Madam Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 466 and ask for its immediate consideration. Madam Speaker, I claim time in opposition to the point of order. Madam…
Madam Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 466 and ask for its immediate consideration.
Madam Speaker, I claim time in opposition to the point of order.
Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Madam Speaker, what we are trying to do here is bring a bill to the floor to help alleviate the suffering of children who, in my opinion, have been abused under U.S. custody at our border. Everybody has read the news articles and everybody has seen the pictures. We have a moral obligation to move forward. To try to delay consideration of a bill to help these children I think is a mistake.
Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Madam Speaker, I am surprised that my colleagues on the Republican side hold this institution in such low esteem. We are the House of Representatives. Our voice matters.
On this issue, the House voted first on a measure to try to help provide some assistance to these children at the border. Then the Senate passed a different version. The way it is supposed to work is we have a negotiation and we try to come to agreement and come up with a compromise bill. So the idea that somehow we don't matter in the House, that we shouldn't matter in the House, that we should just accept whatever the Senate does, to me, I find
that disrespectful of the House of Representatives.
What we are doing is we are sending the Senate basically all that they want, plus we are adding things to help protect children and to provide for more transparency. We are strengthening requirements for children's health. We are tightening restrictions for children's safety. We are supporting nonprofits in communities caring for children's well-being. I mean, we are embracing compassionate processing for children's comfort. Again, we are enhancing accountability in transparency and mandating fiscal responsibility.
Who can possibly be opposed to those things? That is what we are trying to do. We are trying to insist that the House's voice matters, and we are trying to make the Senate bill even better.
Again, what motivates us here is the well-being of these children. We are here because we are for the children. We are here because we are outraged at the way they have been mistreated by this administration. We are tired of excuses as to why we can't protect the children. We are moving forward with legislation that will protect the children against any abuse at our border.
Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
Madam Speaker, I am a little confused. My Republican friends say they want to delay things to have a CBO score, then they say they want to get something to the President's desk right away. They can talk all they want about a CBO score; we are going to talk about the children.
It is an emergency, and what is happening to these children on the border is unconscionable. It should weigh heavily on the hearts of every single person in this Chamber--Democrats and Republicans, alike.
Enough is enough. We need to make sure that we not only provide the necessary resources to alleviate this crisis, but we need to make sure that those resources we provide are provided in such a way that they do go to the purposes that we want them to go to.
And as far as the Department of Defense money, I mean, the bottom line is this administration has been diverting funds from the Department of Defense for this stupid wall, and they have created that crisis.
The bottom line is we are here for the children, and, again, I urge my colleagues to stop the bickering and get down to business. Let us pass this rule; let us go on to pass the legislation; and let us get a deal with the Senate that is better than what is on the table right now.
Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
Madam Speaker, I am really puzzled here. Why is it that the Senate can say no, but the House can't say no to something? Why is it that we always have to do what the Senate wants?
If the gentleman is so enamored with the Senate, maybe he should work over in the Senate.
But the bottom line is, those of us in the House deserve to have our voices heard, and what we are saying here is that we want to provide a bill that will alleviate this crisis, that will help the children.
I will not yield. I do not have enough time to yield.
Madam Speaker, I would like us to make sure we provide resources to the border that actually alleviate the crisis.
I do not want to be part of an effort to send money to the border to be diverted for whatever this President wants. He has shown us where he is on this issue of the children and on the issue of immigration. And, quite frankly, many of us on this side of the aisle--and, I think, some on the other side of the aisle--are offended by that.
So we want to make sure, when we say we are providing relief to this crisis that is affecting so many children, that, in fact, we are providing relief to those children. And that is all we are saying here.
Madam Speaker, strengthening requirements for children's health, why would anybody in the Senate want to be opposed to that?
Tightening restrictions for children's safety, people are dying in our custody. We should want to prevent that from ever occurring again by supporting nonprofits and community caring for children's well- being.
Madam Speaker, this stuff is something that should not be controversial no matter how you look at it, and yet it is for my Republican friends, and I regret that very much.
Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
Madam Speaker, let me remind my colleagues, this is not the House bill that passed. This is a compromise that we have moved forward.
