[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 102 (Tuesday, June 19, 2018)]
[House]
[Pages H5275-H5278]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        WHAT HAS AMERICA BECOME?

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 3, 2017, the gentleman from California (Mr. Garamendi) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, America, my colleagues, Democrat and 
Republican, this young girl needs our help. She is crying out for her 
parents. She needs our help. She needs our help now. She is crying for 
her mother and her father, who have been taken from her.
  This is the picture of America today. This is a picture of our values 
as Americans. 350 million of us are responsible for this young girl 
crying for her mother and her father, who have been taken from her.
  They came to America, her mother came to America because she feared 
that in her home country, they would be harmed. They came to America 
seeking life. This young girl is crying out for our help, and she is 
not alone.
  She is joined by this young girl, who has been separated from her 
parents, and she is alone in a building foreign to her. She is crying 
out to America for our basic humanity, for our basic morality, and she 
is not alone.
  She is not alone, and neither are these young children in a cage in 
America.
  What have we become? What has America become that we would take 
children and their parents who have come here seeking refuge, we take 
the parents away and we put the children in a cage? What has America 
become that we would allow this to happen?
  Whatever the reason is for their arrival at our border, we know this 
about them: they came here seeking the very best of America, the 
promise of this country, and we put them in a cage.
  What has America become that we would allow this to happen, that the 
man in the highest office of this Nation would make it the policy of 
America to cage children; that the man who occupies the highest office 
in this land would make it the policy of this Nation, a Nation whose 
reputation was one of humanity, of concern, and fundamental morality, 
that the man who occupies the highest office in this land would put in 
place policies that would make this young girl cry for her parents?
  Is this the America that we want? Is this the America that we have 
come to be? Is this the America who has lost its moral compass, who 
believes that you could take this young girl or these young men and 
women, these children, and hold them hostage?
  The ransom is a border wall. Is that where we are as Americans that 
the

[[Page H5276]]

price for a border wall is this? Is that where we are as Americans? Is 
that what we have become?
  We can't debate here on the justice or the value of a policy without 
taking a young child away from its parents and putting them in a cage 
so that we could somehow use them as ransom for a public policy.
  This is not America. This is not what we should expect from the man 
who occupies the highest office in this land.
  Have no doubt about it: this is not about a law. This is about a 
policy directed from the White House that says a person crossing into 
this country, whatever their reason; asylum seekers trying to get away 
from the horrors of the country from which they came, coming to America 
seeking the benefit of this great country, that they are a criminal and 
therefore must be separated from their children. Something is terribly, 
terribly wrong here.
  In America, we need to cry out, just as these children are crying 
out, just as this young girl is crying out. We need to cry out in moral 
outrage and say to the President, Stop it. Stop it now. It is wrong. It 
is immoral. And it is un-American. Stop it.
  One phone call is all it takes. Change the policy.
  There is much to be said. We could talk about the laws, we could talk 
about how we could change it, we could talk about border control, we 
could talk about walls, we could talk about new judges, we could talk 
about lawyers, but at the bottom of this issue is a common issue of 
morality.
  Back away for a moment. Think about your childhood. Think about that 
moment when you had your mother's hand and you were 4 years old and you 
were walking in the mall. Think back to your childhood and think of 
that moment, and there is probably not a one of us who hasn't 
experienced this, when that hand wasn't there, and we looked around in 
panic, and we had lost our mother and we were alone and we were in a 
strange place. Is there one of us anywhere that at some moment in our 
early life reached out and mother's hand was not there?
  Mr. President, your policies did that to this young woman and 2,300 
others, crying out for their mother.
  This is not American. This is not right. It is immoral and it is un-
American at its very heart and its very foundation.
  Mr. Speaker, joining me tonight are some of my colleagues who share 
the same concern. My colleague from the district next to me has joined 
me.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from California (Mr. McNerney).
  Mr. McNERNEY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding. He is 
a neighbor and a friend and a colleague, and I appreciate his passion 
tonight, and I think I am going to share that a little bit.
  Mr. Speaker, I normally focus on policy. I came here to try to get 
things done for the people who sent me here to Washington.
  You know, I don't bark every time this President sends out an 
outrageous tweet or makes a ridiculous statement. But when something 
happens that is absolutely despicable, I am morally obligated to call 
the President out and hold him publicly accountable for his actions.
  Ordering young children to be separated from their parents in order 
to send a message and then blaming Democrats for the situation, this 
rises to the level of complete immoral behavior.
  Desperate families come to this country fleeing for their very lives. 
Our history has been to give them shelter.
  My wife's grandfather came from Mexico as a political refugee when he 
and his family were marked for death. America gave him refuge and he 
was able to bring his two-year-old daughter, my mother-in-law, to 
safety.

