[House Hearing, 116 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
KIDS IN CAGES:
INHUMANE TREATMENT
AT THE BORDER
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON CIVIL RIGHTS AND CIVIL LIBERTIES
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT
AND REFORM
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED SIXTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
JULY 10, 2019
__________
Serial No. 116-44
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Oversight and Reform
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COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND REFORM
ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland, Chairman
Carolyn B. Maloney, New York Jim Jordan, Ohio, Ranking Minority
Eleanor Holmes Norton, District of Member
Columbia Justin Amash, Michigan
Wm. Lacy Clay, Missouri Paul A. Gosar, Arizona
Stephen F. Lynch, Massachusetts Virginia Foxx, North Carolina
Jim Cooper, Tennessee Thomas Massie, Kentucky
Gerald E. Connolly, Virginia Mark Meadows, North Carolina
Raja Krishnamoorthi, Illinois Jody B. Hice, Georgia
Jamie Raskin, Maryland Glenn Grothman, Wisconsin
Harley Rouda, California James Comer, Kentucky
Katie Hill, California Michael Cloud, Texas
Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Florida Bob Gibbs, Ohio
John P. Sarbanes, Maryland Ralph Norman, South Carolina
Peter Welch, Vermont Clay Higgins, Louisiana
Jackie Speier, California Chip Roy, Texas
Robin L. Kelly, Illinois Carol D. Miller, West Virginia
Mark DeSaulnier, California Mark E. Green, Tennessee
Brenda L. Lawrence, Michigan Kelly Armstrong, North Dakota
Stacey E. Plaskett, Virgin Islands W. Gregory Steube, Florida
Ro Khanna, California
Jimmy Gomez, California
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, New York
Ayanna Pressley, Massachusetts
Rashida Tlaib, Michigan
David Rapallo, Staff Director
Candyce Phoenix, Subcommittee Staff Director
Valerie Shen, Chief Counsel and Senior Policy Advisor
Joshua Zucker, Assistant Clerk
Christopher Hixon, Minority Staff Director
Contact Number: 202-225-5051
------
Subcommittee on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties
Jamie Raskin, Maryland, Chairman
Carolyn Maloney, New York Chip Roy, Texas, Ranking Minority
Wm. Lacy Clay, Missouri Member
Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Florida Justin Amash, Michigan
Robin Kelly, Illinois Thomas Massie, Kentucky
Jimmy Gomez, California Mark Meadows, North Carolina
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, New York Jody Hice, Georgia
Eleanor Holmes Norton, District of Michael Cloud, Texas
Columbia Carol D. Miller, West Virginia
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
Hearing held on July 10, 2019.................................... 1
Witnesses
Panel 1
Yazmin Ju rez, Asylum Seeker
Oral Statement................................................... 8
Panel 2
Michael Breen, President and Chief Executive Officer Human Rights
First
Oral Statement................................................... 16
Clara Long Deputy, Washington Director Human Rights Watch
Oral Statement................................................... 18
Hope Frye, Executive Director Project Lifeline
Oral Statement................................................... 20
Dr. Carlos A. Gutierrez, M.D. F.A.A.P., Pediatrics Private
Practice
Oral Statement................................................... 22
Ronald D. Vitiello, (Minority Witness) Former Chief, U.S. Border
Patrol Former Acting Director, Immigration and Customs
Enforcement
Oral Statement................................................... 24
Index of Documents
----------
The documents listed below are available at: https://
docs.house.gov.
* Statement from the American Medical Association; submitted by
Chairman Raskin.
* Statement from Amy Kahn; submittedby Chairman Raskin.
* Statement from Carol Martin, Executive Director of Trauma
Recovery at EDMR Humanitarian Assistance Programs; submitted by
Chairman Raskin.
* Statement from Church World Service; submitted by Chairman
Raskin.
* Statement from the National Association of Pediatric Nurse
Practitioners; submitted by Chairman Raskin.
* Statement from Myra Jones-Taylor, Chief Policy Officer for
Zero to Three; submitted by Chairman Raskin.
* "Inside the Secret Border Patrol Facebook Group Where Agents
Joke About Migrant Deaths and Post Sexist Memes" from
ProPublica; submitted by Rep. Gomez.
KIDS IN CAGES:
INHUMANE TREATMENT
AT THE BORDER
----------
Wednesday, July 10, 2019
House of Representatives
Subcommittee on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties,
Committee on Oversight and Reform
Washington, D.C.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:52 p.m., in
room 2154, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Jamie Raskin
(chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
Present: Representatives Raskin, Maloney, Clay, Wasserman
Schultz, Kelly, Gomez, Ocasio-Cortez, Pressley, Norton, Roy,
Massie, Meadows, Hice, Cloud, Miller, and Jordan.
Also present: Representatives Tlaib and Grothman.
Mr. Raskin. The subcommittee will come to order. Please
close the doors if you can. Without objection, the chair is
authorized to declare a recess of the committee at any time.
This subcommittee is convening this hearing regarding
inhumane treatment of children and families at the border. I
will now recognize myself for five minutes to give an opening
statement.
I want to welcome--oh, Okay, we're going to start with a
video. If you would run that.
How are we doing on the opening video? Okay. Let me know
when that comes up.
I want to welcome the members of the Subcommittee on Civil
Rights and Civil Liberties. I want to welcome our distinguished
witnesses and guests to this hearing on the humanitarian crisis
at the border.
The American people are up in arms about reports, both from
the Inspector General of the Department of Homeland Security
and the media and various human rights groups, about the
dangerous overcrowding, spreading infections, influenza,
diarrhea and lice, pervasive medical inattention, sexual
assault, and systematic abuse of the rights of migrants in U.S.
Government care and custody at the border. We hope to shine a
bright light this afternoon on these dark developments to
enable rapid and effective legislative responses.
I especially want to thank our first witness, Yazmin
Juarez, for coming to share the painful story of her 19-month-
old daughter Mariee, who experienced untreated respiratory
complications during her detention by ICE and died shortly
thereafter. We know that six children have lost their lives
while in detention at the border.
I want to thank all the Members of Congress and this
committee who have traveled to the border to investigate and
all of those who are prepared to do so in the coming weeks.
The human rights violations and family catastrophes
happening at the border are not improving a serious regional
refugee crisis, but they are worsening and exacerbating it.
What is driving this refugee crisis? Gang violence and
intimidation, government dysfunction and police corruption,
political persecution, rape and gender violence, they are all
driving unprecedented numbers of desperate families and
terrified children out of the Northern Triangle of Central
America to the United States.
Many of the migrants amassing at our border are escaping
threats of imminent death or bodily harm or the prospect of
their children being forced into violent gangs or criminal
networks of sexual abuse and trafficking. Some are climate
change refugees fleeing the devastating effects of extreme
drought and flooding in their home areas.
The journey to the border today for these huddled masses is
traumatic and filled with deadly peril. Along the way, many are
robbed, assaulted, or raped. Some have been killed. Parents
have drowned alongside their children in the Rio Grande.
But hundreds of thousands have made it to our border. They
turn themselves in to border officials and make their legal
claim for asylum, a claim that they have the right to make
under both American and international law.
Yet they have been greeted not as refugees whose asylum
claims must be heard and taken seriously under our due process
of law, but as presumptive criminals and threats to the
American people.
The Trump administration has prosecuted them, subjected
their families to prolonged and miserable detention, separated
children from their parents, and forced migrants back into
Mexico. The entire thrust of this policy is punishment, both
court-ordered and government-administered, and deterrence by
means of mass trauma.
