Ben Luján

Mr. BEN RAY LUJAN of New Mexico

Mr. BEN RAY LUJAN of New Mexico. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize Dave Cuellar of Veterans Helping Veterans for his outstanding volunteer work with New Mexican veterans. A Vietnam veteran himself, Mr. Cuellar had a distinguished career as a Gallup police officer after serving his country in the Army. Before retiring as a police lieutenant, he helped to protect and serve Gallup for over 22 years. In 2003, Mr. Cuellar was inspired to help start Veterans Helping Veterans, an organization dedicated to providing informational and social support for veterans in the Gallup area. The group provides critical help to veterans navigating the Veteran Administration's benefit and healthcare systems. More importantly, Mr. Cuellar has created an open and welcoming network run by veterans for veterans. His group is all inclusive, working with veterans young and old, from all backgrounds and all branches of the military to create a voice for all veterans. Words alone cannot express our full appreciation and gratitude for the service of our veterans, and the deeds of volunteers like Mr. Cuellar help make a difference in the lives of our veterans who often face many challenges when they return home from active duty. Veterans Helping Veterans is a great example of a remarkable volunteer organization that is having a positive impact in the community. I thank Dave Cuellar for both his service and for his work with Veterans Helping Veterans.

Mr. BEN RAY LUJAN of New Mexico

Mr. BEN RAY LUJAN of New Mexico. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize James B. Lewis, who is retiring after a career devoted to public service. Most recently, Mr. Lewis served as New Mexico State Treasurer, a position he held for the last 8 years. Mr. Lewis' long and distinguished career includes serving our country in the Army and serving New Mexico in many notable positions, such as Chief of Staff to Governor Bruce King, Chief Clerk and Chief Executive Officer of the New Mexico State Corporation Commission, Director and Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Department of Energy, President of the National Association of State Treasurers, and immediate past President of the National Association of State Auditors, Controllers, and Treasurers. In 1986, Mr. Lewis became the first African American to be elected to a statewide office in New Mexico, and is also the first and only African American to be appointed and then elected to office three times. His tenure in the Treasurer's office will be remembered for his efforts to increase transparency and raise public awareness and understanding of this important office and the role it plays in our great state. Treasurer Lewis automated the warrant and collateral compliance system, established the Remote Electronic Banking System, signed the first joint Powers Agreement enabling the Ramah Navajo Chapter to invest in the Local Government Investment Pool, and implemented the new state Linked Deposit program. The State Treasury plays a vital role in protecting state monies deposited in New Mexico's financial institutions and promoting a stable state economy, and as Treasurer, Mr. Lewis led that effort with distinction. While Mr. Lewis' retirement is a loss for the state of New Mexico, I wish him all the best as he embarks on this next chapter, and I congratulate him on his distinguished career.

Mr. BEN RAY LUJAN of New Mexico

Mr. BEN RAY LUJAN of New Mexico. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to commend New Mexico PBS for again receiving an American Graduate: Let's Make It Happen community service grant that will enable its stations to continue their efforts to improve graduation rates for students in New Mexico. This grant through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is part of an effort to close ``graduation gaps'' for students of different races, ethnicities, family incomes, disabilities, and those with limited English proficiency. In today's economy, a high school diploma is a necessity and a college degree is so important to opening the doors of opportunity. In New Mexico, sadly, we have seen troubling graduation rates, with too many of our young people failing to graduate from high school. New Mexico PBS will use this grant to highlight local leaders who are helping increase graduation rates and playing a vital role in encouraging our children to complete their education. It will also work to increase understanding of the challenges facing students, working with partners to develop long-term solutions that emphasize the importance of early education. This effort is a continuation of New Mexico PBS's mission to provide educational programs that strengthen our communities and build a brighter future for our state. I commend New Mexico PBS for its efforts and also the American Graduate program for their commitment to our young people.

