[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 120 (Wednesday, July 17, 2019)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4918-S4920]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                  STOP CRUELTY TO MIGRANT CHILDREN ACT

  Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, tonight I am rising to talk about 
legislation that I have introduced that now has 40 Senators sponsoring 
it. It is called the Stop Cruelty to Migrant Children Act.
  I think all of us in America have seen so many stories of refugee 
children being treated in a horrific manner at the border or beyond the 
border in a system of child migrant prisons.
  Just recently, we have had the story about 3-year old Sofia and her 
parents--Tania and Joseph--proceeded to experience horrific 
circumstances in which a gang killed Tania's mother and her sister-in-
law. A note was posted on the door that they would be killed, that they 
had 45 minutes to leave. I imagine all of us would flee with our 
children under those circumstances.
  They made it to the border of the United States. They did get through 
an initial hearing which is designed to determine if there is credible 
fear of return, and that sets the stage then for an asylum hearing.
  But we are shipping folks back into Mexico to await that asylum 
hearing. In this case, the little girl in the family--she has a heart 
problem, and she had suffered a heart attack--a 3-year old girl--yet we 
sent that family back into Mexico without friends, without family, 
without funds.
  It is only because a Member of Congress heard about it--a Member in 
the House, Congresswoman Escobar--and intervened, that the little girl 
was allowed to remain in the United States. Even then, the 
administration said you--the little girl, the 3-year old--you have to 
choose between which parent will be in the U.S. and which one will be 
sent back without funds, family, and friends into Mexico with the rest 
of the children.
  It is a horrific situation to split the family in this process, 
horrific to ask a little girl to have to decide who would be in the 
safety of the U.S. and which parent would be sent back into very 
dangerous territory across the border. This is just one example out of 
thousands.

  President John F. Kennedy said: ``This country has always served as a 
lantern in the dark for those who love freedom but are persecuted, in 
misery, or in need.''
  If President Kennedy were speaking today, he couldn't say those words 
because today our country, under the current leadership, is not 
conducting itself in a manner that serves as a ``lantern in the dark 
for those who love freedom but are persecuted, in misery, or in need.''
  Instead, we have a new policy. It is a policy that was articulated by 
John Kelly just weeks after the administration took office. The policy 
was that if we inflict pain and suffering on refugees, it will deter 
immigration. The strategy of deliberately inflicting pain on refugees 
is not supportable under any moral code, under any religious tradition, 
or under any system of ethics.
  Shortly after John Kelly, who was then head of Homeland Security, 
expressed this, there was a reaction. This was in the early months of 
2017. As a result, they took the program underground for a little more 
than a year, until June of 2018, when then-Attorney General Jeff 
Sessions gave a speech called ``Zero Tolerance.'' Six months out from 
an election, it is not unusual to have an Attorney General give a 
speech in which getting tough on crime is emphasized. But as you read 
the details of that speech, you realize this wasn't about getting tough 
on crime. This was about returning explicitly to the vision that John 
Kelly had laid out originally of tormenting refugees in order to 
discourage immigration. That is a whole different thing. It is not zero 
tolerance; it is zero humanity.
  Every one of us can picture relatives coming to this country and to 
this border and would want them to be treated with respect and decency 
as they pursue asylum.
  Most people do not win their asylum hearings. The rate of success is 
different in different districts. In some, it is 15 percent. In some, 
it is 20 percent. In some, it is 30 percent. But the burden of proof is 
on the refugee. The burden of proof is difficult to establish, so most 
people do not succeed if they do not have extensive evidence to make 
their case on the fear of return.
  The initial hearing is easy in the sense that you simply have to 
assert that you have a credible fear based on your story, but in the 
asylum hearing, you have to prove it. You carry the burden of proof. Is 
it too much for us to continue the vision of treating those fleeing war 
and those fleeing famine, those fleeing conflict and violence--is it 
too much for this America that we love to treat them with decency and 
respect as they go through the adjudication process for asylum? It is 
not. In fact, that has been the vision of America; that has been the 
process in America to say that if you are truly fleeing these horrific 
circumstances, then we light a torch to shine your way forward.
  I cannot understand how it is possible that the administration 
persists in this strategy of traumatizing children. It starts at the 
border, where Customs and Border Protection has been instructed to set 
up a blockade and block children who arrive right at the line on the 
middle of the pedestrian bridge or the pathway and then block them from 
entering while they call up Mexican officials to come and drag them 
away.
  I saw this down in McAllen a year ago June. Three CBP officers were 
stretching across the bridge. Anyone who did not have a passport or a 
visa was sent back into Mexico in violation of international law and 
our domestic law. I asked why we would do this to refugees fleeing 
persecution. Basically, the answer was this: We are too busy. We are 
too crowded.
  The only thing was, there was no crowding, not at that time. There 
was no crowding at all. The interview rooms were empty. The processing 
center at McAllen was empty. It was simply a strategy of slamming the 
door shut.

