Richard Durbin

Mr. DURBIN

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

Mr. DURBIN

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

Mr. DURBIN

Mr. DURBIN. I announce that Senator from Colorado (Mr. Bennet), the Senator from Illinois (Ms. Duckworth), the Senator from New York (Mrs. Gillibrand), the Senator from California (Ms. Harris), the Senator from Minnesota (Ms. Klobuchar), the Senator from Vermont (Mr. Sanders), and the Senator from Massachusetts (Ms. Warren) are necessarily absent.

Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Colorado (Mr. Bennet), the Senator from Illinois (Ms. Duckworth), the Senator from New York (Mrs. Gillibrand), the Senator from California (Ms. Harris), the Senator from Minnesota (Ms. Klobuchar), the Senator from Vermont (Mr. Sanders), and the Senator from Massachusetts (Ms. Warren) are necessarily absent.

Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Colorado (Mr. Bennett), the Senator from Illinois (Ms. Duckworth), the Senator from New York (Mrs. Gillibrand), the Senator from California (Ms. Harris), the Senator from Minnesota (Ms. Klobuchar), the Senator from Vermont (Mr. Sanders), and the Senator from Massachusetts (Ms. Warren) are necessarily absent.

Mr. DURBIN

Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Colorado (Mr. Bennet), the Senator from Illinois (Ms. Duckworth), the Senator from New York (Mrs. Gillibrand), the Senator from California (Ms. Harris), the Senator from Minnesota (Ms. Klobuchar), the Senator from Vermont (Mr. Sanders), and the Senator from Massachusetts (Ms. Warren) are necessarily absent.

Mr. DURBIN

Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Colorado (Mr. Bennet), the Senator from New Jersey (Mr. Booker), the Senator from Illinois (Ms. Duckworth), the Senator from New York (Mrs. Gillibrand), the Senator from California (Ms. Harris), the Senator from Minnesota (Ms. Klobuchar), the Senator from Vermont (Mr. Sanders), and the Senator from Massachusetts (Ms. Warren) are necessarily absent.

Mr. DURBIN

Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from New Jersey (Mr. Booker), the Senator from New York (Mrs. Gillibrand), the Senator from California (Ms. Harris), the Senator from Minnesota (Ms. Klobuchar), the Senator from Vermont (Mr. Leahy), the Senator from Vermont (Mr. Sanders), and the Senator from Massachusetts (Ms. Warren), are necessarily absent.

Mr. DURBIN

Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Colorado (Mr. Bennet), the Senator from New Jersey (Mr. Booker), the Senator from New York (Mrs. Gillibrand), the Senator from California (Ms. Harris), the Senator from Minnesota (Ms. Klobuchar), the Senator from Vermont (Mr. Sanders), and the Senator from Massachusetts (Ms. Warren) are necessarily absent.

Mr. DURBIN

Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Colorado (Mr. Bennet), the Senator from New Jersey (Mr. Booker), the Senator from New York (Mrs. Gillibrand), the Senator from California (Ms. Harris), the Senator from Minnesota (Ms. Klobuchar), the Senator from Vermont (Mr. Sanders), and the Senator from Massachusetts (Ms. Warren) are necessarily absent.

Mr. DURBIN

Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Colorado (Mr. Bennet), the Senator from New Jersey (Mr. Booker), the Senator from New York (Mrs. Gillibrand), the Senator from California (Ms. Harris), the Senator from Minnesota (Ms. Klobuchar), the Senator from Vermont (Mr. Sanders), the Senator from Massachusetts (Ms. Warren), and the Senator from Rhode Island (Mr. Whitehouse) are necessarily absent.

Mr. DURBIN

Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Colorado (Mr. Bennet), the Senator from New Jersey (Mr. Booker), the Senator from New York (Mrs. Gillibrand), the Senator from California (Ms. Harris), the Senator from Minnesota (Ms. Klobuchar), the Senator from Vermont (Mr. Sanders), and the Senator from Massachusetts (Ms. Warren) are necessarily absent.

Mr. DURBIN

Mr. DURBIN. I announce the that the Senator from Colorado (Mr. Bennet), the Senator from New Jersey (Mr. Booker), the Senator from New York (Mrs. Gillibrand), the Senator from California (Ms. Harris), the Senator from Minnesota (Ms. Klobuchar), the Senator from Vermont (Mr. Sanders), and the Senator from Massachusetts (Ms. Warren) are necessarily absent.