Mr. BEN RAY LUJAN of New Mexico

Mr. BEN RAY LUJAN of New Mexico. Mr. Speaker, I enter into the Record the story of a young Honduran girl who resisted being robbed for $5, was clubbed over the head, dragged out by two men who cut a hole in her throat and left her in a ravine. [From the New York Times, July 11, 2014] The Children of the Drug Wars (By Sonia Nazario) Cristian Omar Reyes, an 11-year-old sixth grader in the neighborhood of Nueva Suyapa, on the outskirts of Tegucigalpa, tells me he has to get out of Honduras soon-- ``no matter what.'' In March, his father was robbed and murdered by gangs while working as a security guard protecting a pastry truck. His mother used the life insurance payout to hire a smuggler to take her to Florida. She promised to send for him quickly, but she has not. Three people he knows were murdered this year. Four others were gunned down on a nearby corner in the span of two weeks at the beginning of this year. A girl his age resisted being robbed of $5. She was clubbed over the head and dragged off by two men who cut a hole in her throat, stuffed her panties in it, and left her body in a ravine across the street from Cristian's house. ``I'm going this year,'' he tells me. I last went to Nueva Suyapa in 2003, to write about another boy, Luis Enrique Motino Pineda, who had grown up there and left to find his mother in the United States. Children from Central America have been making that journey, often without their parents, for two decades. But lately something has changed, and the predictable flow has turned into an exodus. Three years ago, about 6,800 children were detained by United States immigration authorities and placed in federal custody; this year, as many as 90,000 children are expected to be picked up. Around a quarter come from Honduras--more than from anywhere else. Children still leave Honduras to reunite with a parent, or for better educational and economic opportunities. But, as I learned when I returned to Nueva Suyapa last month, a vast majority of child migrants are fleeing not poverty, but violence. As a result, what the United States is seeing on its borders now is not an immigration crisis. It is a refugee crisis. Gangs arrived in force in Honduras in the 1990s, as 18th Street and Mara Salvatrucha members were deported in large numbers from Los Angeles to Central America, joining homegrown groups like Los Puchos. But the dominance in the past few years of foreign drug cartels in Honduras, especially ones from Mexico, has increased the reach and viciousness of the violence. As the United States and Colombia spent billions of dollars to disrupt the movement of drugs up the Caribbean corridor, traffickers rerouted inland through Honduras, and 79 percent of cocaine-smuggling flights bound for the United States now pass through there. Narco groups and gangs are vying for control over this turf, neighborhood by neighborhood, to gain more foot soldiers for drug sales and distribution, expand their customer base, and make money through extortion in a country left with an especially weak, corrupt government following a 2009 coup. Enrique's 33-year-old sister, Belky, who still lives in Nueva Suyapa, says children began leaving en masse for the United States three years ago. That was around the time that the narcos started putting serious pressure on kids to work for them. At Cristian's school, older students working with the cartels push drugs on the younger ones--some as young as 6. If they agree, children are recruited to serve as lookouts, make deliveries in backpacks, rob people and extort businesses. They are given food, shoes and money in return. Later, they might work as traffickers or hit men. Teachers at Cristian's school described a 12-year-old who demanded that the school release three students one day to help him distribute crack cocaine; he brandished a pistol and threatened to kill a teacher when she tried to question him. At Nueva Suyapa's only public high school, narcos ``recruit inside the school,'' says Yadira Sauceda, a counselor there. Until he was killed a few weeks ago, a 23-year-old ``student'' controlled the school. Each day, he was checked by security at the door, then had someone sneak his gun to him over the school wall. Five students, mostly 12- and 13- year-olds, tearfully told Ms. Sauceda that the man had ordered them to use and distribute drugs or he would kill their parents. By March, one month into the new school year, 67 of 450 students had left the school. Teachers must pay a ``war tax'' to teach in certain neighborhoods, and students must pay to attend. Carlos Baquedano Sanchez, a slender 14-year-old with hair sticking straight up, explained how hard it was to stay away from the cartels. He lives in a shack made of corrugated tin in a neighborhood in Nueva Suyapa called El Infiernito-- Little Hell--and usually doesn't have anything to eat one out of every three days. He started working in a dump when he was 7, picking out iron or copper to recycle, for $1 or $2 a day. But bigger boys often beat him to steal his haul, and he quit a year ago when an older man nearly killed him for a coveted car-engine piston. Now he sells scrap wood. But all of this was nothing, he says, compared to the relentless pressure to join narco gangs and the constant danger they have brought to his life. When he was 9, he barely escaped from two narcos who were trying to rape him, while terrified neighbors looked on. When he was 10, he was pressured to try marijuana and crack. ``You'll feel better. Like you are in the clouds,'' a teenager working with a gang told him. But he resisted. He has known eight people who were murdered and seen three killed right in front of him. He saw a man shot three years ago and still remembers the plums the man was holding rolling down the street, coated in blood. Recently he witnessed two teenage hit men shooting a pair of brothers for refusing to hand over the keys and title to their motorcycle. Carlos hit the dirt and prayed. The killers calmly walked down the street. Carlos shrugs. ``Now seeing someone dead is nothing.'' He longs to be an engineer or mechanic, but he quit school after sixth grade, too poor and too afraid to attend. ``A lot of kids know what can happen in school. So they leave.'' He wants to go to the United States, even though he knows how dangerous the journey can be; a man in his neighborhood lost both legs after falling off the top of a Mexican freight train, and a family friend drowned in the Rio Grande. ``I want to avoid drugs and death. The government can't pull up its pants and help people,'' he says angrily. ``My country has lost its way.'' Girls face particular dangers--one reason around 40 percent of children who arrived in the United States this year were girls, compared with 27 percent in the past. Recently three girls were raped and killed in Nueva Suyapa, one only 8 years old. Two 15-year-olds were abducted and raped. The kidnappers told them that if they didn't get in the car they would kill their entire families. Some parents no longer let their girls go to school for fear of their being kidnapped, says Luis Lopez, an educator with Asociacion Compartir, a nonprofit in Nueva Suyapa. Milagro Noemi Martinez, a petite 19-year-old with clear green eyes, has been told repeatedly by narcos that she would be theirs--or end up dead. Last summer, she made her first attempt to reach the United States. ``Here there is only evil,'' she says. ``It's better to leave than