End Cruel Immigration Enforcement Against Kids
Floor Speech
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Ms. DEXTER. Mr. Speaker, I want to tell you about a second grader named Diana Crespo-Gonzalez. She loves to draw, and she loves school.
On January 16, she was sick. She had a persistent fever, her nose wouldn't stop bleeding, and her parents did what any good parents would do. They took their child to see a doctor. They never made it inside.
Instead, immigration agents surrounded their car. The parents pleaded with the agents to just let their daughter get seen.
Think about that for a second, Mr. Speaker. Put yourself in their car, wondering if you made a mistake by taking your child to a doctor.
Shortly after, Diana and her parents were detained and transported 2,000 miles from their home in Gresham, Oregon, to the Dilley child family detention facility in Texas, the largest child detention facility in the United States.
I will say that again: the largest child detention facility in the United States. That is a sentence that should not exist.
The conditions at Dilley are not just bad; they are indefensible and inhumane. The food is inedible. One father detained there with his child said: ``We were given wormy food, and when someone spoke out about it and said that the children should get better food, he was taken in the middle of the night and threatened that he and his family would be separated.''
Another said: ``Sometimes there are strange things in the food, and it seems like strange parts of an animal that shouldn't be in the food, but many children do not eat the food here. It worries me when there are so many small children who are just not eating.''
A 14-year-old said that his 7-year-old brother stopped eating entirely. Many report that the water is not drinkable, that it is too salty, and that it smells of chemicals. If you do drink it, your stomach turns with pain.
It is not just food and water, but the foundation of human life. As if that weren't bad enough, these kids and families are also being deprived of sleep, healthcare, and education. Children inside have reported ideas of self-harm, even suicide.
A 14-year-old who was detained for 45 days said: ``Since I got to this center, all you will feel is sadness and mostly depression.''
Mr. Speaker, if you advocate for yourself, or as a parent advocating for your child, there is the threat of retaliation.
One father said: ``We are scared to ask for anything because the officers start threatening us that they will put us in different detention centers and put our children in foster care.''
This is where they sent Diana, a second grader who just needed to see a doctor.
I couldn't stand back while she was in prison there, and I had a chance to help. One of the most important lessons I have learned in my first year in Congress, Mr. Speaker, is that you cannot defend your constituents from behind a desk. Showing up and advocating for the people you represent matters.
So I traveled to Texas with plane tickets in hand to bring Diana and her parents back to Oregon. When I arrived, officials repeatedly blocked my entry, giving shifting and contradictory explanations as to why.
I was told I could not enter because of measles cases, despite an officer telling me just the day before that there were no active cases and no risk.
I was told to leave. I was told to wait. I was told nothing at all. The message was clear: Don't look too closely.
Oversight isn't optional. When ICE blocked me from entering, I made it clear that if they would not let me in, they would at least bring my constituents out to speak with me. After hours of waiting and arguing, ICE actually did more than that. They released the Crespo-Gonzalez family altogether. I was able to escort them home.
Diana made it home, but there are children today who are still trapped in Dilley. Legally, children are not supposed to be in custody for more than 20 days, yet dozens of children have been detained at Dilley for over 3 months, one-third of a school year spent in prison--children who are sick, children who are scared, and children who do not understand why this is happening to them.
It is not just children who have been detained who feel the trauma of this immigration crackdown. Children in my district live in fear of the ICE man. He comes to them in their dreams, and it worries them that they are going to come to get them or a loved one. I heard it from a teacher in Oregon who shared how devastating ICE's presence has been for her students.
She said: ``Many students stopped coming to school for weeks, either because parents did not feel safe to bring them to school or students did not feel safe to leave their parents, knowing they might come home to an empty house.''
Across this country, ICE is targeting children outside of schools, outside of clinics, and outside of their own homes. Immigration enforcement against children is inhumane and unnecessary. Families can and should be able to navigate their immigration cases together and in community, with the support of loved ones and legal services.
This is about who we are and who we want to be as a country. Kids need care and compassion, not cruelty and cages.
Today, we will spotlight the importance of ending cruel immigration enforcement against children once and for all.
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Ms. DEXTER. Balint).
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Ms. DEXTER. Moore).
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Ms. DEXTER. Mr. Speaker, I now yield to the gentlewoman from Washington and the ranking member of the Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration Integrity, Security, and Enforcement (Ms. Jayapal).
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Ms. DEXTER. Mr. Speaker, I now yield to the gentlewoman from Arizona, Mrs. Grijalva.
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Ms. DEXTER. Mr. Speaker, I now yield to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Rivas.)
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Ms. DEXTER. Jacobs).
