Immigration Legislation

Floor Speech

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Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my dear colleague and friend from New York for holding this moment so that we can all speak out.

Like so many of my fellow Americans, I have absolutely been distraught the last several days, many days. Many days crying.

We are getting hundreds of calls to my office here in Washington, my office in the district. Many of those people are actually crying as they watch what is happening to children.

I have to tell you that, in my life--and I am a mother and a grandmother and, for the last 20 years, a Member of this United States Congress--I have never seen such state-sponsored cruelty, state- sponsored child abuse that we are seeing right now. There really isn't any other word for it. Child abuse.

The President of the United States has announced some sort of a so- called improvement, trying to fool an enraged Nation into thinking that they have reversed course on this issue of children coming, with their parent, across the border.

In reality, the President's executive order enables the indefinite incarceration of immigrant families and has absolutely no plan to reunite babies who were ripped from their families, ripped from the arms of their parents.

There are children who will still be in cages, Mr. Speaker. Frankly, I can't stand it. I wonder if you can stand it, Mr. Speaker.

I am the daughter of immigrants. Neither of my parents was born here in the United States of America. They came here because Jews were being persecuted in Russia, and they fled here. They were able to get to this country. They were helped to be resettled in the city of Chicago by the Salvation Army, for whom I am ever grateful in my life.

My grandfather made it by getting a horse and wagon, getting up before dawn and loading up the wagon with vegetables, and going through the alleys of Humboldt Park in Chicago and schlepping bags of potatoes over his shoulder, up stairs, and into apartments.

He and my grandmother--who made clothes for all the children, including my mother--sent four children to college, because they worked so hard to fulfill the dream of taking care of their children and having a better life.

The parents who are fleeing across this border are desperate. They are leaving domestic abuse, abuse from gangs threatening the lives of their children, sometimes leaving some children behind and taking the ones that they can across this border, because they believed that they could seek asylum in this country. And that was the rule, that is the law, until the Attorney General of the United States, directed by the President, said: No, we are no longer considering a right of asylum for people who are victimized by domestic abuse or gang abuse. No, not anymore. We are going to arrest them. We are going to put them in jail.

Now understand, I bet you--we haven't talked about this--that many of these children are not well, or their parents are not well, because this was a journey across countries, often walking for mile after mile after mile--dehydration, lack of proper nutrition--and now confined in places, separated from their parents. You have the children in one place and the parents in another place--in jails, essentially, and in cages for the children.

What happens if there is a sickness that could pass across these children?

If a child dies, will we know? Will we be told?

Many times, they try to keep even Members of Congress out of seeing exactly what is going on. Some of my colleagues--God bless them--have been able to visit and see.

How come there are so few images?

Because you can't even take your phone in there to take pictures of what is going on.

What do we know about the reality of the life of these children, the suffering of these children, the screaming of these children, that is now on the cover of Time magazine?

I am telling you, this is not the United States of America. Shame, shame on President Trump; shame on congressional Republicans for their heartless, radical immigration agenda; and shame on anyone who is silent in the face of this abuse of children. People are heartbroken, and now they have to rise up and say no to this.

Mr. Speaker, I understand that there were mothers and children today at ICE in New York protesting. We need to see more of that.

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