And, again, here is what my friends are saying is partisan: that we put into this bill that for children's health we must ensure a higher standard for medical care, nutrition, and hygiene. That is what they are calling partisan. That is what they are saying, oh, it is awful, we can't move forward on that.
The bill we are putting forward, this compromise bill, will meet the needs of the children. That is all that it does. So I don't know why we in the House can't, in a bipartisan way, stand together and say: Look, we want to improve on what the Senate did, and we want to guarantee that the moneys we send actually go to help the children and not get diverted to other things like we know this administration has a habit of doing.
Madam Speaker, anybody who has seen the pictures in the newspapers recently, anybody who has read the news articles, again, our hearts should ache.
This is not America. This is not what our country is about. We can do much, much better, and that is why we should move forward with consideration.
Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Madam Speaker, my colleagues have seen the pictures and they have heard the stories. And if that is not convincing to them to move forward, to increase protections for children who are held in our custody, then I don't know what else to say.
What we are asking for here in this compromise bill that we are moving forward is to make sure that there are stronger protections in here, to make sure that the abuse that we have all read about and that we have all seen stops and never, ever happens again. That is what this is all about.
So I am at a loss because, to me, the evidence is overwhelming that we need to provide stronger protections for these children. If my colleagues disagree, then they can vote against the bill and against consideration, but I would urge all of my colleagues to vote ``yes'' so that we can move forward with this rule in consideration of this bill and get this passed as soon as possible and get on to either urging the Senate to pass it or to continue in negotiation, but we can do better than the Senate bill.
Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Cole), the ranking member of the Rules Committee, pending which I yield myself such time as I may consume. During consideration of this resolution, all time yielded is for the purpose of debate only.
General Leave
Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks.
Mr. Speaker, today the Rules Committee met and reported a rule, House Resolution 466, providing for consideration of the Senate amendment to H.R. 3401. One hour of general debate has been provided, controlled by the chair and ranking minority member of the Committee on Appropriations.
Mr. Speaker, I think, by now, we all have seen the horrific images showing the bodies of Oscar Alberto Martinez Ramirez and his nearly 2- year-old daughter, Valeria. They were taken on Monday as these Salvadoran migrants tried to cross the Rio Grande after leaving a Mexican migrant camp. Like so many others, they were exercising their legal right to seek asylum here in the United States. They wanted to be free from the violence, gangs, poverty, and inequality that is rampant in El Salvador, just as it is all across Central America.
I visited El Salvador and I visited Honduras recently, and, Mr. Speaker, I saw the unbearable conditions with my own eyes. It is no wonder that organizations like the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime have said this and other Central American countries are more dangerous than Afghanistan and only slightly better than Syria.
Syria, Mr. Speaker, is the site of an ongoing civil war. Let that sink in for a moment.
But, unfortunately, Alberto and Valeria didn't survive their journey. Alberto's wife, Tania, was forced to watch in horror as a current washed her family away.
I am telling their story today because this is what migrants face as they risk their lives to come to this country--not to transport drugs, not to commit crimes, as the President suggests, but to find refuge, to raise their daughter in a safe place, and to have a chance at building a better life, a life that they could only find in America.
Isn't this what each of us wants for our own families?
They came to present themselves at a legal port of entry and to seek legal asylum, as is their right under U.S. law.
And they weren't the only ones to die. Just this past weekend, Border Patrol agents found four more bodies in the river west of Brownsville, Texas: three more young children and a young woman in her twenties.
Every single week, people drown in the river and perish in the deserts, invisible and unknown.
It wasn't too long ago that we celebrated how immigration made our country stronger, whether it was a Democratic or a Republican administration.
I am reminded of President Reagan's final speech in office, where he said:
Anybody, from any corner of the world, can come to America
to live and become an American. This, I believe, is one of
the most important sources of America's greatness.
But, Mr. Speaker, the Trump administration apparently has the complete opposite view of immigration. They don't celebrate it; they demonize it.
Consider what may have happened to Oscar and his family if they did make it to our border, forced to sleep on concrete floors with the lights on 24 hours a day, with no soap, no medicine, maybe not even a toothbrush, Valeria separated from her parents, because that is what migrants are forced to endure at border facilities under this President.
A physician who visited one recently said: ``The conditions within which they are held could be compared to torture facilities.''
