Forced Family Separation

Floor Speech

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Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I rise on World Refugee Day to thank the American public for standing up against the heartless decision by the Trump administration to separate children from their families at the southern border of the United States. Because the administration's policy triggered our moral gag reflex, you spoke up loudly--everyday citizens, business executives, faith leaders, Governors pulled back Guard troops from missions on the border, and airlines announced they would not facilitate separation of families by flying children hundreds of miles away from their parents. Because of you, the American public, this administration has altered its cruel policy, at least for the time being.

A new Executive order suggests that families will not be separated, but many questions remain. Will they be detained indefinitely? Where will they be detained? What process will be used to determine their fate? Will people seeking to use our legal asylum process be treated like criminals?

The most urgent question I have is this. What is the fate of the 2,300 children you have stripped away from their families? How will you assure that these children are properly returned to parents who are worried to death about them?

Congress has to exercise the most persistent oversight to ensure that these children are restored to their families. An administration that so cavalierly separated them from their parents out of a mistaken belief that the American public wouldn't care about it can hardly be trusted to reunite these families with speed and compassion. We have to stay on the task to ensure that they do.

Much has been said about the trauma inflicted upon these children taken from their parents. I want to say a word about how traumatic it is for a parent to have a child taken away without any idea when or if a child will be returned. Marco Antonio Munoz was a 39-year-old father from Honduras who made the difficult trek to the United States with his wife and 3-year-old boy. They came here in May after his brother-in-law was murdered by a drug gang near Capon. Honduras has one of the highest homicide rates in the world, and they just wanted their family to be safe. The family crossed into the United States on May 12, in Granjeno, TX--a popular crossing point for Central American families and teens who want to turn themselves in and seek asylum in the United States.

I know a little bit about families like the Munoz family. I lived in Honduras in 1980 and 1981 and have returned a number of times, most recently in 2015. The violence in these neighborhoods is severe, driven by gangs connected to a drug trade that has its origins in American demand for illicit drugs produced in Mexico, Central, and South America. The violence in these Honduran neighborhoods has a direct connection to the sad reality of addiction in the United States. When a family like the Munoz family leaves their home, they leave everything behind, and all they have is each other.

When the Munoz family was taken into custody in the United States, Border Patrol agents told them the Trump zero tolerance policy meant they had to be separated, and Mr. Munoz, the father, had a panic attack.

As one border agent said: ``They had to use physical force to take the child out of his hands.''

That is called being a parent. If you tried to take my child out of my hands, I will hold on with every ounce of strength in my body.

They took Mr. Munoz away. They put him in a car to take him to a kennel-like jail, and he fought in the car. He tried to escape when they took him out of the car. When they put him in the kennel, he rattled the cage he was in. They decided the cage wasn't strong enough, so they then transported him to a regional jail in McAllen, TX, and put him in a padded cell. The next morning, when they came to visit him, he was dead in his cell, a victim of suicide, with a piece of clothing wrapped around his neck.

An agent who found him expressed confusion about why Mr. Munoz would ``choose to separate himself from his family.'' It wasn't Mr. Munoz who chose to separate himself from his family; it was a decision by this administration to punish him and his family that separated him from his family, and with no knowledge when or if he would see his wife and 3- year-old son again, he killed himself.

When you have left your entire life behind, and all you have is your family, how can anyone fail to understand how painful it is to lose them?

As we try to reassemble 2,300 families whom this administration has spread to the winds, there will be at least one 3-year-old boy who will not be able to reunite with his father.

I ask this President, I ask the Attorney General, I ask the Secretary of Homeland Security, was it worth it? Was it worth it?

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