While the Trump administration did not cause the refugee
crisis in Central America, it has exacerbated it by cutting off
hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign aid for education,
healthcare, and community development to precisely the
countries which the refugees are now desperately fleeing in
huge numbers.
We owe the region at least this aid, given that we are a
key market for the drug trade that has wreaked so much violence
and insecurity in these countries, and all of us are implicated
in foreign policies toward Central America over the last
several decades which have emphasized war and military
assistance over economic and social development.
The administration's chaotic policy responses have produced
a severe humanitarian crisis at the border, with dangerous
overcrowding, widespread sickness and disease, and a shocking
failure to provide adequate medical care, food, water, and
sanitation.
America is watching scenes of sick children packed into
holding cells, pregnant women sleeping on cold floors, and
mothers trying to warm newborn babies with aluminum blankets.
The policy of separating thousands of migrant children from
their parents is designed to make conditions at the border so
miserable that the refugees will simply stop coming. Last May,
then Attorney General Sessions stated, ``If you don't want your
child to be separated, then don't bring them across the border
illegally.''
But these policies are failing to deter asylum-seeking
families because the underlying causes of their migration are
so grave and overwhelming. In fact, the Trump deterrence policy
seems to be having no deterrent effect at all.
According to Customs and Border Protection's own data,
family migration spiked in the month after the administration
announced the family separation policy, and there have been
sharp increases ever since, unlike anything we've seen before
in our lifetimes.
Whatever else these harsh policies are intended to
accomplish, the message received by hundreds of thousands of
people seems to be: Migrate now before things get even worse.
The administration has failed to respond in a way that
meets the actual humanitarian challenges at the border. Our
government should be sending doctors and social workers and
humanitarian supplies to the border along with asylum officers
and legal resources to help identify and process claims. We
should be making sure that all of the money being spent at the
border is not being wasted, but used to meet the urgent
nutritional and medical needs of the migrants.
Last week, the Department of Homeland Security's Inspector
General warned of a ``ticking time bomb'' at Border Patrol
detention facilities. The IG cited children crammed into cages
with no access to showers or hot meals and ``serious
overcrowding and prolonged detention'' for adults, some in
standing room only conditions with no room to lie or even sit
down.
At the Border Patrol station in Clint, Texas, The New York
Times reported: ``Outbreaks of scabies, shingles, and
chickenpox were spreading among the hundreds of children in
cramped cells, agents said. The stench of the children's dirty
clothing was so strong it spread to the agents' own clothing.
People in town would scrunch their noses when they left work.
The children cried constantly. One girl seemed likely enough to
try to kill herself that the agents made her sleep on a cot in
front of them so they could watch her as they were processing
new arrivals.''
There is no excuse for our government being so unprepared
and indifferent to refugee flows that have been steadily
mounting for months. These conditions violate American law and
international human rights standards. We would not accept these
conditions for refugees anywhere else in the world.
The Trump administration reversed a policy, for example,
that largely protected pregnant women from detention. Over 200
human rights and civil rights groups have called for the
policy's reinstatement, noting the current arbitrary detention
of pregnant women violates international human rights norms.
Last week, the DHS Inspector General reported that 31
percent of children across five facilities had been held longer
than 72 hours, in violation of Flores, the 1997 settlement
agreement that required children to be placed in safe and
sanitary conditions and directs children be transferred out of
detention facilities as expeditiously as possible. There have
now been news reports of migrant children detained for much
longer than 72 hours and many for weeks.
There is a dangerous lack of accountability at detention
facilities. We know that many officers are doing their best
under these trying and excruciating conditions, but after
recent reports there is little doubt that there is a real
contingent of border agents acting in callous and scandalous
ways, punishing scared and helpless children, mocking migrant
deaths on Facebook, and even attacking in vile ways Members of
Congress who dare to demand fair treatment for migrants under
the rule of law.
I am pleased that the Acting Secretary has pledged to
investigate these reports, but reportedly top Border Patrol
officials have been aware of the Facebook group and its
egregious contents for many months and even years.
What sort of culture exists within DHS that would foster or
even tolerate this behavior for so long? Why did the
administration and its allies block efforts to ensure that
increased funding for the border be accompanied by provisions
to ensure responsible oversight over how our money as taxpayers
is being spent? How can we end official tolerance for these
shameful actions in our name?
I hope our hearing today will bring these difficult facts
into the light and pose hard questions about official actions
that shame us as a society, not as Democrats or Republicans or
independents, but as Americans. I also hope that this hearing,
in conjunction with Chairman Cummings' full committee hearing
scheduled for Friday, will identify immediate steps to provide
relief and change in these conditions.
I will now go to the opening video before I turn it over to
our ranking member, Mr. Roy.
[Video shown.]
Mr. Raskin. The chair now recognizes the ranking member of
the subcommittee, Mr. Roy of Texas, for five minutes for his
opening statement, and I will be liberal with that.
Mr. Roy. I thank the chairman.
Ms. Juarez, on behalf of this committee, all the members
here, the entire House of Representatives, there are no words
that we can possibly share with you about the loss of your
little girl. I am the father of a son and a daughter. I cannot
possibly imagine what you have gone through. And we owe it to
you and to our country and to all those who seek to come here
to have a system that works and to not have something like this
happen. And so my prayers from my family to you, and we thank
you for being here.
Mr. Chairman, I have to say I am frustrated, though, with
the title of the hearing. It's setting a tone that doesn't
allow us to come together to address this difficult problem in
a way that is befitting of the United States and our welcoming
nature as a country. It is a hearing entitled ``Kids in
Cages.'' What we say and the hyperbole we use matters.
As a Member from Texas and a former staffer on the Senate
Judiciary Committee, as a Member of Congress, I've been to the
border many times, and to this day I have never seen a kid in a
cage the way those words seem to indicate it.
Let's look at the advertisements for this hearing, OK? The
slide on the right is the ad for this hearing, showing pictures
of kids supposedly in cages. The picture on the left is a
picture from 2014 when President Obama's DHS Secretary Jeh
Johnson was giving a tour of a facility where you've got, yes,
chain link barriers put up in temporary facilities at that time
under the Obama Administration in a way to deal with a crisis
at 2014 time of unaccompanied children riding on the top of
train cars--we remember those horrific stories from five years
ago--and trying to deal with the problem of massive numbers of
people coming across the border, oftentimes with parents that
aren't the parents claiming to be the parents of the child,
which is horrific, oftentimes in facilities and dealing with
situations where you want to separate the children from bad
actors.
In the most recent time, we've had 144,000 people that CBP
had to deal with in May. How do you deal with that? Under the
most generous circumstances of trying to figure out what to do
to care for these children, release them to family members,
release them in a safe way, care for them, give them food, give
them healthcare, how would we have them do it when we're
denying them the facilities and the resources to do it?
We should discuss the humanitarian crisis. We're
experiencing an unprecedented surge in migrants. You see the
chart over here. I don't have to go through it. The red line,
you see the massive spike in apprehensions. The numbers in June
were 94,987, the highest June number recorded in at least the
last five years. It was down from 144,000 in May. That often
happens because of the heat in June.
I've personally seen that an overwhelming number of
individuals fill our Border Patrol stations and stretch our
Border Patrol workers to go above and beyond. We all agree that
they're stretched. There is no disagreement in this room on
that, at least today. There might have been five months ago.
I've seen the facilities, and I've not seen a single cage
in the way that it is being depicted. I am seeing ways to try
to separate people and keep them safe. And we demean the
process and our Border Patrol agents, who are law enforcement
officers for the government of the United States trying to do
their job, when we call them cages.
It is not helpful to use this crisis that so many denied
and called manufactured now to score political points. In this
fiscal year, more than 694,000 aliens have been apprehended,
whether they were claiming asylum or whether they were just
straight coming illegally.