have them kill me here.'' She headed north with her 21-year-old sister, a friend who had also been threatened, and $170 among them. But she was stopped and deported from Mexico. Now back in Nueva Suyapa, she stays locked inside her mother's house. ``I hope God protects me. I am afraid to step outside.'' Last year, she says, six minors, as young as 15, were killed in her neighborhood. Some were hacked apart. She plans to try the journey again soon. Asking for help from the police or the government is not an option in what some consider a failed state. The drugs that pass through Honduras each year are worth more than the country's entire gross domestic product. Narcos have bought off police officers, politicians and judges. In recent years, four out of five homicides were never investigated. No one is immune to the carnage. Several Honduran mayors have been killed. The sons of both the former head of the police department and the head of the national university were murdered, the latter, an investigation showed, by the police. ``You never call the cops. The cops themselves will retaliate and kill you,'' says Henry Carias Aguilar, a pastor in Nueva Suyapa. A majority of small businesses in Nueva Suyapa have shuttered because of extortion demands, while churches have doubled in number in the past decade, as people pray for salvation from what they see as the plague predicted in the Bible. Taxis and homes have signs on them asking God for mercy. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees recently interviewed 404 children who had arrived in the United States from Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala and Mexico; 58 percent said their primary reason for leaving was violence. (A similar survey in 2006, of Central American children coming into Mexico, found that only 13 percent were fleeing violence.) They aren't just going to the United States: Less conflicted countries in Central America had a 712 percent increase in asylum claims between 2008 and 2013. ``If a house is burning, people will jump out the window,'' says Michelle Brane, director of the migrant rights and justice program at the Women's Refugee Commission. To permanently stem this flow of children, we must address the complex root causes of violence in Honduras, as well as the demand for illegal drugs in the United States that is fueling that violence. In the meantime, however, we must recognize this as a refugee crisis, as the United Nations just recommended. These children are facing threats similar to the forceful conscription of child soldiers by warlords in Sudan or during the civil war in Bosnia. Being forced to sell drugs by narcos is no different from being forced into military service. Many Americans, myself included, believe in deporting unlawful immigrants, but see a different imperative with refugees. The United States should immediately create emergency refugee centers inside our borders, tent cities--operated by the United Nations and other relief groups like the International Rescue Committee--where immigrant children could be held for 60 to 90 days instead of being released. The government would post immigration judges at these centers and adjudicate children's cases there. To ensure this isn't a sham process, asylum officers and judges must be trained in child-sensitive interviewing techniques to help elicit information from fearful, traumatized youngsters. All children must also be represented by a volunteer or government-funded lawyer. Kids in Need of Defense, a nonprofit that recruits pro bono lawyers to represent immigrant children and whose board I serve on, estimates that 40 percent to 60 percent of these children potentially qualify to stay under current immigration laws-- and do, if they have a lawyer by their side. The vast majority do not. The only way to ensure we are not hurtling children back to circumstances that could cost them their lives is by providing them with real due process. Judges, who currently deny seven in 10 applications for asylum by people who are in deportation proceedings, must better understand the conditions these children are facing. They should be more open to considering relief for those fleeing gang recruitment or threats by criminal organizations when they come from countries like Honduras that are clearly unwilling or unable to protect them. If many children don't meet strict asylum criteria but face significant dangers if they return, the United States should consider allowing them to stay using humanitarian parole procedures we have employed in the past, for Cambodians and Haitians. It may be possible to transfer children and resettle them in other safe countries willing to share the burden. We should also make it easier for children to apply as refugees when they are still in Central America, as we have done for people in Iraq, Cuba, countries in the former Soviet Union, Vietnam and Haiti. Those who showed a well- founded fear of persecution wouldn't have to make the perilous journey north alone. Of course, many migrant children come for economic reasons, and not because they fear for their lives. In those cases, they should quickly be deported if they have at least one parent in their country of origin. By deporting them directly from the refugee centers, the United States would discourage future non-refugees by showing that immigrants cannot be caught and released, and then avoid deportation by ignoring court orders to attend immigration hearings. Instead of advocating such a humane, practical approach, the Obama administration wants to intercept and return children en route. On Tuesday the president asked for $3.7 billion in emergency funding. Some money would be spent on new detention facilities and more immigration judges, but the main goal seems to be to strengthen border control and speed up deportations. He also asked Congress to grant powers that could eliminate legal protections for children from Central America in order to expedite removals, a change that Republicans in Congress have also advocated. This would allow life-or-death decisions to be made within hours by Homeland Security officials, even though studies have shown that border patrol agents fail to adequately screen Mexican children to see if they are being sexually exploited by traffickers or fear persecution, as the agents are supposed to do. Why would they start asking Central American children key questions needed to prove refugee status? The United States expects other countries to take in hundreds of thousands of refugees on humanitarian grounds. Countries neighboring Syria have absorbed nearly 3 million people. Jordan has accepted in two days what the United States has received in an entire month during the height of this immigration flow--more than 9,000 children in May. The United States should also increase to pre-9/11 levels the number of refugees we accept to 90,000 from the current 70,000 per year and, unlike in recent years, actually admit that many. By sending these children away, ``you are handing them a death sentence,'' says Jose Arnulfo Ochoa Ochoa, an expert in Honduras with World Vision International, a Christian humanitarian aid group. This abrogates international conventions we have signed and undermines our credibility as a humane country. It would be a disgrace if this wealthy nation turned its back on the 52,000 children who have arrived since October, many of them legitimate refugees. This is not how a great nation treats children.

