[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 169 (Thursday, October 11, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6782-S6784]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                        No Internment Camps Act

  Mr. MERKLEY. Thank you, Mr. President.
  Today I rise to bring attention to the No Internment Camps Act. This 
is an important bill to make sure that America does not repeat the 
mistake of World War II and develop and expand internment camps here in 
the United States of America.
  One may think that this is something that is farfetched, that of 
course the United States would not establish internment camps, but the 
fact is, we already have 3, and the House passed a bill to greatly 
expand those internment camps. We have 35 sponsors of a bill here in 
the Senate to expand internment camps. We have the President issuing an 
Executive order asking Congress to expand internment camps. Recently, 
the President put forward a draft regulation to expand internment

[[Page S6783]]

camps without the consent of Congress. So it is all very real.
  Where did this story begin? It began, as far as public awareness, on 
May 7, when Attorney General Jeff Sessions gave a speech. He called 
this his zero-tolerance policy. I listened to the description of the 
zero-tolerance policy on arresting people at the border, and I said: 
You know, when you take away the fancy rhetoric, it sounds like he has 
criminalized families who are fleeing persecution from overseas. I 
thought, that is a pretty stunning situation because we in America 
often look to Lady Liberty and the words inscribed on the base or 
pedestal of Lady Liberty that say ``Give me your tired, your poor, your 
huddled masses yearning to breathe free.''
  The idea that our Attorney General is saying we are going to 
criminalize flight from persecution--and it was found, furthermore, 
that they were going to immediately throw adults into jail and rip away 
the children from their families. That is not possible. That is not 
possible here in the United States of America.
  So I arranged to go down to the border. I went down on June 3 and 
visited the McAllen processing center. The McAllen processing center is 
a location that the press had never been allowed into, so they were 
stationed outside saying: What are you going to find inside? What are 
you going to see? What is in there?
  I expressed surprise that the press here in America was excluded from 
this facility to see what was going on.
  I went in. I was given a tour. What I found was pretty shocking--a 
room in which huddled masses of families were shoved into wire link 
cages with nothing but an aluminum foil Mylar blanket. Then in an 
adjoining larger space, a warehouse space, we saw larger cages, 30-by-
30 foot cages where families were being separated into fathers in one 
cage, mothers in another, daughters in a third, and sons in a fourth.
  I stood in front of one 30-by-30 foot chain link cage and said: These 
young boys, who are lining up by height to prepare for being fed; these 
young boys, with the smallest being just knee-high to a grasshopper, 
maybe 4 years old; these young boys have been separated from their 
parents?
  The answer was this: Well, Senator, not all of them. Some of them 
arrived unaccompanied.
  I said: But many of these boys in this cage were taken away from 
their parents?
  They said: Yes.
  I said: Well, where did that happen?
  They said: Well, we brought the family in that door over there, and 
then, with some explanation, we said, ``We need to take your son away. 
We need to take your daughter away. We need to take your spouse away.''
  And they were locked up in these various locations inside that 
warehouse.
  So it turned out it was real. The administration was criminalizing a 
flight from persecution, a flight that our ancestors know all too well, 
fleeing from civil war, from religious persecution, from famine to come 
here to the United States of America and see that beautiful, welcoming 
Statue of Liberty--``Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses 
yearning to breathe free''--but instead of that welcoming embrace, 
prison for the parents and, quite frankly, prison for the children, 
separating them.
  I went from there up to Brownsville. I had been told by immigration 
advocates that many of these young men were being stuffed into a single 
building up in Brownsville, a former Walmart run by a nonprofit called 
Southwest Key. I had asked permission to visit this location, and I had 
been told: No, no, no. You have to give 2 weeks' advance notice.
  They had a waiver system, so I asked for a waiver to be able to see 
