[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 98 (Wednesday, June 13, 2018)]
[House]
[Pages H5098-H5099]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




        STOP PROSECUTING ASYLUM SEEKERS AND SEPARATING FAMILIES

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Illinois (Mr. Gutierrez) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. GUTIERREZ. Mr. Speaker, last week a group of about a dozen of us 
wrote a letter to the head of the Department of Homeland Security, 
Health and Human Services, and the Attorney General. We demanded that 
the Trump administration cease its practice of prosecuting asylum 
seekers, to reunite the children they separated from their families, 
and to allow Members of Congress to visit the facilities where the 
children are being held.
  We gave these three Trump administration Cabinet Secretaries a 
deadline to get back to us, and so far we have heard nothing, not a 
peep. So now we are trying to figure out how to make it clear to the 
Trump administration that agencies taking children from the arms of 
moms and dads is absolutely 100 percent unacceptable to us and most 
Americans.
  Let's look at what is going on here. In order to get more of you on 
that side of the aisle elected or re-elected, the President and his 
henchmen have devised an election-year strategy to be as mean and nasty 
as possible to asylum seekers, to immigrants, refugees, and Latinos in 
general.
  The President, and the Attorney General, and others have said that 
this is a national security strategy, and that our national security 
depends on taking toddlers, infants, and children, most of whom are 
under the age of 12, away from their parents.
  Come on, really? How does jailing a scared, frightened, terrorized 8 
year old who barely escaped with her life from Central America, make 
any of us safer?
  Well, it doesn't. The only person who might be safer because an 8-
year-old child is in jail is a Member of the House running for re-
election on a get-tough-on-immigration platform.
  And it isn't like they are taking these children from their parents 
and putting them on the other side of the jail or the other side of the 
for-profit detention center. No, they are taking the toddler, the 
infant, the 8 or 9 year old and taking them to a government facility 
somewhere else, maybe in New York, Chicago, Seattle, thousands of miles 
away.
  And we are hearing the most horrific stories. Parents who have had 
their children taken from them have committed suicide.
  Imagine how you would feel if you had to walk from El Salvador to 
Texas to save the life of your son or daughter, only to wind up in 
detention. Now, imagine that a man in a uniform comes up to you and 
says, hey, we are going to take your child for a bath. We are going to 
take them to see the doctor. And then hours go by and you realize they 
are gone, maybe forever. Can you imagine?
  Can you sit quietly and do nothing when that is how your tax dollars 
are being spent?
  We are scarring these children for the rest of their lives. We know 
this. Taking children from their families and institutionalizing them 
at a young age

[[Page H5099]]

will have consequences for that child, and for this country, and our 
taxpayers, for the rest of their lives.
  And we don't know for sure because none of the agencies have 
responded, but we hear that parents are going to court in mass trials 
and having their asylum claims denied--not heard, but denied--and then 
the parents are deported.
  Does the government then go out and find the child in Chicago or 
Detroit, and send them back to their parents? Who knows? But probably 
not.
  There is a certain devious and genuinely cruel kind of evil in 
separating a child from their mother. And they don't expect anyone on 
the Republican side of the aisle to say anything, because it is part of 
the strategy to help them keep their job.
  Well, do you know what? Look, today, I am going to be joining with a 
group of hundreds of advocates from a diverse array of organizations, 
issues, and areas of this country, and we are going to demand answers.

                              {time}  1015

  And it is just not Luis Gutierrez, but my friend and ally, Joe 
Crowley. We will be together today at a rally at Freedom Plaza at 1:30 
here in Washington, D.C., and Joe and I will have other Members, 
including some who signed that letter I talked about and got the ball 
rolling.
  Because do you know what? We cannot sit back and let our government 
systematically ruin the lives of families and scar children for life. 
When we said ``never again,'' we meant it. Never again, and that means 
right here in the United States of America.
  Mr. Speaker, I include in the Record a letter to the Cabinet 
Secretary, signed by 11 Democrats, demanding that answers be placed in 
the Record.

                                Congress of the United States,

                                     Washington, DC, June 8, 2018.
     Hon. Kirstjen M. Nielsen,
     Secretary of Homeland Security,
     Washington, DC.
     Hon. Jeff Sessions,
     Attorney General of the United States, U.S. Department of 
         Justice, Washington, DC.
     Hon. Alex M. Azar II,
     Secretary, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 
         Washington, DC.
       Dear Secretary Nielsen, Attorney General Sessions, and 
     Secretary Azar: We write to express our strong and emphatic 
     opposition to the recently announced decision to prosecute 
     migrants and asylum-seekers, which is a reprehensible action 
     that violates U.S. treaty obligations, due process, and the 
     law. The consequence of this policy is that children are 
     routinely taken from their parents, with tragic results. 
     There are widespread reports of more than 11,000 migrant 
     children already in custody of the Department of Health and 
     Human Services (HHS). and hundreds of children--nearly half 
     younger than 12 years old detained in Border Patrol stations 
     when the law requires they be transferred within 72 hours to 
     HHS. Serious and legitimate concerns have been raised about 
     the deep trauma such separations cause these children, the 
     questionable conditions in which they are being held and the 
     absolute absence of a plan to reunite these children with 
     their parents and families.
       Separating families by force and punishing children and 
     their families who are fleeing for their lives is immoral, 
     unnecessarily cruel, and violates every science-based child 
     welfare principle to act in the best interests of the child. 
     We refuse to stand by while you systematically harm and 
     traumatize thousands of children. Therefore, we call on the 
     Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security 
     to cease and desist with your so-called ``zero-tolerance'' 
     policy and demand that HHS immediately begin reuniting these 
     separated children with their parents. We also insist that 
     you share with us the locations where you are holding these 
     children and allow us and other Members of Congress to visit 
     these locations and check on the conditions and welfare of 
     the children.
       Given the severity of the situation, an immediate response 
     is appropriate. We ask that you respond to us with your plan 
     to meet these requests by 12 noon on Tuesday, June 12th. 
     Members of Congress stand ready to take action if these 
     issues are not addressed promptly. Morality and human decency 
     dictate that you reverse these policies and take immediate 
     actions to end the harm you are causing to the children you 
     wrenched from their parents and took into your custody.
           Sincerely,
         Joseph Crowley, John Lewis, Luis V. Gutierrez, Wm. Lacy 
           Clay, Pramila Jayapal, Judy Chu, Jan Schakowsky, Raul 
           M. Grijalva, Adriano Espaillat, Barbara Lee, Al Green, 
           Members of Congress.

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