                              {time}  1945

  I built a life and raised a family here. Now I have children and 
grandchildren of my own. What would it be like to have them torn from 
my arms if I tried to provide them safety?
  The American Conference of Catholic Bishops is very clear. It is 
immoral, and it is wrong. There is no greater moral obligation that we 
have than to care for the children of this world. Clearly, ripping 
children from the arms of their parents is completely unacceptable.
  This President is too much of a coward to take responsibility for his 
actions. The President has power to stop this abhorrent policy right 
now. We, in Congress, will fight to keep families together.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman will suspend.
  Members are reminded not to engage in personalities toward the 
President.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. 
Castro).
  Mr. CASTRO of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I thank Congressman Garamendi for 
his passion and his profound words on this very difficult subject, not 
only for Members of the United States Congress, but also for many 
Americans across the country.
  I had an opportunity yesterday, along with several other Members of 
Congress, including Bennie Thompson, the ranking Democratic Member on 
the Homeland Security Committee; Sheila Jackson Lee; Frederica Wilson; 
Ben Ray Lujan; and Filemon Vela, to visit two sites where these young 
kids are being kept in the Rio Grande Valley in Texas--one of them, 
Casa Padre; the other one, Casa Presidente.
  When we were there, I and a few other Members of Congress met two 
young children who were being held without their parents. They were 
separated from their parents.
  One of them was named Roger, an 8-month-old boy--8 months old. The 
administrators told us that his mother is actually deceased, and they 
believe that he had come to the country with his sister, but she was 
nowhere to be found.
  The other was a young girl named Leah. She was 1 year old, and she 
was separated from her parents.
  These are among the youngest victims of this brutal policy of 
President Trump in separating young children from their parents.
  Most Americans believe that we can enforce our immigration laws and 
still respect human dignity and human rights. But in going down the 
road that this President has taken us, he is taking us down a road 
where we are losing our own humanity. He is taking us down a road that 
is reminiscent of the worst episodes and moral failures in the 
country's history, the things that, as Americans, we deeply regret.
  Also, we have been asked by many Americans over the last few weeks in 
particular a common question as Members of Congress: ``What are you 
doing to stop this?'' We are pushing legislation. We are out on the 
streets. We are organizing rallies. We are doing every single thing 
that we can to change this, to end it.
  I want to say thank you to my colleagues that were with me yesterday. 
Thank you also to Nancy Pelosi and the members of the Congressional 
Hispanic Caucus who visited San Diego; to Beto O'Rourke and Joe 
Kennedy, who were in Tonillo near the tent cities, near El Paso; to 
Frank Pallone, Hakeem Jeffries, and Jerry Nadler who were out in the 
New York-New Jersey area; and Debbie Wasserman Schultz and others who 
were in Florida.
  Thank you to the folks in the Senate who also made a trip to McAllen, 
and to Senator Merkley, without whose help and support a few weeks ago 
in Brownsville, this issue would not nearly have had the same amount of 
attention.
  This year marks 50 years since we lost two titans in American 
history, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy. Fifty-two 
years ago, in a famous speech that he gave in South Africa on their Day 
of Affirmation, Senator Robert F. Kennedy said back then: ``Moral 
courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great 
intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital quality for those who 
seek to change a world that yields most painfully to change.''
  What we are asking is for this Congress to have the moral courage to 
listen to the American people and do right by these immigrants.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his comments 
and would ask him a question. The gentleman said he visited one of the 
shelters, and there were babies, babies a few months old.
  Mr. CASTRO of Texas. Yes, we went into the shelter, and we visited 
two of them. At one of them, there were about four or five infants. 
They had something called an infants room. At least

[[Page H5277]]

two of those infants--one of them 8 months named Roger, the other one a 
year old named Leah--had been separated from their family members. They 
were being taken care of by staff.
  But it was jarring to go into a room, to see young babies, and to 
realize that their parents or their family members were nowhere to be 
found, and that this is now standard government practice under the 
Trump administration.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. So any age, literally, 4-, 5-, 6-month-old babies 
taken from their mothers?
  Mr. CASTRO of Texas. Absolutely. In fact, when we went into the 
second center, we asked them: ``Well, who is held here?'' And the 
administrator said: ``Children between zero and 12 years, and the 
youngest one we have right now is 8 months.''
  Mr. GARAMENDI. There is something incredibly immoral. I thank the 
gentleman for traveling to bring the reality back to the House of 
Representatives. It is really important, and I thank him very much for 
doing that.
  Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from New Jersey for joining us 
this evening. I yield to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Payne).
  Mr. PAYNE. Mr. Speaker, I thank Mr. Garamendi, once again, for 
stepping out and giving Members such as myself the opportunity to 
express our outrage at what is going on in this great Nation of ours. 
The gentleman has given me several opportunities to speak on issues 
pertaining to this country that are at the core of decisions and issues 
that we need to address, and his passion tonight is warranted.

