salvador and honduras. recently the president of honduras talked about this. i know the president of guatamala has talked about it. what the president of guatamala said in essence is the traffickers, the smugglers, they heard this, and they came down to our country and said let's go to the northern border, make that difficult and arduous journey, sometimes very dangerous journey for the children because the biden administration said there would no longer be title 42 in place where we can turn you away it the border and in fact said we want to reunite families and kids. and that means come to the border and you can come into the country. and that's what's happened. look, i believe we ought to have a legal immigration system that is very healthy in this country. i believe in immigration. i think it's a very important part of who we are as americans. we take more people in every year than any other country in the world legally, and that's over a million people a year. and i think that's been good for our country.

it's part of the fabric of our society. we should want immigrants to come, but come in a legal and orderly way. and not only is the surge overwhelming the border, but it's really not fair to all those people who have been waiting in line for years and years to come to our country, from a country like he will -- el salvador, honduras or guatamala. people who want to come legal, people uniting with their families or have skills we want in this country, we should encourage that. but this is happening in a way that is not orderly and it's happening because there's been a change in policy. the other big change in policy is if you come, people were told, this is after the inauguration, then if you apply for asylum, meaning that you have a credible fear of persecution back home, so you apply for asylum, you will be allowed to come into the country. in other words, there won't be an ajudd indication of that,

there -- adjudication of that. there won't be a decision whether you applied properly or not, you will be told you can come into the country. so i went down to the border a few weeks ago and was able to go with secretary mayorkas and the senate chair of the group. at that point the border patrol stations and detention facilities, built for single adults and never built for long-term detention, were overwhelmed with children and you had children sleeping side by side during covid, none of them being tested for covid, by the way. and they didn't have blankets, they had sheets, essentially, that are, you know, no real warmth or padding and they were sleeping on the ground with pads underneath them and the system just couldn't handle it. now at this point, most of those children are out of the border

patrol system and they are into the h.h.s. system and h.h.s. is the agency that is supposed to take care of these kids. they can only be in the border control custody for a short period of time. that was being violated. they were there longer than they should, but there was no place for them to go. and now the h.h.s. facilities are open and they are taking care of the kids. some of my colleagues will say we have fewer children in border control custody. they are still in custody, they went from the border patrol to h.h.s. h.h.s. has had a tough time staffing up. there has been allegations of abuse. some of the contracts given to the private sector to run the h.h.s. facilities have not been done in a proper way and it has caused problems and a lot of the people down there on the border helping with the kids are not

trained to take care of kids, including, by the way, a lot of government employees who volunteered to go down, they got paid to go down, but they don't have the training so this creates a lot of issues, as you can imagine, when you have thousands and thousands of these kids showing up in unprecedented numbers. so that's what we're seeing on the border because of changes in policies. another change in policy that was made was not only were we no longer going to turn people away because of covid putting anything in its place to deal with all these claims, but instead there was a policy called remain in mexico policy, or the migrant protocol policy and under that policy, people who came as families an applied for asylum were said, fine, but you have to wait in mexico rather than wait in the united states for your asylum claim to be adjudicated. and, frankly, a lot of those people ended up going back home because they were not brought

into the united states, in the interior, as i said earlier, as a vast majority have been, instead they were told to wait in mexico, they chose to go back to their home mostly in central america rather than wait in mexico. those cases, once adjudicated, those people could come back and enter our country if they were successful in their court case. but this system is -- is not working. if a trafficker or a struggler -- smuggler goes to a family in central america or elsewhere, there are a lot of immigrants coming from other countries, including all over latin america, ecuador, nicaragua and other places, but if they go and they say, if you come with us, give me a lot of money as a trafficker, and these kids come with me or you come as a family, we'll get you into america, and you will have the opportunity to stay in america. and you know what, i have to say tonight on the floor of the united states senate that those

smugglers and traffickers are probably telling the truth, and that's the problem. because when they come to the border and they claim asylum, then instead of having that being adjudicated there at the border and determined or instead saying you need to wait on the other side of the border until we adjudicate this, but i would do it on the other side of the border and adjudicate rapidly, instead of saying, here's a bus pass, and saying, go to the interior of the united states, go to cincinnati, ohio, or washington, d.c., and then wait for your court case, you need to check in periodically and those court cases and the adjudications take years. on average four, five, six, seven, or eight years depending on who you talk to. and because a lot of these cases are appealed, you get into the seven or eight years. that's a long time, right?