Mr. BEN RAY LUJAN of New Mexico. Mr. Speaker, I have a parliamentary inquiry.

Mr. BEN RAY LUJAN of New Mexico. Mr. Speaker, again, if there is discretion that can be shared, that was directly from the article that I asked to be entered into the Record. On many occasions I have been on this floor and been part of many debates in the 5 years I have been honored to serve with the Congress and have used the exact same approach and have never been charged. Is there any discretion that the Speaker can give us direction on?

Mr. BEN RAY LUJAN of New Mexico. Mr. Speaker, I have a further parliamentary inquiry.

Mr. BEN RAY LUJAN of New Mexico. Mr. Speaker, with that being said to debate, even though the same practices are used by Members, rulings can change by the Chair on this particular issue?

Mr. BEN RAY LUJAN of New Mexico. Mr. Speaker, for clarification, that is exactly what I did, which is I read a statement from the article. I am confused, Mr. Speaker. I am just maybe a junior Member from a small farm in New Mexico, but it seems that if I am reading from the article directly, that I don't appear to be violating any rules to be charged time.

Mr. BEN RAY LUJAN of New Mexico. Mr. Speaker, I have a further parliamentary inquiry.

Mr. BEN RAY LUJAN of New Mexico. Mr. Speaker, this was not an embellishment. This was a direct quote from the article. It appears to me that my understanding of an embellishment are my own words being added.

Mr. BEN RAY LUJAN of New Mexico. Mr. Speaker, last week, we were part of a conversation and debate around strengthening antihuman trafficking laws. We all came to this floor, and Democrats and Republicans found a way to talk to one another and talk to the American public about what we should do to protect these children that are in harm's way, not just fleeing street violence, but being brutally murdered and raped, Mr. Speaker. This week, what my Republican colleagues are doing is coming out of a conference and weakening antihuman trafficking laws. Mr. Speaker, at this point, all I can say is God help this Congress if it is now our policy to weaken human trafficking laws. It is a sad, sad day, Mr. Speaker, and I certainly hope that my colleagues take a chance to look at this and look into their hearts and pray on that and come to the floor and do the right thing.