Mr. DURBIN

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

Mr. DURBIN

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

Mr. DURBIN

Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Vermont (Mr. Sanders) is necessarily absent.

Mr. DURBIN

Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Vermont (Mr. Sanders) and the Senator from Rhode Island (Mr. Whitehouse) are necessarily absent.

Mr. DURBIN

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

Mr. DURBIN

Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, today America lays to rest the great Justice John Paul Stevens. On behalf of the U.S. Senate, it is my privilege, along with my Illinois colleague Senator Duckworth, to introduce and have adopted a bipartisan resolution honoring this remarkable and noble man, a native of the city of Chicago. During his Supreme Court confirmation hearings in 1975, then-Judge John Paul Stevens faced a line of questioning about his health, which, in retrospect, is amusing. They were asking questions about his health 44 years ago. Justice Stevens had undergone a single bypass heart surgery 2 years earlier, and the members of the Judiciary Committee just wanted to make sure he could handle the rigors of serving on the U.S. Supreme Court. History has shown us that Justice John Paul Stevens had not only a strong heart but a good heart when it came to serving on the U.S. Supreme Court. Sadly, that mighty heart finally did stop beating last week. Justice Stevens was 99 years old. He died peacefully with his daughters Elizabeth and Susan by his side. My State of Illinois is proud to claim John Paul Stevens as a native son. He was a member of a prominent Chicago family, and he grew up in the luxury of his family's hotel, then known as the Stevens Hotel and now known as the Hilton Hotel on Michigan Avenue. He never used the privilege of his family's wealth to shirk his responsibilities as a citizen of America. In World War II he was a lieutenant commander in the Navy. He was awarded the Bronze Star for his service on the code-breaking team, whose work led to the downing of the plane of the man who had planned the attack on Pearl Harbor. After the war, he became an accomplished attorney and a champion of good, ethical government. It was John Paul Stevens' integrity, as much as his brilliant legal mind, that convinced President Gerald Ford to nominate him, then a Federal judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court in 1975. President Ford called then-Judge Stevens ``the finest legal mind I could find.'' The Senate obviously agreed. The vote on the Senate floor for John Paul Stevens' confirmation was 98 to 0. He was the second oldest and third longest serving Justice in the history of our Nation, but it is the quality of his service, and not its length, that most distinguishes John Paul Stevens' career on the U.S. Supreme Court. Justice Stevens approached disputes fairly, squarely, and succinctly. He took great pains to understand all sides of a case and give all sides a fair hearing. He rejected the easy path of ideology, and he was willing to change his position when the facts warranted it. He authored the majority opinions in some of the most famous and important Supreme Court decisions in his time. One example was in 2004. Justice Stevens wrote the majority opinion in which the Court, by a vote of 6 to 3, rejected the Bush administration's view that prisoners at Guantanamo Bay could be held beyond the reach of the law with no access to the Federal courts. The case was Rasul v. Bush. In 1984, in the landmark Chevron case, Justice Stevens wrote an opinion for a unanimous Supreme Court about the deference owed to Agency interpretations of Federal statutes, crafting a legal framework that has been cited in more than 11,000 subsequent judicial opinions. He was also often brilliant in dissent. In his lengthy dissent in Citizens United v. FEC in 2010, Justice Stevens rejected the radical and, I personally believe, dangerous notion that corporations have essentially the same First Amendment rights as individuals and should be allowed to spend, potentially, unlimited amounts of money on campaigns. President Eisenhower famously said that he made only two mistakes as President, ``and they're both sitting on the Supreme Court.'' President Ford felt just the opposite about his choice in Justice Stevens. In 2005, the year before his death, President Ford wrote of Justice Stevens: ``I am prepared to allow history's judgment of my term in office to rest (if necessary, exclusively) on my nomination 30 years ago of John Paul Stevens to the U.S. Supreme Court.'' I can think of no higher praise. Justice Stevens stepped down from the Supreme Court 9 years ago. Anyone who had hoped that he might slip quietly into retirement was certainly disappointed. He continued in his retirement to speak and write forcefully and eloquently on major issues facing America. In 2014, he testified before the Senate Rules Committee on the dangers that dark money in politics posed to American democracy. He wrote three books. Justice Stevens once told an interviewer that the person who most motivated him to write was a professor from whom he took a poetry class at the University of Chicago. The professor's name was Norman Maclean. In his own retirement, Norman Maclean wrote a semi- autobiographical novel entitled, ``A River Runs Through It and Other Stories.'' It was later made into a movie starring Robert Redford. Looking at the life's work of John Paul Stevens, it is clear that a river ran through his life too. The currents in that river included a reverence for American democracy and the Constitution, compassion and respect for individuals, and a painstaking commitment to decide each case on its merits rather than relying on easy answers suggested by political ideology. Justice John Paul Stevens was a good man and a courageous man, whose strong heart was matched by a brilliant mind, ceaseless curiosity, and a fierce commitment to justice. He fought the good fight. He served our Nation with honor, and he safeguarded and enriched our democracy. May he rest in peace and honor. Madam President, as in legislative session, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. Res. 282, submitted earlier today.

