Family Separation

Floor Speech

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Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, I come to the floor on a separate issue involving the rule of law. We have been reminded literally within the last 24 hours about the importance of the rule of law as applied to the families who have sought to cross the border and experienced extraordinary cruelty and inhumanity when their children were taken from them. A court, literally in the last 24 hours, issued an order requiring that those children be reunited with their families. That decision is not only a humane and moral one, it is also in accord with constitutional and statutory requirements. Those children never should have been separated from their parents, but now, because of the court, an excessive and abusive use of power will be corrected.

We are living in a time of unparalleled threats to the rule of law and fundamental rights and liberties from a Chief Executive who seems to have no respect for them. The courts are exercising their traditional role--in fact, the role the Founders envisioned for them as a check on unhinged Executive power.

We also learned just today that a key figure in the judicial system, Justice Kennedy, will be retiring this summer. This retirement is earthshaking and gut-wrenching, and his departure means a historic challenge is ahead. The American people should have a voice. My Republican colleagues should follow their own precedent. A confirmation vote should take place after the new Congress is seated. A historic decision--one that will literally shake the decisions of the courts for years and likely decades--requires deliberate consideration that simply is impossible in the short months we have between now and the election; indeed, politically charged months.

The future of privacy protections, women's healthcare, and many basic civil rights, including healthcare--whether young people are on their parents' insurance until the age of 26, whether people are vulnerable to preexisting condition abuses, whether people have basic healthcare rights that are guaranteed to them under the Affordable Care Act--all of these rights are at stake and at risk.

The Supreme Court is not just marble pillars and velvet drapes. Its decisions have a direct impact on people's lives and the lives of our children. So we are in this Chamber at a critical moment when the judicial system literally will be determined for decades to come.

Nothing brings this issue home more readily and dramatically than viewing the children who have been separated from their families and the families themselves at the border.

I visited the border this past Friday, along with my colleagues Senator Heinrich and Senator Udall of Utah--two good friends and colleagues. At each stop we made, we saw the devastating human impact of this President's immoral and inhumane policies of family separation and family detention. In Tornillo, TX, we visited a tent city where teenagers, 14 to 17 years old, are confined--in effect, incarcerated in a modern-day internment camp. Make no mistake, they have been deprived of basic access to the outside world and of access by that outside world to them.

The deprivation of liberty is the core definition of incarceration, and the potential detainment of tens of thousands of families in exactly that kind of tent city located on our military bases throughout the country should frighten and alarm every American because we are seeing repeated in a different age, in color rather than black and white, the images of those internment camps where thousands of people of Japanese descent were sent during World War II.

We may not agree with every decision of the U.S. Supreme Court, but we know it is unique. It is certainly different as a judicial institution. It should be considered unique in choosing open-minded and fair jurists in the mold of Justice Kennedy for these positions--not right-wing fringe ideologues.

I believe colleagues on both sides of the aisle will stand up and be counted if that kind of right-wing fringe ideologue is nominated. We certainly must use every tool available to stop that kind of nominee because what is at stake are real lives like the ones I saw in El Paso.

I met with a 2-year-old girl who trekked across Mexico with her father for a month. Her father held her as we spoke to him. He must now worry whether she will be separated from him and detained indefinitely and indiscriminately. The anguish and anxiety I saw in that girl's eyes still haunt me, and it will be with me for a long time.

We saw a legal, moral, and humanitarian crisis unfolding before our eyes in realtime. This administration claims it is solving this crisis, but the clear, virtually undisputed evidence suggests exactly the contrary. More than 100 facilities nationwide house migrant children, and the administration is looking to open even more facilities, very likely, on military bases, and little progress has been made on reuniting these families.

The Department of Health and Human Services has reported that 2,047 unaccompanied minor children are still in its custody. Health and Human Services Secretary Azar claimed before the Finance Committee yesterday that there is ``no reason why any parent would not know where their child is located.'' He claimed that ``every parent should know where their child is located.''

The reality is, there is no plan to reunite them. Thousands of parents have no idea where their children are. What is happening on the ground is that many parents are enduring the pain and suffering of simply not knowing where their child is, and many children have the pain and suffering of not knowing where their parent is. The father of the 2-year-old whom I saw clutching his child to his chest as she stared into the unknown future ahead of her has no reason to believe the Secretary of Health and Human Services because he knows what the reality is on the ground.