when you're in the united states awaiting your court case. why? because there's a huge backlog of over a million cases, i think it's more like 1.3 million cases now. that huge backlog and the resources devoted to the system and the fact that just because you apply for asylum and you get to come into the united states, gives the trafficker the ability to say that. let your kids come with me or come with me as a family member, pay me a lot of money and unfortunately a lot of these individuals, including women and kids get abused on the trip north from mostly guatemala, el salvadore, hondouras, up to mexico, and obviously there's a lot of issues with crossing the border itself in terms of going across the desert and some terrible stories. but the point is they know that when they get to the united states, they are going to be told not that you have to turn

back, not that you have to stay here until we decide whether you actually are, you know, going to get asylum, whether you qualify for it, but instead, here's a bus ticket, here's a plane ticket, go into the interior and wait. now let's say the individual that goes to the interior does not show up for the court case, what happens? well, in theory there's a group called i.c.e., which is part of the immigration system that then having kept track of that person, to deport the person back to their home country. that's not happening or at least it's not happening in the vast majority of cases. for a while it was that the administration and, frankly, the previous administration had a similar policy for at least some time that we're going to focus on criminals so those who were in the united states who were migrants coming up here who have a criminal record, we're going to deport them, but not prioritizing others who simply

come here under an asylum claim and then do not show up at their court case or show up but do not leave the country. but if you look at the deportation figures over the last several months in the biden administration, you will see that is simply not happening. there were fewer deportations last month than there were i.c.e. agents. so i'm not sure what they are doing. but i do know on this day, on the inaugural day, president biden said to the world, we're going to stop deportations if for a period of time. -- deportations for a period of time and so this added to the narrative if you're a struggler or trafficker, one of these people exploiting these families or individuals or kids, you have an argument that's pretty strong where you say, if you come to the border and claim asylum, you can come into the united states of america and see what happens. and unfortunately right now we don't have a system in place to deal with that.

so that's a long way of saying we've got a crisis on the border and we're not facing up to it. and in a number of the hearings that i've been at on this topic, the administration witnesses go out of their way to say this is the fault of the trump administration. and their argument is, as i understand it, that the trump administration should have been prepared for this -- this surge by putting in place during this time period a lot more of this infrastructure, we talked about the h.h.s. facilities, for instance, that we're not ready and therefore kids got stuck at the border patrol detention facilities. it's an interesting argument. they didn't have the issue here. they didn't have the surge. they did back in 2019, but they had put policies in place to deal with it. you can argue the policies, right or not, but then you can't say they should have had all of this infrastructure in place. my point is we need to own up to

our own actions and to blame the trump administration for what's happening now in terms of the lack of infrastructure when the infrastructure wasn't needed, frankly, given the policies they had in place, i think it's frankly not a constructive use of time. we should be focused on how can we take this situation and make it better and deal with it? and my own view, for what it's worth, is we start with enforcing the law. particularly along the border and say to our border patrol, we're going to give you the support you need to be able to support keeping these drugs out, dealing with the immigration crisis in an appropriate way. instead we've done just the opposite. so the first thing i would do is to say, let's support those who are on the border. let's tell them we will support them and provide the resources they need to do their job. one of them is to complete the fencing that was started during the trump administration. there are some in -- in this

body on the other side of the aisle and of course a lot in the obama administration who did not support the wall, same with the new trump administration -- i'm sorry, the new biden administration, but the trump administration decided to go ahead with the wall. they got the money for it. they started building it, not across the whole border, but 20% of the border, in areas that it would make a difference to slow people down. i've always been of the view that the wall isn't in and of itself an answer, if you don't have technology associated with the wall, people will go under it, over it, or around it. you have to have the cameras and so on to make it effective. that has not been completed. what has been completed is most of the fencing, but then there are gaps in the fencing, and when i was down there, as everyone can testify who has been down to the border who has