On February 15 the President declared a national emergency
at the border to deal with the escalating crisis. On May 1 the
Office of Management and Budget wrote Congress its first
request for emergency funding to address this worsening crisis.
That request and the followup was ignored. And the situation
grew so dire, I find myself in agreement--I found myself in
agreement with the editorial board of The New York Times, who
said it is time for Congress to stop dithering and pass
emergency funding to deal with this nightmare.
I even forced a few votes on the floor of the House of
Representatives. How dare I force votes in the people's House?
And some of my colleagues joined.
Why? Because for five months we had listened to some of our
colleagues say there is no crisis. Speaker Pelosi called the
situation a fake crisis at the border. Foreign Relations
Committee Chairman Engel called the situation a fake crisis at
the border. House Judiciary Committee Jerry Nadler: There is no
crisis at the border. Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz,
one of my colleagues on this committee: We don't have a border
crisis. Representative Doggett, a fellow Texan, called the
situation a phony border crisis. Representative Sanford Bishop
called it a crisis that does not exist. I could go on and on.
There are dozens of examples, hundreds of examples.
Instead of focusing on the magnets that will allow cartels
to exploit women and children, some in this body would rather
attack the men and women on the front lines of the crisis.
In the face of our willful blindness and at times blatant
falsehoods, CBP has performed over 3,000 rescues this year--
3,000 rescues this year--including last month in Laredo where
they rescued 14 migrants locked in a horse trailer that was 124
degrees inside with no ventilation or exit.
Now, we can have a robust debate about how we solve this
crisis, about what we do about legal and illegal, about what we
do about asylum, about ports of entry, between ports of entry.
These are all complex questions, and I wish we would all sit in
a room, roll our sleeves up, and sit down and figure out how to
solve the problem.
But the reality is CBP is out there saving lives. Agencies
such as the CBP do not have enough resources to respond to the
crisis while also performing their law enforcement duties. DHS
Secretary McAleenan said this weekend, quote, ``We have no
evidence that children went hungry.''
Now, we're Oversight, we should go dig into that statement.
I agree with that. Let's go make sure that there aren't
children going hungry.
``Of course, we're worried about it''--this is now his
words--``Of course, we're worried about it. Everyone in the
entire chain of command was worried about the situation for
children. That's why we've built soft-sided facilities, a
thousand spaces. We're building more that we are going to be
opening next week. We're trying to provide as much space and as
much nice a setting as we possibly can while children are in
our custody.
``But the big point was to move them to HHS. Let me give
you an update. On June 1, we had 2,500 children in our custody;
1,200 had been with us over three days. Now that we have the
supplemental from Congress''--the supplemental that was being
denied--``we have the supplemental from Congress, HHS has
additional beds. We only have 350 as of yesterday afternoon's
report, and only 20 of those children have been with us for
more than three days. So that's a huge improvement.''
And that's his words.
Today, I talked to a CBP official that said at no point in
time has a CBP facility been lacking in supplies for migrant
children. Okay, that's his word. We should look into that and
make sure that's the case.
When my friends across the aisle ignored the
administration's request for emergency funding for two months,
DHS took action and CBP began paying for supplies out of their
operational budget. Sometimes they paid out of their own
pockets to make sure that things were taken care of.
Importantly, my chief of staff went to Clint this weekend
because I felt so strongly about looking into what some of my
colleagues were claiming. I couldn't go because of a family
conflict, but my chief of staff went. And he looked and he
talked and he saw and he took pictures--or, I'm sorry, he
observed some of the pictures you're going to see here, which
is from a video from a Border Patrol head in, I believe, in
Arizona, facilities where you're seeing lots of materials and
supplies and food. And there's other pictures that show other
materials and supplies and food.
Now, can I guarantee that all of that got to every person
who's been detained? No. But this is what we're getting in
terms of information and what we're seeing, what I see with my
own eyes. I've seen with my own eyes the facilities in McAllen
where I talked to Border Patrol and they'll see some of my
colleagues on the other side of the aisle come in and go: Well,
this all looks great. They walk across the street and they go
get in front of a camera, and they say: Kids in cages.
That's not going to solve the problem. That's not going to
help Ms. Juarez. That's not going to help stop the cartels who
made $2 billion in 2018 profiting by moving people through
Mexico to come here, hundreds of millions of dollars, the
Reynosa faction of the Gulf Cartel, the cartel del Noreste Los
Zetas, the Sinaloas, dangerous cartels making tons of money
moving people through.
And even if you believe this is because the Northern
Triangle is suffering calamitous situations economically in
terms of safety and security and gangs, agreed. But what we're
talking about is a profit model that cartels are abusing to use
for profit to come then and use our asylum laws to harm these
people and to harm that father and that child that died in the
river trying to come here.
Now, I've gone longer than I probably should have, Mr.
Chairman. I appreciate that you've given me the time. We have a
broken immigration system. We must act quickly. I believe we
need to fix the asylum problem, the Flores settlement
agreement. We need to have a strong collective agreement on
what we can do to secure the border.
I've recently introduced a bill aimed at addressing the
crisis, the Charitable Donations Freedom Act, to make sure
there's no barriers in the Antideficiency Act. If anybody wants
to give something, they can give a charitable gift.
I don't even know if it's necessary, but let's make sure
there's no barriers and let's work together to bring down any
barriers to make sure people are cared for. I don't believe
that the CBP isn't doing everything it can to ensure that human
beings are treated the way they should.
I look forward to hearing from the witnesses, and I
appreciate the chairman's time.
Mr. Raskin. Mr. Roy, thank you very much.
Now, we have two panels today. The first panel has just one
witness, and that's Yazmin Juarez, who's come. And so I am
going to swear her in.
We are very grateful to you for your appearance today. We
extend you our condolences, our sympathy, and also our
gratitude, because you're doing a great service to America by
coming forward to tell your story.
You are accompanied today by Jasmin Rumbaut, a certified
interpreter with the New York State Unified Court System.
You have a headset or you can do simultaneous translation
for Ms. Juarez when the members speak or ask questions.
I believe we're expecting votes to be called in about half
an hour, I think the last I heard. So we will let the witness
testify, we will have whatever questions there are, and when we
return we'll open up with the second panel.
So I'd like to swear you in. So please stand, if you would,
Ms. Juarez, and raise your right hand.
Do you swear or affirm that the testimony you are about to
give is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,
so help you God?
Let the record show that the witness answered in the
affirmative.
Thank you, Ms. Juarez. Please be seated. Please be sure to
speak directly into the microphone. Without objection, your
written statement will be made part of the record.
I also, without objection, will waive onto the committee
for the purposes of participation today Ms. Tlaib from Michigan
and Mr. Grothman from Wisconsin. Hearing no objection, they are
waived on.
And with that, Ms. Juarez, you are now recognized to speak
to the committee.
STATEMENT OF YAZMIN JUAREZ, ASYLUM SEEKER
[The following statement and answers were delivered through
an interpreter.]
Ms. Juarez. First of all, I'd like to thank each and every
one of you, and may Jesus bless each and every one of you.
Thank you, Chairman Raskin, Ranking Member Roy, and members of
the committee, for inviting me.
My name is Yazmin Juarez. My daughter Mariee and I fled
Guatemala, seeking asylum in the United States. We made this
journey because we feared for our lives. The trip was
dangerous, but I was more afraid of what might happen to us if
we stayed. So we came to the United States, where I hoped to
build a better, safer life for us.
Unfortunately, that did not happen. Instead, I watched my
baby girl die slowly and painfully just a few months before her
second birthday.
