Norma Torres

Mrs. TORRES

Mrs. TORRES. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time to close. One final story to remind all of us what is at stake here. Earlier this year, a Honduran father was separated from his wife and child just days after President Trump's zero-tolerance policies went into effect. Marco Antonio Munoz crossed the Rio Grande with his wife and 3-year-old son on May 12 near the tiny town of Granjeno, Texas. Soon after Marco and his family were taken into custody, they arrived at a processing station in nearby McAllen and said they wanted to apply for asylum. Border Patrol agents told the family that they would be separated. That is when Border Patrol officials literally ripped Marco's child from his arms. At no point did Marco attempt to attack or assault the Border Patrol staff, but due to his anguish, he was placed into a padded isolation cell. Marco began to pray, pray for his family and pray for their safety. Hours passed, and the next morning, after receiving no information about where his family was or when he would see them next, Marco took his life. Family values. This is the law and order President Trump has no respect for either. He is disrespecting the rule of law and violating court orders by detaining children, babies, and he is creating hysteria among families and confusion among Border Patrol and HHS officials. Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to oppose the previous question and the rule because we can do better than this. We have family values that we must stand for, and I urge my colleagues to oppose this. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mrs. TORRES. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Correa).

Mrs. TORRES. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Gallego) to speak on the continuing horror stories about what has happened at our Nation's border.

Mrs. TORRES. Mr. Speaker, I yield an additional 30 seconds to the gentleman from Massachusetts.

Mrs. TORRES. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. McGovern), the distinguished ranking member of the Committee on Rules, who has been a leader on this issue of money and politics for years.

Mrs. TORRES. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Deutch) to discuss this proposal.

Mrs. TORRES. Mr. Speaker, if we defeat the previous question, I will offer an amendment to the rule to bring up H.J. Res. 31, sponsored by Representatives Deutch and McGovern and Raskin, which would reserve Supreme Court decisions like Citizens United by enshrining in the Constitution of the United States a democracy for all amendments, establishing the right of the American people to enact State and Federal laws that regulate spending in public elections. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to insert the text of my amendment in the Record, along with extraneous material, immediately prior to the vote on the previous question.

