DPCC Co-Chair Cicilline: President Trump’s Zero Tolerance Policy Shows Zero Judgement And Makes Zero Sense
WASHINGTON, DC – Congressman David Cicilline, Co-Chair of the House Democratic Policy & Communications Committee (DPCC) and a member of the Judiciary Committee, appeared on CNN's Situation Room to discuss his visit to a detention facility in Brownsville and McAllen, Texas, following President Trump's zero-tolerance policy that has separated children from their parents at the border. Below are excerpts from the interview and a link to the video.
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"I went on Sunday, on Father's day, to Brownsville and McAllen, Texas. So, we went to the port of entry. We went to the Border Patrol processing center. We went to the detention center, where in Port Isabel, the parents are being held. And we went to Casa Padre, where some of the older children are being held. It is very clear that there is no process in place. We spoke to 10 mothers who couldn't even get through their story about what had happened to their children. They were crying so hard and their bodies were shaking. Many of them did not know where their children were. They had no contact with their children. They were uncertain. They were just taken from them. No one explained to them why that was and when they would ever see them again.
"We saw children in cages, on the floor, awaiting some final determination as to where they would be placed. It's a really horrible situation, barbaric, that we would separate children. The President now has signed this executive order, which essentially says, we're going to detain families together indefinitely. Of course, that's a violation of law, according to the Flores decision. So that can't actually happen. So it's very unclear what the Administration is doing.
"This effort to try to reunite parents seems to be sort of very ad hoc. We have demanded a number of different ways to hear from the Administration – what are you doing? What are your plans to reunite these families? But we're not getting a lot of information from the Administration. There are over 2,000 children that have been separated from their parents. These children were put in placements in Miami, Chicago and Arizona. And it's not clear that they have been very careful about tracking who's going where, at least sharing that information with parents.
"When I spoke to the mothers, many of them had no idea where their children were. They had no contact with their children. One woman explained that she asked the officials at the detention facility, where is my daughter? And no one answered her. It was never explained to most of these mothers where their children would be taken. They just took him away from them. So I don't think there was any planning. I think this is a policy the President put in place, zero tolerance, along with the advice of Jeff Sessions and Stephen Miller, to separate children from their parents.
"And I don't think they actually mapped out, how do you do that, how do you keep track of these kids, how do you make sure they can be reunited, in part because this should never have happened. This is a monstrous policy. We've always been an example to the world. America spends billions of dollars around the world promoting human rights. And we have always been a beacon for human rights. And now we – our own government is engaged in monstrous behavior, ripping young babies from their mothers, and now having some difficulty reconnecting them. And we need to hear from the administration. We need to hear from the Secretary about the plan to make this happen, and happen now."