Access to Counsel Act of 2021

Floor Speech

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Ms. JAYAPAL. Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman so much for his tremendous leadership on helping to bring this bill to the floor.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of my bill, the Access to Counsel Act.

It is the Access to Counsel Act. I don't know if my friends on the other side have heard that. I am not sure how access to counsel helps empower cartels. I am not sure if my colleagues on the other side have read the bill. This does not fund counsel, and it actually doesn't give a right to counsel. We could debate that in another bill. This gives access to counsel.

It brings us one step closer to upholding our country's principles of due process and fairness by ensuring that individuals with lawful status have the right to call a lawyer and receive assistance if they are detained at ports of entry or in airports.

So why did this bill come about?

The Access to Counsel Act was the very first bill I introduced as a Member of Congress in 2017 in response to President Donald Trump's Muslim ban. On the day that Donald Trump announced that ban, I rushed to my local airport in Seattle. What I encountered and what we saw at airports across the Nation was a sham of our democracy.

People from seven Muslim-majority countries--all with legal access to be in the United States--suddenly found themselves held for upwards of 30 hours, deported, and in some cases pressured to sign papers giving up their legal status without even the ability to call an attorney or a family member.

I then reintroduced, again, the Access to Counsel Act in my second term, in January of 2020, after Customs and Border Protection targeted Iranian Americans at ports of entry. As many as 200 Iranian Americans were held in secondary screening in Blaine, Washington.

Negah Hekmati and her two children were detained for nearly 6 hours despite being U.S. citizens and despite having preclearance for expedited processing at the border that is specifically for approved, low-risk travelers.

She recalls her small children begging her not to speak Farsi in fear of being detained. At such a young age, her children, U.S. citizens, already recognized that they were being profiled and unjustly held because of their heritage.

Of course, when we raised this in the moment, Border Patrol said: That is not happening. We can't do that. We wouldn't do that. We are not doing that.

Well, it took over a year and suing the government in order to access documents from Customs and Border Protection for us to find out that the total number of people held was 227 people. Half of those people were U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents, half of the 227. The rest of them had legal paperwork to come into the country.

So, why were they held? They were held because of their Iranian heritage or ties to the Middle East. Later, we also found out that there was no attempt from Border Patrol to figure out why they were there, whether they should be there, or to even comply with the law that says that your country of origin cannot be the sole purpose that you are held.

If Republicans want to talk about wasting Border Patrol resources, let's talk about the fact that 227 people, half of whom were U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents and the rest with valid visas, were held in a Border Patrol station in Blaine, Washington, for almost 12 hours and unable to leave. That is called detention.

You have now turned the Border Patrol stations into detention facilities. That is not what we are supposed to do. Why is it so difficult to say: Yes, a phone call is permissible.

That is what this bill is trying to do.

Throughout the last administration, we saw dozens of Iranian students with valid visas having their visas revoked or being deported upon arrival to the United States simply because of their country of origin. The Access to Counsel Act would ensure that people who have already been vetted and granted lawful status have a meaningful opportunity to call an attorney, have a meaningful opportunity to call a relative or other interested party, like a Member of Congress, when they get held for more than an hour in secondary inspection.

This is a commonsense measure, Mr. Speaker, to make sure that our Nation treats those who are arriving to our country, whether it is green card holders who have made their home here in the United States; visa holders working, studying, or traveling to the United States; or U.S. citizens who happen to have been identified with a different country of origin for some reason, let's make sure we treat everybody with dignity and respect.

I am so proud to be passing the Access to Counsel Act today, alongside the No BAN Act, to put an end to some of the most cruel and discriminatory policies adopted by the previous administration and to make sure that they never happen again.

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