End Cruel Immigration Enforcement Against Kids

Floor Speech

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Mr. GARCIA of Illinois. Mr. Speaker, I thank Representatives Dexter and Tonko for shining a spotlight on the impact on children from the enforcement efforts of ICE and Customs and Border Protection agents.

Here is what is happening in communities across the country: A 1- year-old baby and his parents are pepper-sprayed while driving to the grocery store.

A high school student was zip-tied and detained on his way to school despite his U.S. citizenship, and he was detained for several days.

Families with children were ripped out of bed in the dead of night, zip-tied, and detained after the apartments that they lived in were raided by agents using military helicopters, so Kristi Noem could get her videos.

Children at a daycare were startled, scared, and traumatized by the armed agents bursting into their classrooms, chasing one of their teachers to abduct her.

These scenes are not from a war zone. These are violent incidents that happened in Cicero, in Roscoe Village, in South Shore, and in my own neighborhood of Little Village in Chicagoland.

Those were ICE and CBP agents, paid by our tax dollars, committing atrocities, targeting my constituents and their children because of the color of their skin or the places where their parents worked.

More than 500 children were being held at the immigration detention center in Dilley, Texas, in January alone. Many for more than twice the 20 days that the law allows the government to hold children in detention.

We have seen the pictures drawn by some of these children. Their letters longing for their friends, schools, and families, a return to normalcy. Then the administration took away their crayons and paper so that people outside the detention center wouldn't learn what was happening inside.

Right now, two of my constituents are detained at Dilley, a mother and her 13-year-old son who were taken by ICE at a routine check-in appointment. Both had developed serious physical and mental issues, but ICE is denying them medical attention and medication.

They are not the only ones. Children have suffered for months because of the abuses of ICE and CBP agents. Many of them may never overcome the trauma caused by their time in detention and the violent actions of our own government.

The stories I shared are just some of the children we know about. There are hundreds of children terrorized by ICE who we don't know about.

Mr. Speaker, I ask my Republican colleagues, what is the purpose of imprisoning innocent children? No moral or legal argument exists to justify imprisoning and neglecting children. I implore my Republican colleagues to care for these children as if they were our own. Anything less is inexcusable.

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