[[Page S4919]]

  For these families sent back across the border without friends and 
family and extension funds to support them, it is very dangerous across 
the border. This is happening with children at Tijuana. I was told of 
numerous circumstances where unaccompanied children would come to the 
border, and they would be blocked at the entry, and then the CBP would 
say: Well, we can't let you step across that line until we consult with 
the manager. Then the U.S. side would call up the Mexican side to come 
drag these kids away.
  I got a phone call. I was in my office here, working late at night. I 
think it was about 11 p.m. at night. I got a phone call from a group 
that has helped escort children. They said: We have three French-
speaking children on the border in Tijuana. They are at the line with 
the U.S. gate, and the U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer is 
blocking them from stepping across that line, and they are very worried 
because if the Mexican officials come and apprehend them, they could be 
sent back to the horrific circumstances--the life-and-death challenges 
that they were fleeing from.
  I had spoken previously to the head of that sector. I had a phone 
conversation, and he said: No, our policy is to facilitate the 
movement. Our instructions to our officers are to facilitate the 
children in crossing that line as if they were our own children.
  I said: Well, do you have training for this, because I keep hearing 
reports of the blockade at the border.
  He said: Yes, we have musters.
  I said: Well, do you have training documents that say that it is your 
policy to treat these kids as if they were your own and facilitate 
bringing them across?
  He said: Yes, absolutely.
  The Legislative Affairs Director cut in on the phone call to say: I 
will have that for you tomorrow. I will have those for you tomorrow.
  We are still waiting for those documents. I don't know that they 
exist. I don't know that the training exists. What I do know is that 
after I had that conversation, I got a call from the border with this 
volunteer group, and they had these three French children who were 
being denied entry. I asked the volunteer who was with the children--I 
said: Hand your phone to the American officer. I will explain the 
conversation I had with the head of the sector and the policies that he 
says are in place and the training that is supposed to be in place that 
says you are supposed to treat these children as if they were your own 
and facilitate their passage across the border.

  The CBP officer said: No, I am not talking to a U.S. Senator. I will 
talk only to the President of the United States.
  I said: Turn on the loud speaker on the phone. Hold your phone up so 
that they can hear what I am saying.
  I told them the same thing--that I had met with their supervisors for 
the sector, and their bosses had said: These are the guidelines. Your 
guidance is to treat these children who are in front of you as if they 
were your own and to facilitate their passage across that line to 
safety and not leave them stranded in Tijuana.
  Realize that being stranded in Tijuana for any child is horrific. 
Imagine it is your child. Whether your child is 17 or whether your 
child is 5, Tijuana is an incredibly dangerous place. There are all 
kinds of sex industry operators there who thrive on pulling little kids 
and teenagers into that sex industry. Do you want your child there with 
no friends and family or funds on the street in that setting? There are 
gangs who prey on the children who are on the street. Do you want your 
children in that setting? No, of course you would never want them left 
in that situation.
  This border blockade is the first piece of traumatizing children to 
discourage immigration. It is morally wrong, and it needs to end.
  Then there is the metering program. Basically, metering says that if 
you come to the border, we will not let you cross. But if you come the 
following day to a square near the border, there will be a book, and 
you can put your name in the book and get on a wait list. That is 
called metering.
  So I went to the square in Tijuana where this is done to watch the 
metering process. People arrive with the book, and they place it on a 
little table under a little canopy. They start calling out names. That 
day, the United States was taking about 30 people, and when all of the 
spaces were full, that was it.
  Then everyone else on the wait list is waiting. If I recall right, 
the wait had been about 6 or 7 weeks for people to be able to get just 
a credible fear interview, which is the very first step. Realize that a 
credible fear interview is not complicated. It can be done 
expeditiously. It means 6 to 7 weeks with no money on the streets of 
some hostile city across the border.
  I want to show you a picture that perhaps you have seen. It is a 
picture that deeply, profoundly disturbs me. This is a father and 
little girl swimming the Rio Grande. They didn't just try to swim the 
Rio Grande. They came to a port of entry of the United States of 
America. They did what the President of the United States, President 
Trump, said to do. They came to the port of entry, and they asked for 
asylum. They were metered and sent back to Mexico to fend for 
themselves for who knows how long--as long as the wait list ends.
  It is dangerous to have a mother, a little girl, or a father on the 
streets of a hostile city. If you wouldn't send your child into that, 
if you wouldn't send your sister and your sister's child into it, then 
we shouldn't be sending others into this perilous circumstance. It is 
so perilous there, and you have no way to even buy food. You certainly 
don't have money for a hotel. You have been stripped of your funds 
during your journey. You fled suddenly to begin with and probably 
didn't have resources on the front end of the journey. So what do you 
do? You say: Well, I can starve and be beaten up--or who knows what 
horrific treatment here--or I can go and cross between the ports of 
entry and ask for asylum.
  That is what they did. It was because they were rejected at the port 
of entry--the very place President Trump said to come--that they lie 
dead on the banks of the Rio Grande, trying to get out of the 
incredibly hostile situation across the border. This is the deliberate 
infliction of trauma, and for every situation like this, there are 
life-and-death decisions.
  This is not the end of it.
  Let's say they had made it across the border and had been taken into 
a processing center. What would happen in those processing centers? 
Well, in the first one I went to in McAllen, there wasn't room to sit 
down. There certainly wasn't room to lie down. You had little kids in 
there who were crying and mothers who were crying, and the fathers were 
in cells that were across the aisle on the other side. They were 
holding these Mylar blankets. There were no cushions on the ground, and 
there were lights left on all night long.
  We have heard the reports of all of the various things we have done 
to children in these processing centers--of our not providing diapers, 
showers, soap; of our making it difficult for them to go to the 
bathroom; of our making it difficult for them to get water; of our not 
providing three meals a day; and of our not providing medical aid.
  What kind of country treats children in this manner? Who does this 
with our tax money, on our land, and by our government? This is more 
than wrong. This is cruel. This is evil. This is the depth of darkness 
to treat children in this fashion. That is why 40 of us have introduced 
this Stop Cruelty to Migrant Children Act. The processing center isn't 
the end of it.
  Then we have a for-profit prison in Homestead that is paid $750 a day 
on a no-compete contract. Who is on the board of that? He is the same 
John Kelly who started the child separation strategy in March of 2017 
and who then served as the President's Chief of Staff. He is paid to be 
on the board of a for-profit. He is paid to lock up children. It is the 
largest child prison in American history.
  Now, if some other country had wanted to throw children back across 
the border into hostile circumstances, if some other country had set up 
a metering program that had left children vulnerable for weeks before 
their initial credible hearings, if some other country had proceeded to 
put children into holding cells and kept the lights on all night and 
had given them no mattresses to lie on and had not supplied