Mr. Speaker, when Lady Liberty encourages us to give her our poor, huddled masses, I don't think she means so the administration can turn around and throw them in a cage. I don't think she lifts her torch so their legal plight could be criminalized and crying children could be ripped from the arms of their parents.
But that is what is happening under this President, and, Mr. Speaker, it is sickening. It should tear at the hearts of every single Member of this House, whether they are Democrats or Republicans.
This week, the House passed bipartisan emergency legislation to address this humanitarian crisis at the border. The Senate had its own ideas. So, today, we are back with a compromise to get a bill quickly signed into law.
This is a compromise that lives up to our core values and protects children and families. It adds critical protections for children who were included in the House version of the bill. It includes language to improve care for children by forcing influx facilities to comply with the Flores settlement and capping, at 90 days, the amount of time a child can spend in such a facility.
We are also reducing funding for ICE, while rejecting additional and unnecessary dollars for the Pentagon.
This is a crisis, Mr. Speaker. We cannot treat compromise as though it is a dirty word, not when migrants are literally losing their lives in unsafe, unhealthy, and unsanitary conditions and children are being torn apart from their families. That is what is at stake here.
The horrors at detention centers shouldn't get lost in the latest tweet-a-thon by the President, just as the plight of migrants shouldn't go unseen by the American people. This should shake our conscience and make clear the urgent need to act.
Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support this rule and the underlying bill, and let's send a message to the President and to the world that America is better than this. This is not who we are, what is happening at our border.
Mr. Speaker, I would just say one final thing. In the compromise package today that seems to bother so many people are merely items that would protect the well-being of these children, that would provide more transparency. For the life of me, I don't understand the controversy. I don't understand why we can't make the Senate bill better, why we can't do more for these children.
I know my colleagues on the other side of the aisle feel as we do, that what is happening is unacceptable. Let us strengthen that bill. Let us actually give a bill to the President that we all know will help these children.
Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
Madam Speaker, I do not yield for that purpose. All time yielded is for the purpose of debate only.
Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
I want to assure the distinguished minority leader that I am not asking Members of Congress to vote for what we are bringing before the House today based on their party. I am asking Members to vote their conscience.
And to be totally frank, we want to make sure there are protections built in this legislation so that funds are not misused as they have been in the past; so we don't see any more children being abused; so we don't see the mismanagement that we have witnessed.
With all due respect to the Senate majority leader, and to many of my friends on the other side of the aisle, when children were being ripped apart from their parents, we heard silence. When we read about the terrible conditions that these children were in, being denied soap, and toothpaste, and toothbrushes, and not being cared for, we heard silence.
When we saw the picture of Oscar and Valeria dead, trying to seek asylum in this country, there is nothing.
So the bottom line is, we want to get this done, and we will stay here as long as it takes, I assure the minority leader. We are not going anywhere.
But we are going to stand for the children, and that is what our purpose is here today.
Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Pennsylvania (Ms. Scanlon), a distinguished member of the Rules Committee.
I yield the gentlewoman from Pennsylvania an additional 30 seconds.
Madam Speaker, I include in the Record two articles, one from The New York Times entitled: `` `There is a Stench': Soiled Clothes and No Baths for Migrant Children at a Texas Center''; the other, `` `The Taliban Gave Me Toothpaste': Former Captives Contrast U.S. Treatment of Child Migrants.''
[From the New York Times, June 21, 2019]
`There Is a Stench': Soiled Clothes and No Baths for Migrant Chidren at
a Texas Center
(By Caitlin Dickerson)
A chaotic scene of sickness and filth is unfolding in an
overcrowded border station in Clint, Tex., where hundreds of
young people who have recently crossed the border are being
held, according to lawyers who visited the facility this
week. Some of the children have been there for nearly a
month.
Children as young as 7 and 8, many of them wearing clothes
caked with snot and tears, are caring for infants they've
just met, the lawyers said. Toddlers without diapers are
relieving themselves in their pants. Teenage mothers are
wearing clothes stained with breast milk.
Most of the young detainees have not been able to shower or
wash their clothes since they arrived at the facility, those
who visited said. They have no access to toothbrushes,
toothpaste or soap.
[Hundreds of migrant children have now been transferred out
of the facility.]
