[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 130 (Wednesday, August 1, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5561-S5564]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           FAMILY INTERNMENT

  Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I come to the floor tonight with a simple 
and clear message, which is that we must not allow internment camps to 
be built in the United States of America.
  I come with this message because we have heard on Capitol Hill that 
even as I speak, individuals are planning to bring forward legislation 
that would, in fact, create internment camps as a strategy of family 
incarceration--a strategy that President Trump has been championing. So 
I say tonight, absolutely not. We must not allow internment camps to be 
established in the United States of America.
  When we look at the history of the world and the history of America, 
we realize that in many ways, we are still a very young nation, with 
less than three centuries behind us. In that comparatively short time, 
we have accomplished great things. We have helped save the world from 
tyranny and fascism, while pushing the boundaries of science. We spread 
democracy and human rights to nations far and wide. We have broken down 
barriers of race and gender and sexual orientation here at home in a 
vision of equality and opportunity for all.
  Yet we cannot forget that along with those great accomplishments, 
there have also been some dark chapters in our history. We all are 
aware of these chapters when the United States embraced slavery from 
its founding up through the Civil War; that we embraced discrimination 
through segregation and Jim Crow laws; that we had in World War II a 
strategy of creating internment camps to imprison our citizens who were 
of Japanese ancestry.
  Now, we have another dark chapter--a chapter in which our government 
has decided to treat those fleeing persecution from around the world as 
if they are criminals, to greet them not with Lady Liberty and a torch, 
saying, ``Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning 
to breathe free'' but a different saying--a saying that if you are 
fleeing persecution and you wash up on the shores of the United States, 
we will treat you as a criminal. We will tear away your children, and 
we will throw you in prison.
  In the span of just a few weeks, from May 4 and into June of this 
year, the Trump team tore around 2,600 young boys and girls from their 
parents' arms. They were families coming to the United States. They 
were fleeing persecution. They were seeking asylum. They were going 
through all kinds of trials and tribulations back in their home 
countries. They were going through all kinds of difficulties on the 
path of arriving in the United States. They had, in their minds, that 
vision that we are a nation where almost everyone has in their family 
history someone who fled persecution, who fled civil war, who fled 
drought and famine, who fled religious persecution, so surely they 
would be treated with dignity and understanding as they sought asylum 
from the persecution they faced back home.
  Instead, many were stopped from coming through the entry points to 
claim asylum. Many resorted, therefore, to coming across other points 
in between the official border points, and they faced this new policy--
this policy concocted by Attorney General Jeff Sessions, President of 
the United States Donald Trump, the Chief of Staff, and Steve Miller. 
This plan was deterrence--deterrence by afflicting children so as to 
send a message, if you flee persecution, do not think of coming to the 
United States.
  Let us recognize that the whole idea of establishing a political 
tactic, a political goal of deterrence through the infliction of trauma 
on children is a dark and evil place for our government to have gone. 
One that--now that light has been shed on it, now that America has 
cried out from boundary to boundary, from East to West and from North 
to South and said that this is wrong, it is immoral, no religious 
tradition in the world would support this, the administration has ended 
those family separations, those children being ripped out of their 
parents' arms. They are now under a responsibility to reunify the 
children with their parents. They have been ordered by the court to 
have deadlines for those children under 5 and for those children 5 
through 17. They missed the first and second deadlines, and 700 
children are still not reunited with their parents.
  Reports are coming in on the impact, the trauma inflicted on the 
children and how seriously this modified their behavior. A recent piece 
in the New York Times told the story of a 5-year-old boy from Brazil 
who was separated from his mother for 50 days.
  Thiago used to love playing with toys of the Minions from the 
``Despicable Me'' movies, but now his new favorite game is patting down 
and shackling migrants with plastic handcuffs, and now when people come 
to their home, he flees. He runs away. He hides behind the couch, 
afraid he will once again be torn from his mother's arms.
  His story is not unique. In fact, we hear story after story after 
story of children and the reverberations of the trauma they have 
experienced at the hands of the Trump administration; children 
terrified of being separated from their parents for even just a few 
moments; children whose whole outlook on life--their whole 
disposition--has been modified; children afraid of engaging in a life 
outside the house.
  The act of tearing families apart has supposedly stopped with the 
President's order. He has an Executive order

