Providing for Consideration of H.R. Matthew Young Pollard Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Years 2018 and 2019

Floor Speech

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Mr. ESPAILLAT. Mr. Speaker, I thank Congressman Hastings for yielding me the time.

Mr. Speaker, I continue to urge my colleagues to find some humanity deep in your hearts. I know America has a huge heart, but I continue to ask my colleagues on the other side of the aisle to look deep inside of your soul and your heart and find humanity and help us pass the Keep Families Together Act to help reunite mothers like Yeni Gonzalez, who I have been pushing to help reunite with her three children. Yeni brought her three children seeking asylum as they escaped gang violence in Guatemala.

President Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions have made it harder for victims of violence to come to the United States by stating--get this--that domestic violence should not be grounds for asylum. And in the fiscal year 2019 budget, the President proposed a $180 million cut to funding that would address the root causes of this migration, including domestic violence.

The Northern Triangle countries of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras have among the 18 highest homicide rates in the world. We need to be doing more to address these root causes, and we need to be doing more to make sure families are kept together--freely, not in detention centers and facilities. Some of these children are being kept in cages that look like kennels.

This week, the President and this administration once again failed to reunite all these children with their family. This administration is using its agency to demonize immigrants--mothers and their children. We need to save the soul of our Nation. I ask, I implore the other side of the aisle to look deep inside of their soul as they go to church on Sunday.

This time our Nation's history will forever be tainted, the reputation of our Nation, as free and a beacon of hope for the entire world.

I ask my colleagues to vote against the previous question so that we can immediately bring the Keep Families Together Act to the floor and stand with our Nation's children.

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