It is painful for me to relive this experience and remember
that suffering, but I am here because the world should know
what is happening to so many children inside of ICE detention.
My beautiful girl is gone, but I hope her story will spur this
country's government to act so that more children do not die
because of neglect and mistreatment.
Mariee had always been a super happy, very healthy baby.
She made the journey from Guatemala without any problems. We
were held in CBP custody for three or four days in a facility
known as ``la hielera,'' or the icebox, because it's freezing
cold. We were locked in a cage with about 30 other people, moms
and children, and forced to sleep on a concrete floor.
We were sent to the ICE detention center in Dilley, Texas.
A nurse examined Mariee when we arrived and found her healthy.
We were packed into a room with five other people, mothers with
children, a total of 12 people in our room.
I noticed immediately how many sick children there were in
detention, that no effort was being made to separate the sick
from the healthy or to care for them. One of the little boys in
our room was sick. As a mother, this was very hurtful to see.
His mom tried to take him to the clinic, but they kept sending
him back without being seen, without care.
Within a week of being at Dilley, Mariee got sick, my
little girl. First it was coughing and sneezing and a lot of
nasal secretions. I brought her to the clinic, where I waited
in line with many other, many other people in a gymnasium to
get medical care. When the physician's assistant saw her days
after, she said that Mariee had a respiratory infection and
prescribed Tylenol and honey for her cough.
The next day, however, Mariee was worse. She was running a
fever of over 104 degrees and began having diarrhea and
vomiting as well. She wouldn't eat, and I remember her head and
her little body felt so hot and that she was weak.
On this day, they told me that she had an ear infection and
gave her antibiotics. I begged them to do deeper exams, but
they sent us back to our room.
I tried to come back multiple times to the clinic. I had to
wait in line from early in the morning with dozens of other
mothers with their sick children. Twice I was turned away and
told to go back to my room.
Mariee lost almost eight percent of her body weight in just
10 days. She was still vomiting constantly. When she was
finally seen by a doctor, they told me to give her Pedialyte
and Vicks VapoRub. I didn't learn until after she died, when I
was researching it online, that you aren't supposed to give
Vicks to kids under two years old because it could cause
respiratory problems.
My baby got sicker. She was vomiting constantly. Her fever
kept going up. She wouldn't eat or sleep. Her body was weak.
And when I finally received a notice that Mariee had an
appointment to be seen by a doctor, I was so relieved, though
that didn't happen. We were told that we were going to be
processed for transfer out of detention, and at that point I
was relieved because I thought that I would actually be able to
take her to see a doctor. As a mother, it was very important
for me to do that. It was very difficult for me to see her
suffering.
What happened was that at 5 a.m. we were woken and taken to
be processed for transfer out of detention, and there we waited
for hours. She was not taken to the clinic to be seen by
medical staff. I later found out that her medical record said
that she had been cleared as someone with no medical
restrictions. But it did not happen that way. She was never
seen. And even though it says that on her records, as her
mother I can say that she was not seen.
I was terrified by the time our plane landed. We took
Mariee to a pediatrician as soon as we could and just a few
hours later to the emergency room. She was admitted to the
intensive care unit with a viral lung infection. Over the next
six weeks, she was transferred to another children's hospital.
My little girl suffered horrible pain. She was poked and
prodded and eventually needed a ventilator to help her breathe.
I couldn't even hold her or hug her or console her when she
asked for her mother. It was a terrible pain to see my child in
a situation and circumstance like this one, and as a mother I
wish that I could have taken her place.
All of the hard work of these doctors came too late. My
Mariee died on what is Mother's Day in my country. When I
walked out of the hospital that day, all I had with me was a
piece of paper with Mariee's handprints in pink paint that the
staff had created for me. It was the only thing that I had
left, and the nurses had given it to me as a Mother's Day gift.
I'm here today because I want to put an end to this. It is
very hard to see so many children and for none of them to be my
daughter and to think that I will never see her again or hug
her or enjoy being with her or tell her just how much I love
her. It is very hard. You have no idea how hard it is to move
forward without my little girl. It's like they tore out a piece
of my heart, like they tore out my soul.
I'm suffering every day. It is difficult to get up and move
forward without her. I wanted to have a better life for her and
a better future and work hard so that she could keep growing
the way that she was, but now we won't be able to do that
because she is gone.
I'm here today to put an end to this and that we not allow
any more children to suffer and die in this way. Mariee could
be here with us, but she is not. Next month she would have been
three years old. That is a very painful date for me. It's
painful to not have her with me and show her what I feel and
say what I want for her. I have no words to describe that.
My daughter is gone. The people who are in charge of
running these facilities and caring for these little angels are
not supposed to let these things happen to them. Their parents
have brought them here to find a better life and a safer life
for their children.
I'm here today because I don't want any more little angels
to suffer the way Mariee did and the way I am now. I don't want
any more mothers or fathers to lose children.
It can't be so hard for a country like the United States to
protect kids who are locked up. It is very hard. You don't know
the terror that mothers and children feel when they see
children in cages, hungry, cold, without the warmth of a home,
just hundreds of other people in the same situation that they
are in. It is very painful.
If I had the power to change things and do it right and
protect children, believe me that I would. I thank God for
giving me a heart that is noble but weak. It is very painful to
see what children are going through and to want to do something
and not be able to.
I want to thank you with all of my heart and I want God to
bless each and every one of you by name. Thank you for the
opportunity to be here and to be able to offer my testimony. I
trust in God that you will have the power to change things and
make a difference so that children and mothers will not have to
suffer. It's a terrible thing. You have no idea the pain, what
the pain is that this means to not have her here with me.
So my infinite thanks to you. And if there's anything that
I can do to make a difference, I will. Thank you.
Mr. Raskin. Ms. Juarez, thank you for your testimony. Words
cannot express the sympathy that we feel toward you. Words
cannot express our sorrow at hearing your story. And words
cannot express our gratitude to you for having the strength to
come forward to tell about these horrific events that have
taken place.
If you're okay taking a few questions, I just have one or
two, and then I'll turn to the ranking member to see if he has
any and if any other members of the committee have anything
that they want to ask you.
In fact, let me start with you, Mr. Roy. We've gone over
with the witness and I'm happy to donate the lion's share of my
time to the witness' presentation. Do you have anything you'd
like to ask?
Mr. Roy. Ms. Juarez, I would just reiterate the statement
of the chairman and the statement that I tried to open with,
that--you said it--[speaking Spanish]. There are no words. And
I am very thankful for your faith and for your blessing upon us
and for your courage in being here, and thank you for being
here.
Mr. Raskin. You know, Ms. Juarez, our country is a Nation
of immigrants. Except for the descendants of slaves and the
Native Americans, all of us are here as immigrants or the
descendants of immigrants. And our ancestors, our parents, our
grandparents saw America as a land of hope and dreams and
opportunity.
And I know that you can't talk specifically about what you
left behind in Guatemala for legal reasons, and your lawyers
have advised you not to get into the detail there, but I wonder
if you would talk to us about what America represented to you,
what moved you to try to get to America with Mariee when you
came.
Ms. Juarez. Yes, of course. As you said, the United States
is the land of opportunity, work, important doctors, and in my
country, you know, they say the American Dream. So my wish and
the purpose of bringing my child here was to move forward with
her, to have her grow, and to be able to give her all of the
things that I would not be able to give her in my country,
because this is a country of freedom and opportunities.
We had so many wishes and dreams when we came here, you
can't imagine. But now it will definitely make that difference
that the U.S. represents. It represents that dream and
opportunity and work and freedom above everything else.
Mr. Raskin. Thank you.