[[Page S5562]]

which I have in my hand, but what this Executive order plans next is 
also horrible and shameful. This is a plan to establish internment 
camps in the United States of America. The President has gone from 
family separation, tearing children out of their parents' arms, to 
family incarceration, where families would be detained indefinitely 
together. Internment camps, tent cities out in the middle of the desert 
or maybe on military bases. We have seen this type of policy before. We 
know how badly it ends for our Nation. We made a huge mistake in World 
War II locking up Japanese-American families in internment camps, and 
we are still dealing with the consequences.
  After visiting one of those camps in 1943, Eleanor Roosevelt remarked 
that ``to undo a mistake is always harder than not to create one 
originally, but we seldom have the foresight.''
  In this instance, we should have the foresight. We know the history 
of the horror of internment camps. We have the ability to stop our 
Nation from making a terrible mistake. We know how history will look on 
us if we fail to prevent this mistake and follow the President's plan 
for internment camps, which he has laid out.
  In the aftermath of the attack on Pearl Harbor, we allowed fear and 
bigotry to consume us. We took away the freedom of more than 110,000 
Americans. Freedom, the most basic human right, was taken away by our 
government from 110,000 American citizens. We locked Japanese-Americans 
in prison camps behind barbed wire fences in some of the most 
inhospitable parts of the Nation for no other reason than their 
Japanese ancestry. Children grew up not in their communities but behind 
barbed wire. Adults were torn off their land, their farms, their 
orchards. They were torn away from their professions, which ran the 
full spectrum of professions across America, to be able to earn just a 
few cents a day, working inside those prisons. Families who once owned 
their homes, had a vision for the future, had a vision for the 
children's future were crammed together for years in wooden shacks 
behind barbed wire.
  In a 1943 radio interview, Dillon Myer, the head of the agency in 
charge of the camps, spoke out against them. Mind you, this was the 
middle of the war. He was in charge of the camps. He knows it is wrong; 
he knows it is destructive. He said: ``Public opinion feeding on 
prejudice and fanned by hatred and fear of the unknown will do some 
peculiar things.''
  He went on to say: Even though the war relocation authority is 
responsible for the operation of the relocation centers, we are 
convinced that they are not good things. It is not a normal way of 
life. It produces many kinds of abnormal conditions that are not 
desirable.
  Indeed, as former First Lady Laura Bush pointed out in her op-ed 
article in the Washington Post a few months ago: ``We also know that 
this treatment inflicts trauma; those who have been interned have been 
twice as likely to suffer cardiovascular disease or die prematurely 
than those who were not interned.''
  One Japanese-American hero, Fred Korematsu, challenged this racist 
policy. He challenged it all the way to the Supreme Court. In a 6-to-3 
decision the Court would long regret, it upheld the constitutionality 
of these camps. Seven decades later, history embraces the view of the 
three dissenting justices. In the words of Justice Frank Murphy:

       Racial discrimination in any form and in any degree has no 
     justifiable part whatever in our democratic way of life. It 
     is unattractive in any setting, but it is utterly revolting 
     among a free people who have embraced the principles set 
     forth in the Constitution of the United States [of America].

  This is why a commission, created by President Jimmy Carter in 1980, 
found that the internment camps were a ``grave injustice'' that stemmed 
from ``race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political 
leadership.''
  It is why, when awarding him the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 
1998, President Clinton said:

       In the long history of our country's constant search for 
     justice, some names of ordinary citizens stand for millions 
     of souls: Plessy, Brown, Parks. To that distinguished list, 
     today we add the name of Fred Korematsu.

  Fred Korematsu challenged the legitimacy of internment camps under 
the Constitution of the United States. In fact, just earlier this year, 
2018, Chief Justice John Roberts said: ``Korematsu was gravely wrong 
the day it was decided, has been overruled in the court of history, 
and--to be clear--'has no place in law under the Constitution.'''
  So it was called a failure of political leadership that we 
established internment camps in World War II, and it would be an 
enormous failure of political leadership if we were to establish 
internment camps in 2018; yet I keep hearing this very plan is being 
cooked up to be put on the floor of the Senate when we return. That is 
why I am speaking about it tonight to say: No, absolutely not; those 
among us who are planning such a deed will face enormous opposition, 
not just from me but from everyone who cares about justice in the 
United States of America, everyone who cares about decency and 
fairness, everyone who knows that the strategy of ripping children out 
of their parents' arms was dark and evil and wrong. We are not going to 
allow family separation to be replaced by family incarceration.
  But here we are, with this Executive order, and it says, in somewhat 
bland language, ``Affording Congress an Opportunity to Address Family 
Separation.'' This Executive order--this order right here--is an 
argument for establishing internment camps in the United States of 
America. This strategy, laid out by the President, must not happen.
  This statement says that it is the official policy of the Trump 
administration to detain immigrant families together. What are they 
talking about? Internment camps--not handcuffs for the parents where 
the children are ripped out of their arms; it is handcuffs for all. It 
is an Executive order calling on the military to provide facilities for 
housing the immigrant families and, if they can't find them, to 
construct them, if necessary. This document instructs the Attorney 
General of the United States to try to find a way to overturn a legal 
settlement known as the Flores consent agreement, which says that 
children cannot be detained indefinitely.

