Forced Family Separation

Floor Speech

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Ms. HIRONO. Mr. President, I thank Senator Merkley from Oregon for his leadership and my other colleagues who are coming to the floor this evening.

Like so many people across the country, I have been deeply affected by what is happening on our southern border. Children are being ripped away from their parents, placed into mass detention, deprived of adequate legal counsel, and isolated from everyone they have ever known. Millions of people are rising up with sorrow and horror over what is happening and with good reason.

The President of the United States and this administration are playing games with the lives of these innocent children, and when confronted, they hide behind excuses that they are just ``following the law.'' This is just another lie from a President and an administration that have institutionalized lying to justify their unconscionable policies. There is nothing in the law that requires a zero tolerance approach at the border. It was a choice that Donald Trump and his administration made, and these children are suffering the consequences.

The President's actions are unnecessary and cruel, but they aren't particularly surprising, coming from him. On issue after issue, Donald Trump creates a crisis through his own actions, blames others for what is happening, and uses the ensuing chaos to demand a legislative solution that often harms even more people.

It is up to each of us and to the millions of Americans outraged by his actions to stand up, fight back, and demand action. This action remains urgent, even after the President announced earlier today that he would use his Executive authority to end family separation at the border. This Executive order just creates an entirely new problem. It does not end zero tolerance, and it does not end indefinite detention. It only means children are going to be incarcerated together with their parents. This is still unacceptable and echos back to one of the darkest periods in our history when, during World War II, the U.S. Government incarcerated 120,000 Japanese Americans. That this time we are incarcerating non-Americans misses the point. Due process applies to everyone--everyone--on American soil.

The President's order also instructs the Attorney General to challenge the Flores settlement, which sets national standards for humane treatment of children in immigration detention and ensures their prompt release. The elimination of these national standards would have profoundly negative consequences for thousands of children every year and is yet another demonstration of the cruelty with which this administration treats immigrants to our country.

The President has also hinted that legislation will accompany his Executive action. Any legislative solution must result in less chaos and more justice for these children and their families.

Congress certainly has a responsibility to repair our broken immigration system, and we tried hard in 2013, with months of work and bipartisan compromise. But we cannot and should not enact a patchwork solution that enshrines Donald Trump's hatred and fear of immigrants into law. We need to think through the inevitable consequences of our policies and propose legislation that will actually help these families and their children. This approach stands in stark contrast to a President and an administration that rarely think things through. They never stop to consider the consequences of their actions.

Instead of being ashamed about this, the President appears to take pleasure in the chaos he sows, but this chaos causes real damage to real people. These misguided, shoot-from-the-hip decisions of his have already caused significant harm to thousands of children who will face a lifetime of trauma after being separated from their parents.

Let me tell you a story. It is one I haven't told very often because it is difficult to talk about. I often speak about my own immigrant experience of coming to this country when I was 7 years old with my mom and my older brother Roy. Mom was escaping an abusive marriage to start a new life for us. Mom brought us two older kids with her, leaving my 3-year-old younger brother behind in Japan, because we were old enough to go to school, and at 7 and 9 years old, we could look after ourselves while she was at work supporting us. My younger brother left back in Japan never really recovered from the trauma of the separation from his mother and his siblings. My mother always had deep sorrow about having to leave her baby behind. We finally reunited almost 3 years later.

What is happening to these children feels personal to me. Like so many people, I find that my anger and emotion about this issue aren't far below the surface for me. I am very concerned about what will happen to these 2,400 children who have already been separated from their parents. These children have already been traumatized. Yet the President's Executive order does not prioritize reuniting these children with their parents.

Years from now, stories will be written about this dark moment in our Nation's history and what happened to these children. People will judge what we did and how we responded.

I will continue to fight against this President's reprehensible actions that dehumanize immigrants, tear families apart, and undermine our country's moral leadership. I call on all of my colleagues, especially those on the other side of the aisle, to join us in this fight.

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