what was going on inside this former Walmart. The waiver was turned 
down. Clearly the administration did not want any Member of Congress to 
see what was going on inside that building.
  Since I was there in Texas, I drove up the road to Brownsville and 
said: Well, I will just call them up when I get there and say, ``Surely 
you have enough members on your staff that one of them could come out 
and talk to me, or maybe one of them could give me a tour of what is 
inside.''
  When I arrived and walked up to the door of this former Walmart, 
there was a phone number posted on the front of it. I proceeded to call 
that phone number and talk to the assistant to the supervisor of the 
facility. The assistant said: Yes, the supervisor would be happy to 
come out and talk to you.
  I waited 10 minutes. No supervisor appeared. I called again, and they 
said: Oh, no, the supervisor is on his way.
  Well, what the supervisor was really doing was waiting for the police 
to arrive. They called the police to come and arrest me. Very 
interesting--you are arrested for knocking on the door and asking to 
have a supervisor talk to you? Well, they didn't arrest me. They hadn't 
actually formally asked me to leave the property, but they certainly 
weren't going to let me inside to see what was going on or even talk to 
me about what they were doing.
  The immigration advocates have said: We have heard a rumor that 
possibly up to 1,000 young boys have been stuffed into that Walmart. I 
thought, that is not possible. As I was standing there and talking to 
the press, I repeated that. I thought, I shouldn't say this. I 
shouldn't say this because that is so outlandish. Surely no 
administration would try to stuff 1,000 boys into one building.
  So I was refused entry. I brought attention to this scandalous child-
separation strategy--this strategy of deliberately inflicting trauma on 
children in order to send a political message. No one in the world can 
justify inflicting trauma on children to send a political message. It 
is not acceptable under any moral code. It is not acceptable under any 
religious tradition. But the dark heart of this administration had 
hatched this evil plan, and it was being implemented.
  I went back 2 weeks later, on June 14, and I went back with 
reinforcements--other Members of Congress. We went to that facility, 
and this time they granted a waiver and said: Yes, you may see what is 
going on. They allowed the press in as well. So we went in for a tour.
  I asked ``How many boys are here?'' thinking, at most a couple 
hundred.
  They said: Well, we are now ready to put 1,500 boys in this facility, 
and we are one busload short of filling it.
  I think they said there were 1,467 residents in this one building.
  They took me out to the outside area, where they had set up a soccer 
field. They said: Isn't this wonderful? We have a soccer field.
  Imagine how long it takes for nearly 1,500 young boys to circulate 
through a soccer field.
  They took me to a game room, and there was a broken Foosball machine. 
I thought, how long does it take 1,500 boys to circulate through a 
single broken Foosball machine? Maybe there were a couple of them; I 
remember seeing one. They were very proud that they had this soccer 
field and this game room.
  I said: You know, you expanded so fast. At the beginning of the year, 
how many boys did you have?
  They said: Well, we planned for 300. We had 300 bedrooms and 300 
boys.
  They said that 2 months ago, they had increased to 500, and now they 
have 1,500 or almost 1,500.
  I asked: This rapid expansion--did you plan carefully for this?
  They said: Oh, yes.
  I said: Was there anything that you needed that you fell short on?
  The director of Southwest Key said: Yes. We don't have mental health 
counselors, or at least we are short.
  I said: How many are you short?
  They said: Ninety mental health counselors.
  Ninety? Wow. That is a big shortfall. Realize that these boys were 
fleeing persecution from overseas. So they had experienced trauma in 
their lives abroad, they probably experienced trauma en route, and now 
they are experiencing the trauma of being ripped away from their 
families and shuttled off to this warehouse. Yet there was no plan to 
have the mental health counselors needed for this population. This is 
one feature of the incompetence and callousness of this administration 
in implementing this policy.
  Public outcry was significant. I thank all Americans who participated 
in that public outcry, saying that this is not our America--
criminalizing a flight from persecution, locking people up while they 
await asylum hearings--

[[Page S6784]]