  So this document lays out two strategies to internment camps: one, by 
getting the courts to overturn the Flores consent agreement and the 
second, affording Congress an opportunity to address family separation. 
It calls on Congress to act, to make it legal to establish internment 
camps. Have we learned nothing?
  Here is what I have to say about this Executive order: no internment 
camps in the United States of America, not now and not in the future. I 
will absolutely resist such a strategy. This Presidential vision is 
anything but Presidential--this vision of a President who is operating 
in a fashion outside of a vision of the Constitution. I know there will 
be many among us who will join in this effort to resist this strategy.
  So if my colleagues--any one of them--should bring this to the floor, 
I want them to know this will be a fight. This will be a battle. We 
will call up the horror of the past and say that it will not be 
accompanied by a horror of the present. We will not go from family 
separation to family incarceration. Internment would be just as wrong 
today as it was seven decades ago. If we allow this to happen, it is 
more than a failure of political leadership. It is to allow America to 
dwell in a deep and dark and evil place.
  Some may say that families fleeing persecution are coming to America 
to ask for asylum, which they are allowed to do under the Refugee 
Convention, of which the United States is a member.
  They may say: Senator Merkley, you believe it is wrong to rip 
children out of their parents' arms, and you believe it is wrong to 
establish internment camps. What would you do? Well, here is what I 
would do: I would reestablish the Family Case Management Program. That 
is a program that worked well--that worked very well--but was 
dismantled by this administration approximately a year ago to pave the 
way for family separation, to inflict trauma on children.
  What is the Family Case Management Program? I don't think the 
President of the United States knows about this program--the program he 
ended--or he doesn't want to know about it. He wants to paint some 
other vision. So let's remind the President of the United States how 
this works, the program that he got rid of, the program that worked so 
well.

[[Page S5563]]

  A family comes seeking asylum. They present themselves with that 
case. They are treated with respect and dignity because we are a nation 
of individuals with family histories of individuals fleeing 
persecution. We understand what that is like. We understand what it is 
like, and we treat people with decency.
  The families are put into a case management program while their 
asylum case is being prepared. The whole point of the program is to 
make sure they show up for their court appointments, make sure they 
show up for their check-ins, make sure they have someone who guides 
them through the system so they understand how it works. If they 
understand how it works, they know when to show up and where to show 
up, and they know how to prepare for those meetings.
  This program was created by ICE and Homeland Security. They put their 
heads to work: How do we treat people with dignity and respect and make 
sure they show up at their check-ins and their court appointments? They 
designed a very good program, the Family Case Management Program. So 
families lived their life in preparation for their appearances in 
court, and we did not inflict trauma on the children. We did not treat 
them as pawns in some broader scheme of deterrence. We treated families 
with basic dignity.
  Then, if they won their asylum case, then they came into a country 
that had received and treated them with dignity. If they lost their 
asylum case, they went back to their country. They were deported, but 
they had memories of a country that treated them with respect and 
decency until that asylum case date arrived.
  This program had such a phenomenal success rate that I was stunned 
when I got hold of the inspector general's report. I want to make sure 
that folks can see this. This inspector general's report says, based on 
the information provided by ICE, that the overall program compliance 
for all five regions is an average of 99 percent for ICE check-ins and 
appointments and 100 percent attendance at court hearings.
  That number is stunning, and I wouldn't share it if it were anything 
other than from the inspector general himself or herself reporting 
after a thorough investigation--99 percent for ICE check-ins, 100 
percent attendance at court hearings. Wow. How often do you see a 
program that works that well?