``There is a stench,'' said Elora Mukherjee, director of
the Immigrants' Rights Clinic at Columbia Law School, one of
the lawyers who visited the facility. ``The overwhelming
majority of children have not bathed since they crossed the
border.''
Conditions at Customs and Border Protection facilities
along the border have been an issue of increasing concern as
officials warn that the recent large influx of migrant
families has driven many of the facilities well past their
capacities. The border station in Clint is only one of those
with problems.
In May, the inspector general for the Department of
Homeland Security warned of ``dangerous overcrowding'' among
adult migrants housed at the border processing center in El
Paso, with up to 900 migrants being held at a facility
designed for 125. In some cases, cells designed for 35 people
were holding 155 people.
``Border Patrol agents told us some of the detainees had
been held in standing-room-only conditions for days or
weeks,'' the inspector general's office said in its report,
which noted that some detainees were observed standing on
toilets in the cells ``to make room and gain breathing space,
thus limiting access to the toilets.''
Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas on Friday announced the
deployment of 1,000 new National Guard troops to the border
to help respond to the continuing new arrivals, which the
governor said have amounted to more than 45,000 people from
52 countries over the past three weeks.
``The crisis at our southern border is unlike anything
we've witnessed before and has put an enormous strain on the
existing resources we have in place,'' Mr. Abbott said,
adding, ``Congress is a group of reprobates for not
addressing the crisis on our border.''
The number of border crossings appears to have slowed in
recent weeks, possibly as a result of a crackdown by the
Mexican government under pressure from President Trump, but
the numbers remain high compared to recent years. The
overcrowding crisis has been unfolding invisibly, with
journalists and lawyers offered little access to fenced-off
border facilities.
The reports of unsafe and unsanitary conditions at Clint
and elsewhere came days after government lawyers in court
argued that they should not have to provide soap or
toothbrushes to children under the legal settlement that gave
Ms. Mukherjee and her colleagues access to the facility in
Clint. The result of a lawsuit that was first settled in
1997, the settlement set the standards for the detention,
treatment and release of migrant minors taken into federal
immigration custody.
Ms. Mukherjee is part of a team of lawyers who has for
years under the settlement been allowed to inspect government
facilities where migrant children are detained. She and her
colleagues traveled to Clint this week after learning that
border officials had begun detaining minors who had recently
crossed the border there.
She said the conditions in Clint were the worst she had
seen in any facility in her 12-year career. ``So many
children are sick, they have the flu, and they're not being
properly treated,'' she said. The Associated Press, which
first reported on conditions at the facility earlier this
week, found that it was housing three infants, all with teen
mothers, along with a 1-year-old, two 2-year-olds and a 3-
year-old. It said there were dozens more children under the
age of 12.
Ms. Mukherjee said children were being overseen by guards
for Customs and Border Protection, which declined to comment
for this story. She and her colleagues observed the guards
wearing full uniforms--including weapons--as well as face
masks to protect themselves from the unsanitary conditions.
Together, the group of six lawyers met with 60 children in
Clint this week who ranged from 5 months to 17 years old. The
infants were either children of minor parents, who were also
detained, or had been separated from adult family members
with whom they had crossed the border. The separated children
were now alone, being cared for by other young detainees.
``The children are locked in their cells and cages nearly
all day long,'' Ms. Mukherjee said. ``A few of the kids said
they had some opportunities to go outside and play, but they
said they can't bring themselves to play because they are
trying to stay alive in there.''
When the lawyers arrived, federal officials said that more
than 350 children were detained at the facility. The
officials did not disclose the facility's capacity but said
the population had exceeded it. By the time the lawyers left
on Wednesday night, border officials told them that about 200
of the children had been transferred elsewhere but did not
say where they had been sent.
``That's what's keeping me up at night,'' Ms. Mukherjee
said.
Some sick children were being quarantined in the facility.
The lawyers were allowed to speak to the children by phone,
but their requests to meet with them in person and observe
the conditions they were being held in were denied.
The children told the lawyers they were given the same
meals every day--instant oats for breakfast, instant noodles
for lunch, a frozen burrito for dinner, along with a few
cookies and juice packets--which many said was not enough.
``Nearly every child I spoke with said that they were
hungry,'' Ms. Mukherjee said.
