End Cruel Immigration Enforcement Against Kids

Floor Speech

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Mrs. RAMIREZ. Mr. Speaker, I rise to share Steven's story. Who is Steven some may ask?

Steven is a constituent, and he is a 14-year-old boy, an eighth grader with autism, who spent 66 days incarcerated in Dilley Immigration Processing Center.

Steven and his dad are finally back home with their family and the community that loves them. However, this past Monday, I accompanied Steven and his father, Victor, to their check-in at ICE. I witnessed firsthand the pain and the trauma caused by the cruelty of separation and detention. Each day that Steven spent in inhumane and unsanitary conditions in Dilley took a toll on this little boy.

Steven didn't want to go to his check-in on Monday because the last time he showed up for the check-in with his father as he had been told, he was kidnapped for 66 days.

When he got there and he saw me, he was grateful, but I can see the great distress in the face of this little boy. I saw a child as we went in for his check-in cower in the corner of a chair in the fetal position with his ears covered because he was so afraid to hear the words that he and his father heard the last time he was there. He was so afraid of going back to detention.

Let me say it and let me say it loud and clear in the people's House. Shame on every person in this country who thinks it is acceptable to terrorize children. Shame on you who talk about being the party of children and family who is locking them up in cages, who is separating them from their loved ones, from their community, denying them from air, from Sun, from play, from laughter, from joy, and every single thing a baby, a child deserves.

President Mandela said: ``There can be no keener revelation of a society's soul than the way in which it treats its children.''

Incarcerating children is an evil, morally bankrupt practice that calls into question any commitment our Nation has or claims to care about their preciousness.

We must unleash our collective outrage. Don't look away and don't normalize children in cages. We must demand that no other children experience what Steven has experienced or more than 3,800 children have experienced in ICE so far.

We will melt ICE, and I have a bill to do just that. We will dismantle the Department of Homeland Security because, frankly, at this juncture, nothing less is acceptable.

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