Supporting United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement

Floor Speech

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Ms. PELOSI. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, this is really a very sad day in the Congress of the United States because we are ignoring the needs of children. As a mother of five children--I had five children in 6 years, so lots of little babies all around the house all the time, lots of joy--and understanding the connection between parent and child, and being a grandmother of nine now, I can't even imagine why the Republicans think it is a good idea to move forward with a bill that does nothing to unite families, to stop the separations, and to have the reuniting of families in a way that is humane--not to reunite and detain in prison, in detention, but to unite in a way that honors the humanity of America.

In church on Sunday, the sermon was about not being an enemy of humanity. Some of the activities that are happening now in relation to these children are actions that qualify as enmity to humanity.

What we have: 2,000 children remain separated from their parents, locked away in Federal custody and living in a state of terror and trauma.

This is a picture of a little boy being confronted by an armed official. Do we have any idea what the impact is on that child?

Republican leadership pushed multiple antifamily bills that would have made the horrific situation worse for children by enshrining the President's outrageous mass deportation agenda as the law of the land with his zero-tolerance policy. We should have zero tolerance for that policy.

My Republican colleagues have voted again and again against actions to force a vote on a bill that would require the government to reunite families, and now you are promoting a new political stunt, wasting the country's and the Congress' time with a meaningless vote on a nonbinding resolution that does nothing to protect the children and end the cruel crisis that President Trump has created.

This resolution does nothing to prevent the separation of babies from their mothers. You are parents. You know, in the night, if you hear a sound from the room down the hall, that connection is something beyond material. It is spiritual. It is about parent and child, mother and child, father and child, and now we are going to rip that apart.

It does nothing to prevent the separation of children with disabilities from their parents and caregivers. It does nothing to provide legal counsel to children in immigration court, including little babies who cannot even yet verbally communicate.

For example, Johan. Earlier this summer, a 1-year-old boy named Johan appeared in court without his parents--1 year old. He played with a toy. He drank from a bottle. Then he cried hysterically, because he did not have his mother or his father there to comfort or care for him. The immigration judge even reported that he was ``embarrassed to ask'' if little Johan could understand the proceedings. The judge is asking a 1- year-old child taking a bottle if he can understand the proceedings.

What sort of administration sends a 1-year-old child into a courtroom alone to make his case? This resolution is an assault to little children like Johan.

Congress should be working day and night to protect these traumatized children. Do you know the toll that you are taking on these children? I wish you would listen to the representatives of the Society of Pediatric Doctors and what they have to say about this, pediatricians, what they have to say about this.

We should be working day and night to ensure the President can never again enable children to be ripped from their parents' arms. Democrats will continue to fight for families.

Here is the thing I found very sad, because it was almost a year ago, say, 10 months ago, when I was informed by the administration that they were going to separate children from their parents. This is not something that has emerged. This is a decision that was made.

They said, these parents, especially the moms they were talking about, are unfit mothers because they have chosen to take their children across the desert, which is very dangerous. That makes them unfit.

Unfit? Really? If their choice is to stay home and be murdered, be raped, be victims of gang violence, and they are coming to find solace or refugee status? They are unfit, I was told by the administration, and we know better what is good for the children. We are going to take the children and send them to foster care or whatever--or whatever-- foster care or whatever, taking children from their parents, as a decision of national policy.

Around that same time, we had a hearing--well, it was earlier. It was on the Muslim ban, so it was more like over a year ago, and the American Association of Evangelicals testified in that hearing. It was a Democratic hearing, because the Republicans would not have that hearing. They said that the U.S. refugee resettlement program is the crown jewel of American humanitarianism, the American Association of Evangelicals--the refugee resettlement program, the crown jewel of American humanitarianism.

So how is it that it can be so obvious to so many people that we are humanitarian, that all of these children are God's children, that all of them have a spark of divinity? Mr. President, they have a spark of divinity, and you do, too.

So let us all act on our and their spark of divinity and treat them with the level of respect that they deserve and not use children as a political shield for some other agenda.

This isn't about whether you support ICE or not. By the way, I will just close on this. On this subject, I want to remind our Republican colleagues that Democrats have been strong on protecting our borders all along. You recall after 9/11, a commission was formed, the 9/11 Commission. It took a couple of years to make recommendations. It took a while to make recommendations--a distinguished nonpartisan, bipartisan commission. It presented its recommendations in the summer of 2004.

The Republicans in Congress controlled the Congress at the time, and they would not take up those recommendations, which were about protecting our country.

Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from New York may remember it, because he has been a champion on this issue for such a long time, and since his district was affected by 9/11, in the forefront of that fight for us, to form a commission to begin with but also to fit--it took us, until the Democrats took control of the Congress, in 2006--the first bill that we put on the floor, H.R. 1 in the new Congress, was to adopt the 9/11 Commission recommendations to keep the American people safe, protect and defend, which is our oath of office.

So don't make it look like you are either for protecting the border or not. This is about being enemies of humanity, by taking children away from their parents, keeping them separated, and when they unite them, to keep them under detention. It is not the crown jewel of our humanitarianism.

I urge a ``no'' vote. I am going to vote ``present'' on it, because they will use it politically, use it politically, use it politically. Vote ``present'' or however anyone wants to vote, but understand what it is.

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