seen this, there are holes in the wall to put a gate in but they hadn't completed it and the biden administration came in and said, stop, stop the construction even though the contractors had already been paid to do this work. literally if you go to the el paso sector, where i was, you will go to an opening in the wall, there will be construction material on the ground and there's no contractors there and the border patrol is demoralized by this. these people have been paid to put up the gate, so now they have to be present to keep people from coming through the openings, which is what they do, because they don't have the people to do it, assume there's going to be a lot of crossings there. instead we should close the small sections of the wall that hasn't been completed. it's small openings. and put the technology in place. we were told that only 10% of the technology had been put in place for, let's say, tosses of

miles of wall. not thousands, not for even the area outside the suburban and your ban areas, but in areas where it could slow people down to give people the chance to be able to respond. the technology was stopped on day one because president biden said we're going to stop construction, stop, even though the contractors had been paid for this work. so that, to me, is number one. let's give the border patrol what they need in terms of personnel and equipment and specifically the technology. i think the technology is the most important part of this and you do need the sensors and the cameras, you do need to know what's going on if smugglers are coming through with a bunch of drugs and they can divert the border patrol, which they do, with another group, let's say another group where there's families and a lot of processing time involved, the border patrol will go to one group and spend a

lot of time processing, as they have to do and in the meantime the group coming with the drugs will sneak across. if you have the technology in place, you can avoid that, but if you don't, there's no way to deal with that crisis. so number one, let's take care of those along the border who are trying their best to do their work and don't have the support that they need. number two, i think we need to reinstate some asylum policies that were starting to work effectively. they weren't implemented fully during the trump administration. one is that for those who want to apply for asylum to apply in their own country or a safe country. people who be want to apply for asylum now, want to -- can go to the border and they can go to the interior of the united states and given a notice to appear, a lot of families are not given a notice to appear, they are just overwhelmed.

i saw families given a sheet of paper that had the addresses of where the i.c.e. offices are in america and they were told, we don't know where you're going, but wherever you go, go to this i.c.e. office in your region. whether they are given a notice to appear or not, they are going into the interior. what if those people applied in their home country or applied in a safe third country and there are safe third country agreements with countries in the region, for instance guatemala, which as you know, if you're coming from honduras or el salvador or further south you go through guatemala. they weren't put in a place where they were complemented full by, but that would be a smart thing, to tell people if you want to apply for asylum, that's fine. come to our consular office and apply. or if you don't want to aplay in

your own country because you fear persecution, go to a third country, a safe third country, and apply. doesn't that make sense? also, i think we should -- and again these should all be bipartisan ideas, given the border patrol resources they need, third-country asylum applications. i know for a while, there were a number of democrats who strongly supported applying for asylum in your own home country. but third, i would require adjudication at the border. so when you come for asylum -- and this is consistent with legislation that's bipartisan, that senator sinema and senator cornyn have introduced and i support -- is to have processing centers on the border. this will take some funds. it will be expensive because we don't have a system in place right now. there is a 1.2 million, 1.3 million backlog on the border right now.

instead, have these on the border, have these operations where somebody can come, claim asylum, go before an immigration official, someone who can judge whether that asylum claim is credible or not. now, a little background to this -- if you come from these northern tribal countries or you come from mexico and claim asylum, only about 15% -- that's 1-5 -- are ultimately successful. why? because most people who are coming are coming for economic reasons. which i totally understand. if i was a father in honduras, in a rural area, and i had no prospects for a job, i would want to gather my family and come to the united states because you can get a lot more financial security here for yourself and your family. that's totally understandable. but that's not the basis for an immigration system. because, unfortunately, there are billions of people around

the world in that kind of a situation. so it needs to be based on an orderly system where, yes, people can apply, as they do every day from honduras and come in from the legal system, or if they have a credible fear, they can apply for asylum. but why not do it in these third countries or when you come to up to the border, do it at the border. or let's assume 15% qualify, those 15% would be able to come in as asylees. i'm not against the refugee system. i think we should accept refugees in this country, as other countries do, who have a credible fear of persecution in their home country and need a place to land. and we have a successful system to do that, a understand a system to resettle those -- and a system to resettle those people. there are agencies that specializeness that. so i think on the border is where we ought to put the founding. these regional processing centers ought to be there to help make the decision quickly,