If the Department of Health and Human Services or the Department of Homeland Security can tell parents where their children are as easily as Secretary Azar claims, they should have done so yesterday. They should have done so before Friday when I visited.

We all know, from firsthand accounts, it simply isn't happening and that the emotional, mental, and physical damage to these families will last a lifetime for many of them. That trauma will be enduring. The President claims his Executive order has solved these problems, but it has not. All it has done is substitute family imprisonment and incarceration for family separation.

This Executive order is in clear violation of the Flores settlement agreement, which is legally binding on the U.S. Government. It prohibits detaining children for more than 20 days, in effect, imprisoning them with their parents, as the Executive order has the effect of doing. Putting aside the humanitarian and moral costs to this Nation and the damage to our image around the world, the cost per individual per day in Tornillo is $2,000. Let me repeat that number. The cost per individual per day for every person in Tornillo is $2,000. That cost alone, financially, is intolerable, but moral and humanitarian costs are even more profound.

This Executive order is destructive. It is draconian. It is no answer to the problem of family separation and detention. The evidence is clear from my visit to the border, so far as I am concerned but also in everything the administration said, that the time is now to end this immoral and inhumane zero tolerance policy that involves, integrally, criminal prosecution, and the rest of these issues really flow from that criminal prosecution because it triggers the imprisonment. In effect, confinement without bail is the way it would be looked at in the civilian setting.

This administration must adopt less restrictive alternatives if it wants to guarantee the appearance of these families for their hearings. We know less restrictive alternatives work, they have been proven in the past, and they also cost less. They are more humane. They protect our moral principles, and they are less expensive.

Piecemeal announcements from this administration have been contradictory and unclear. It has been the opposite of transparent. Congressional committees now must exercise our responsibility for oversight and scrutiny. There must be hearings. It must involve all the Federal agencies with responsibility. As a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, I am particularly concerned that the Department of Defense is dramatically increasing its involvement in immigration and enforcement. The plan is to build these tent camps on two military bases in Texas. Fort Bliss in El Paso is one of them, and unaccompanied children will be held at Goodfellow Air Force Base in San Angelo. The families at Fort Bliss and the unaccompanied children at Goodfellow Air Force Base in San Angelo will be, in effect, incarcerated at the bases of military men and women who serve and sacrifice for the values that will be betrayed by that illegal and immoral confinement, in violation of the Flores agreement and fundamental principles of fairness.

Military services are preparing, as well, to offer additional military bases to detain migrants. DOD has sent 21 Active and Reserve uniformed judge advocates to the border on temporary order to prosecute Department of Justice immigration cases. All of these developments represent a clear diversion of Department of Defense resources from military mission to immigration enforcement.

The Presiding Officer and I serve together on the Armed Services Committee as well as the Judiciary Committee. We both know the deep and serious consideration that was required as to resource commitments in the latest National Defense Authorization Act--the difficult decisions that had to be made in a time of scarce resources and growing danger around the world through our military and national security. I am concerned that these policies will comprise military residents and immigrants on American military installations.

I consistently oppose the use of these military installations to house unaccompanied migrant children. I will continue to oversee the Department of Defense's involvement in this critical issue.

Again, I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle that the Senate Armed Services Committee must hold an oversight hearing on this issue as soon as possible. We owe it to the American people. Family separation and detention should no longer be a political issue. We need to come together and make sure the President understands that migrant children can no longer be treated as pawns or hostages--as leverage to secure changes to parts of our immigration system that have nothing to do with the plight of these immigrant families. We should reject this President's crude and cynical political strategy. We cannot risk continuing to separate and indefinitely detain migrant families. These practices offend our basic sense of morality and justice, and they are unnecessary to protect our borders.

Yes, we all want border security. Yes, we want to stop drug traffickers and human traffickers from taking advantage of our borders. We want more resources in judges and Border Patrol agents and members of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Service. They should have the resources and support they need. We met with many of the dedicated men and women who are serving in those agencies. Violating our basic sense of due process, abrogating due process rights so adjudication is denied and due process is abrogated certainly should be intolerable.

At this juncture, the emergent need that has to be addressed now is reuniting these families. If shaming the administration is what is needed, we should do it, but ultimately the rule of law will be enforced by our courts. They will be regarded in history along with our free press as the bulwark between a potentially tyrannical Presidency and preservation of our fundamental rights. Now is the time to celebrate and protect those basic rights and the rule of law.

Thank you.

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