Another group of lawyers conducting inspections under the
same federal court settlement said they discovered similar
conditions earlier this month at six other facilities in
Texas. At the Border Patrol's Central Processing Center in
McAllen, Tex.--often known as ``Ursula''--the lawyers
encountered a 17-year-old mother from Guatemala who couldn't
stand because of complications from an emergency C-section,
and who was caring for a sick and dirty premature baby.
``When we encountered the baby and her mom, the baby was
filthy. They wouldn't give her any water to wash her. And I
took a Kleenex and I washed around her neck black dirt,''
said Hope Frye, who was leading the group, adding, ``Not a
little stuff--dirt.''
After government lawyers argued in the Ninth Circuit Court
of Appeals in San Francisco this week that amenities such as
soap and toothbrushes should not be mandated under the legal
settlement originally agreed to between the government and
migrant families in 1997 and amended several times since
then, all three judges voiced dismay.
Among the guidelines set under the legal settlement are
that facilities for children must be ``safe and sanitary.''
The Justice Department's lawyer, Sarah Fabian, argued that
the settlement agreement did not specify the need to supply
hygienic items and that, therefore, the government did not
need to do so.
``Are you arguing seriously that you do not read the
agreement as requiring you to do anything other than what I
just described: cold all night long, lights on all night
long, sleeping on concrete and you've got an aluminum foil
blanket?'' Judge William Fletcher asked Ms. Fabian. ``I find
that inconceivable that the government would say that is safe
and sanitary.''
Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Escobar).
Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. What we just witnessed was really interesting. In the amount of time that it took my friends on the other side of the aisle to get through those antics, we could have passed this bill. That is what urgency looks like. Not political theater. These kids that we are here to try to protect deserve more than grandstanding. They deserve things like medicine. They deserve things like soap and clothing.
And my Republican friends say they don't want to waste time, but they wasted a hell of a lot of time with what we just saw happen.
And just one other observation. In all the other editorial comments that were made, I didn't hear the word ``children'' mentioned once. I mean, it is telling, because that is what this debate is all about. It is not about grandstanding, and it is not about more money for cages to put kids in. It is about the children. And I am sorry that the children who are suffering under U.S. custody are such an afterthought.
And to the gentleman from Michigan, I am outraged, too. I am outraged that the terrible conditions that these kids have been forced to experience happened under U.S. custody. I am outraged that that would happen in the United States of America.
Madam Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Connecticut (Ms. DeLauro), the distinguished chairwoman of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies.
Madam Speaker, I yield the gentlewoman from Connecticut an additional 1 minute.
Madam Speaker, I include in the Record two articles: One from Vox, entitled, ``The Horrifying Conditions Facing Kids in Border Detention, Explained,'' and another from Time magazine, entitled, ``Lawyers Say Migrant Children Are Living in `Traumatic and Dangerous' Conditions at Border Detention Site.''
[From Vox, June 25, 2019]
The Horrifying Conditions Facing Kids in Border Detention, Explained
(By Dara Lind)
On any given day, 2,000 children are in Border Patrol
custody, and the problems are hardly confined to one
facility.
At any given time, for the past several weeks, more than
2,000 children have been held in the custody of US Border
Patrol without their parents. Legally, they're not supposed
to be held by border agents for more than 72 hours before
being sent to the Department of Health and Human Services,
which is responsible for finding their nearest relative in
the US to house them while their immigration cases are
adjudicated.
In practice, they're being held for days, sometimes weeks,
in facilities without enough food or toothbrushes--going days
without showering, overcrowded and undercared for.
Late last week, the conditions of that detention in one
facility in Clint, Texas, became public when investigators,
checking on the US government's obligations under the Flores
agreement (which governs the care of immigrant children in US
custody), were so horrified that they turned into public
whistleblowers and spoke to the Associated Press about what
they saw.
The stories they told have horrified much of America. The
past several days have seen growing outrage, and the acting
commissioner of Customs and Border Protection (which oversees
CBP) announced his resignation Tuesday (though officials
maintain the outrage didn't cause the resignation).
But the problem goes beyond one official--or one facility.
The story gained even wider traction after Rep. Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez's (D-NY) reference to the detention facilities
as ``concentration camps,'' and the ensuing debate over
whether that term was appropriate.