that is not our America and you must stop. The courts said the same 
thing because it is actually illegal to lock up children for more than 
20 days under the Flores consent agreement.
  So President Trump sent a message. He sent an Executive order titled 
``Affording Congress an Opportunity to Address Family Separation.'' Oh, 
how nice. The President is giving us an opportunity to address family 
separation. And what did the President ask for in that Executive order? 
He asked for us to pass a law to overrule the Flores consent agreement 
and allow the administration to establish family internment camps. 
Imagine--family internment camps here in the United States. That is 
what the President was asking for, that is exactly what the House of 
Representatives passed, and that is exactly what 35 Members of this 
body have signed on to cosponsor--family internment camps in the United 
States of America. That is absolutely wrong, it is absolutely 
unacceptable, and it is absolutely unneeded.
  You may say: Wait. You are saying that the children shouldn't be 
separated from their parents and that you shouldn't lock up families 
together, so what do you propose, Senator Merkley? What do you propose 
that we do?
  Well, the answer is, we had a very good program. It was called the 
Family Case Management Program. This Family Case Management Program 
said that when a family comes and is seeking asylum, they will be 
placed into the community and they will have intensive case management 
with somebody who speaks and writes their language, an individual who 
is in continuous contact with them, who makes sure they know exactly 
when their check-ins are and how to attend them and who knows exactly 
when the court hearing is and how to get to those court hearings.
  So I wondered, did this work? How well did this program work? It 
turns out that there is an inspector general report from Homeland 
Security that came out--I think the date was November 30, 2017. Here is 
what the inspector general found: ``According to ICE, overall program 
compliance for all five regions is an average of 99 percent for ICE 
check-ins and appointments, as well as 100 percent attendance at court 
hearings.'' So 100 percent--you can't get better than that. The Family 
Case Management Program--the inspector general under this 
administration said that there was 100 percent attendance at court 
hearings. So if you hear a Member of the Senate say ``Well, we are 
concerned about this catch-and-release because people don't show up for 
their hearings,'' that is a lie. That is inaccurate.
  That is inaccurate. If you hear the President saying, well, we are 
going to lock families up if they don't appear for their court 
hearings, that is inaccurate. That is a lie. The inspector general of 
this administration found 100 percent attendance at court hearings.
  Fortunately, Members of this body have come to their senses and 
rejected the language from the House establishing internment camps, 
expanding them, authorizing them. Fortunately, Members of the Senate 
have come to their senses and abandoned their effort--for now, at 
least--to establish permission, authorization, and funding for 
internment camps, as well they should because it doesn't fit the vision 
of America: a nation where most of us are the children of immigrants, 
if not immigrants ourselves; a nation where in our family tree we have 
individuals who fled persecution, religious persecution, who fled 
famine, who fled conflict to be welcomed by the vision of the Statue of 
Liberty.
  The story, unfortunately, doesn't end here. The President has now 
issued a draft regulation. That draft regulation says we in the 
executive branch are granting ourselves the authority to establish 
internment camps without permission or direction from Congress.
  Are you kidding me? A lengthy regulation designed to authorize 
themselves, without Congress acting, to establish family internment 
camps is totally out of sync with the traditions of America, with the 
values of America, or the law as it exists under the Flores consent 
agreement.
  Let me put this as simply as I can: Children belong in homes and 
playgrounds and schools. They don't belong behind barbed wire. I will 
fight as fiercely as I possibly can any proposal to put children behind 
barbed wire as they wait their asylum hearing. It is wrong. It is 
morally wrong. It is, from a policy perspective, totally unjustified, 
as was child separation.
  That is why I am introducing the No Internment Camps Act. Let us not 
repeat the mistakes of World War II. This act ensures that no Federal 
dollars will be used for the operation and construction of family 
internment camps. It creates a 1-year phaseout of three family 
detention centers currently in operation, and it saves money from the 
family detention centers and transfers it to the Alternatives to 
Detention Program in order to reestablish the Family Case Management 
Program--the program that had a 100-percent success rate in getting 
people to their hearings. Put money into programs that work, not into 
prisons that afflict children.
  There are many groups that have said how important this is and have 
endorsed the no internment camps legislation: Japanese American 
Citizens League, Human Rights Watch, Asian Americans Advancing Justice, 
Women's Refugee Commission, the Anti-Defamation League, the Asian 
Pacific American Network of Oregon, the American Immigration Lawyers 
Association of Oregon, Human Rights First, the Leadership Conference on 
Civil and Human Rights, Karen Korematsu, the daughter of Fred 
Korematsu, the lead plaintiff in the Supreme Court case that challenged 
Japanese internment camps in World War II.
  Let us put an end to the prospect of the administration expanding on 
its own, through Executive order, internment camps in the United 
States. Let's do so by passing the No Internment Camps Act.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas.