OFFICIALS LEGISLATION INTEREST GROUPS PUBLIC STATEMENTS COMMITTEES VETOES

Your Tax Dollars Are Funding This

Floor Speech

Date: Feb. 12, 2026
Location: Washington, DC

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Ms. DEXTER. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to tell the American people exactly what their tax dollars are being used for: imprisoning children, even infants.

Last month, DHS agents detained a sick 7-year-old and her parents in an urgent care parking lot while they were trying to get her medical attention.

Then they sent that child to the Nation's largest family detention facility, recently reopened by Trump, a facility where families report there is contaminated food, limited access to clean water, and where there have been confirmed measles cases.

Your tax dollars are funding this.

Last Friday, I traveled to Texas to fight to bring Diana and her family home to Oregon. I am grateful that Diana is home safe in Gresham.

This never should have happened in the first place. It is immoral to jail children. It should enrage every American that their tax dollars are being used to do so.

Congress controls the power of the purse. It is past time to reassert that authority and end this horrific practice. We must draw a bright red line: Taxpayer dollars cannot be used to imprison children. That is the bare minimum.

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