The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Vermont.
Mr. LEAHY. Thank you, Madam President. If I require further time beyond 10 minutes I will take time from that reserved to the Senator from Vermont.
Let’s understand exactly what we are talking about here. There are approximately 12 million lawful permanent residents in the United States today. Some came here initially the way my grandparents did or my wife’s parents did. These are people who work for American firms, they raise American kids, they pay American taxes. Section 7 of the bill before us represents a choice about how to treat them.
This bill could have been restricted to traditional notions of enemy combatants—foreign fighters captured on the battlefield—but the drafters of this bill chose not to do so. Let’s be very clear. Once we get past all of the sloganeering, all the fund-raising letters, all the sound bites, all the short headlines in the paper, let’s be clear about the choice the bill makes. Let’s be absolutely clear about what it says to lawful permanent residents of the United States. Then let’s decide if it is the right message to send them and if it is really the face of America that we want to show.
Take an example. Imagine you are a law-abiding, lawful, permanent resident, and in your spare time you do charitable fundraising for international relief agencies to lend a helping hand in disasters. You send money abroad to those in need. You are selective in the charities you support, but you do not discriminate on the grounds of religion. Then one day there is a knock on your door. The Government thinks that the Muslim charity you sent money to may be funneling money to terrorists and thinks you may be involved. And perhaps an overzealous neighbor who saw a group of Muslims come to your House has reported ‘‘suspicious behavior.’’
You are brought in for questioning. Initially, you are not very worried. After all, this is America. You are innocent, and you have faith in American justice. You know your rights, and you say: I would like to talk to a lawyer. But no lawyer comes. Once again, since you know your rights, you refuse to answerany further questions. Then the interrogators get angry. Then comes solitary confinement, then fierce dogs, then freezing cold that induces hypothermia, then waterboarding, then threats of being sent to a country where you know you will be tortured, then Guantanamo. And then nothing, for years, for decades, for the rest of your life.
That may sound like an experience from some oppressive and authoritarian regime, something that may have happened under the Taliban, something that Saddam Hussein might have ordered or something out of Kafka. There is a reason why that does not and cannot happen in America. It is because we have a protection called habeas corpus, or if you do not like the Latin phrase by which it has been known throughout our history, call it access to the independent Federal courts to review the authority and the legality by which the Government has taken and is holding someone in custody. It is a fundamental protection. It is woven into the fabric of our Nation...
...The bill before the Senate would not merely suspend the great writ, the great writ of habeas corpus, it would eliminate it permanently. We do not have to worry about nuances, such as how long it will be suspended. It is gone. Gone.
Over 200 years of jurisprudence in this country, and following an hour of debate, we get rid of it. My God, have any Members of this Senate gone back and read their oath of office upholding the Constitution? This cuts off all habeas petitions, not just those founded on relatively technical claims but those founded on claims of complete innocence.
We hundred Members in the Senate, we privileged men and women, are supposed to be the conscience of the Nation. We are about to put the darkest blot possible on this Nation’s conscience. It would not be limited to enemy combatants in the traditional sense of foreign fighters captured in the battlefield, but it would apply to any alien picked up anywhere in the world and suspected of possibly supporting enemies of the United States...
...By its plain language, it would deny all access to the courts to any alien awaiting— what a bureaucratic term, to determine your basic human rights, ‘‘any alien awaiting’’—a Government determination as to whether the alien is an enemy combatant. The Government would be free to delay as long as it liked—for years, for decades, for the length of the conflict which is so undefined and may last for generations.
One need only look at Guantanamo. Even our own Government says a number of people are in there by mistake, but we will not get around to making that determination. Maybe in 5 years, maybe 10, maybe 20, maybe 30. And we wonder why some of our closest allies ask us, what in heaven’s name has happened to the conscience and moral compass of this great Nation? Are we so terrified of some terrorists around this country that we will run scared and hide? Is that what we will do, tear down all the structures of liberty in this country because we are so frightened?...
...What has changed in the past 5 years that justifies not merely suspending but abolishing the writ of habeas corpus for a broad category of people who have not been found guilty, who have not even been charged with any crime? What has turned us? What has made us so frightened as a nation that now the United States will say, we can pick up somebody on suspicion, hold them forever, they have no right to even ask why they are being held, and besides that, we will not even charge them with anything, we will just hold them? What has changed in the last 5 years?
Is our Government is so weak or so inept and our people so terrified that we have to do what no bomb or attack could ever do, and that is take away the very freedoms that define America? We fought two world wars, we fought a civil war, we fought a revolutionary war, all these wars to protect those rights. And now, think of those people who have given their lives, who fought so hard to protect those rights. What do we do? We sit here, privileged people of the Senate, and we turn our backs on that. We throw away those rights.
from here starts on p. S10356. Looks like it passed. I honestly wish I could say I was surprised.
|