Mrs. TORRES. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me the customary 30 minutes, and I yield myself such time as I may consume. This rule makes in order two bills and four amendments: H.R. 50, Unfunded Mandates Information and Transparency Act of 2017; and H.R. 3281, Reclamation Title Transfer and Non-Federal Infrastructure Incentivization Act. H.R. 50 amends the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act of 1995 and the Congressional Budget Act of 1974. This is a bill that Congress already voted on in 2015 in nearly a party-line vote in the House before dying in the Senate. I understand my colleagues think that this is a very important issue. As a former mayor and council member, I know how difficult Federal regulations can be to implement. This legislation, however, does nothing except grind progress to a standstill, blocking improvements to our Nation's health, safety, and environmental protections. Perhaps that is why this rule also makes in order H.R. 3281, which assaults our Nation's environmental and health standards in a different way. This legislation, which I opposed in the Natural Resources Committee, would authorize a de facto privatization of Federal infrastructure across the Western U.S., all while stiffing our taxpayers. The bill does not require that taxpayers be compensated for the loss of publicly owned land and mineral interests. Imagine, once again, this Congress is putting the interests of private business ahead of our hardworking taxpayers. This legislation is a proposal from President Trump's infrastructure plan, which largely seeks to enrich developers and private businesses at the expense of our hardworking taxpayers and the general public as a whole. I could understand spending time on these bills if we had finished the pressing work before us, but with thousands--and I mean thousands-- of children still separated from their parents due to the cruel actions of this administration, is this really what we are spending time on? Where are the moral priorities and family values of this Congress? I have spoken with the Department of Homeland Security, and I have spoken with the HHS Office of Refugee Resettlement, and there has been one constant answer from both of them: They have absolutely no idea what they are doing, no idea where the parents of these children are, no idea how many children have been put into foster care, no idea when these families will be reunited, and no idea what comes next. Congress has a responsibility to act, not next week, not next month, not next year, but today. Once we leave for August recess, let me remind you, it will be 39 days before we come back. That means 39 more days that we are going to allow children to be held in detention, in cages, in cold cells, without their parents. The Trump administration has already missed the first deadline to reunite families. What assurances do we have that they won't miss the second deadline, or the third one, or possibly the fourth one? How many more deadlines does this Congress, this administration, need before we realize that we are complicit--complicit--in separating children from their parents who care about them? And while we have them in our custody, we are complicit in not properly taking care of them. ``Full of dirt and lice,'' that is how an immigrant mother described her 14-month-old baby son who had been returned to her after 85 days of separation. We must act because this administration chooses not to. Failure to do so will mean more families are broken forever, more families like Yasmin's. On May 22, Yasmin and her two teenage daughters entered the United States and were immediately apprehended and then separated. The mother was transferred to the McAllen holding center--also known as the dog pound, as they call it--with a group of other separated mothers. After 7 days, the mothers were told that they would be deported without their children. Many of the mothers fainted when they heard this news. One mother had a seizure in a cell. After appearing in court, Yasmin was handcuffed, shackled, and given no information on the status of her children. Family values. After being transferred to another detention center, Yasmin was informed that her daughters had been reunited with their father. But Yasmin still remains in a detention center, where she has gone more than a month separated from her children. She has received absolutely no information about when she will see her children again and must simply wait and pray. Family values. These people are fleeing for their lives to the promise and safety of the United States, and we aren't even considering their asylum cases. Let me tell you another story, Mr. Speaker. A woman from El Salvador decided to flee to the U.S. with her two young boys, ages 4 and 10, after receiving grave threats from MS-13 gang members. Prior to fleeing to the U.S., she had sought protection from Salvadoran authorities through the legal process but had not received any protection. In March of this year, she presented herself to the border officials, after making a conscious decision not to enter the U.S. at an official port of entry. She had learned that CBP officials are turning away asylum seekers in direct--direct--violation of the United States and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The mother and her two boys were apprehended and taken to a Border Patrol processing station. The mother was sent to an adult detention center in Laredo, and the boys were sent to a shelter for unaccompanied children under the Office of Refugee Resettlement within Health and Human Services. At one point, the brothers were separated from one another and placed into two separate foster homes, but were eventually reunited and released to family on the East Coast. Under current law and procedure--something this Congress could change today--the children have absolutely no right to an appointed lawyer. Without their mother to speak on their behalf, the 4-year-old and the 10-year-old boys must make a case for asylum on their own in separate court cases. This is what we could be doing today: One, fixing the broken laws that have toddlers, toddlers who are barely out of diapers, representing themselves in court and fixing the root causes of these issues with the Central American Family Protection and Reunification Act, legislation I have offered with Ranking Member Engel. I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on this rule so that we can use our limited time here to act, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mrs. TORRES

Mrs. TORRES. Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Mrs. TORRES

Mrs. TORRES. Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Mrs. TORRES. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time. Let me remind this body of a brief history of our Nation. During World War II, this country chose to round up Japanese American citizens and put them in internment camps across the country. Some were held in my hometown at the Los Angeles County Fairgrounds, in Pomona, California. In 1944, the Supreme Court ruled in Korematsu v. United States that the government had every right to incarcerate families in the best interest of our national security. It was wrong and immoral then, and it is wrong and immoral now, and we look back at Japanese internment as a dark moment in our history. Just yesterday, the Supreme Court finally rejected the ruling and admitted that it was clearly unconstitutional to forcibly place Japanese Americans in concentration camps--74 years later. That is how long it took for our court system to catch up with the reality and to right a horrible wrong. We are facing a similar dark period in our country now with what is happening at our southern borders. How long will it take this time for us to realize that what this administration is doing at our southern borders is morally repugnant, wrong, and illegal? How long before we realize that what we are doing is causing emotional harm to families, especially to the children? How long before we consider how history will remember this moment and judge us? What national security threat are we facing today that warrants such a barbaric response towards families and children? They are exactly that: children, families, babies. They are coming to our borders pleading for help and protection. They are fleeing kidnapping, rape, murder, and threats. They are not MS-13; they are fleeing MS-13. They want to work and raise their children in peace. Is that so terrible? This administration is deliberately choosing to inflict trauma onto thousands of children, holding children hostage, using child abuse as a scare tactic to deter families from coming here seeking refuge. There are still more than 2,000 children separated from their families at this present moment. President Trump may have signed his executive order last week, but he failed to implement a plan to reunite these families--no plan to reunite these families. We are doing nothing to fix this problem today. And let's be clear: Speaker Ryan's bill, which we may or may not consider this week, does nothing to fix this problem either. All his bill does is pave the way for long-term incarceration of families in prison-like facilities. It would be replacing one form of child abuse for another. I visited some of these detention centers at our borders. The horrendous conditions we are exposing families to are completely unacceptable. Where are we, as a nation, when we place children in cage-like cells, inside warehouses, with nothing but an emergency thermal blanket and a thin mat between them and the cold concrete floor, with a toilet in the middle of the cell? Criminally prosecuting every individual, every child, who crosses between a port of entry, who poses no threat to our country, is not only inhumane, it makes us less secure. We have a limited number of prosecutors. We have to make choices. If you prosecute one crime, it means you are not prosecuting another. So when we send our prosecutors after every single border crosser, who benefits? Let me tell you who benefits. The murderers, the rapists, the drug traffickers, the drug dealers, the pimps, the muggers, and the human traffickers, that is who will benefit from this. We are taking away from where law enforcement agencies need the most and are wasting by traumatizing defenseless families. How does this make us safe? This administration's impulsive zero-tolerance policy is harming our moral credibility. It is harming our national security. Most of all, it is harming innocent babies. Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to oppose the previous question and the rule, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mrs. TORRES. Mr. Speaker, I yield the gentlewoman from California an additional 30 seconds.

