[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 104 (Thursday, June 21, 2018)]
[House]
[Pages H5488-H5489]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
CHILDREN HEADED TO MICHIGAN
(Ms. KAPTUR asked and was given permission to address the House for 1
minute and to revise and extend her remarks.)
Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, yesterday's Detroit Free Press reported that
two babies were taken by the Department of Homeland Security from their
parents at the U.S.-Mexico border and flown in the dead of night last
night to Grand Rapids, Michigan--one child is 8 months old, and another
11 months old--hundreds and hundreds of miles from home.
Fifty more immigrant children have landed in foster care by
spontaneous combustion in western Michigan. A staffer at Bethany
Christian Services, which is assisting these displaced children said:
``Not only are they being separated from their family, they are being
transported to a place that they don't know in the middle of the
night.''
Mr. Speaker, taking children from parents presents a deep moral
crisis for our Nation. The abduction of children from their parents is
a crime against humanity. The Trump administration's kidnapping of
children must end.
Mr. Speaker, I include in the Record this important article from the
Detroit Free Press entitled ``Torn from Immigrant Parents, 8-Month-Old
Baby Lands in Michigan.''
[From Detroit Free Press, June 20, 2018]
Torn From Immigrant Parents, 8-Month-Old Baby Lands in Michigan
(By Tresa Baldas)
Four days ago, a Homeland Security official proclaimed:
``We are not separating babies from parents.''
Yet in the middle of the night, two baby boys arrived in
Grand Rapids after being separated from their immigrant
parents at the southern border weeks ago.
One child is 8 months old; the other is 11 months old. Both
children have become part of a bigger group of 50 immigrant
children who have landed in foster care in western Michigan
under the Trump administration's zero-tolerance border
policy.
The average age of these children is 8, a number that has
alarmed foster care employees who are struggling to comfort
the growing group of kids who are turning up in Michigan at
nighttime, when it's pitch-dark outside. They're younger than
ever, they say. And they are petrified.
``These kids are arriving between 11 p.m. and 5 a.m. Not
only are they being separated from their family, they are
being transported to a place that they don't know in the
middle of the night,'' said Hannah Mills, program supervisor
for the transitional foster care program at Bethany Christian
Services, which is currently assisting the displaced
children. ``We have found on many occasions that no one has
explained to these children where they are going.''
According to Mills, some of these displaced children got
picked up right at the airport by a foster family, while
others wound up at a foster care center, begging to talk to
their parents. Many have gone 30 days or more without talking
to their parents because their parents can't be located, she
said.
Bianey Reyes, center, and others protest the separation of
children from their parents in front of the El Paso
Processing Center, an immigration detention facility, at the
Mexican border on June 19, 2018, in El Paso, Texas. (Photo:
Joe Raedle, Getty Images)
``These kids are hysterical. They're screaming out for mom
and dad,'' said Mills, who speaks Spanish and can converse
with the children, noting only a handful have learned some
English.
Mills, who has worked with displaced, immigrant children
for six years, said the foster agency is dealing with a new,
troubling element: Getting unaccompanied children on the
phone with their parents. Typically, this takes about three
days, she said. But now it's taking up to a month or more
because the parents are detained and the agency can't locate
them.
``That's probably one of the most detrimental things,''
Mills said. ``At least if we can get a kid to speak with
their parent, they can feel safe.''
Equally upsetting, Mills said, is watching children when
they do finally get on the phone with a parent. For example,
she recalled, a tearful 7-year-old on the phone with her
mother asking her, `Are you OK? Are you hurt? Is someone
hurting you?'
``All of it is incredibly upsetting,'' Mills said,
stressing: ``The difference is, we're seeing so many more
younger kids.''
Homeland Security officials were not available for comment
on why infants and toddlers are being taken from their
parents.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration has steadfastly
maintained that its goal is to protect the nation's borders,
enforce immigration laws and send a strong message to
[[Page H5489]]
immigrants that if they cross the border unlawfully, they
will be prosecuted and their kids taken away.
There is no federal law that mandates children and parents
be separated at the border, though the practice has led to
nearly 2,000 kids being misplaced in the past six weeks--a
phenomenon that has triggered a firestorm of controversy.
Many religious groups, social activists and immigrant-
sympathizers are calling for an end to the practice while
Trump supporters are saying let him do his job.
On Tuesday, the Michigan Department of Civil Rights
announced that it's assessing the impact of Trump's zero-
tolerance policy on the state of Michigan and the detained
immigrant children, stating it ``has a duty to make sure
their civil rights are protected.''
``We have received reports and are very concerned that the
children arriving here are much younger than those who have
been transported here in the past. Some of the children are
infants as young as 3 months of age and are completely unable
to advocate for themselves,'' Agustin V. Arbulu, Executive
Director of Michigan Department of Civil Rights said in a
statement.
The American Association for Justice also condemned the
family separation policy on Tuesday, stating: ``These actions
are risking the safety and well-being of innocent children.
We call on the administration to immediately halt this
practice and to reunite these traumatized families. This is
not who we are as a nation. We can and must do better.''
But the Trump administration is not backing down, stressing
the policy is about preserving and protecting America's
borders and upholding the law. Moreover, it insists, the
policy is not new, claiming children have long been placed in
foster care when their parents were criminally charged with
an immigration violation.
``What has changed is that we no longer exempt entire
classes of people who break the law,'' Homeland Security
Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said in a White House briefing
Monday. ``Here is the bottom line: DHS is no longer ignoring
the law.''
She later added: ``We are a country of compassion. We are a
country of heart. . . . We must fix the system so that those
who truly need asylum can in fact receive it.''
President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans
desperately searched Tuesday for an end game to the
administration's contentious zero-tolerance immigration
policy that has drawn fire from lawmakers on both sides of
the aisle.
Trump said Tuesday he wants the legal authority to detain
the children along with the adults and ``promptly remove
families together as a unit.''
Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I remind my colleagues of the words at the
base of the Statue of Liberty by Emma Lazarus:
Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuge of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp besides the golden door.
That is the America that I know. That is the America of liberty for
all.
The New Colossus
(By Emma Lazarus)
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
``Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!'' cries she
With silent lips. ``Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!''
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