Mr. BEN RAY LUJAN of New Mexico

Mr. BEN RAY LUJAN of New Mexico. Mr. Speaker, I submit the following article: [From the New York Times, July 11, 2014] The Children of the Drug Wars: A Refugee Crisis, Not an Immigration Crisis (By Sonia Nazario) Cristian Omar Reyes, an 11-year-old sixth grader in the neighborhood of Nueva Suyapa, on the outskirts of Tegucigalpa, tells me he has to get out of Honduras soon-- ``no matter what.'' In March, his father was robbed and murdered by gangs while working as a security guard protecting a pastry truck. His mother used the life insurance payout to hire a smuggler to take her to Florida. She promised to send for him quickly, but she has not. Three people he knows were murdered this year. Four others were gunned down on a nearby corner in the span of two weeks at the beginning of this year. A girl his age resisted being robbed of $5. She was clubbed over the head and dragged off by two men who cut a hole in her throat, stuffed her panties in it, and left her body in a ravine across the street from Cristian's house. ``I'm going this year,'' he tells me. I last went to Nueva Suyapa in 2003, to write about another boy, Luis Enrique Motino Pineda, who had grown up there and left to find his mother in the United States. Children from Central America have been making that journey, often without their parents, for two decades. But lately something has changed, and the predictable flow has turned into an exodus. Three years ago, about 6,800 children were detained by United States immigration authorities and placed in federal custody; this year, as many as 90,000 children are expected to be picked up. Around a quarter come from Honduras--more than from anywhere else. Children still leave Honduras to reunite with a parent, or for better educational and economic opportunities. But, as I learned when I returned to Nueva Suyapa last month, a vast majority of child migrants are fleeing not poverty, but violence. As a result, what the United States is seeing on its borders now is not an immigration crisis. It is a refugee crisis. Gangs arrived in force in Honduras in the 1990s, as 18th Street and Mara Salvatrucha members were deported in large numbers from Los Angeles to Central America, joining homegrown groups like Los Puchos. But the dominance in the past few years of foreign drug cartels in Honduras, especially ones from Mexico, has increased the reach and viciousness of the violence. As the United States and Colombia spent billions of dollars to disrupt the movement of drugs up the Caribbean corridor, traffickers rerouted inland through Honduras, and 79 percent of cocaine-smuggling flights bound for the United States now pass through there. Narco groups and gangs are vying for control over this turf, neighborhood by neighborhood, to gain more foot soldiers for drug sales and distribution, expand their customer base, and make money through extortion in a country left with an especially weak, corrupt government following a 2009 coup. Enrique's 33-year-old sister, Belky, who still lives in Nueva Suyapa, says children began leaving en masse for the United States three years ago. That was around the time that the narcos started putting serious pressure on kids to work for them. At Cristian's school, older students working with the cartels push drugs on the younger ones--some as young as 6. If they agree, children are recruited to serve as lookouts, make deliveries in backpacks, rob people and extort businesses. They are given food, shoes and money in return. Later, they might work as traffickers or hit men. Teachers at Cristian's school described a 12-year-old who demanded that the school release three students one day to help him distribute crack cocaine; he brandished a pistol and threatened to kill a teacher when she tried to question him. At Nueva Suyapa's only public high school, narcos ``recruit inside the school,'' says Yadira Sauceda, a counselor there. Until he was killed a few weeks ago, a 23-year-old ``student'' controlled the school. Each day, he was checked by security at the door, then had someone sneak his gun to him over the school wall. Five students, mostly 12- and 13- year-olds, tearfully told Ms. Sauceda that the man had ordered them to use and distribute drugs or he would kill their parents. By March, one month into the new school year, 67 of 450 students had left the school. Teachers must pay a ``war tax'' to teach in certain neighborhoods, and students must pay to attend. Carlos Baquedano Sanchez, a slender 14-year-old with hair sticking straight up, explained how hard it was to stay away from the cartels. He lives in a shack made of corrugated tin in a neighborhood in Nueva Suyapa called El Infiernito-- Little Hell--and usually doesn't have anything to eat one out of every three days. He started working in a dump when he was 7, picking out iron or copper to recycle, for $1 or $2 a day. But bigger boys often beat him to steal his haul, and he quit a year ago when an older man nearly killed him for a coveted car-engine piston. Now he sells scrap wood. But all of this was nothing, he says, compared to the relentless pressure to join narco gangs and the constant danger they have brought to his life. When he was 9, he barely escaped from two narcos who were trying to rape him, while terrified neighbors looked on. When he was 10, he was pressured to try marijuana and crack. ``You'll feel better. Like you are in the clouds,'' a teenager working with a gang told him. But he resisted. He has known eight people who were murdered and seen three killed right in front of him. He saw a man shot three years ago and still remembers the plums the man was holding rolling down the street, coated in blood. Recently he witnessed two teenage hit men shooting a pair of brothers for refusing to hand over the keys and title to their motorcycle. Carlos hit the dirt and prayed. The killers calmly walked down the street. Carlos shrugs. ``Now seeing someone dead is nothing.'' He longs to be an engineer or mechanic, but he quit school after sixth grade, too poor and too afraid to attend. ``A lot of kids know what can happen in school. So they leave.'' He wants to go to the United States, even though he knows how dangerous the journey can be; a man in his neighborhood lost both legs after falling off the top of a Mexican freight train, and a family friend drowned in the Rio Grande. ``I want to avoid drugs and death. The government can't pull up its pants and help people,'' he says angrily. ``My country has lost its way.'' Girls face particular dangers--one reason around 40 percent of children who arrived in the United States this year were girls, compared with 27 percent in the past. Recently three girls were raped and killed in Nueva Suyapa, one only 8 years old. Two 15-year-olds were abducted and raped. The kidnappers told them that if they didn't get in the car they would kill their entire families. Some parents no longer let their girls go to school for fear of their being kidnapped, says Luis Lopez, an educator with Asociacion Compartir, a nonprofit in Nueva Suyapa. Milagro Noemi Martinez, a petite 19-year-old with clear green eyes, has been told repeatedly by narcos that she would be theirs--or end up dead. Last summer, she made her first attempt to reach the United States ``Here there is only evil,'' she says. ``It's better to leave than have them kill me here.'' She headed north with her 21-year-old sister, a friend who had also been threatened, and $170 among them. But she was stopped and deported from Mexico. Now back in Nueva Suyapa, she stays locked inside her mother's house. ``I hope God protects me. I am afraid to step outside.'' Last year, she says, six minors, as young as 15, were killed in her neighborhood. Some were hacked apart. She plans to try the journey again soon. Asking for help from the police or the government is not an option in what some consider a failed state. The drugs that pass through Honduras each year are worth more than the country's entire gross domestic product. Narcos have bought off police officers, politicians and judges. In recent years, four out of five homicides were never investigated. No one is immune to the carnage. Several Honduran mayors have been killed. The sons of both the former head of the police department and the head of the national university were murdered, the latter, an investigation showed, by the police. ``You never call the cops. The cops themselves will retaliate and kill you,'' says Henry Carias Aguilar, a pastor in Nueva Suyapa. A majority of small businesses in Nueva Suyapa have shuttered because of extortion demands, while churches have doubled in number in the past decade, as people pray for salvation from what they see as the plague predicted in the Bible. Taxis and homes have signs on them asking God for mercy. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees recently interviewed 404 children who had arrived in the United States from Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala and Mexico; 58 percent said their primary reason for leaving was violence. (A similar survey in 2006, of Central American children coming into Mexico, found that only 13 percent were fleeing violence.) They aren't just going to the United States: Less conflicted countries in Central America had a 712 percent increase in asylum claims between 2008 and 2013. ``If a house is burning, people will jump out the window,'' says Michelle Brane, director of the migrant rights and justice program at the Women's Refugee Commission. To permanently stem this flow of children, we must address the complex root causes of violence in Honduras, as well as the demand for illegal drugs in the United States that is fueling that violence. In the meantime, however, we must recognize this as a refugee crisis, as the United Nations just recommended. These children are facing threats similar to the forceful conscription of child soldiers by warlords in Sudan or during the civil war in Bosnia. Being forced to sell drugs by narcos is no different from being forced into military service. Many Americans, myself included, believe in deporting unlawful immigrants, but see a different imperative with refugees. The United States should immediately create emergency refugee centers inside our borders, tent cities--operated by the United Nations and other relief groups like the International Rescue Committee--where immigrant children could be held for 60 to 90 days instead of being released. The government would post immigration judges at these centers and adjudicate children's cases there. To ensure this isn't a sham process, asylum officers and judges must be trained in child-sensitive interviewing techniques to help elicit information from fearful, traumatized youngsters. All children must also be represented by a volunteer or government-funded lawyer. Kids in Need of Defense, a nonprofit that recruits pro bono lawyers to represent immigrant children and whose board I serve on, estimates that 40 percent to 60 percent of these children potentially qualify to stay under current immigration laws-- and do, if they have a lawyer by their side. The vast majority do not. The only way to ensure we are not hurtling children back to circumstances that could cost them their lives is by providing them with real due process. Judges, who currently deny seven in 10 applications for asylum by people who are in deportation proceedings, must better understand the conditions these children are facing. They should be more open to considering relief for those fleeing gang recruitment or threats by criminal organizations when they come from countries like Honduras that are clearly unwilling or unable to protect them. If many children don't meet strict asylum criteria but face significant dangers if they return, the United States should consider allowing them to stay using humanitarian parole procedures we have employed in the past, for Cambodians and Haitians. It may be possible to transfer children and resettle them in other safe countries willing to share the burden. We should also make it easier for children to apply as refugees when they are still in Central America, as we have done for people in Iraq, Cuba, countries in the former Soviet Union, Vietnam and Haiti. Those who showed a well- founded fear of persecution wouldn't have to make the perilous journey north alone. Of course, many migrant children come for economic reasons, and not because they fear for their lives. In those cases, they should quickly be deported if they have at least one parent in their country of origin. By deporting them directly from the refugee centers, the United States would discourage future non-refugees by showing that immigrants cannot be caught and released, and then avoid deportation by ignoring court orders to attend immigration hearings. Instead of advocating such a humane, practical approach, the Obama administration wants to intercept and return children en route. On Tuesday the president asked for $3.7 billion in emergency funding. Some money would be spent on new detention facilities and more immigration judges, but the main goal seems to be to strengthen border control and speed up deportations. He also asked Congress to grant powers that could eliminate legal protections for children from Central America in order to expedite removals, a change that Republicans in Congress have also advocated. This would allow life-or-death decisions to be made within hours by Homeland Security officials, even though studies have shown that border patrol agents fail to adequately screen Mexican children to see if they are being sexually exploited by traffickers or fear persecution, as the agents are supposed to do. Why would they start asking Central American children key questions needed to prove refugee status? The United States expects other countries to take in hundreds of thousands of refugees on humanitarian grounds. Countries neighboring Syria have absorbed nearly 3 million people. Jordan has accepted in two days what the United States has received in an entire month during the height of this immigration flow--more than 9,000 children in May. The United States should also increase to pre-9/11 levels the number of refugees we accept to 90,000 from the current 70,000 per year and, unlike in recent years, actually admit that many. By sending these children away, ``you are handing them a death sentence,'' says Jose Arnulfo Ochoa Ochoa, an expert in Honduras with World Vision International, a Christian humanitarian aid group. This abrogates international conventions we have signed and undermines our credibility as a humane country. It would be a disgrace if this wealthy nation turned its back on the 52,000 children who have arrived since October, many of them legitimate refugees. This is not how a great nation treats children.