  There is another report, and that report came when the program was 
terminated. That report proceeds to have some additional numbers in it. 
This one came after the second report. It was an afterprogram report. 
It is called the Family Case Management Program Closeout Report, 
February 2018. This was in the hands of the Trump administration even 
as they were planning to end the program, actually did end the program.
  What it says is, the program operated for 17 months. It says it was 
launched in the following cities: Baltimore, Chicago, Los Angeles, 
Miami, New York City, and Newark. It had different nonprofits that 
operated it: Bethany Christian Services, the Frida Kahlo Community 
Organization, the International Institute of Los Angeles, the Youth Co-
Op, Inc. in Miami, the Catholic Charities of New York. They served over 
2,000 immigrants. It treated them by educating them about how this 
worked as they prepared for their asylum hearing. It provided them with 
individualized needs assessments and service plans, orientation and 
information sessions on legal rights and responsibilities and 
obligations, tracking and monitoring of those obligations, including 
showing up for check-ins, which they did 99 percent of the time, and 
showing up for court hearings, according to the IG, 100 percent of the 
time.
  ICE concluded it was an overall success. This evaluation came after 
the IG's report. It was no longer 100 percent attendance of court 
hearings. Instead, it was 99.3 percent--a 99-percent success rate, 99-
percent compliance with ICE monitoring requirements, including 
telephonic and in-person check-ins.
  When participants reported on how they were treated, they talked 
about positive relationships with their case managers, and it centered 
on the trust that was established between the case manager and the 
participant. That is pretty amazing success for a program that the 
administration shut down in favor of choosing to deliberately inflict 
trauma on children.
  We have not one report, not one evaluation; we have two. This report 
from February this year, with all this positive information about how 
the program worked, is not easy to find online. It has essentially been 
hidden.
  After I raised this issue of the Family Case Management Program, a 
person brought this report to my team and said: Hey, did you know there 
is this other closeout evaluation that lays out the vision of how well 
the program worked in far more detail than the IG report?
  I said: No, I didn't know about that. Great, I will share it with my 
colleagues, which I am doing right now.
  I don't know why it wasn't circulated. Maybe it is because it had 
such glowing reviews of the program the administration shut down that 
they were embarrassed by their argument; the fact of this report says 
their argument that people wouldn't show up for their court hearings is 
simply wrong. I imagine that is why it wasn't circulated.
  In this Family Case Management Program, they talk about costs in this 
evaluation. They go through the different strategies. The Family Case 
Management Program costs $38 per day. That is per participant, per day, 
$38. That compares with family residential facilities at an average 
cost of $237 per day. That is $38 versus $237.
  The program worked incredibly well, and it was far less expensive 
than detention--family residential facility detention. In addition, we 
now have some recent numbers that have been put forward. Health and 
Human Services has told news outlets that it costs American taxpayers 
$775 per person, per night to house people at tent city internment 
camps--$775 per person per night versus $38. Thirty-eight dollars, no 
trauma--a relation of respect and trust versus incarceration at $775 
per night.
  This Trump strategy of inflicting trauma on children is wrong at 
every single level you can imagine. It is a costly, inhumane, damaging 
program, with lifetime consequences for the children versus decency and 
respect and trust, and the program costs just a fraction, one-twentieth 
of this reported $700-plus per night.
  If you have those two options, which one would you choose? Would you 
choose the program that costs a fraction, one-twentieth, of the tent 
city internment camp strategy? Would you choose a program that builds 
trust and relationships and has a 99- to 100-percent rate of success in 
people showing up for their check-ins, a 99- to 100-percent rate of 
showing up for their court hearings versus a program that does so much 
damage to so many.
  I have come to the Senate floor to say one thing as clearly as I 
possibly can to every colleague. If you are part of the plan to bring 
an internment camp strategy to the floor of the Senate, I will fight 
that plan with everything I have. It is an evil and dark place for this 
country to go. We know that from our history.
  We know history has said it was a failure of political leadership to 
allow it to have happened in World War II. I will do everything I can 
to make sure we do not have another failure of political leadership 
that allows the vision of internment camps imbedded in the President's 
Executive order to occur in the United States of America.
  Lady Liberty says: ``Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled 
masses yearning to breathe free.''
  It speaks to the fact that almost all of us come from family roots 
that involved immigrants, involved people fleeing persecution.
  In that poet's words, Emma Lazarus, goes on to speak about ``the 
wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, 
tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!''
  Let's keep that lamp lit here in the United States of America. Let's 
treat those fleeing persecution with respect and decency. That is what 
is in our blood as an American. That is what is in our DNA--a vision of 
compassion and freedom and opportunity that knows, through all too 
personal of family experiences, what it is like to flee religious 
persecution or famine or war and what a beautiful thing it is to be 
treated with respect and decency if you

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come to the shores of the United States of America.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alaska.

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