I'm going to call on Mrs. Maloney from New York.
And, members, you know, we're in sort of a modified five-
minute rule. Obviously, the witness has been through a lot, but
if there's one or two questions you'd like to ask, I think that
that works out well.
Mrs. Maloney.
Mrs. Maloney. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And thank you, Ms. Juarez.
This was very difficult, to hear your testimony, and I know
it was even more difficult to give your testimony. So why are
you here in what is such an obviously painful experience for
you to remember the horror of what your Mariee went through?
Why are you here?
Ms. Juarez. I'm here today because I want to tell all
people of all the world in all countries, especially in the
United States, that we need to make a change and make a
difference to actually care and protect kids more.
ICE detention centers are terrible, inadequate places to
lock children up, I am sorry to say, as if they were animals.
It is difficult to have to say that. But I repeat that I'm here
because I want to make a difference, to help more children, in
the name and in the memory of Mariee. And if it's possible to
make that difference and to make that change, believe me, I
want that to happen.
Mrs. Maloney. You described----
Mr. Raskin. Mrs. Maloney, forgive me. I've learned that
votes are about to be called in a moment. Would you be willing
to cede to some other member so everybody could ask a question?
Would that be okay? And I'll just recognize them.
I saw, Ms. Tlaib, you had your hand, if you would like to
ask a question.
Ms. Wasserman Schultz, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, Ms. Pressley.
Ms. Tlaib. Thank you, Chairman.
Ms. Juarez, thank you so much for being here.
I wanted to ask, it's so important because you in many ways
experienced something that we saw ourselves in many ways when
we went to El Paso, but you referred to it as the icebox. You
also talked about your daughter not getting access to care and
so forth.
Would you talk a little bit more about the conditions that
you and your daughter were in? I think it would be really
helpful for my colleagues to understand how it felt. You know,
sometimes you don't think about this, but the food.
When I went there, people were just like sleeping, just
constantly laying down, and the children were jumping on top of
the body. You know, the kids were energetic and jumping around.
They were all, again, in the same facility. I think it's really
important to talk about your experience while you were in our
care.
Ms. Juarez. Sure. When I was admitted into the ICE
detention facility we spent a very cold night that entire early
morning sleeping on concrete with what they--this gray thing.
They said it was a blanket, but it's--so-called blanket--but
it's not that for me.
The food was not appropriate for a child. It didn't have
the proper nutrients for the health of a child nor the proper
hygienic situation. It looks like the food went through many
hands, and that could be many more germs then that could make a
child sick or an adult sick. And children don't really have the
natural defenses to be able to ward off any kind of serious
illnesses.
In my experience with Mariee, she was a happy, healthy
child, thank God, when we were back in our country. She didn't
suffer any serious illnesses until we got here into the United
States. But in the detention facility there were hundreds of
people who were sick, children and adults. And it was very
difficult to see that. It was very difficult to see hundreds of
people standing in line trying to be seen for medical consults.
And what happened to me and many other people is that we
had to go back and be turned away without receiving that kind
of help. And that to me seems like the most negligent thing,
and that what would be necessary is greater attention and
supervision to the health of children, which should be the
priority.
Mr. Raskin. Thank you.
For one question, Mr. Clay, and then Ms. Wasserman Schultz.
Mr. Clay. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Let me make a statement
and then ask one question.
You know, this disgraceful detention policy starts at the
top, starts with President Trump, Stephen Miller, who initiated
this policy. DHS implements it. You know, we as Americans
should be ashamed of what has transpired at these detention
centers. And if you are not, you have lost your soul and
compassion for others.
Let me just ask one question. In your testimony, Ms.
Juarez, you noted that you begged a nurse to examine Mariee's
lungs after she had been coughing for over two weeks. Did the
nurse give you a reason for not examining Mariee's lungs?
Ms. Juarez. I was never given an explanation of why they
didn't do more serious tests. Actually, one night we were in my
room and we were going to go eat, and so I was trying to wake
her up. And I shook her, wake up, we're going to go eat, and
she didn't react.
So obviously, as a mother, my reaction was to, you know,
try to wake her up to go eat and to worry very much when she
wouldn't wake up. And so I begged, after that point I begged
that we be getting an appointment, because it was not able to--
we weren't able to see a doctor without having an appointment.
So when we finally were seen, what they did was take her
temperature and give her ice cream. And they told me that that
would help with her fever. But I think that was worse for her
lungs. In my country, when a child is sick, you cover them up,
but not here. They give her a popsicle, which I think made her
lungs sicker, but they said it was good for her fever. It
actually made me wonder about the professionalism.
And actually even I took her to see a doctor and she was
vomiting in front of the doctor and they still wouldn't do any
more serious tests with her. And I was just--I was saying, you
know, whatever it takes, you can take me handcuffed if you want
to, but I really wanted them to have her see a specialist,
because it seemed that whatever she had was something more
serious. You can tell just by the sadness in her eyes, and it
was a very painful thing to experience.
Mr. Raskin. Okay. So we're going to go to Ms. Wasserman
Schultz, we're going to go to Mr. Roy, we're going to go to Ms.
Pressley and Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, and I think that will take us
to the end.
So, Ms. Wasserman Schultz, you are recognized for a
question.
Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Senora Juarez.
[speaking Spanish].
My question is focused on the medical record that makes it
appear that your daughter was actually seen by a medical
professional on March 25, 2018.
First, no one warned you that your daughter may be too sick
to travel? It says on the medical record that she was cleared
for travel. Is that correct?
Ms. Juarez. Yes.
Ms. Wasserman Schultz. And just to be clear, on the date of
this medical record, which is on the screen, Mariee did not
actually see a doctor, correct?
Ms. Juarez. Yes, correct.
Ms. Wasserman Schultz. And so there was no medical
evaluation of your daughter that actually happened on your last
day in the facility, which was the day that this medical record
was produced?
Ms. Juarez. No, not at all.
Ms. Wasserman Schultz. So, Mr. Chairman, what my concern
is, is that if ICE medical records of migrants like Senora
Juarez can be fabricated, which it appears that this one may
have been, how many more fraudulent medical records might be
out there?
I mean, she's testifying here under oath. We have to get to
the bottom of this and ensure that the medical records that are
being produced by ICE are accurate and that they're not just
making them up to cover up their neglect. It's unacceptable.
Mr. Raskin. Thank you very much, Ms. Wasserman Schultz.
Mr. Roy.
Mr. Roy. Ms. Juarez
[speaking Spanish].
Ms. Juarez. Of course. After everything that happened in my
country, I don't want to go back. I don't have my family here.
I'm here now and my dream is to move forward, to work, to
study, to learn, so that in the future when I am a mother again
I could teach them everything that I fought so hard for and
everything that I have struggled to study and learn along the
way.
Mr. Raskin. Thank you.
Ms. Pressley.
Ms. Pressley. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Ms. Juarez, I just wanted to state for the record that you
did nothing wrong and you certainly did nothing to deserve
this. Seeking asylum is a human right and you did what any
mother or parent would have done for their child. You
sacrificed everything for your safety and the safety of your
baby. You left everything you knew for the chance of a better
life.
You said that you have a noble but weak heart. You
underestimate your strength. And in this moment, you are
embodying every American ideal that we espoused that we do, and
I thank you for that.
It is unfortunate that our country is no longer standing by
its promise of being a beacon of hope and haven for those like
you seeking asylum. Instead, this administration has
criminalized families and is now operating a fundamentally
flawed system that is systemically separating families and
engaging in human rights abuses on U.S. soil.
So all I want to say to you from the bottom of my heart, as
a mom, as an American, and as a human being, is that I am
sorry. I am so very sorry that we have failed you.
