Conditions of Migrant Detention Facilities Are Inhumane

Floor Speech

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Mr. GARCIA of Illinois. Mr. Speaker, I am joined today by my colleagues to show our country the inhumane conditions of migrant detention facilities.

As a grandfather and an immigrant, my heart breaks every time another child dies in U.S. custody.

Migrants are escaping some of the harshest political and economic turmoil in Central America, only to have their children die once they arrive here. Like 1-year-old Mariee Juarez and her mother who fled domestic abuse in Guatemala, then she died in a U.S. hospital after receiving inadequate care.

We don't allow prisoners to die. How are we allowing children to die in Federal custody?

Last week, the inspector general of DHS confirmed what we already knew: Conditions are dangerous and unsanitary.

This is cruel and un-American. This cannot be the new normal. What the President is doing is anything but normal.

When Attorney General Sessions initiated this, it was a bad way to move forward.

Is this the message that President Trump wants to send the world, that the U.S. is where children come to die?

How many children must die before this administration acts?

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