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Ms. DEXTER. Mr. Speaker, I spent 20 years taking care of the sickest members of our community as a critical care and pulmonary physician. I have seen what happens when people aren't able to get the care that they need: Preventable illnesses escalate and become deadly.
At Dilley, there have been repeated reports of children's medical needs not being met, resulting in life-threatening health problems. That includes a 2-year-old with infected gums that Dilley staff did not treat for over 23 days, leading her to have a fever and infection, cry relentlessly, and be forced to have a diet of only liquids.
It includes an 18-month-old baby who went to the hospital for 10 days when her oxygen levels were dangerously low and a 10-year-old child with Hirschsprung's disease who lacked proper medical care, resulting in no bowel movements for over a month.
Families report something even more disturbing. When they ask for help, they are dismissed, belittled, and mocked. One person reported that they were laughed at by guards while vomiting and pleading to see a doctor.
If any hospital in this country treated children this way, we would shut it down. We would investigate. We would hold people accountable. Instead, our tax dollars are funding it. It is reprehensible.
I call on my colleagues for an immediate end to cruel immigration enforcement against children. Defund and dismantle ICE.
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Ms. DEXTER. Mr. Speaker, I am going to give my colleague just a moment and tell you about a family who are not immigrants with children. They are Americans, four Americans. Jackie Merlos and her children went to the Canadian border with her mother, who had a visiting visa from Honduras to come and see her sister and her nieces and nephews who live in Canada as permanent legal residents.
They drove to the Peace Park. They went there to have a family reunion, a picnic. There was no intention for any misguided actions. They just wanted to have a picnic and a reunion.
Now, Jackie has an asylum case, an active asylum case. She has lived in the United States for over 20 years and has an active work permit. She has done everything right. As they hugged, ICE agents, CBP agents swarmed the family and detained all of them.
Now, luckily, her sister lives in Canada where they released her fairly quickly, but Jackie was accused of human trafficking, as if her sister and her nieces and nephews wanted to come into the United States. She was kept with her four children, 7-year-old triplets and their 9-year-old, in a windowless cell at the border in Ferndale, Washington, for 2 weeks--over 2 weeks.
This is not a facility meant for long-term detention. It is a facility meant for 48-hours-or-less stays. There are no showers. There is no kitchen to make food for them. They kept them there.
I had the ability to go and see this family, but I wasn't allowed to talk to them. We were told that they were being sent back home and that Jackie had asked for that. It was a lie. Jackie had never signed any paperwork. She has four U.S. children. She knew she had done everything right, and she refused. But we were lied to. I, as a U.S. Congresswoman, was lied to.
Eventually, we had a habeas corpus case, and Jackie was released. Her children had been released as they were about to deport them.
Let me also say that her husband was taken into detention after her children were questioned individually, without their mother there, by CBP agents. They asked where they live and how much money do they make. Their father was detained from their own home. He was detained to the Northwest Detention Center.
While he was there, Customs and Border Patrol took pictures of the children and took them to their father and asked: Is this your child? They had him sign something. Well, he was signing passport applications. He reads Spanish. The applications were in English.
Our government was trying to deport, which isn't really a thing at all, American citizens against the will of their parents, and they lied to a U.S. Congresswoman about whether or not they wanted to be sent home. They wouldn't allow me to see Jackie. They wouldn't let me talk to her. They absolutely were on the border, the fringe of sending them. They were at SeaTac Airport being sent when we finally got them to cease and desist.
This is what your taxpayer dollars are paying for. These are U.S. citizen children with a mother who had done everything right. Shame on us. This has to stop.
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Ms. DEXTER. Mr. Speaker, I again thank all of my colleagues who joined us today and who spoke with such clarity and urgency. What we heard this afternoon makes one thing clear: Immigration enforcement against children is inhumane and unnecessary.
Families can and should be able to navigate their immigration cases together and in community, with the support of loved ones and legal service providers.
Detention harms children. It harms their physical health. It harms their mental health. Even after they are released, that trauma stays with them for life.
For so many children, the harm starts long before detention ever happens. It starts with fear.
For months now, every single school group that has come into my office or that I have visited has raised ICE as one of its top concerns. Elementary students, middle schoolers, high schoolers, even college students, for all of them, ICE is their top concern.
At a time when teachers aren't getting paid enough, and the Department of Education is getting gutted, young people are coming to Congress and asking: How can we stop our friends from being taken away?
This administration is traumatizing an entire generation. That is why we are here today to call for an end to cruel immigration enforcement against children.
End child detention. Defund and dismantle ICE, and save our children from this nightmare.
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