Mr. DURBIN. I further ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and the motions to consider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, I made my second trip to the southern border just this last Friday with, I believe, 14 of my Senate Democratic colleagues. It is the largest congressional delegation I have ever been a part of for this type of assignment. We went to McAllen, TX. Approximately 40 percent of those who present themselves at our border come through this McAllen, TX, post. There is a port of entry there where many people, of course, are detained when they present themselves at nearby border positions. Just a few months before, I had been to El Paso, TX, and, in El Paso, about 20 percent of those who come to our southern border present themselves as well. It was an eye opener and an emotional experience to see the hundreds of people who are being held in detention at our border in McAllen. There were two contrasting images. One of them was the image of a Catholic nun, Sister Norma Pimentel, who has, for most of her adult life, dedicated herself to those who come to our border seeking rescue and security. Catholic Charities in McAllen, TX, has an extraordinary center filled with volunteers from all over the United States. I met some people from the city of Chicago and the State of Illinois and from all across the Nation who had given up their daily lives to come down and volunteer and do the basics--cook food, clean up, pass out toiletries, and offer a helping hand to many people who have just gone through the worst struggle in their lives. Sister Norma is an extraordinary person, and she has really touched the hearts of so many people in her caring and loving way. It is a reminder time and again of the goodness of so many Americans who want to tell the world that we are in fact a nation driven by values of importance. It was my good fortune to have breakfast with her and then spend another part of my day with her and my Senate colleagues. That hour-- that hour I will never forget--is when I saw these people, many of whom had struggled for weeks, a month, days and days to get to the border of the United States. They had gone through life experiences that we wouldn't wish on anyone. They were victims of assault, rape, and crimes that were committed against them, but they were leaving determined to come to the U.S. border. Many of them told stories, particularly from the countries of Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras, about what they had been through and the threats to their families in these countries, which are largely lawless now, as these drug gangs and others threaten their children and them. It was in desperation that many of them made this journey, cashing in everything they owned on Earth to try to make it to the border of the United States. Theirs is today's story, but it really is the story of this country that goes back for many years. It was 108 years ago that my grandmother decided to make her journey to the United States with three small children. She brought her two daughters and her son from the country of Lithuania to become immigrants to the United States. Her 2-year-old daughter, which she carried in her arms, was my mother, and I am a proud son of that Lithuanian immigrant. Why did they come to the United States? Simply because they heard there was a better chance for a better future if they made it here. That is the story of this country. We are being tested now at this time in this generation as to whether that story is still alive. Now, we understand there are some basics here. I hope we can all agree on them. Perhaps some will not, but I believe they are important. The first is that we need border security. In an age of terrorism with the worst drug epidemic in the history of our Nation, it is right for us to know who is coming into this country and what they are bringing into our country. Secondly, we want to make certain that anyone who is known to be a danger in this country is never allowed admittance, and those who are here undocumented and who commit a serious crime have forfeited their right to stay, as far as I am concerned--no questions asked beyond that. The third thing is that we have to have an orderly immigration system. We cannot absorb every person in the world who wants to come to the United States at this moment. It just is not in our best interest. It really isn't in theirs either. We need an orderly immigration process. The question we have to ask ourselves is this: If we agree on those three things, can we then agree that we have a broken immigration system that needs to be repaired? Can we agree that people who do present themselves at the border will be treated in a humane fashion? I told the story of Sister Norma, but if you look at the immigration policy of the Trump administration, you find a much different message to the world. We remember when this President initiated his Presidency by establishing a Muslim travel ban, creating chaos at airports across the country, and continued to separate thousands of American families. We remember the policy of this administration when the President announced the repeal of DACA. DACA, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, is a program that grew out of the DREAM Act, a bill that I introduced about 18 years ago. It was a bill that said--or an Executive decision, actually, under President Obama: If you were brought to this country as a child, and your parents made the decision to come, and you were just along for the ride, but you lived in this country, got an education in this country, and didn't create serious crimes in this country, you deserve a chance. You got up every morning and went to school and pledged allegiance to that flag and believed it was your own, and, then, probably