And I also want to say that I will never forget what you
shared with us today even if I'm tempted to or want to because
it is painful and traumatic and shameful, but I refuse to
forget. We will not forget you or Mariee. We will not look
away.
Thank you.
Mr. Raskin. Thank you, Ms. Pressley.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Gracias, Senora Juarez
[speaking Spanish].
Ms. Juarez. No.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez.
[Speaking Spanish.]
Ms. Juarez. No.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez.
[Speaking Spanish.]
Ms. Juarez.
[Speaking Spanish.]
Mr. Raskin. Excuse me just for a moment. Let's translate
unless
[speaking Spanish], but I think probably not. So if you
could translate the last exchange then.
The Interpreter. To the first question, about whether there
is safe and sanitary conditions as mandated under U.S. law, in
her opinion the answer was no.
To the second question, about whether or not there was a
culture of cruelty that she saw under ICE conditions, I guess I
can get into the answer of that so far, which was that when I
was in detention, when I was in the cage and we had a phone
interview with immigration and ICE officials, they asked me why
I was here.
Ms. Juarez.
[Speaking Spanish.]
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. I'll let her translate quickly, but
[speaking Spanish].
Ms. Juarez.
[Speaking Spanish].
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez.
[Speaking Spanish].
Ms. Juarez. No.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. Gracias.
Ms. Juarez. As to the question as to being on the telephone
during the interview of why I was here and what I had come for,
and I responded that I had come here, you know, I was talking
about my child's future, but they wouldn't let me talk and they
said, you know, this country is for Americans, Trump is my
President, and we can take your little girl away from you and
lock you in jail. And I just started to cry, because I really
didn't have any words to respond to that. And that situation,
to me, that is mistreatment.
To the question of were you called crude names, personally,
no, but it was the nastiness of the words that were the strong
words that were used to me like what, like just calling me an
immigrant, but not really letting me respond when they used
strong words toward me and to really be able to give them any
kind of appropriate response.
To the question of did you feel safe, no.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. And, Mr. Chair, I just think it's
extremely important that this is noted, that this is not an
issue--you know, there are debates about money and resources.
That's for another day. But what is being pointed to here is a
culture of cruelty.
To have a CBP officer tell a migrant woman escaping
unspeakable horrors in her home country and tell them this
country is for Americans and to threaten separating her from
her daughter, to threaten a human rights violation, is
extraordinarily concerning and at a bare minimum grounds for
serious investigation by this committee and other entities.
Thank you.
Mr. Raskin. And that's what we're doing. So thank you very
much, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez.
Were there any other members who had any other questions
that they wanted to ask?
Ms. Kelly, did you have anything or no?
Ms. Kelly. Not really a question. The questions have been
asked.
But just to give my sympathy and sorry and hope in your
quest that this will never happen again to anybody else. But
thank you for sharing.
Mr. Raskin. Ms. Juarez, your story has broken the heart of
America, but your courage gives us a second chance to get it
right. So we want to thank you what you've done, and you have
friends and admirers on this committee for coming forward.
We are going to recess for the purpose of voting. We will
resume with the second panel immediately after votes.
[Recess.]
Mr. Raskin. Good afternoon. The committee will reconvene.
I want to thank all of our extraordinary witnesses who have
come to be with us today: Michael Breen, who's president and
CEO of Human Rights First--thank you for coming--Hope Frye, who
is the executive director of Project Lifeline; Clara Long, the
deputy Washington director for Human Rights Watch; Dr. Carlos
Gutierrez, who is a pediatrician in private practice; and
Ronald Vitiello, who is the former chief of U.S. Border Patrol
and the former acting director of ICE.
I will begin by swearing all of you in. Please rise and
raise your right hand, if you would. Thank you.
Do you swear or affirm the testimony you're about to give
is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so
help you God?
Let the record show that all of the witnesses answered in
the affirmative. Thank you. Please be seated.
Please speak into the microphone. Your written statements
will be made part of the record, without objection.
And with that, Mr. Breen, you are now recognized to give an
oral presentation of your testimony.
STATEMENT OF MICHAEL BREEN, PRESIDENT AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE
OFFICER, HUMAN RIGHTS FIRST
Mr. Breen. Mr. Chairman, thank you, and thank you for
holding this important hearing and for the opportunity to be
here today.
For over 40 years, Human Rights First has representing
asylum seekers in the American legal system. We helped draft
the Refugee Act of 1980. Today, we have clients in needless
detention, clients who have been forced back to Mexico under
the MPP policy, who are struggling with access to counsel, who
are deliberately deprived of their medication, and who have
been accused of no crime.
There is no reason why there needs to be a burgeoning human
rights crisis at the border or the human rights and due process
violations we are seeing every day. This is the predictable
result of deliberate policy and gross incompetence by the
administration. There are better answers. There are tons of
better answers.
My written testimony submitted to this committee, along
with numerous reports and recommendations by Human Rights First
and others, lay out a clear path forward that respects human
rights and safeguards our Nation, and I hope we can talk about
those things.
But right now, I would like to try and keep a promise I
made yesterday in Juarez, in El Paso, before I came back to my
own daughter, to other parents. In overcrowded rooms filled
very far away from this one, including a church sanctuary
converted into a shelter for over 100 people, I promised other
parents trying to get back to their kids, parents who, like Ms.
Juarez, spoke of their continued belief in the United States of
America and their abiding faith in God. I promised them that I
would do my best to make their voices heard here today.
The 18-or 19-year-old girl who stood up in a crowded
immigration court looked a judge in the eye with all the
courage she could muster and asked him to get her back to her
daughter. She'd survived a rape at age 13, and when she reached
the border to seek asylum, she didn't have the proper paperwork
so she was separated from her five-year-old child.
And then she was sent to CBP detention, the so-called ice
boxes, for 50 days, when guidelines say three, three days, 50
days, then taken to Juarez, dropped off, and told to fend for
herself until after her hearing. The judge was powerless to do
anything but ask the government's representative and attorney
from DHS to make a note of it.
Since there is still no system in place for keeping track
of separated families and making sure they get back together,
who knows what good that note will do.
The many refugee families I met with in Juarez, including a
woman who had requested asylum with her partner and their two
children, they were taken to that now infamous makeshift camp
under the bridge. After about three days in terrible
conditions, her five-year-old was too weak to stand. She told
me she begged an officer for help. Help me, she said, my child
is dying. And she told me the officer replied, and I quote,
well, are they dead yet? Then shut up and stop crying.
She said that she and others called the television crews
outside the fence for help and were soon sent to a tent camp in
the desert she described as even worse. There they were told
the conditions were punishment for trying to talk to the media,
and that if they tried it again, things would get even worse.
Finally, her daughter collapsed and lost consciousness. At
that point, she and her daughter were taken to the hospital and
treated for severe dehydration. When they got back to the camp,
her partner and her other child had been moved to another
facility. That was the last time she saw them. Then she too was
left in Mexico to fend for herself and her child, where I met
her, in a place where kidnapping, assault, and rape of asylum
seekers is an everyday occurrence.
I could go on and on. This is no longer just about the
integrity of our borders. This is about the integrity of our
Nation.
Mr. Chairman, I want to say one other thing. I know what it
means to wear the American flag on my shoulder when I go to
work every day. I'm a proud member of a law enforcement family.
I served as an Army officer myself. And through my years of
training and of service, it was drilled into me again and again
that when you wear that flag, you carry with you the honor and
the values of this entire Nation, that your conduct defines the
ideals and the meaning of that flag in the eyes of the world.
