Immigration Policy

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MERKLEY. Madam President, I rise to address a current-day scar, a wound in America--a wound in terms of how we are treating children arriving on our borders and seeking asylum.

George Washington said America is a nation open ``to receive not only the opulent and respectable stranger, but the oppressed and persecuted of all nations and religions.''

This sense of the vision of America was repeated 100 years later through Emma Lazarus's poem that is carved into the foundation of the Statue of Liberty. Phrases of that poem include: ``Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. . . . Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,'' but that spirit is lost right now in the USA.

We are a nation almost universally of immigrants, and yet we are treating those children fleeing persecution as if they are criminals when they arrive at our borders.

I went down this last weekend with Senator Mazie Hirono of Hawaii and Senator Tina Smith of Minnesota, with Representative Judy Chu of California and Representative Beto O'Rourke of Texas. Four of us visited two family internment camps--one in Dilley and one in Karnes-- and all five of us went to the Tornillo child prison in the desert in Texas outside El Paso.

This war against children--this Trump war against children--was most dramatically demonstrated back in May and June when the U.S. Government implemented a ``zero tolerance'' policy that, in fact, said, if you assert your international rights and come to the border of the United States, we will treat you as a criminal. We will lock you up. We will rip your children out of your arms, and who knows if you will ever see them again.

I went down June 3 of this year to shine a light on this and find out what was really going on. I saw children in cages. I tried to enter a facility--a former Walmart--that I was told had hundreds of kids locked up in it. I was denied entry because of the administration's desires to keep the effects of their child separation policy secret. There was an outcry from people across America saying the United States does not do this. We do not inflict trauma on children as a direct and deliberate strategy of sending a message to the world that we do not want you, if you are fleeing persecution, to come to our shores. We do not deliberately inflict trauma on children.

In addition to the public outcry, there was court action. The administration agreed and said: OK. We will stop doing child separation. We will quit ripping children out of their parents' arms, but the President said, if we can't rip children out of their parents' arms, instead, we will lock them up. We will lock them up with their parents--still treating them as criminals as they await asylum here. In fact, the bill to that effect passed the House of Representatives, and 35 Senators in this Chamber signed on to this bill to expand this system of family internment camps at the request of the administration.

I came to this floor. I pointed out the long and shameful history of family internment camps in America, and I proposed a different vision. I put forward a bill entitled the No Family Internment Camps in America Act. I noted it would be a fierce fight if those who want to proceed with internment camps attempted to do so. This body dropped that effort--stopped that effort. That is good, but the administration is still determined to pursue this, and they have been moving funds to people to expand family internment camps in places like Karnes and Dilley. So we went there to look at these family internment camps--one with fathers and sons; one with mothers and daughters.

You know, the right thing to do as families await asylum hearings is for them to get that hearing on a timely basis of 6 to 12 months and have them under a Family Case Management Program of not locking them up in prison. Locking up children in prisons does deep, traumatic damage to these children, so we must continue to fight this internment camps strategy.

The four Members of Congress who were there at Dilley met with a woman. She and her daughter have been locked up in Dilley going on 6 months. Yesterday was the daughter's 15th birthday. The Quinceanera is a big celebration--if you come from a Latin American tradition--of a young girl becoming a young woman. We asked the camp: Are you going to recognize this girl's birthday, this very significant 15th birthday, this quinceanera?

No, we can't do anything special to recognize one child.

We said: Well, why not have a policy of recognizing each child on his or her birthday, so you are doing the same for everyone?

They said: No, too much trouble. We will have a monthly gathering and list the names of those who had birthdays that month. That will suffice.

It is a symbol of the dehumanization with which we are treating people locked up--families we are locking up who have fled persecution and are awaiting an asylum hearing.

That young woman is suffering significantly. We met with her mother. Her mother told us she is not sleeping well, she is not eating well, and she was really depressed over the fact that this very significant day would go unrecognized. We should never be locking up children for long periods of time.

There is an agreement--a settlement--that said children will not be locked up for more than 20 days. It is called the Flores settlement. It was a settlement that came out of the fact that we recognized that locking up children hurts them, traumatizes them, that it should never happen, and it shouldn't happen for more than 20 days.

Well, it is happening more than 20 days and not just with the mother and her daughter who are locked up there. They fled persecution by a drug gang--a gang that was extorting the family to make payments from their beauty supply business or beauty parlor. When she couldn't pay, the gang came to her house and assaulted her daughter. She told us they fled the next day.

We need to improve the programs with which we are trying to help stabilize those countries and help decrease the power of those drug gangs, but, certainly, when those fleeing persecution come here to our shores, let's treat them with respect and dignity.

This is a birthday card that several dozen Members signed yesterday that we are sending to this young woman locked up. The card says: ``Feliz Quinceanera.'' It is signed inside by dozens of Senators. It says: From your friends in the Senate of the United States. We want her to know--we want every child who is locked up in these child prisons under the Trump war on children to know that we are working to end this war.

We went on to Tornillo--the child prison that was initially established to be an emergency shelter for 1 month for 450 children. It has now been extended 3 times, and it has been expanded to hold not 450 children but 3,800 children.

At this moment, they cranked up the number of people there to 2,700, and they are purposely keeping this as a ``temporary shelter'' so they can bypass all the laws related to incarcerating children; they can bypass the requirements for education; they can bypass the Flores 20- day standard.

I asked: How many children are here over 20 days of these 2,700, a couple of dozen?

The director said: No, more than 2,000 of the 2,700 children here are over the 20 days. Then we were told that 1,300 of those children already have a sponsor. They already have the sponsors who have filled out all the paperwork and have done their fingerprints and everything. They could be released immediately, if the administration would complete the paperwork.

He told us that 1,300 children could be in homes and schools and parks in 5 to 7 days from now if the administration would complete the paperwork. We proceeded to hold a press conference, and we said this is unacceptable that the paperwork is not being completed and these children are being locked up here.

We held this on Saturday. We said this Tornillo prison camp should be shut down. This is not the spirit of the USA and certainly is not being used as a temporary shelter for 1 month.

I have good news to report because yesterday the administration said they are changing the rules. They expect to release several thousand children within the next few days--that is the right thing to do--and we may shut down Tornillo.

So let's keep the attention of America on this. Let's keep the spotlight on it. Let's not let this war on children continue with our money, on our territory, under our government, deliberately inflicting trauma on children. It must end.

The Family Case Management Program, which was an alternative to locking people up, had a report from the Department of Homeland Security inspector general who said 99 percent of people show up for their check-ins and there was 100 percent attendance at court hearings. There was a closeout report for the program because the administration shut it down, and the closeout report called the program a success. It said 99.3 percent attendance for court proceedings overall, 99 percent compliance with monitoring requirements, including check-ins, and it costs $38 a day compared to many hundreds of dollars for internment camps or prison camps.

Let's restart a program that made sense--a program that worked. We have seen this series of attacks on children--child separation, family internment camps, child prison camps. Let's put America back on track and treat children coming to this country fleeing persecution with respect and dignity as they await their asylum hearings.

Thank you.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source