in the freedom of the press and the importance of letting his fellow countrymen know what was happening in the Syrian civil war. During his time in Syria his works were published in The Washington Post and the McClatchy News, among other news outlets. On August 14, 2012, he was kidnapped and no one has heard from him since. His family is understandably concerned about his well-being and his whereabouts. It has been nearly 2 years and his family and friends still have no idea where he is, who is holding him or what they might want in exchange for his freedom. I once again call on the Obama administration to do whatever they can, through the resources the Federal Government has, to locate and safely return Austin Tice to his family. I say once again to Austin's family: We have not given up. We will never give up until we find your son and bring him safely home. Border Crisis

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.