(CNN) Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin inserted the hot-button political issue of immigration into the Winter Games when telling the story of Chloe Kim, the teen phenom who won a gold medal in the women's halfpipe.

Speaking from the Senate floor -- next to a picture of Kim with her arms outstretched in joy while holding an American flag -- and later at a news conference, Durbin, a Democrat, talked about Kim's father, Jong Jin Kim , who came to California from Korea in 1982.

Jong Jin Kim didn't have a college degree, spoke little English and had nothing but a Korean-English dictionary and $300 in his pocket.

Chloe Kim

"He decided to go to school. He picked up a degree in engineering technology," Durbin said Tuesday. "He decided to start a family. A nice little family. And a little girl, who had a special skill when it came to snowboarding. That girl was Chloe Kim, and she won a gold medal last night at the Olympics."

Then Durbin went there, saying if the US had the kind of hard-line immigrations policies on the books that President Trump and his GOP allies want, Kim's family wouldn't have been allowed to come here.

Read More