  Let me say, never in my life did I think that I would be on the floor 
of the United States House of Representatives calling for the President 
of the United States to stop tearing children away from their parents. 
Yet here I am.
  Perhaps it is fitting that today is Juneteenth, a holiday to 
commemorate the end of slavery in the United States. Juneteenth is also 
a stark reminder that our country has a dark history of ripping 
children away from their parents.
  African Americans know all too well that laws and policies can be 
twisted to evil ends. We know all too well the pain of having our 
children torn away from us and our families separated. It was a common 
event during slavery. We know all too well that state-sponsored 
psychological terror can have lasting effects on generations.
  What is going on at our south border is evil. It is a deplorable 
policy by deplorable people, and it has to stop.
  The president of the American Academy of Pediatrics has explained 
that the practice of ripping children away from their parents at the 
border is child abuse. Let me emphasize, one of the country's leading 
pediatricians has said that the United States is engaging in horrible 
actions that ``disrupt the synapses and the neurological connections 
that are part of the developing brain'' of these immigrant babies.
  Who are we as a nation?
  Now, I have heard pundits defending evil by saying that the Trump 
administration is just following the law, just applying the law. I have 
heard other pundits wrongly say migrant parents are breaking the law 
and deserve to have their children taken away.
  Attorney General Jeff Beauregard Sessions even trotted out the Bible 
to defend the family-separation policy, quoting a passage that says 
``to obey the laws of the government because God has ordained the 
government for his purposes.''
  That is the same scripture that they used for slave-owners against 
their slaves, to defend their practice of holding human beings in 
bondage.
  So let me answer Attorney General Beauregard Sessions and the Trump 
administration's goons: Legal does not mean moral.
  Slavery was legal, but it was immoral. Jim Crow was legal, but it was 
immoral. Forced sterilization was legal, but it was immoral. Apartheid 
was legal, but it was immoral. Tearing children away from their parents 
at the border may be legal, but it is immoral.
  The President could end this evil with one tweet. Congress can end it 
with a vote. Let us hope that reasonable people steer the ship of the 
state onto the right course before the seas of despair consume us all.
  Mr. Speaker, I say to the gentleman from California, let me just say 
that, as I thought about this, the gentleman has been in this body much 
longer than I and has seen people come and go, great people on both 
sides of the aisle that the gentleman has worked with. Well, let me 
just say, what has happened? What has happened to that side of the 
aisle? What is going on with our colleagues on the other side of the 
aisle that they do not speak up? They all have children.
  I would die for my triplets getting here if I was in a position where 
I thought that my life and my children's lives were in danger where I 
was. You had better believe I would come up here and try to get into 
this Nation. We would all do that for our children.
  Yet these people are criminals? It baffles the mind.
  I know that time is fleeting, but I have seen the GOP come up with a 
new nonprofit through this whole endeavor. They have created a new 
nonprofit, sir. It is called ``Cage the Children.''
  Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman speaks about the laws and 
about the potential, and every member of the Democratic Caucus has now 
signed on to be a coauthor of the legislation, Keep the Families 
Together Act. It would end immediately the separation of families that 
has now taken 2,300 children away from their parents.
  Mr. Speaker, joining us tonight is the Representative from the city 
of Las Vegas, Nevada. I thank him for joining us and yield to the 
gentleman from Nevada (Mr. Kihuen).
  Mr. KIHUEN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from California (Mr. 
Garamendi) for organizing this hour to discuss a humanitarian issue 
that we are confronted with right now here in the United States of 
America. I thank him for his leadership.
  Mr. Speaker, I just came back from the border this morning, and I am 
heartbroken. I am emotionally drained, and I am saddened for this 
country, the United States of America. Who would have ever thought, in 
the greatest, most powerful, richest country in the world, that we 
would be tearing kids apart from their mother and their father and 
putting them in cages?