The US government's response was to move the children out
of the Clint facility--and move another group of children in.
On Monday, officials confirmed that all 350 of the children
there last week would be moved to other facilities by
Tuesday; about 250 of them have been placed with HHS, and the
remainder are being sent to other Border Patrol facilities.
But on Tuesday morning, a Customs and Border Protection
official told a New York Times reporter on a press call that
about a hundred children were currently being housed at
Clint.
That's illustrative of the hectic improvisation that's
characterized much of the Trump administration's response to
the current border influx. It's a problem that is much, much
bigger than the problems at a single facility. Indeed, the
problems investigators identified at Clint are problems
elsewhere as well.
The lone member of the team of legal investigators who
visited the El Paso facility in which many children were sent
from Clint--called ``Border Patrol Station 1''--told Vox that
conditions there were just as bad as they were in Clint, with
the same problems of insufficient food, no toothbrushes, and
aggressive guards.
The problem isn't the Clint facility. The problem is the
hastily-cobbled-together system of facilities Customs and
Border Protection (the agency which runs Border Patrol) has
thrown together in the last several months, as the
unprecedented number of families and children coming into the
US without papers has overwhelmed a system designed to
swiftly deport single adults.
It is apparent that even an administration acting with the
best interests of children in mind at every turn would be
scrambling right now. But policymakers are split on how much
of the current crisis is simply a resource problem--one
Congress could help by sending more resources--and how much
is deliberate mistreatment or neglect from an administration
that doesn't deserve any more money or trust.
Border Patrol isn't prepared to care for children at all.
It's now housing 2,000 a day.
According to statistics sent to congressional staff last
week and obtained by Vox, between May 14 and June 13, US
Border Patrol facilities were housing over 14,000 people a
day--and sometimes as many as 18,000. (The most recent tally,
as of June 13, was nearly 16,000.)
Most of these were single adults, or parents with children.
But consistently, over that month, around 2,000--2,081 as of
June 13--were ``unaccompanied alien children,'' or children
being held without adult relatives in separate facilities.
In an early June press call, a Customs and Border
Protection official said, referring to the total number of
people in custody, ``when we have 4,000 in custody, we
consider that high. 6,000 is a crisis.''
Traditionally, an ``unaccompanied alien child'' refers to a
child who comes to the US without a parent or guardian.
Increasingly--as lawyers have been reporting, and as the
investigators who interviewed children in detention last week
confirmed--children are coming to the US with a relative who
is not their parent, and being separated.
Because the law defines an ``unaccompanied'' child as
someone without a parent or legal guardian here, border
agents don't have the ability to keep a child with a
grandparent, aunt or uncle, or even a sibling who's over 18,
though advocates have also raised concerns that border agents
are separating relatives even when there is evidence of legal
guardianship.
Under the terms of US law--and especially the 1997 Flores
settlement, which governs the treatment of children in
immigration custody--immigration agents are obligated to get
unaccompanied children out of immigration detention as
quickly as possible, and to keep them in the least
restrictive conditions possible while they're there. Barring
emergencies, children aren't supposed to be
in Border Patrol custody for more than 72 hours before being
sent to HHS--which is responsible for finding and vetting a
sponsor to house the child (usually their closest relative in
the United States).
That hasn't been happening. Attorneys, doctors, and human
rights observers have consistently reported that children are
being held by Border Patrol for days or longer before being
picked up by HHS. And in the meantime, they're being kept in
facilities that weren't built to hold even adults for that
period of time, or in improvised ``soft-sided'' facilities
that look like (and are commonly referred to as) tents.
The detention conditions crisis doesn't just affect
children. But conditions for children are under special legal
scrutiny.
Since late last year, US immigration agents have been
overwhelmed by the number of families coming across the
border. The US immigration system, which was built to quickly
arrest and deport single Mexican adults crossing into the US
to work, doesn't have the capacity to deal with tens of
thousands of families (mostly from Central America) who are
often seeking asylum in the US.
The length of time migrants are spending in Border Patrol
custody (and the conditions there) have attracted some alarm
before. In April, pictures of migrants being held outside
under a bridge in El Paso, fenced in and sleeping on the
ground, attracted outrage and led Border Patrol to stop
holding migrants there. And in May, the DHS Office of the
Inspector General released an emergency report about
dangerous overcrowding of adults in two facilities: with up
to 900 people being held in a facility designed to hold 125.