quickly, so the people don't have to wait for years but instead they get an answer yes or no to be able to come into this country if they aplay for asigh -- apply for asylum and they qualify for asylum. finally, i would say that we need to put a system in place to discourage illegal immigration that goes to the employer. this is somewhat controversial on both sides of the aisle for different reasons. to me, if an employer can hire someone who is illegal because that person has documentation, say, a driver's license or a social security card or something else that is fraudulent, there will be more and more illegal immigration because that's the magnet. i know some say that people come to this country to take advantage of our social services and not to work. there may be some of that. but i will tell you, and you go on the border and talk to these migrants, which i have done, and i did it again just a couple of

months ago -- and i've done it many times before -- and ask them, why are you coming to america? they will not say they're coming to america to get upon our social welfare system. they say they're coming to work. they're coming because they know they can make five times, ten times, maybe even from poor areas in honduras 15 times what they can in their home country, and they'd like to bring their families and like them to have a better life and maybe send remittances back to their family. well, that's -- again, that's an issue that we need to address in these third countries but in the meantime we have to have an orderly system of immigration. if you allow employers to hire people without any consequence, then this will continue to happen. so what's the answer to that? well one is to have an e-verify system that really works. that means you have to verify electronically whether someone is eligible to work in the united states. and the small business owners should not be the police officers.

it should be easy to do. there should be a software system that enables them to find out immediately whether that social security card is lawful or not. that includes looking at this online and deciding whether the number is connected to the person. i also think it is going to require a photograph and looking at the photograph and determining whether the person is who the person says he or she is. but this can be done with the new technologies that we have. right now we have e-verify in place, but it is not mandatory. don't you think it should be mandatory? because if you dry up the job opportunities for people coming here illegally, then you will not have this magnet of pulling people over the border. again, legal immigration ought to be encouraged. we ought to bring in refugees. asylees who qualify ought to be given asylum in this country. that's who we are. we are a country that has always welcomed the stranger but do it in an orderly and lawful way. if we don't do that, we'll continue to see the border be

overwhelmed. we will continue to see this. there's no reason for this to change based on current policies. if these simple steps i talked about, which could all be bipartisan -- this is not a partisan issue; this is an issue of commonsense approaches that have been taken by republican and democratic administrations over the years. we can make a big difference here. there is a small program called the central american minors program, which was reinstated just this week and it helps with regard to unaccompanied kids coming from central america. i support that program. i'm glad the biden administration put it in place. and i've been told by biden administration officials at the highest level at d.h.s. that this is the answer. well, we had something like 19,000 kids coming over the border during one month and thousands a day. and that system in the obama years when it was in place, the central american minors programs, only had 3,000 or

4,000 kids over ten weeks, something like that. so we had more kids in ten days than they had in ten weeks. if you don't do these other things, too, you're not going it make a dent in this issue. and, again, our hearts go out to some of these individuals. they have a tough time in their countries. and we wish their countries were more like ours. we wish that they had more economic opportunities, more freedoms, that they had a democracy and market system that actually worked for the people. that's not the reality now. and i know the administration is focused on saying the answer to that question is zealing with the push -- is dealing with the push factors, dealing with, as vice president yamaha harris said during her trip, the source of the problem, which is the poverty in central america. there are migrants coming from all over the world.

central america, of course, and that continues, and it's a very poor part of our hemisphere, but also from many other countries including mexico, including people from romania, from yemen, from ecuador, from colombia, certainly countries all over latin america. so it's a big problem. again there are billions of people in the world who, unfortunately, don't have the kind of lifestyle we have in this country and aspire to it. so you have to have an immigration system of some kind. second, i would make the point that the administration is talking about spending $4 billion in central america. i suppose that's over the next few years. it should be noted that we just spent $3.6 billion on economic development in those same countries over the past five years. so i'm for that. i think we should be helping these countries develop.

