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In a packed press conference Monday held mere feet from the U.S./Mexico border near San Diego, a delegation of House Democrats grew emotional as they described visiting several detention facilities filled with jailed migrants torn apart by the Trump administration’s brutal family separation policy. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and more than a dozen members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus said they had met detained kids as young as six years old as well as spoken with anguished parents, one of whom had only been able to speak with her son once in the past month after he was shipped off to New York.
It’s a policy, Leader Pelosi stressed, “that can be changed in a moment” by Donald Trump. Instead, Trump spent the day blaming Democrats for his own monstrous creation.
For their part, House Democrats said the Trump administration has torn an estimated 2,000 kids from parents since Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III announced the policy last month. While many kids are being held in a former Walmart in Texas run by Southwest Key, a smaller group are being detained at a smaller facility visited by the House Democrats earlier Monday. Currently, 62 kids ranging from six to 17 years old, are at the El Cajon facility, including separated kids and children who arrived unaccompanied, or without parents. The facility, members said, has two separate areas where girls are detained.
Members stressed that the overburdened staff supervising children were “doing the best they can,” but that jailed children are still jailed children due to the barbaric policy that Sessions has attempted to justify using the Bible. California Congressman Juan Vargas, who helped lead the delegation, slammed Sessions’ bastardization of scripture in order to kidnap and jail kids. “Where in the Bible does it say we have to separate parents?” he questioned. “It doesn’t. You’re using the Bible to do something immoral.”
Democrats repeatedly stressed that Trump could stop the policy as quickly as he started it. The administration has, in a matter of days, both claimed that the policy doesn’t exist and that it does exist, but it’s the fault of the Democrats. This is a lie.
"It's up to President Trump to own the fact that he made this policy,” California Congresswoman Judy Chu, chair of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus, rebutted. “Trump started this and he can end this."
It’s a policy that has left migrant parents in unspeakable anguish. There have been reports of one baby being torn from her mother’s arms while breastfeeding, while other parents have been told their children are going to take a shower, only to realize they aren’t coming back.
The delegation also visited a second detention facility holding detained adults, some of whom “didn’t get a chance to say goodbye” to their kids, according to attorney and California Congresswoman Nanette Barragán.
“That’s injustice,” she blasted, “and others not knowing where their kids are, and what’s happening, and ‘how can you help connect me, or tell me what is going on?’ These are some of the kind of conversations I had today with three of the mothers in these facilities who have been separated from their kids. And I’ll say one more thing. When we first got there, we were told no one in this facility has been separated from their kids. To which I said, ‘not true, because I represent three of the mothers.’ And all of a sudden the number changed. How much other information did we get today that’s inaccurate?”
Those are questions Democrats all over the country have been trying to find the answers to. On Father’s Day, House Democrats Bill Pascrell of New Jersey and Hakeem Jeffries of New York led a delegation to a detention center in Elizabeth, New Jersey, refusing to budge until members were allowed inside. In Tornillo, Texas, Beto O’Rourke, who hopes to unseat Sen. Ted Cruz this fall, was among the participants in a march to the “tent city”—it’s a concentration camp—that will jail up to 500 separated kids. Also in Texas, former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro attempted to leave toys at a McAllen facility where kids are initially processed. He was blocked.
Pelosi stressed that both Democrats and outraged Americans must “keep persisting” in ending this immoral and barbaric policy, adding that she believes Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen “should resign” now. “This is not an immigration issue,” Pelosi continued. “This is a humanitarian issue. It’s about the children.”