Because of the Flores settlement, lawyers have the
opportunity to investigate conditions for children to see if
the government is complying--and possibly ask a judge to
intervene if it is not. That's what spurred the fact-finding
mission that led to last week's stories.
The reports about Clint broke at a time when the Trump
administration was already playing defense about its
compliance with the Flores settlement. (While the
administration is working on a regulation that would
supersede the terms of the agreement, that regulation isn't
expected to be published in final form until fall, and may
well be held up in court.)
In a 9th Circuit Court of Appeals hearing earlier last week
about whether the administration needed to allow a court
appointee to monitor conditions for children in ICE and CBP
custody, Department of Justice lawyer Sarah Fabian told
judges that children didn't necessarily need towels or
toothbrushes to be in ``safe and sanitary'' conditions--a
clip that looked especially bad when the Clint stories came
out showing the children were being denied just that.
The court hearing was not specifically about the Clint
facility--it wasn't about what investigators found last week
at all. And as Ken White explained for the Atlantic, Fabien's
cringeworthy ``safe and sanitary'' argument came from the
awkward stance the Trump administration has taken in this
litigation: In order to challenge the court appointment of a
special monitor, they argued that there's a difference
between a promise to keep kids in ``safe and sanitary''
conditions (which the government has agreed to for decades)
and a guarantee of particular items like toothbrushes.
The court appeared unimpressed. And the stories about Clint
and other facilities that have come out in the ensuing days
certainly bolstered the case that the Trump administration
has either willingly violated its agreement to keep kids safe
and healthy, or has been unable to keep it--or a mix of both.
The problem isn't Clint.
The problems that investigators identified at Clint--too
many people, not enough food, no toothbrushes--weren't
inherent to that facility. They were indications of an
overloaded (or neglected) system.
And it's already clear that those problems go beyond Clint.
ABC News obtained testimony from a doctor who visited
another facility for children in Texas--the Ursula facility--
and witnessed ``extreme cold temperatures, lights on 24 hours
a day, no adequate access to medical care, basic sanitation,
water, or adequate food.'' She said the conditions were so
bad that they were ``tantamount to intentionally causing the
spread of disease.''
The children are now being sent from Clint to a facility
that is just as bad, according to Clara Long of Human Rights
Watch, who was the only member of last week's investigative
team who visited it.
Long told Vox that when she was there, the facility in El
Paso known as ``Border Patrol Station 1'' was mostly being
used as a transit center where migrants were staying only a
few hours before going elsewhere. But she spoke to one family
who had been held in a cell there for six days, and who
voiced the same concerns that children in the Clint facility
did.
The mother of the family, Long said, was so ashamed of not
having clean teeth--the El Paso facility, like Clint, wasn't
providing enough toothbrushes--that ``when she was talking to
you she would put her hand up in front of her mouth and
wouldn't take it down.'' The teenage son said he was afraid
of the guards because when he'd gotten up to go to the
bathroom in the middle of the night, a guard had shoved him
back into his cell and slammed the door on him. For two
nights, the family had had to sleep on the cold floor without
blankets.
The fundamental question: Why is it taking so long to get
kids out of custody--and is it happening on purpose?
Most of the children who were at Clint when the team
visited last week--about 250 of the 350--were set to be sent
to HHS custody by Tuesday.
Questions remain about what is happening to the other 1,750
or so children who were in Border Patrol detention on
Thursday if levels have remained static since mid-June, and
why the government was able to place only 250 children over
five days with the agency that's supposed to take
responsibility for all children within 72 hours.
It's not clear where the bureaucratic breakdown really is--
and whether it's the result of resource constraints or
choices about how resources are used.
The Trump administration definitely has made a choice to
keep single adults in detention, even if it could release
them. Border Patrol chief Carla Provost has told Congress
that ``if we lose (the ability to keep and deport) single
adults, we lose the border.'' That does raise questions about
whether the overcrowding in adult facilities could be
avoided.