Mr. BEN RAY LUJAN of New Mexico

Mr. BEN RAY LUJAN of New Mexico. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of this legislation and many other bills we are considering that deal with human and sex trafficking--an important issue, a critical issue, that especially relates to protecting children who are too often victims of abuse and violence. I commend the Speaker for bringing these bills up for a vote. Mr. Speaker, as I was watching the debate this evening, I couldn't help but come back to the floor. I hope all of my colleagues that are speaking tonight on the importance of passing these human trafficking bills will join us next week to talk about the importance of protecting children. It was with alarm, Mr. Speaker, that I read a letter that Speaker Boehner penned to President Barack Obama that appears that my Republican colleagues, when they left a meeting earlier this afternoon, are asking to take away the very protections from children during a law that was passed in 2008 that we are asking to protect these children tonight. So I come today to ask my colleagues to read the transcripts, to hear the debate this evening, and to think about it, to go home this weekend and, whatever faith that we may be, that we pray about it and we talk to our pastors and our religious leaders about it because these kids that we are going to be talking about next week are the very children that need protections as well. The motivation to pass these bills today is the same motivation that moved this body to pass legislation that became law in 2008, to protect children. This law has since become the subject of much condemnation for many of my Republican colleagues as we discuss the humanitarian crisis on the border. We are here on this floor debating legislation to protect children, yet many of my colleagues want to take away due process from children who are trying to escape unimaginable violence in Central America. In Honduras, the murder capital of the world, the violence was captured in a story recently--and I apologize for the graphic nature of this story.

