End Cruel Immigration Enforcement Against Kids

Floor Speech

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Ms. JACOBS. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today because our country has normalized something that should never be normal: locking up kids. Under the Trump administration, ICE has detained thousands of children, many of them under 5 years old.

As a Representative from San Diego, an immigrant and border community, I have seen firsthand the consequences of our immigration system. As someone who has spent my career working on human rights, I can tell you that this is state-sanctioned child abuse.

These children are not threats. They are not statistics. They are kids, some just babies and toddlers, who have fled violence, poverty, and instability. They have done nothing wrong. Many have experienced trauma before they ever set foot on American soil.

Instead of care and instead of compassion, we are detaining them and traumatizing them for life.

To be honest, I don't actually care what their parents may or may not have done. Children should not be punished for their parents' actions.

Mr. Speaker, 2 weeks ago, I went to the Dilley immigration detention center in Texas, the primary site for family detention in our country. What I saw and what I heard would rattle any parent, and it should disturb everyone.

Kids have nightmares so bad that they wake up screaming in the middle of the night. Teenagers are regressing developmentally and wetting the bed. The classrooms were empty. The playground was empty. There was no joy or laughter, just the look of fear and despair in people's eyes.

The mom of a 3-year-old told me that her daughter was anxious and depressed, but the nurse said that she was fine because she hadn't lost too much weight yet, so they didn't help her.

This kind of fear and uncertainty doesn't just go away. It will follow these kids. It will shape their development and leave lasting scars.

This isn't just my observation. The American Academy of Pediatrics has said for years that detaining children causes toxic stress that can permanently alter brain development. Pediatricians call it institutional harm.

When medical professionals are telling us that what we are doing to these kids causes the same neurological damage as physical abuse, we need to stop calling it immigration policy and start calling it for what it is.

I know immigration is complicated. I know that there are strong opinions on all sides of this issue, but protecting children should not be controversial. Ensuring that children are treated with dignity and care should not be political or partisan. Apparently, it is because the Republican Party, the so-called profamily party, is complicit in child abuse.

I won't be complicit. My colleagues and I will not be complicit. We need to shut down Dilley and end family detention for good. We need to reject the idea that locking up children and their parents is an acceptable response to migration.

That means Congress needs to do its job and cut off funding for family detention and claw back the $75 billion blank check that was given to ICE and Border Patrol.

While we are at it, not a single committee in this House has held a hearing on conditions inside family detention facilities, not one. Republicans control every gavel in this building, and they have conducted zero oversight of what is being done to children in our government's custody. If they won't do oversight, we will. When we have the majority, Dilley will be the first place we go.

Many of us in this Chamber have children of our own. While I don't have kids yet, I wouldn't be able to live with myself and look my four nieces and nephews in the eyes if I weren't doing everything in my power to protect all kids.

Mr. Speaker, I urge all of my colleagues to look their kids in their eyes tonight and imagine them locked up in these conditions, and then work with us to end family detention.

Mr. Speaker, I thank Congresswoman Dexter for her leadership on this issue.

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