In two wars, I saw men and women alongside me make
unbelievable sacrifices to uphold those values and those
ideals. Thousands and thousands of us held that line. Thousands
and thousands continue to try to do that right now. It's not so
that the Congress of the United States will stand by while
American officials are ordered to conduct a policy of
deliberate cruelty against children, stand by while men and
women wearing that flag are ordered to pull children younger
than my own daughter out of their parents' arms and then
knowingly deliver defenseless families into the arms of
criminal gangs to suffer kidnapping, assault, and rape.
This is not the America it was the honor of my life to
serve. I cannot believe it is the America this Congress wishes
to leave, and I cannot believe that this is the legacy that any
of you want for your public service. But unless you act, it
will be.
Thank you.
Mr. Raskin. Mr. Breen, thank you very much.
Ms. Long, you are recognized for five minutes.
STATEMENT OF CLARA LONG, DEPUTY WASHINGTON DIRECTOR, HUMAN
RIGHTS WATCH
Ms. Long. On behalf of Human Rights Watch, I want to thank
this Subcommittee on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties for the
opportunity to testify at today's hearing.
Human Rights Watch is a nonprofit, independent organization
that investigates allegations of human rights violations in
more than 90 countries around the world, including in the
United States.
I am the acting deputy Washington director and a senior
researcher on immigration at Human Rights Watch, and I have
over a decade of experience covering border and immigration
issues. Since 2016, I have served as a detention monitor and
consultant with the Flores Settlement legal team, visiting
children detained in the Brownsville, Texas, Casa Padre
facility; the now-closed tent facility in Tornillo, Texas; in
Homestead, Florida; and those held in Border Patrol stations in
California, Arizona, and most recently, Texas.
From June 17 to June 19 of this year, I was part of a
monitoring team that interviewed children in Border Patrol
stations in the El Paso area about their protections under the
Flores Agreement, which is a decades' old, as you know, class-
action settlement obligating the U.S. Government to release
migrant children expeditiously and to adhere to certain
detention standards.
What we found was outrageous. Our interviews with nearly 70
children in the El Paso sector revealed that the U.S. Border
Patrol is holding many children, including some who are much
too young to take care of themselves, in overcrowded border
jails for weeks at a time without contact with family members,
regular access to showers, clean clothes, or toothbrushes. Many
were sleeping on hard floors. Many were sick. Many, including
children as young as two or three, were separated from adult
caretakers without any provisions for their care besides that
provided by unrelated older children also being held in
detention.
On my first day in the Clint Border Patrol Station, I spoke
with an 11-year-old boy who was caring for his three-year-old
brother. They had been fending for themselves in a cinderblock
cell with dozens of other children for three weeks. When I met
them, the little one was quiet. He had matted hair, a hacking
cough, muddy pants, and eyes that were fluttering closed. As we
spoke, he fell asleep on two office chairs drawn together.
``I'm the one who takes care of him here. No one helps me take
care of him,'' his brother told me.
My son is almost three, and sometimes when I'm with him
these days, I find it difficult not to think of the
excruciating moment when I had to send those two alone back to
their cell.
Like these boys, nearly all the children I met in Border
Patrol detention were visibly dirty, mucus or mud stained. They
were nearly all wearing the same clothes that they had worn
when they crossed the border. They told us they were not given
regular access to soap or toothbrushes. They were given access
to showers only once or twice in a period of weeks, if at all.
Unsurprisingly, infectious disease appeared widespread.
``I went into the flu cell for seven days. I had a fever in
there and I was shaking. Some of the other kids were vomiting.
They all had fevers. No one was taking care of the kids with
the flu. We were not allowed to leave the flu cell ever,'' a
14-year-old girl told me.
We and others have been raising the alarm about deplorable
hygiene practices, abuse, and mistreatment in Border Patrol
detention for some time. What was unprecedented in these visits
is that the agency is now needlessly subjecting children to
crowded, inhumane conditions for lengthy periods far beyond the
72-hour limit required by U.S. law, compounding potential harm.
``Sometimes when we ask, we are told we will be here for
months,'' said one 14-year-old girl, who said she had already
been in Clint for three weeks. Despite these prolonged lengths
of stay, we found no evidence that anyone had made any attempts
to reunite children with their family members in the United
States. Indeed, many of the children we spoke with had been
separated from their families and were deeply traumatized as a
result.
``The officers took my dear grandmother away. We have not
seen her since that moment. Thinking about this makes me cry at
times,'' the words of a 12-year-old girl detained alone at
Clint with her eight-and four-year-old sisters.
These abuses are not happening in a vacuum but in the
context of a concerted effort by this administration to punish
and deter asylum seekers, including by returning thousands of
families to Mexico to dangerous conditions and severe
injustice. No one should support child abuse as immigration
policy.
Congress should exercise strenuous oversight to ensure
children are quickly released from detention and guarantee
their safety and well-being while detained. Families belong
together and free. Children should be allowed to remain with
adult family members, when that's in their best interest, and
be promptly released, with appropriate support, to ensure they
appear for immigration proceedings. Issuing CBP and its parent
agency DHS a blank check to expand the system for detaining
children will only increase the permanent harm already being
suffered.
Thank you.
Mr. Raskin. Thank you very much, Ms. Long.
Ms. Frye.
STATEMENT OF HOPE FRYE, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, PROJECT LIFELINE
Ms. Frye. Chairman Raskin, members of the subcommittee,
thank you for this opportunity to testify before you. I'm an
attorney with more than 40 years experience practicing
immigration law.
Mr. Raskin. Please put your mic on.
Ms. Frye. Oh, sorry. Okay?
I coordinate and lead monitoring visits to CBP, ORR, and
ICE facilities on behalf of Flores counsel. I selected the
attorneys and was team lead on a Flores monitoring visit to the
Rio Grande Valley Border Patrol Stations from June 10 through
14.
While public attention is focused on hideous conditions at
the Clint CBP Station in El Paso, the situation at border
facilities in the RGV are substantially the same. What
distinguishes the RGV sector is the 2017 Federal court decision
that found them in violation of Flores for failing to provide
adequate food, adequate access to drinking water, adequate
hygiene, and adequate sleeping conditions, and by keeping the
temperatures too cold.
They have had two years to remedy these failures. What have
they done? Nothing. Children in the RGV are still going hungry.
They're given nonnutritious food and not enough of that. Pureed
food necessary for infants six to 12 months is completely
missing. When there are bottles and formula, there's no way to
wash the bottles, so they become contaminated. Some of the
babies were breastfed. Their moms complained they got
inadequate water to assure milk production.
The children we saw were filthy, wearing the same wet and
muddy clothes in which they traveled. Many were covered in
mucus and vomit. Babies had soiled diapers. The children
smelled foul.
No child had warm clothes, despite the extreme cold in the
holding areas. Babies were in onesies with no sweater, jacket,
or socks. Some children had showered but many had not, like the
17-year-old mother with a 10-month old son had been held more
than 20 days without showering.
It's outrageous that these conditions still exist. The
government is not only flouting the rule of law, it's
terrorizing the children.
Influenza killed a boy in the RGV three weeks before our
arrival. We found nearly every one of the children we met sick
with the flu, differing only in the severity of their symptoms.
I met a 16-year-old girl and her eight-month-old daughter. The
baby was extremely ill, lethargic, with a deep, continuous
raspy cough. She'd had a mild cold when they arrived, but CBP
took the baby's medicine and clothes. Despite the raging flu,
for which the entire facility had been under recent quarantine,
the baby had not received any medical attention.
After rigorous advocacy by the Flores counsel, we were
allowed to bring a pediatrician into the Ursula facility. After
the pediatrician's visit was announced, five infants, whom we
had seen before, were taken to the hospital to the natal
intensive care unit.
