What Has America Become?

Floor Speech

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Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, America, my colleagues, Democrat and Republican, this young girl needs our help. She is crying out for her parents. She needs our help. She needs our help now. She is crying for her mother and her father, who have been taken from her.

This is the picture of America today. This is a picture of our values as Americans. 350 million of us are responsible for this young girl crying for her mother and her father, who have been taken from her.

They came to America, her mother came to America because she feared that in her home country, they would be harmed. They came to America seeking life. This young girl is crying out for our help, and she is not alone.

She is joined by this young girl, who has been separated from her parents, and she is alone in a building foreign to her. She is crying out to America for our basic humanity, for our basic morality, and she is not alone.

She is not alone, and neither are these young children in a cage in America.

What have we become? What has America become that we would take children and their parents who have come here seeking refuge, we take the parents away and we put the children in a cage? What has America become that we would allow this to happen?

Whatever the reason is for their arrival at our border, we know this about them: they came here seeking the very best of America, the promise of this country, and we put them in a cage.

What has America become that we would allow this to happen, that the man in the highest office of this Nation would make it the policy of America to cage children; that the man who occupies the highest office in this land would make it the policy of this Nation, a Nation whose reputation was one of humanity, of concern, and fundamental morality, that the man who occupies the highest office in this land would put in place policies that would make this young girl cry for her parents?

Is this the America that we want? Is this the America that we have come to be? Is this the America who has lost its moral compass, who believes that you could take this young girl or these young men and women, these children, and hold them hostage?

The ransom is a border wall. Is that where we are as Americans that the price for a border wall is this? Is that where we are as Americans? Is that what we have become?

We can't debate here on the justice or the value of a policy without taking a young child away from its parents and putting them in a cage so that we could somehow use them as ransom for a public policy.

This is not America. This is not what we should expect from the man who occupies the highest office in this land.

Have no doubt about it: this is not about a law. This is about a policy directed from the White House that says a person crossing into this country, whatever their reason; asylum seekers trying to get away from the horrors of the country from which they came, coming to America seeking the benefit of this great country, that they are a criminal and therefore must be separated from their children. Something is terribly, terribly wrong here.

In America, we need to cry out, just as these children are crying out, just as this young girl is crying out. We need to cry out in moral outrage and say to the President, Stop it. Stop it now. It is wrong. It is immoral. And it is un-American. Stop it.

One phone call is all it takes. Change the policy.

There is much to be said. We could talk about the laws, we could talk about how we could change it, we could talk about border control, we could talk about walls, we could talk about new judges, we could talk about lawyers, but at the bottom of this issue is a common issue of morality.

Back away for a moment. Think about your childhood. Think about that moment when you had your mother's hand and you were 4 years old and you were walking in the mall. Think back to your childhood and think of that moment, and there is probably not a one of us who hasn't experienced this, when that hand wasn't there, and we looked around in panic, and we had lost our mother and we were alone and we were in a strange place. Is there one of us anywhere that at some moment in our early life reached out and mother's hand was not there?

Mr. President, your policies did that to this young woman and 2,300 others, crying out for their mother.

This is not American. This is not right. It is immoral and it is un- American at its very heart and its very foundation.

Mr. Speaker, joining me tonight are some of my colleagues who share the same concern. My colleague from the district next to me has joined me.
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Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his comments and would ask him a question. The gentleman said he visited one of the shelters, and there were babies, babies a few months old.

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Mr. GARAMENDI. So any age, literally, 4-, 5-, 6-month-old babies taken from their mothers?

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Mr. GARAMENDI. There is something incredibly immoral. I thank the gentleman for traveling to bring the reality back to the House of Representatives. It is really important, and I thank him very much for doing that.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from New Jersey for joining us this evening. I yield to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Payne).

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Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman speaks about the laws and about the potential, and every member of the Democratic Caucus has now signed on to be a coauthor of the legislation, Keep the Families Together Act. It would end immediately the separation of families that has now taken 2,300 children away from their parents.

Mr. Speaker, joining us tonight is the Representative from the city of Las Vegas, Nevada. I thank him for joining us and yield to the gentleman from Nevada (Mr. Kihuen).

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Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Kihuen, I don't want you to stop. I want you to stay strong. I want your voice to be heard. I want your experiences to be known.

Eight years old, coming to America with your parents. In this room, there are very few who would share such an experience, who could understand first the excitement of being in America, and then the potential terror of being taken from your parents.

I want you to make your voice heard because it is the voice of experience. It is the voice of a recent family coming to America.

So as we go through these days, please come to the floor, tell the experience again, not only of your family, but also what you saw in those shelters, in those cages.

Will the gentleman do that?

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Mr. GARAMENDI. I am quite certain that across this country, every one of the 430-some Members of Congress saw this photo. Probably most have heard the audio recording of young children just like this calling out for their mommy or daddy, papa.

I suspect many of us have seen the pictures of young children, 3, 4, 5 with a Sharpie telephone number on their chest so that if somehow they were separated, there would be someone to contact.

I am certain that every Member, 430-plus of us, plus the Senate, that was a child, that at some point in their life, when they were young, 3, 4, 5 years of age, they were separated from their parent. And I am absolutely certain that each one of us knows the terror of that moment.

And most of us are now parents. Most of us are now parents, and we know the terror of a child who has disappeared, wandered off.

I don't believe there is one of us that knows the terror of this mother whose child was taken away by American police; the awesome power of this government imposed upon that young woman, a mother, taken from her child.

Is there one of us? Is there one of us that has endured that police power?

Okay. I get emotional about this because I am a parent.

No. I don't know the terror of the police state taking my child away. I don't know that. But I know the terror of that child who has wandered off.

This is a policy that has been imposed upon parents and their children by the President. This is not a law that requires this kind of cruelty. There is no such law that requires this kind of cruelty. There is no law that requires the American government to cage children. There is no law that requires this. This is the policy of the President of the United States. This is his policy. Zero tolerance. His policy that cages children as though they were animals. His policy that puts the fear into a child.

It is the President's policy, not the law, that caused this young child to cry out for her mother and for the police to stand over her.

The Attorney General says it is the law. It is not the law. It is his policy, together with the President's policy, that has created this humanitarian crisis in the United States of America. It must end.

Martin Luther King--who was killed, murdered, assassinated 50 years ago--from the Birmingham jail spoke about justice and the law in his letter from the Birmingham jail.

So, Mr. Attorney General Beauregard Sessions, listen to what he had to say. He said: ``A just law is a manmade code that squares with the moral law or the law of God.''

He went on to argue: ``An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law.''

And how should justice be defined? He answered this way: ``Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust.''

Mr. Attorney General, by the words of Martin Luther King, your defense of what you say is the law is unjust, it is immoral, and it is not the law of God.

My wife, Patty, has what she calls cradle songs, songs that she sung to our children as they were young and growing.

One of those was written by Bobby Dylan, Blowin' in the Wind: Yes, and how many times can a man turn his head Pretending that he just doesn't see? Yes, and how many ears must one man have Before he can hear people cry?

And, Mr. President and Mr. Attorney General, the opening line of that song is this: How many roads must a man walk down Before you call him a man?

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