when you were about 10 or 12, someone in the family told you something that you never heard before: You were not legally in America. What should we do with these young people? Well, when I introduced this bill 18 years ago, my plan was to give them a chance to earn their way to legal status, finish their education, make certain that they have no serious criminal record, be willing to serve this country in the Armed Forces--and so many of them are--be willing to go on to school and develop a degree in teaching, engineering, nursing, or medicine, and then we gave you a chance for a green card and a path to legalization and citizenship in America. In 18 years, I have never been able to make this the law of the land, but I prevailed on President Obama to create a program based on this premise, and he created the DACA Program. Now, over 800,000 young people in America stepped up, paid a $600 filing fee, went through a criminal background check, and they were given permission to stay in this country without fear of deportation and with permission to work in this country as well. Who are they? There are so many different people. I have introduced them on the floor today--I mean other days, I should say--with color photographs and telling their stories. The ones I think of immediately, the stars of the class, as far as I am concerned, are the more than 30 of these DACA students who are currently enrolled in the Loyola University Stritch School of Medicine in Chicago, which made the competition for the school of medicine open to DACA recipients, and they competed openly and won 32 slots. In order to pay for their education, because they don't qualify for Federal assistance to go to school, my State of Illinois loans them money, and for each year that they are loaned money, they promise to serve a year, once they are licensed physicians, in an area of medical need in my State. What a wonderful program that takes into account their skills and talent and our need in the State for medical care in rural communities in Smalltown, America, and in the inner city of Chicago and other big cities in my State. Well, the President of the United States decided to end the program that made them eligible to apply for medical school, and in making that decision, the President jeopardized the completion of their medical degrees because, you see, no matter how hard they worked, that medical degree leads to a residency where they learn how to practice medicine hands on, and a residency is a job, and to be legally entitled to work in this country, you need to have DACA protection, which President Trump took away. So many of them faced the prospect that their medical education would end because of the President's decision. Fortunately for them, the case was brought to Federal court to try to stop President Trump from eliminating DACA, and it provided us with a program that will continue with its protections until the court case is resolved. That could happen, and it could happen soon. It tells you what happens when a President makes a decision that affects so many lives and the damage that it can do, not just to them and their families but to our Nation. The President also terminated the Temporary Protected Status Program for multiple countries that protected some 300,000 people who have come to the United States over the years because of adverse natural disasters or political conditions in their country. Then the President, last year, initiated a program called ``Zero Tolerance'' that resulted in the disastrous separation of thousands of families at the border. Because a Federal court mandated it, the administration had to account for the children who were separated. There were some 2,880 infants, toddlers, and children taken away from their parents, some with lies about where these children were going and how soon they would be returned. This is what the court said in Southern California to the Trump administration: Account for these children. Tell us where they are today. Tell us where their parents are. They couldn't even match up all the children with the parents because many of the parents had been sent back to their countries with the promise that the children would return, and there was no recordkeeping so that could be done. This President also was engaged, through his Department of Homeland Security, in migrant detention facilities, where the inspector general with the Department of Homeland Security found ``an immediate risk to the health and safety of detainees and DHS employees.'' I saw them in April of this year in El Paso. We had a detention facility there where they were holding those who were presented at the border. The sign over the door of that detention center said: Capacity 35. I looked through the plate glass window. There were 150 men standing shoulder to shoulder. They ate standing up. There was no room for all of them to lie down and sleep. I was told a couple of weeks later that the population census had grown to 200 in that cell that was designed for 35, with 1 toilet. Next to it was a detention cell with another plate glass window. Over the door, it said: Capacity 18. I counted 75 women, some with nursing children, in that room designed for 18 people, with 1 toilet. That situation is unacceptable and inhumane. Regardless of the legal outcome of those who present themselves, we can and must do better as a nation. The inspector general is right. That condition that I saw was a risk to health and safety. Then, the President, through a series of his infamous tweets, threatened mass arrests and deportations of millions of immigrants who have committed no crime and posed no threat to the safety and security of their communities. What the President has done is created rampant fear in the immigrant communities around Illinois and