Mr. BEN RAY LUJAN of New Mexico. This is a story from The New York Times: During a recent late-night visit to the San Pedro Sula morgue, more than 60 bodies, all victims of violence, were seen piled in a heap, each wrapped in a brown plastic bag. While picking bullets out of a 15-year-old boy shot 15 times, technicians discussed how they regularly received corpses of children under 10 and sometimes as young as 2. Last week, in nearby Santa Barbara, an 11-year-old had his throat slit by other children because he did not pay a 50-cent extortion fee. The doctor at the morgue said: before, we saw children being killed because they were at the scene when gangs were coming to prey on families and they just happened to be there; now, we are seeing kids kill kids. There are hundreds of other stories like this. Mr. Speaker, I beg and I plead of my colleagues, each and every one of us that may or may not have been here when the law passed, but those of us that are here now, these are kids. I know that you and I, Mr. Speaker, that we love children, and we want to make sure that they are not victims of these horrific crimes. Please, please, take this weekend and ask the Speaker to remove the provisions that will take away the due process from these children. As we pass these bills together, let us not forget what brought this Congress together in 2008, to protect these children. Let us show the same compassion that is a driving force of these bills tonight.

Mr. BEN RAY LUJAN of New Mexico

Mr. BEN RAY LUJAN of New Mexico. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor MANA, a National Latina Organization, whose members will be in our nation's Capital from July 24 to July 26, 2014, to celebrate its 40th anniversary. MANA was founded in 1974 as the Mexican American Women's National Association, as a national grassroots membership organization with chapters, individual members, and affiliates across the country. The organization has evolved to encompass Hispanic women from all ethnic and cultural backgrounds and is the oldest and largest Hispanic women's organization in the country. The MANA mission is to empower Latinas through leadership development, community service, and advocacy. For 40 years, MANA has been a powerful voice for Latinas across the country to share their concerns, as well as their successes, as women, professionals, heads of households, educators, and trailblazers. Through its chapters and affiliates, MANA's expansive network has made the organization a leader for reaching the Latino community at the grassroots level. Each local chapter is supported by the commitment of passionate volunteers who are dedicated to the educational, health, political, and economic advancement of Hispanics in their respective communities, implementing the shared mission and vision of the national MANA office, headquartered in Washington, DC. Throughout its rich history, MANA has established a number of programs to fulfill the mission of the organization and empower Latinas from every walk of life. The AvanZamos Initiative is a national effort to provide leadership development for adult Latinas. Through training in the areas of financial literacy, mentoring, advocacy and leadership development at the annual MANA Latina Leadership Institute, Latina leaders from across the country are given the skills to help shape the lives of future generations in positive and upwardly mobile directions. The MANA Las Primeras Awards Gala honors Latinas who demonstrate important ``firsts'' in their fields with a national impact on the Hispanic community--highlighting Latinas' important contributions across the country. The Hermanitas Initiative is significant mentoring program in the United States developed specifically for Hispanic youth. The program empowers Latina adolescents by promoting educational achievement and personal enrichment; developing leadership abilities; encouraging cultural identity and awareness; and modeling proactive community involvement. Finally, I salute the commitment of the founders of MANA--Blandina (Bambi) Cardenas, Organizing Chair; Bettie Baca, Organizing Vice Chair; and Evangeline (Vangie) Elizondo, the First Board President. Their early efforts were the building blocks for what MANA has become today. It is my honor to congratulate MANA, a National Latina Organization, for 40 years of success in strengthening the Latina community in the United States.

Mr. BEN RAY LUJAN of New Mexico

Mr. BEN RAY LUJAN of New Mexico. Madam Chair, for over 70 years, our national laboratories have worked to ensure the security of our Nation. We have a responsibility to be good stewards of the environment in relation to the historic and ongoing radiological work at these laboratories. At Los Alamos, there are legal obligations, including the 3706 campaign to remove transuranic, or TRU, waste and the broader 2005 consent order between the DOE and the State of New Mexico to remediate legacy waste at Los Alamos. Two major wildfires near Los Alamos National Lab have highlighted the importance of removing aboveground waste from this facility. The DOE was nearing its completion of the 3706 campaign when the Nation's only repository for TRU waste, the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, experienced, first, a fire and then a radiological release. As we work to restore WIPP operations, we must ensure that our national laboratories have the resources to meet their legal obligations for environmental remediation. We also must recognize our moral obligation to these communities that have served our great Nation. It is with this intention that I request the chair to work with me and Representatives from other affected communities, as this bill moves forward to conference, to ensure that adequate and appropriate funds are available not only for the restoration operations of WIPP, but also for legally-mandated environmental remediation efforts at Los Alamos and at other affected national laboratories. I thank you for this time to address this important issue. I look forward to working with you to find a solution, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. BEN RAY LUJAN of New Mexico