                              {time}  2000

  That is not the America that I know. I came to this country when I 
was 8 years old. I crossed that same border that I visited. My parents 
came here in pursuit of the American Dream. They came here because they 
knew if they worked hard and sacrificed that they would have a shot at 
the American Dream.
  That is all these kids and these families want, and just being there 
at the border and looking at those mothers straight in the eyes and 
them looking back at you with watery eyes, asking for help, this is not 
a Republican or Democrat issue. This is a humanitarian issue. This is 
about the future of America. This is about humanity. This is about 
kids. And it hurts me to see that in the United States of America we 
are putting these same kids in cages.
  We made a call to the President to rescind this zero tolerance policy 
because we want to keep these families together. These are not 
criminals. These are innocent families who are leaving persecution, who 
are trying to achieve a better life for their kids.
  Any family, any parent in the country or anywhere else seeking a 
better life for their kids would do everything and anything to pursue a 
better life for their kids.
  So I am disappointed in our President. I am disappointed in my 
colleagues who refuse to speak up when we are seeing these images on TV 
of children in cages being treated like animals. That is not the 
America that I know. That is not the America that gave me and my family 
an opportunity to succeed.
  So, Mr. Speaker, I got emotional yesterday being there at the border 
and remembering very vividly those moments when my family crossed the 
border. I remember it as if it was just yesterday. And I couldn't help 
but think that if somebody were to take me away from my father and 
mother at that precise moment, what would I do? Who would I trust? 
Where would I go? I couldn't even speak a word of English. I was 8 
years old. I needed that love and those hugs from my mother and my 
father.
  So today I came back and I made a promise that I would fight for 
these

[[Page H5278]]

families, that I would fight for these kids, that I would fight for the 
future of America; the principles and the values that make this country 
strong. That is the reason why I ran for office in the first place. 
That is the reason why we are serving in office in the first place.
  So I am here to call on the President to rescind the zero tolerance 
policy that is cruel, inhumane, and un-American.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Kihuen, I don't want you to stop. I want you to 
stay strong. I want your voice to be heard. I want your experiences to 
be known.
  Eight years old, coming to America with your parents. In this room, 
there are very few who would share such an experience, who could 
understand first the excitement of being in America, and then the 
potential terror of being taken from your parents.
  I want you to make your voice heard because it is the voice of 
experience. It is the voice of a recent family coming to America.
  So as we go through these days, please come to the floor, tell the 
experience again, not only of your family, but also what you saw in 
those shelters, in those cages.
  Will the gentleman do that?
  Mr. KIHUEN. I will.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. I am quite certain that across this country, every one 
of the 430-some Members of Congress saw this photo. Probably most have 
heard the audio recording of young children just like this calling out 
for their mommy or daddy, papa.
  I suspect many of us have seen the pictures of young children, 3, 4, 
5 with a Sharpie telephone number on their chest so that if somehow 
they were separated, there would be someone to contact.
  I am certain that every Member, 430-plus of us, plus the Senate, that 
was a child, that at some point in their life, when they were young, 3, 
4, 5 years of age, they were separated from their parent. And I am 
absolutely certain that each one of us knows the terror of that moment.
  And most of us are now parents. Most of us are now parents, and we 
know the terror of a child who has disappeared, wandered off.
  I don't believe there is one of us that knows the terror of this 
mother whose child was taken away by American police; the awesome power 
of this government imposed upon that young woman, a mother, taken from 
her child.
  Is there one of us? Is there one of us that has endured that police 
power?
  Okay. I get emotional about this because I am a parent.
  No. I don't know the terror of the police state taking my child away. 
I don't know that. But I know the terror of that child who has wandered 
off.
  This is a policy that has been imposed upon parents and their 
children by the President. This is not a law that requires this kind of 
cruelty. There is no such law that requires this kind of cruelty. There 
is no law that requires the American government to cage children. There 
is no law that requires this. This is the policy of the President of 
the United States. This is his policy. Zero tolerance. His policy that 
cages children as though they were animals. His policy that puts the 
fear into a child.
  It is the President's policy, not the law, that caused this young 
child to cry out for her mother and for the police to stand over her.
  The Attorney General says it is the law. It is not the law. It is his 
policy, together with the President's policy, that has created this 
humanitarian crisis in the United States of America. It must end.
  Martin Luther King--who was killed, murdered, assassinated 50 years 
ago--from the Birmingham jail spoke about justice and the law in his 
letter from the Birmingham jail.
  So, Mr. Attorney General Beauregard Sessions, listen to what he had 
to say. He said: ``A just law is a manmade code that squares with the 
moral law or the law of God.''

  He went on to argue: ``An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony 
with the moral law.''
  And how should justice be defined? He answered this way: ``Any law 
that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human 
personality is unjust.''
  Mr. Attorney General, by the words of Martin Luther King, your 
defense of what you say is the law is unjust, it is immoral, and it is 
not the law of God.
  My wife, Patty, has what she calls cradle songs, songs that she sung 
to our children as they were young and growing.
  One of those was written by Bobby Dylan, Blowin' in the Wind:

     Yes, and how many times can a man turn his head
     Pretending that he just doesn't see?
     Yes, and how many ears must one man have
     Before he can hear people cry?

  And, Mr. President and Mr. Attorney General, the opening line of that 
song is this:

     How many roads must a man walk down
     Before you call him a man?

  Mr. Speaker, I yield back.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Members are reminded to direct their remarks 
to the Chair.

                          ____________________