Texas Border Business
Washington, D.C. – Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee, a Senior Member of the House Committees on Judiciary, Homeland Security, and Budget, and the Ranking Member on the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism Homeland Security and Investigations, and a leading voice on immigration issues, issued this statement following reports that the government intends to open a facility in Houston to house separated immigrant children:
“Over the last many weeks, the country has been horrified by the sights and sounds of children being separated from their parents, and Americans aghast at the realization that families are being torn apart in their name. While the President purported to end the practice with his Executive Order signed on Wednesday, thousands of children have been torn apart from their families and sent to various pockets of the country, often under cover of night, without any indication to their parents as to their whereabouts, or a plan to reunite them. Thus far, over 2,300 of children have been separated from their parents.
“Reports indicate that one of the locations that has been designated to receive children is a warehouse located at 419 Emancipation Avenue, in Houston. This morally bankrupt policy can leave no footprint in our beloved city, and Houstonians of all walks of life must stand tall in opposition to this endeavor. Together, we must persist in our objections to this administration’s policy and especially to any attempt to cast our fair city as an appendage to this administration’s cruel, inhumane and disastrous policy and say with one voice: not in my name! We must urge the company which has leased the facility at 419 Emancipation to abandon its plan to shoehorn its shelter into our beloved city.
“If we permit this facility to open in Houston, we will be complicit in this abomination, and contributing to the emotional and psychological anguish likely to be visited upon these children for many years to come; we will have no choice but to share the guilt the parents of these children must feel, who came to this country in pursuit of a better life, only to have their American dream turn into a nightmare. To visit any of these facilities, like I did, is to see migrants who speak little or no English; it is to see children, who in many instances lack the ability to effectively self-advocate under custodial pressures, questioned as to the veracity of their claims for asylum; it is to see parents separated from their children without so much as a piece of paper or a receipt explaining how reunification with children could and will occur.
“Recently, the administration has announced plans to establish a “Reunification Task Force,” to assist in efforts to bring children back to their parents. The Congress must be given a report on the manner in which this task force functions and what it hopes to accomplish, how it plans to do this and the time frame in which it plans to do so. But already, there are serious concerns as to whether this task force has the wherewithal, in resources and leadership, to accomplish this daunting task. The leader of the task force, for example, is a self-described “architect” against certain women’s health choices and according to a deposition from just seven months ago, he has never worked with or resettled migrants. To the extent the task force is equipped to do this job, among the first questions it must answer is whether the government will audit or otherwise provide a list of these children and their locations. Heretofore, officials from the Department of Health and Human Services have been reticent to answer this critical question. The trauma visited upon these children must stop.
“When I visited the border and the federal detention facilities that housed parents and children quarantined from one another, what I witnessed was horrific and was echoed in heartbreaking audio recordings released by the press revealing children crying, aching for their parents, as all face a fate uncertain, and one inconsistent with the American ideal. I will never forget the little children I met during my visit to the border. One baby, 9-month-old Roger, had been taken from his 19-year-old sister after she was prosecuted for crossing the border illegally. Their mother is dead, and they were coming here to find family. Little Leah, just one year-old, was taken from a grandmother and a sister. The pain was no less visceral when speaking with mothers wondering where their children have gone. In South Texas I met Gabby, from Honduras, who had a 45 day-old baby taken from her, and while housed at the facility had not yet been treated or given medical attention. Houstonians cannot, for one moment, permit this to occur in our hometown.
“As the president’s plan to visit heartache on these migrant families has appropriately unraveled, serious questions about the competence of this presidential administration emerge once more. Critically, why was this policy child separation policy implemented without a plan in place for reunification? This policy has been a moral debacle. The work before us is substantial, but important to do. We must ensure the policy of separation ends in fact. We must do all we can to reunite children with their parents. And, with the resolve that this community has summoned before, we must make sure that children separated from their parents are not housed in our hometown as we must say with one voice: not in my name.”