But it doesn't address the issue of unaccompanied children,
who can't simply be released with a notice to appear in
immigration court. While children with parents in the US
could theoretically be placed with those parents, the
government is supposed to vet potential sponsors to make sure
it's not placing children with traffickers--but that's the
job of HHS, and the vetting doesn't begin until children are
released from Border Patrol custody.
Observers and policymakers agree that HHS simply doesn't
have the capacity to take migrant kids in. One Democratic
Hill staffer compared it to a ``jigsaw puzzle'': Not only are
there only so many spaces available to place a child, but the
facilities available might not match the child's particular
needs. (You can't put an infant in an HHS shelter for teens,
for example.) But another Hill staffer told Vox that HHS
claims it's never refused a transfer for space reasons,
muddying the waters.
Then there's the question of whether CBP is really doing
all it can to care for kids in the time they're in CBP's
care.
One of the Clint observers told Isaac Chotiner of the New
Yorker stories of cruelty from some guards, indicating that
they were deliberately punishing children for the sin of
coming to the US without papers. But she also said that many
guards were sympathetic, and told the observers that children
shouldn't be in their custody--implying that they were doing
the best they could and simply didn't have the resources to
do more. (Advocates also say they've tried to donate supplies
to Border Patrol facilities but had their donations rejected;
it's not clear if this was a Border Patrol decision, or if
there's a legal complication banning outside donations.)
Congress is considering a package right now to give the
Trump administration billions more dollars to deal with
migrants coming into the US. To Democratic leadership,
including the appropriators led by Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard
(D-CA), who drafted the House version of the supplemental
package, the solution to poor conditions in custody is to
provide more money specifically to improve those conditions.
They emphasize that the bulk of the funding will go to HHS to
increase capacity for migrant kids and that funding for ICE
and CBP will be strictly limited to humanitarian use.
But to some progressives, led in Congress by Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez, giving any money to immigration enforcement
agencies right now is an endorsement of the current state of
affairs.
The not-one-more-dime camp, in part, is taking a bright-
line stance against the detention of children. But in part,
they're demonstrating a lack of trust in the administration
to adhere to any law or condition. And they assume that any
money given to ICE for transit of migrant kids will, in some
way or another, encourage ICE to detain more families and
arrest more immigrants in the United States.
The ``smart money'' camp, on the other hand, believes
firmly that without funds to improve conditions in detention,
the conditions will only get worse.
That's especially relevant in the case of kids deemed
``unaccompanied,'' who have to remain in custody until a
sponsor is found. The past few days have demonstrated that
those children are extremely vulnerable and that much of the
American public wants their situation to change. It just may
not be clear how.
Madam Speaker, before I yield to our next speaker, I would remind my colleagues that a vote to defeat the previous question really isn't a vote to bring up the Senate bill. It is a vote to give control of the House floor to the Republicans.
They say they would bring up the Senate bill, but there is absolutely no guarantee that they would. They could bring up a bill to fund a wall, for all we know.
Madam Speaker, we are here to find a way to alleviate the suffering of these children at our border and not to play political games. So I would urge my colleagues to make sure that they vote ``yes'' on the previous question.
And, by the way, I just say to my colleague from Oklahoma, a lot of us aren't satisfied with the Senate bill the way it has been drafted because there are protections that we want to see in that bill because, quite frankly, speaking for myself, I don't trust this administration.
I don't trust this administration to do the right thing, an administration that separated--knowingly and deliberately separated-- children from their parents at the border, an administration that tolerated the conditions that have horrified the entire country.
So I want it clear that the moneys that we are appropriating are going to help children, not to continue this insane inhumane policy that has horrified this Nation.
I won't trust this administration to tell me the correct time, at this particular point. So, no, we are not satisfied. We want more protections in here for the children. We want more transparency. The American people, I think, expect that. We should provide them that information.
Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Mrs. Torres), the distinguished member of the Rules Committee.
Madam Speaker, I yield the gentlewoman an additional 30 seconds.
Madam Speaker, I would like to remind the gentlewoman that we are members of the Democratic Party, not the Democrat Party, and I would appreciate it if we were characterized correctly.
Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Mucarsel-Powell).
Madam Speaker, I yield an additional 30 seconds to the gentlewoman from Florida.
Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Michigan (Ms. Tlaib).
Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee).