i was for a trade agreement with these countries to try to encourage their economic development. i'm who are helping deal with the corruption and dealing with the kind of lack of transparency and the lack of opportunity in these countries. that's all good. the judicial system, the rule of law needs to be strengthened. they are in our backyard. they should somebody treated, in my view, differently than countries elsewhere in the world because they're 10 close to us. our neighbors essentially. but that's not going to solve the problem. certainably not doing my -- certainly 0 not during my lifetime. it will take decades and doesn't mean we shouldn't do t and we have been doing it. $3.6 billion of hard-earned taxpayer money has gone towards this in the last five years. but i don't think it's honest to tell the american people if we just spend a little more money in central america, this problem will be solved. wouldn't that be nice if we

could wave a magic wand and it would be solved? it's going to take a long time. it doesn't mean we shouldn't be doing it. but in the meantime we've got to come up with a system that is lawful, that is orderly, that is humane, that deals with this problem. and by putting our head had in the sand, we're blaming the previous administration -- again, here's their record -- is not going to solve the problem. in fact, it's going to create an impression that the problem is easy to solve, which it is not. it's a difficult problem, no question about it. and broader immigration reform is something that's needed, no question about that. but in the meantime let's focus on the border. let's do these simple things, support the border patrol, make sure they have what they need in terms of technology. let's be sure we're doing all we can to have asylees apply in their country, or if not in a third country. if they come to our border, let's adjudicate these claims at

the border. because then the next group will say, wellwork i'm not going to get to come into the united states and wait for four or five years to get into the community. i'm going to have my case decide at the border. it's like those traffickers, those smugglers who are exploiting these people, they'll saying now, come with me. i'll take you. you'll be able to have a life there because you won't be deported. that's what they can say now. we want them to have, well, you're going to have to have your case adjudicated at the border. you may be qualified, 15% again have made it through -- and those are people who should be taken care of as aslice. but for those other individuals, they will know that it's much better to apply legally, go through the system and to have the opportunity to go through an orderly, legal process.

so i hope that the administration makes some of these changes quickly because i don't see this situation getting any better. in fact, in may it got worse, despite everyone saying from d.h.s. with whom i spoke, you know, don't worry. things are getting better. i don't see that. there's a looming date -- i think it is the end of the july -- when title 42 no longer will apply to single individuals. right now title 42 i talked about earlier, which is where because of covid the united states government is turning poem away at the border -- turning people away at the border. right now this is happening with regard to single individuals. when title 42 ends, which it will at the end of the what is the covid-19 public health emergency, which expires soon, then what's going to happen? well, i can tell you, the border patrol is very, very nervous about that.

that's one question they asked me about repeatedly? what are we going to do when we can't use title 42? that's a short-term issue we have to deal with. congress could extend title 42 for now. we still have a covid issue, not just in this country. thank goodness we're getting over it. but there is a much bigger issue unfortunately south of the border and all the countries we talked about, including some of these countries in south america that are having a serious issue now with covid. so you could continue it, in my view, as a public health emergency. but, in any case, let's not do this, get rid of, as an example, title 42 without preparing for it. let's be sure there is a place something else, something better, to be able to deal with the obvious surge that we have seen. so i appreciate the fact that this is a tough issue. and i know that some of my colleagues on the other side of the highly would probably prefer that we not get into these difficult issues, because

they're hard. i do see that the presiding officer has now arrived with whom i have worked quite a bit on this issue, and we have a specific piece of legislation that helps deal with this issue, that helps deal with the summer. -- with the -- with the surge. that legislation is bipartisan. it creates a strategic plan and contingency fund for immediate needs it the border, that's another part of what we ought to do is to be honest about the problem, to deal with it. it's called the border response resilience act. it enables the department of homeland security to respond to the worst migration crisis that we've had in at least 20 years. and i would hope that again that's a bipartisan approach, that we could at least pass that and then take the other four steps that i talked about to ensure that we have an orderly system that actually works. to be sure we can retain the

sovereignty of our border, keeping these illicit drugs out like the synthetic opioids, like fentanyl that are killing so many americans, and that we have an orderly and lawful and humane immigration system. with that, i yield back my time. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

quorum call:

mr. schumer: mr. president, i ask unanimous consent the quorum call be dispensed with. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. schumer: now, i ask unanimous consent the senate proceed to legislative session and be in a period of monger business with senators -- morning business and senators permitted to speak for ten minutes each. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. schumer: i understand there's a bill at the desk and i ask for its first reading. the presiding officer: the clerk will read the title of the bill for the first time,. the clerk: the bill to expand americans access to the ballot box, strengthen ethics rules for public servants and implement other anticorruption methods for fortifying our democracy and for other purposes. mr. schumer: i now ask for a second reading and to place the bill on the calendar under the provisions of rule 14, i object

to my own request. the presiding officer: objection having been heard, the bill will receive its second reading on the next legislative day. mr. schumer: mr. president, i ask unanimous consent the appointment at the desk appear separately in the record as if made by the chair. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. schumer: mr. president, i ask unanimous consent that the judiciary committee be discharged from further consideration and the senate now proceed to senate res. 248. the presiding officer: the clerk will report. the clerk: s. res. 248, recognizing and celebrating the 225th anniversary of the entry of the state of tennessee into the united states as the 16th state. the presiding officer: is there objection to proceeding to the measure? without objection, the committee is discharged and the senate will proceed. mr. schumer: i ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table. the presiding officer: without objection.

mr. schumer: mr. president, i ask unanimous consent the senate proceed to consideration of senate res. 273, submitted earlier today. the presiding officer: the clerk will report. the clerk: senate resolution 273, designating june 2021 as great outdoors month. the presiding officer: is there objection to proceeding to the measure? without objection, the senate will proceed. mr. schumer: i know of no further debate on the resolution. the presiding officer: is there further debate? if not, all in favor say aye. all opposed, no. ayes appear to have it. the ayes do have it. the resolution is agreed to. mr. schumer: i ask unanimous consent that the preamble be agreed to and the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. schumer: and finally, mr. president, i ask unanimous consent that when the senate completes its business today, it

adjourn until 10:00 a.m., thursday, june 17, that following the prayer and pledge, the morning hour be deemed expired, the journal of proceedings be approved to date, and the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day, and morning business be closed. further, upon the conclusion of morning business, the senate proceed to executive session to resume consideration of the tommy p. beaudreau nomination postcloture. that the cloture time on the beaudreau nomination expire at 11:30, the senate -- if cloture is invoked on the tien nomination, all postcloture debate be expired at 1:25, if any of the nominations are confirmed, the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table and the president be immediately notified of the senate's actions. the presiding officer: is there objection? without objection, it is so ordered. mr. schumer: if there's no

further business to come before the senate, i ask it stand adjourned under the previous order. the presiding officer: the senate stands adjourned until senate stands adjourned until the senate today confirmed president biden's nominees to serve as assistant epa administrator for water and u.s. district court judge for maryland. the senate is now working on the nominee to serve as a deputy interior secretary. we also expect votes this week on the nominee for deputy homeland security secretary. when the sun is back in session live coverage here on cspan2. ♪ ♪'s beam see spanish unfiltered view of government. funded by these television companies and more including charter communications. ♪ ♪ back broadband is a force for empowerment but that's why charter has invested billions building infrastructure, upgrading technology,

empowering opportunity in communities big and small. charter is connecting us. >> charter communication support c-span is a public service along with these other television providers. giving you a front row seat to democracy. c-span's landmark cases explores the stories and constitutional drama behind significant supreme court decisions. as for the next few weeks, watch key episodes from our series, sunday at 9:45 p.m. eastern on c-span, the united states were fred challenges the government's policy for forcibly interning people of japanese descent during world war ii they voted 63 for the united states watch landmark cases on c-span, online at c-span.org or listen on the c-span radio app.

>> dan glicksman's autobiography is entitled laughing at myself. subtitled my education in congress on the farm and at the movies. former representatives serving congress for 18 years, a native of wichita, kansas, he went on to serve as president clinton's agriculture secretary from 1995 to 2001. in 2004 he replaced jack as chairman and ceo of the motion picture association of america until 2012. in our interview we spent some time talking on his interest in humor. >> on this episode of bookmarks plus listen at c-span.org/podcast or wherever you get your podcast. ♪ ♪ joni stout