Mrs. TORRES. Mr. Speaker, I yield the gentlewoman from California an additional 30 seconds.

Mrs. TORRES. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Bass) to discuss this proposal.

Mrs. TORRES. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I just want to add that I absolutely agree with my colleague from the other side of the aisle on one thing, and that is that we should be absolutely focused and work together on the issues on which we agree, such as the USA Act. Mr. Speaker, why aren't we allowed to have a vote on the floor when that is bipartisan legislation created by a bipartisan group of Members? If we want to talk about the rule of law, Mr. Speaker, we can't talk from both ends. Either we support the rule of law or we don't. Yet this Republican Congress, time and time and time again, has been complicit with President Trump and his family's conflicts of interest when it comes to dealing with China, when it comes to dealing with our trade agreements, when it comes to dealing with Russia and now possibly North Korea. Mr. Speaker, the Trump administration has ripped thousands of children from their parents' arms at the border, sending them all over the country. Separating children from their parent poses ongoing psychological harm and trauma, yet the government has no clear plans to reunite those families. For that reason, if we defeat the previous question, I will offer an amendment to the rule to bring up Representative Bass' bill, H.R. 6236, the Family Unity Rights and Protection Act, which would require the Federal Government to reunite families which have been forcibly separated at the border. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to insert the text of my amendment in the Record, along with extraneous material, immediately prior to the vote on the previous question.

Mrs. TORRES. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I absolutely agree that a primary duty of this Congress is to fund the military, absolutely. There are military families serving in our Nation and abroad that deserve to get paid. So I would like to take this moment of privilege to remind this Congress that, before I got here, my son, who joined the United States Air Force, was going to have his pay withheld. I remember him telling me, Mr. Speaker: Mom, I signed up to serve our great Nation in the United States Air Force, and I signed up to defend and protect my country. I did not sign up to defend and protect the men of my country, but I signed up to protect all of the people in my country. And I resent Congress withholding my pay or tying my pay to the reproductive rights of women. So let's keep all of those things in mind when we talk about the priorities of this Congress. Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Doggett).

