Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility officials in Elizabeth, New Jersey, didn’t know who they were messing with when they tried to refuse entry to a group of House Democrats on Father’s Day weekend. Their delaying tactics stalled. Calling the cops on them didn’t work. Telling them to get media out of the room was futile. When they opened a door leading into the facility, legislators physically prevented it from closing until they could go inside. Finally, a small delegation was allowed to go in.
They haven’t been alone. U.S. Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon and Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal of Washington state were among the first legislators to have sprung into action following the official implementation of the administration’s “zero tolerance” policy and traveled to facilities holding separated kids and parents. Outside the Federal Detention Center in SeaTac—the administration has been arresting so many migrants that some are being transferred to federal prisons—Jayapal said that border agents told some anguished moms that their “families would not exist anymore.”
Merkley, on the other hand, never even made it past the sliding doors of the former Brownsville, Texas Walmart that is now jailing up to 1,500 migrant kids, a surge from 1,200 just weeks ago. After nearly 20 minutes of Merkley pacing outside, a supervisor finally came out to where he was waiting, but only to brush him aside and speak to the pack of policemen the facility had called due to his presence. Finally, the facility supervisor asked Merkley, a sitting United States senator, to leave the premises. He did—but not without pissing off the viewers who were watching through a livestream.
The anger and horror in the air are palpable. Across the nation, outraged Americans have demanded a stop to this brutality and want answers, leading Congressional Democrats to trek to immigration detention facilities in California, New Jersey, Oregon, Texas and other states to meet with separated families and to examine conditions, though some with more success than others. Some, like a Congressional delegation led by civil rights icon John Lewis of Georgia, risked arrest in an act of civil disobedience in a support for families.
Meanwhile, Congressional Republicans are nowhere to be seen. Legislatively, Senate Republicans could join all Senate Democrats supporting U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein’s “Keep Families Together Act,” but none currently do.
Parents have told some of these Congressional delegations that their children were snatched away from them without so much a hug. In California, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Congresswoman Judy Chu and members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus (CHC) toured detention facilities for both adults and children, with Congresswoman Nanette Barragán saying that some parents they met “didn’t get a chance to say goodbye.” Meanwhile, the children’s detention facility they visited had nearly 70 kids jailed, paling in comparison to the nearly 1,500 kids jailed in Brownsville, Texas.
Texas has been ground zero of the administration’s brutal attack on families, McAllen in particular. It’s home to Ursula, the largest processing facility in the nation, where separated children are held before being transferred to a detention center under the control of the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), like Brownsville. This past week, Merkley returned, along with U.S. Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, and several House Democrats from Rhode Island, Texas, Vermont and Wisconsin, to visit Ursula:
"When you have a mother tell you directly that she's in fear that she will never see her child again, and when the United Nations Human Rights Commission indicate to the Trump administration that you are violating human rights, then you know that what we are saying today is President Trump, cease and desist," Jackson Lee said.
But when former San Antonio mayor Julian Castro, accompanied by the 12-year-old U.S. citizen child of undocumented immigrants, tried to leave toys and letters of support for children there, he was barred from entering. “It amounts essentially to state-sponsored child abuse that is traumatizing young children by taking them away from their parents,” Castro said, “not letting them know when they’re going to see their parents again, keeping them in conditions that we wouldn’t want any of our children in.”
Also in Texas, Beto O’Rourke, who hopes to unseat Sen. Ted Cruz this fall, helped lead a march to the “tent city”—it’s a concentration camp—in Tornillo that will jail up to 500 separated kids. Planned just hours in advance for Father’s Day, the protest attracted thousands. "We would like to think,” he said, “and we try to tell ourselves, this is not America, this is not us, this is not what we do. But ladies and gentleman, at this moment, this is America, this is us, this is what we are doing."
That includes quadrupling-down on anti-immigrant fear-mongering, aided by so-called family values Republicans who are doing nothing to protect vulnerable families. Democrats need to keep exposing what’s happening to these families—and exposing complicit legislators for who they are. “They came to this country in search of the protection and refuge that the proud inscription on the Statue of Liberty promises to those fleeing terror,” Congressman Jerrold Nadler said. “They are being welcomed by more terror. What could be more terrifying than having your [child] taken from your arms?”
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