around this Nation. Then, the President put in place a new rule that blocks asylum claims at our border for nationals of any country except Mexico, including families and children fleeing persecution. The UNHCR, the United Nations refugee agency, said that the rule that the President promulgated will endanger vulnerable people in need of international protection from violence or persecution. Now the President is continuing on his path of destruction. He is considering reducing the number of refugees that the United States will admit in the year 2020 to zero. You have to go back in history to World War II, when the President of the United States, a member of my own political party, made a conscious decision to tell those Jewish people coming from Europe that they would not be allowed admittance into the United States to escape the Nazi Holocaust. The story of the SS St. Louis is one that people should read and consider the 800 passengers on that ship who were rejected by the administration as refugees and sent back to Europe. A fourth of them died in the Holocaust. Because of our feeling of shame after World War II, the United States, under Presidents of both political parties, said that we would try to set a standard for the world when it came to accepting refugees, and we did. An average of almost 80,000 per year were admitted into the United States. Think back to the Cubans who came to this country to escape communism under Castro. They have become such a vibrant part of America today, and in fact, three of the Senators today are of Cuban decent. They were part of that refugee movement--maybe not their generation but in their family. Then, of course, we accepted Jewish people from the Soviet Union, who were being persecuted. Soviet Jews found a welcoming America. The Vietnamese who risked their lives to fight on our side in that horrible war were welcomed into the United States rather than see them face persecution in their own countries. The story goes on and on and for years and years. For decades the United States established a standard of caring when it came to refugees. Now this President has announced that despite all of the turmoil in the world, we cannot accept a single refugee in the year 2020. What a departure from the high-minded and high-valued conduct of previous Presidents. Since the enactment of the Refugee Act of 1980, the United States has resettled over 80,000 refugees per year under the administrations of both political parties. President Trump has said he will end it. For the last 2 years, the Trump administration has set the lowest refugee ceilings in history in the midst of the worst refugee crisis in history. Now the administration may slam the door at least for a year or until someone prevails on the President. Today, as almost every day, the administration has announced a new rule that allows immigration officers to arrest and deport undocumented immigrants anywhere in the United States unless that person can prove they have been in the United States for at least 2 years. I ask, if someone stopped you on the street and said ``Prove you have been here for 2 years,'' how long would it take you to gather that documentation to make that proof, if you can? To do this to people and threaten to deport them on the spot immediately if they don't produce the documentation is totally unfair. This procedure, known as expedited removal, allows an immigrant to be deported without consulting with an attorney or counselor or defending themselves in a hearing before an immigration judge. It is summary judgment on the street to deport people and tear families apart. America is better than this. We can certainly keep America safe and respect our heritage as a nation of immigrants. We can have a secure border and abide by our international obligations to protect refugees fleeing persecution as we have done on a bipartisan basis for decades. When I went and toured the McAllen Border Patrol station, Donna, and Ursula, we met with many of the leaders there and saw firsthand what is happening. We are starting to build facilities that will be more humane, at least by design, and hope that is exactly what happens. I would like to say a word about the men and women who work for Customs and Border Protection. I am not going to make any excuses for those who have abused people in the past or those who have said horrible things online about them--no excuses at all. But the people I met as part of our government service at the border were overwhelmingly good and caring people who are confronted with a situation at the border that they never envisioned with circumstances beyond their control. So I want to say a word for those who are doing the best they can under these extraordinary circumstances and thank them for their service. The reality is that President Trump's policies, as harsh and cruel as they have been, have been ineffective at our southern border. The situation is much less secure than when he took office. The President's obsession with the border wall led to the longest government shutdown in history, even paralyzing our immigration courts for that 35-day period. More refugees have been driven to the border because the President has shut down the legal avenues for migration and blocked all assistance to stabilize the Northern Triangle countries. Under President Obama we set up in-country in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras an opportunity for those who wished to come forward and apply for asylum status in the United States without leaving their own country if they chose to do it. It was one alternative to an expensive, dangerous trek to the southern border. The Trump administration closed down that program, giving the people in those countries no other alternative but to try to make that trip to