Mrs. TORRES. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding me the customary 30 minutes, and I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, this rule makes in order 29 amendments to H.R. 6157, the Department of Defense Appropriations Act for fiscal year 2019. The underlying legislation is the product of bipartisan negotiations, which have been going on for months. Bipartisan negotiations are a really good thing, and I am glad that, on this one issue, we are finding ways to work together. In particular, I want to recognize the work that Representative Aguilar, Representative Hurd, and many of our colleagues on both sides of the aisle have been doing to create a path forward and look for a solution to President Trump's self-created Dreamer crisis. That is what we are supposed to be doing here: working together to solve problems. Unfortunately, this Republican leadership doesn't believe in working with the other side. They are only interested in negotiating with their own. So it is not surprising that it isn't going very well. That is why they pulled their own immigration bill last week. Maybe the Republican leadership, which has blocked the bipartisan Dream Act time and time again, and which has blocked the bipartisan USA Act time and time again, should trust their Members to craft and vote on compromise legislation. But they don't have the courage or the vision to do that, do they? Now we have another crisis, which, again, the President has created, a crisis that has outraged our constituents. Thousands of children, even infants and toddlers, are ripped from their parents at our southern border, children who have done absolutely nothing wrong, children who did not choose to come here on their own, kids too young to know the name of the country that they came from, too young to know what asylum is, too young to know what illegal entry means. Some of these kids only know two words: ``mom'' and ``dad.'' We have heard the recordings of these children crying out for their parents while being made fun of. Many of us have visited the detention centers, and it is heartbreaking and it is unnecessary. So, while I congratulate the Appropriations Committee for their hard work on the defense bill, I have to remind the Speaker that we have 95 days to finish our work for funding the Federal Government. But I would challenge my colleagues to imagine one day, a single day, without their child, unsure if they would ever see them again. We have some time to do the defense bill, but on the issue of family separation, we cannot afford to wait another day. Congress should be addressing this crisis today. It is not going to be easy. This administration clearly did not think through this policy that they have created. Right now, we have children in HHS care, but where are their parents? Some are in custody of the U.S. Marshals or ICE, already deported, or maybe some are free on bond. HHS said yesterday that they were not reuniting kids with their parents who are in detention. What does that mean? Are they going to be free? If not, what is the plan? Let's look at the best-case scenario: a parent who gets out on bond and goes to HHS and asks for their child is told, ``Show us your documents. Prove you are really the parent,'' and this parent who has been in custody has nothing. Where is the plan to help these parents obtain their documents? Where are these plans to help these children reunite with their parents? Does the administration even know where all the parents are and how they are supposed to be reunited with their kids? How are they keeping track of the babies, the babies who are simply too young to even know their name? We have many unanswered questions. We should be making sure those kids get to their parents, making sure that every single one of those children is accounted for. That is doing our job. Instead, we are passing another appropriations bill with the full knowledge that we will probably do what we have done every year that I have been here: We will pass a CR at the end of the fiscal year, and then we will probably pass another CR, and then another, and then another, and then another, because we can't legislate together. This rule makes in order 29 amendments, but not a single one of them deals with the issues of the kids. Why not allow a vote on the amendment I offered with Representative Schiff to prohibit detaining children at military facilities? Why not allow a vote on my amendment to block certain Cabinet members from using military aircraft until the children are reunited? Is it more important for Scott Pruitt to get on a plane than for a baby from El Salvador to get back into his mother's arms? or the amendment offered by my colleague on the Rules Committee, Mr. Polis? Representative Polis' amendment would have prohibited the Department of Defense from transferring resources to the Department of Justice to carry out prosecution of migrant families. Don't our troops need these resources? Shouldn't our military be focused on keeping us safe from ISIS and North Korea, not toddlers and babies? And why is the Republican leadership afraid to allow us to have a vote? I guess babies are too controversial for the Republican caucus. I guess keeping families together is a poison pill amendment. By refusing Congress a vote, this House is giving up its responsibility to make immigration laws, plain and simple. This House should be a check on the administration. That is the way the system is supposed to work. But we are not doing that. Instead, by refusing to let us have a vote on the floor, the Republican House majority is endorsing President Trump's family jails. Mr. Speaker, this House majority owns this crisis. Let me be clear: A vote for this rule is a vote for more of President Trump's cruelty to these babies. It is a vote to keep innocent children from their parents. This House has the power to reunite these families. This House has the power to end separation. This House has the power to stop hateful immigration policies. But this House won't act. Because of that, thousands of families may be destroyed forever. We must defeat this rule and give this House an opportunity to act. Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to oppose the rule, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mrs. TORRES

Mrs. TORRES. Mr. Speaker, I yield an additional 30 seconds to the gentleman from Florida.

Mrs. TORRES. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Vermont (Mr. Welch).

Mrs. TORRES. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Mississippi (Mr. Thompson), who is the distinguished ranking member of the Committee on Homeland Security.

Mrs. TORRES. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Aguilar) to discuss our proposal.

Mrs. TORRES. Mr. Speaker, if we defeat the previous question, I will offer an amendment to strike the text of this rule and insert House Resolution 774, Representative Denham's bipartisan queen-of-the-hill resolution. This rule would bring up four separate immigration bills to be debated and voted on the House floor. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to insert the text of my amendment in the Record, along with extraneous material, immediately prior to the vote on the previous question.

Mrs. TORRES. Mr. Speaker, I yield 30 seconds to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Lofgren).

Mrs. TORRES. Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer), the Democratic whip.

Ms. TORRES

Ms. TORRES. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Barragan).