Mr. BEN RAY LUJAN of New Mexico. Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. BEN RAY LUJAN of New Mexico. Mr. Chairman, I rise to amend the Energy and Water Appropriations bill to increase the construction account by $15 million to ensure local governments like the city of Rio Rancho, the county of Bernalillo, and the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District get reimbursed for work they have done in conjunction with the Army Corps of Engineers. The Army Corps of Engineers works with local governments in New Mexico to construct levies, implement flood control measures, and other important infrastructure for the safety of the public. More specifically, the city of Rio Rancho entered into a reimbursement contract with the Army Corps of Engineers and has not been paid back for several years due to the lack of appropriations. The same goes for the county of Bernalillo, the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District, and other communities across the United States. This delay in reimbursement has led to interruptions in financing for other city projects and also has the potential to hurt the credit rating of these entities if they do not recover these funds via reimbursement, as stated in their contracts with the Federal Government. By increasing the dollar amount in this account, which includes a number of programs and accounts that are critical to local governments--like engineering, construction, technical assistance, flood control, and environmental infrastructure--we can get these entities reimbursed and get these liabilities off the books of the Army Corps of Engineers to get other projects going. According to the Congressional Budget Office, this increase has zero impact on the budget and, in fact, would save money by reducing liability for the Federal Government. Mr. Chairman, local governments have been left holding an IOU from the Federal Government for doing work based on the good faith written agreements with the Army Corps of Engineers. Mr. Chairman, I understand there may be opposition from some of my colleagues, but I am hoping that I can persuade the chairman to support me in this effort. Under section 593 of the Water Resources Development Act of 1999, the city of Rio Rancho and other local governments entered into agreements with the Army Corps of Engineers. When city and local governments enter into reimbursement contracts, they expect to be reimbursed. They have annual budgets with the expectations they will get paid back. Congress should live up to these obligations in the authority given to the agency by Congress. Mr. Chairman, I understand the constraints that the subcommittee dealt with, with the allocations given to them. But we need to make sure that we are working to make these local governments whole with the agreements and contracts they have with the Federal Government. With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. BEN RAY LUJAN of New Mexico. Mr. Chairman, I would like to pose a question either to the chairman or the ranking member: With local governments like this entering into agreements with the Army Corps of Engineers and doing work like this, is there something that could be done associated with trying to get an assessment of those, and maybe we can chip away at those reimbursements in a timely manner? Is that something that we might be able to work on? Mr. Chairman, I would yield to anyone who might be able to respond to that. Mr. Chairman, my question is: With local governments, like the ones in New Mexico and other parts of the United States, that have entered into agreements with the Army Corps of Engineers or others for reimbursement in a timely manner, is there a way that we might be able to chip away or work at this? I would be willing to withdraw the amendment if I could get an assurance that this is something that we can look at and work at. I have offered this amendment in years past. And, again, there are local governments across the United States that are waiting for reimbursement, and I think it is something that would be good for us to take a look at. I yield to the gentleman from Idaho.

Mr. BEN RAY LUJAN of New Mexico. Mr. Chairman, would that be agreeable or amenable to the ranking member?

Mr. BEN RAY LUJAN of New Mexico. I yield to the gentlewoman from Ohio.

Mr. BEN RAY LUJAN of New Mexico. Thank you very much. Mr. Chairman, I want to thank the staff for their time and their effort and the courtesy of the chairman and the ranking member. I will not offer this amendment today and we will see if we might be able to work together, Mr. Chairman, and if not, we will come back next year and we will see what we can do. Maybe we will need to take a vote. But I appreciate everyone's courtesy today. Mr. Chair, I ask unanimous consent to withdraw my amendment.

Mr. BEN RAY LUJAN of New Mexico

Mr. BEN RAY LUJAN of New Mexico. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to bring up H.R. 15 to demand a vote on the bipartisan immigration reform bill that honors our American values.

Mr. BEN RAY LUJAN of New Mexico

Mr. BEN RAY LUJAN of New Mexico. Mr. Chairman, it is with great disappointment that I come to the floor today in opposition to this attempt by my Republican colleagues to undermine the Antiquities Act, a law that has resulted in the protection and preservation of some of our Nation's most cherished lands. The Grand Canyon, Zion National Park, the Cesar Chavez National Monument, and many more have all been protected under the Antiquities Act by Presidents of both parties. This issue hits close to home for me and my constituents. Last March, President Obama designated the Rio Grande del Norte in northern New Mexico as a national monument under the Antiquities Act. The result was years of work and the community coming together to find consensus on a path forward that respects our traditions and respects our culture. Protecting the Rio Grande del Norte had broad support and a strong coalition worked with the administration and Secretary Salazar to show that protecting this land needed to be a top priority. Whether it is for recreation, farming, or sustaining a way of life, the Rio Grande del Norte impacts all those who visit and all those who live off the sustenance it provides. It is one of the crown jewels of our State, and if it were not for the Antiquities Act, this majestic land that represents our culture and drives the local economy would not have received the protections that will ensure its vitality for future generations. This attack on the Antiquities Act is an attack on the preservation of lands that are a part of who we are, our rich history as a diverse Nation, and our ability to enjoy these lands in the future. I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on this bill.