the border. That made no sense at all. There is also a gaping leadership vacuum at the Department of Homeland Security. In the 2\1/2\ years the President has been in office, there have been four different leaders in the Office of the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, and in every major subcategory position, whether it is interior enforcement or border enforcement, there have been at least as many people in an acting capacity and not in a permanent capacity. I will say that we have tried our best to work with this administration when they have asked for help and volunteered it when they didn't. Last February, when we passed the omnibus bill, we included over $400 million for humanitarian assistance at the border, and when the President came back and asked for an emergency supplemental of $4.6 billion for additional funding, Democrats joined Republicans to pass that legislation. Last year, before the border crisis began, Senate Democrats supported a bipartisan agreement, including robust border security funding and dozens of provisions to strengthen border security. But the President threatened to veto it, and instead pushed for a hard-line approach, which, when it was called for a vote in the U.S. Senate, received fewer than 40 votes. Six years ago, in 2013, there was a problem on the Senate floor, and there aren't many to recall as we stand here today, but this was one of them. I was part of the Gang of 8, four Democrat and four Republican Senators who worked for months--Senator John McCain, Chuck Schumer, and many others--to put together a comprehensive immigration reform bill. We brought it to the floor of the Senate, and it passed 68 to 32. It was a step and a move in the right direction to deal with our broken immigration system. Unfortunately, the Republican House leadership refused to even consider that bill or call for a hearing. The Acting Secretary of Department of Homeland Security, Kevin McAleenan, said that if our bill in 2013 had been enacted into law, ``we would have a very different situation. . . . we would be a lot more secure on our border.'' Republican Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, who supported that bill, said ``If that bill became law, most of the problems we're having today we'd not be having.'' We had a path, a bipartisan path, a good path that we should return to. It is time for us to find a way to work together for a secure border, for a secure nation, to reduce the massive amounts of money that are being spent now because of this migration, and to do it in a humane fashion consistent with the values of the United States. We are ready to work with Republicans. Democrats on this side of the aisle are ready to work to achieve goals I think we all share. We need to address the root causes in the Northern Triangle countries that drive migrants to flee to the United States. We need to crack down on the traffickers and transporters who are exploiting these migrants. We need to expand third-country resettlement so that immigrants can find their way safely without making that dangerous trek. We need to eliminate immigration court backlogs so that asylum claims can be processed more quickly. We need to expand the use of proven alternatives to detention, like family case management, so immigrants know their rights and show up for court. It was hard to believe, when we went to Sister Norma's cafeteria centered in McAllen--some of the migrants who had gone through the system and were now heading to join family members in the United States showed us the packets they were given with legal documents. Understand, these people were fresh off the border, out of detention. As we looked inside the packets, we found in many cases that the instructions were printed in English, not Spanish, and they did not include any specific time or place for the person to report. They had simply typed in ``to be determined.'' Is it any wonder that people struggle to come to a court hearing as required by law? We can do better. We need to get them the information they need if they are going to be a part of our legal system and tell them the time and place they need to report. We stand ready to work on this side of the aisle for smart, effective, humane border security policy. We need to have a bipartisan approach. Republican colleagues need to step up and find a constructive way to deal with the challenges we face on the border today. We can keep America safe. We can continue to probably call ourselves a nation of immigrants. What we are seeing now is a situation which begs for a bipartisan, compromise solution. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. DURBIN

Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Colorado (Mr. Bennet), the Senator from New Jersey (Mr. Booker), the Senator from New York (Mrs. Gillibrand), and the Senator from Vermont (Mr. Sanders) are necessarily absent.

Mr. DURBIN

Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from New Jersey (Mr. Booker), the Senator from Nevada (Ms. Cortez Masto), the Senator from California (Ms. Harris), the Senator from Vermont (Mr. Sanders), and the Senator from Michigan (Ms. Stabenow) are necessarily absent.

Mr. DURBIN

Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from New Jersey (Mr. Booker), the Senator from Nevada (Ms. Cortez Masto), the Senator from California (Ms. Harris), the Senator from Vermont (Mr. Sanders), and the Senator from Michigan (Ms. Stabenow) are necessarily absent.

Mr. DURBIN

Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from New Jersey (Mr. Booker), the Senator from Nevada (Ms. Cortez Masto), the Senator from California (Ms. Harris), the Senator from Vermont (Mr. Sanders), the Senator from Michigan (Ms. Stabenow), and the Senator from Massachusetts (Ms. Warren) are necessarily absent.