Trump Administration Needs to Honor its Word on Food Aid

Floor Speech

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Mr. MAGAZINER. Mr. Speaker, I rise today for the 25th time to demand that the Trump administration restore funding for lifesaving food aid for malnourished children.

This is Plumpy'Nut. It is a fortified peanut paste that has saved millions of lives by getting safe nutrition to children in hard-to- reach places around the world. Until recently, this was being shipped by USAID to war-torn and famine-torn areas all over the world, saving lives under Democratic and Republican administrations, until the Trump administration dismantled USAID. As a result, children are starving around the world.

Here in the United States, the production lines that create this product are virtually shut down. Edesia Nutrition in my district in Rhode Island and Mana Nutrition in Georgia get all of their ingredients from U.S. farmers. This is all produced in the United States. When it is shipped around the world, it is shipped in boxes that say: ``From the American People.''

This is not just about saving lives, though this does save lives. It is also about strengthening America's standing in the world. When we pull back and stop providing food aid for starving kids around the world, our adversaries, particularly China, are happy to step into the void. They are doing so already.

Next week, we will celebrate the Fourth of July, a day when we reflect with pride on the Nation that we have always been and the values that we stand for. This year, let's reflect on those values of charity and leadership, those values that have, under Democratic and Republican administrations, guided our foreign policy.

Here is the thing: The Trump administration, while cutting off funding for ready-to-use therapeutic food, has also been insisting that it is just temporary and that the funding is going to come back. Elon Musk even put out a tweet where he named the factory in my district and said they are going to get their funding back. Marco Rubio repeatedly, including in front of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said that funding for emergency food aid would be restored. They leaked a story to FOX News about how they were restoring food aid.

The money hasn't come yet, and this is still sitting in warehouses in Rhode Island instead of being shipped to the children who need it. It has been 6 months. What is taking so long?

What we need is for the Trump administration to not change its policy but to honor its word. They say that they are going to do this, so do it already.

I will continue to stand on the House floor every single day until they do. Restore the funding now. Go After Criminals, Not Innocent People

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Mr. MAGAZINER. Mr. Speaker, Donald Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said that they would focus on deporting violent criminals and gang members, but that is not what they are doing.

I sit on the Committee on Homeland Security. Let me tell you the data and facts from the administration themselves.

More than 70 percent of the people detained or deported so far under the Trump administration have never been convicted of any crime. That is 200,000 people detained and deported who were not convicted of any crime.

They are deporting mothers and grandmothers, children with cancer, and employees of American companies, people just trying to make a living. They are not only deporting people who came here illegally. They are going after legal green card holders and asylum-seekers, locking them up with no due process. Students who had the gall to write an op-ed expressing their opinion on a political issue are being locked up for deportation.

It is all to meet the artificial quota of 3,000 per day set by Stephen Miller. He doesn't care whether the people he is deporting are criminals or not, clearly.

They deported a 4-year-old American citizen child with cancer whose parents had no criminal record, and we still don't know why.

We still haven't gotten answers about Andry Hernandez Romero, a gay makeup artist with no criminal record who legally sought asylum and who never even entered the country but was deported to a prison in El Salvador, a country that he is not even from.

This week, a landscaper, Narciso Barranco, with no criminal record was beaten in the streets by masked agents. His three sons are all United States marines.

This has to stop. The Trump administration needs to do what they said they were going to do: Go after criminals, not innocent people.

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