Rep. Elijah Cummings, who died on Thursday at the age of 68, is being remembered as one of the House of Representatives’ moral voices, as a champion of civil rights, justice, and dignity. But he was also a passionate defender of the most vulnerable among us, including immigrant children and families coming to our border in search of new and hopeful lives, only to be separated, jailed, and mistreated by the U.S. government.
Following the historic 2018 midterm elections, Cummings and other incoming Democratic House chairs were faced with a massive swath of issues to investigate due to the Trump administration’s precedented corruption, but from the start, Cummings, who became chair of the powerful House Oversight Committee, made it clear one of his first priorities would be to investigate the administration’s family separation policy, which has torn apart thousands of families at the border.
“I believe this is a true national emergency,” he said in February. “When our own government rips children from the arms of their mothers and fathers with no plans to reunite them—that is government-sponsored child abuse.” He kept his word, and the subpoenas issued to the Department of Justice, Department of Homeland Security, and Department of Health and Human Services were the first of the new Congress.
When now-former acting Homeland Security secretary Kevin McAleenan ultimately testified in front of the House Oversight Committee, Cummings’ fury was representative of decent, outraged people across the nation.
“What does that mean? What does that mean when a child is sitting in their own feces? Can’t take a shower,” he told McAleenan, who shook his head and sighed in response, then looked down. “Come on man! None of us would have our children in that position. They are human beings … we are the United States of America. We are the greatest country in the world. We are the ones that can go anywhere in the world and save people. Come on. We’re better than that. When we are dancing with the angels, these children will be dealing with the issues that have presented to them.”
Under Cummings’ watch, oversight members continued to expose the horrific human rights abuses committed by the Trump administration, including findings that under the barbaric “zero tolerance” policy, border officials stole at least 18 babies and toddlers under the age of two—“including nine infants under the age of one”—from families at the border, and were kept from their families anywhere from 20 days to as long as six months. That is, as Cummings had previously, said, government-sponsored child abuse.
Cummings also stood beside Yazmin Juárez when she testified about the death of her nearly two-year-old toddler Mariee after they were jailed in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody. In testimony before the House Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, the asylum-seeker described how ICE consistently failed to provide proper medical treatment for the child after she became sick at the South Texas Family Residential Center, a migrant family jail in Dilley.
“I noticed immediately how many sick kids there were—and no effort was made to separate the sick from the healthy,” she said. Mariee was cleared as healthy when they arrived but then became sick too.” Officials released them only when the child had become so sick she was limp. “My Mariee died on May 10, 2018,” Yazmin told legislators. “When I walked out of the hospital that day, all I had with me was a piece of paper with Mariee’s handprints in pink paint. The nurses made it for me the day before, as a Mother’s Day gift.”
“My hope is that we can all agree on several basic points,” Cummings said in July. “Anyone in the custody of our government—especially a child—must be treated humanely and with respect. This is our watch.” It must be our watch now, to continue this work and to ensure that vulnerable people are treated with dignity and respect, to ensure that families can stay together in freedom, and to ensure that no further human rights abuses are committed in our name. “This is our watch.”