[[Page S4920]]

diapers, hygenics, food and water, or medical treatment as appropriate, 
and if some other country had locked up children in a child prison that 
had been built to a capacity of 3,200 children at a for-profit and had 
had no incentive to pass the children on to State-licensed care 
facilities or to sponsors with homes, we would have 100 Senators down 
here on this floor, saying we have to stop this because we stand up for 
children in the United States of America.
  So what I want to know is: How come there aren't 100 Senators down 
here today, standing up against this type of treatment? I invite all 
100 of my colleagues to join this bill to stop cruelty to migrant 
children.
  I was struck by some of the comments by the kids who were being held 
down in Clint.
  A 12-year-old boy said:

       I'm hungry here at Clint all the time. I'm so hungry that I 
     awaken in the middle of the night with hunger. Sometimes I 
     wake up from hunger at 4 a.m. and sometimes at other hours.

  A mother recounted that when she asked for medicine for her son's 
fever, an agent retorted: ``Who told you to come to America with your 
baby anyway?'' How about, instead, we get help for the child who has a 
fever.
  There are children being held in cages, children being marched in 
single lines between Army-style huts, children who have been inflicted 
with trauma through child separation, children who have been locked up 
in a for-profit prison that has no incentive to move children to State-
licensed facilities. In fact, it is the opposite. It is by a company 
that got a no-compete contract. Who is on the board? He is the former 
Chief of Staff to President Trump.
  So what does this bill do?
  It ensures that children are not thrown back across the border when 
they come up to the border of the United States. It ensures that 
children receive prompt medical assistance. Many children have died 
from fever. By just using a simple device to check the fever, it would 
enable you to know if this child needs additional help. It would ensure 
that basic hygiene and three meals a day are provided. It would allow 
for more caseworkers to be hired to help children to be moved quickly 
to State-licensed facilities or to homes, and homes are really where 
they should be while they await asylum. Children belong in schools and 
homes and on playgrounds, not behind barbed wire in a for-profit prison 
that is designed to hold 3,200 people down in Homestead, FL. This bill 
would prohibit that devilish, misdirected strategy of paying for and 
incentivizing the imprisonment of children.
  Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., said: ``Our lives begin to end the day 
we become silent about things that matter.''
  I hear a lot of silence in this Chamber on the horrific treatment of 
children. Let's have a little less silence and a little more advocacy. 
Let's have 100 Senators sign up for the Stop Cruelty to Migrant 
Children Act. America is better than the way we have been treating 
these children. I give thanks to all 40 Senators who have signed on to 
this legislation.
  In our hearts, I think it is fundamentally understood that 
deliberately traumatizing children in order to discourage immigration 
is wrong. We have a responsibility to end it.
  Thank you.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alaska.

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