We began our CBP visit on Monday. On Wednesday night, I got
sick. I had a fever, 102.5, vomiting, diarrhea. I developed
this deep, racking, continuous cough, the same cough many of
the children had.
At 4 a.m. on Friday, I called 9-1-1. The ER doctor ordered
me admitted to the hospital. I had influenza A. I caught it
from the children. I was put in isolation, given IV fluids and
medicine. They began respiratory therapy every three hours. I
had a five-day course of Tamiflu.
Contrast this with the children. We had the same disease,
but they had to plead for medical attention. If they got it,
they were probably given something for the fever and some, but
not all, were maybe given a few doses of Tamiflu. Most were
returned to the packed cages in the same freezing rooms to
sleep on the concrete and to transmit the flu to other children
held with them.
It's child abuse, pure and simple, like the case of the
premature newborn baby I'll call Baby K. After traveling from
Guatemala, her mom, just 17, had an emergency C-section in
Mexico. Baby K was born a month premature. As is the case with
every migrant with whom we spoke, mom was forced to throw away
her things. This included her backpack containing Baby K's warm
clothes.
They had been in detention seven days when we met, kept in
a freezing cold, crowded cage without soap, a toothbrush, a
shower, or clean clothes. Baby K was nonresponsive and looked
at risk of dying. Immediately after encountering Baby K and
mom, I brought the senior-most attorney for the government to
see them. She was obviously disturbed and took the information
necessary to gain release to an ORR shelter. Despite this and
massive other intervention, it took the government over 2 days
to transfer Baby K and mom to ORR custody.
The administration would have us believe that the number of
arriving children is delaying release from CBP and creating the
subsequent need to warehouse children in unregulated, influx
facilities like Homestead. But the real culprits are the policy
that slow the rate of release from ORR shelters by imposing
restrictive and unnecessary requirements for the vetting of
family sponsors.
Rather than providing funds to detain additional children,
Congress should be working to ensure their expeditious release
to their families who are far better suited to care for these
children than a government that is causing them so much harm.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Raskin. Thank you very much for your testimony.
Dr. Gutierrez.
STATEMENT OF DR. CARLOS A. GUTIERREZ, M.D., F.A.A.P.,
PEDIATRICS, PRIVATE PRACTICE
Dr. Gutierrez. Thank you very much, Chairman Raskin and
Ranking Member Mr. Roy. Thank you subcommittee members,
congressional subcommittee members, for the opportunity to
speak to you concerning the medical aspects of what I am faced
with as a private pediatrician in El Paso, Texas.
I am, as you might say, in the front lines of taking care
of these men, women, and children. As a pediatrician, we don't
have any age limits because we have to take care of adults as
well.
Let me tell you, I got involved with doing this in the year
2014 when we had a lot of the Central American refugees arrive
on our borders. And at that time, the Border Patrol was kind
enough to ask for our help, the community, the community
physicians. And they asked us if we would be present on arrival
when the refugees would be arriving at the Border Patrol
detention facilities.
We were glad to help. There were about 20 of us who were on
call every day. We provided excellent care. As soon as they
would arrive from the buses, things went smoothly, not one
death.
Fast forward to the year--last October, we had the same
situation where we began having a lot of refugees arrive on our
border city. And being naive, I thought, well, okay, let's do
it the way we did last time. We did a great job taking care of
the medical needs of the refugees.
I approached individuals who I thought would be able to
give us permission and told them that we had between 50 and 100
physicians, pediatricians, adult doctors, OB-GYNs, pharmacists,
dentists. We were ready to step in and do whatever we could to
take care of their needs. We were told, thanks, but no thanks.
We do not need your help. And I was flabbergasted. I says, how
the heck could--can they say that?
And I mean I tried. I tried. We went through our
Congressman, Congressman O'Rourke, later on through
Congresswoman Veronica Escobar, to no avail. We were not
allowed to gain access to the Border Patrol detention
facilities.
Our feeling as a doctor, as a pediatrician especially, is
that if we could get there right as soon as they could--they
would arrive to the centers, we could really make a difference
and prevent a lot of catastrophes like what we heard today in
some of the past deaths.
We pediatricians have trained in taking care of kids for
three to five years, just in kids. We know how to pick up
subtle signs that would indicate that, oh, man, this kid is
going to get pretty sick. Because a child is not a small adult.
A child is a child, a pediatric patient who can be running
around and playing with 103, 104 fever, and within half hour
can just crash on you. And if you don't know how to pick up
those subtle signs, you're in for a bad outcome.
And I've got to tell you that this is not the fault of the
Border Patrol, because Border Patrol or ICE, they're not
trained to take care of things like that. They may be able to
have individuals like EMTs, like individuals who can maybe take
a blood pressure, take a temperature, but you need a doctor
right there. You need especially a pediatrician to prevent some
of the catastrophes that have happened in the last couple of
years.
Let me tell you, I had a child that was--they called me on
that had been released from the shelter. And this two-year-old,
105 fever, listless like a rag doll. I looked at her and
immediately called our ambulance from our children's hospital
to pick her up. She ended up having bilateral pneumonia. I
talked to the mom, and she said she asked for help but no
medical help was available.
And day in and day out, I see these patients and I ask, did
you get any medical help there? And in my experience, they
either receive little or no medical care at all. And what
really Ps me off is that if we're not allowed to get into those
medical--into the refugee centers to take care of things right
on, at least let whoever is taking care of those patients
communicate with us on the outside.
You would--I think it's--you know, it would be hard for you
to fathom, but they--whoever is taking care of these
individuals in the Border Patrol facilities are not allowed to
communicate with us. What's their excuse? Oh, we have to
respect the privacy of the refugee. That's a crock, you know
that? That is just not right.
You know, that's not the way real medicine is practiced.
Real medicine is to where a doctor, if they have to refer
somebody to another specialist, they can communicate. They are
not allowed, if there's even anybody at those detention centers
taking care of the medical needs.
Not only that, the medicines are taken away from them.
Whether they have a history of seizures, high blood pressure,
asthma, diabetes, they are taken away and they are not given
back to them. So when they arrive to our facility at the
shelters that we work at, they--parents tell us that my son was
on this, this, this. Well, gosh, we have to guess what kind of
medicine they're on and start all over and at least get them
through until they go to their final destination.
This is not right. At the very least I hope you who have
the power to do this can make an immediate change. First of
all, ideally, I would love for you to allow us in the community
access to those shelters. We could make a tremendous
difference. And you know what? It's pro bono. You don't have to
sign a contract with anybody. This is pro bono.
Second, if you're not going to be able to allow us to get
into those facilities, then let whoever is in there take--give
us--you know, give us information, be able to give us
information. Hey, we have somebody with chickenpox, with
measles or whatever, so that we can be aware of what we're
expecting. That would be so, so beautiful.
This is not a right-wing, this is not a left-wing issue.
This is not a Democrat or Republican issue. This is a human
being issue, and this is something that is so basic to our
country, to human beings. We need to take care of these
individuals the way we would take care of our own children.
They deserve the love and the respect that every one of you
receive.
Thank you.
Mr. Raskin. Thank you, Dr. Gutierrez.
Mr. Vitiello, you are recognized for five minutes.
STATEMENT OF RONALD D. VITIELLO, FORMER CHIEF, U.S. BORDER
PATROL, FORMER ACTING DIRECTOR, IMMIGRATION AND CUSTOMS
ENFORCEMENT
Mr. Vitiello. Chairman Raskin, Ranking Member Roy,
distinguished members of the subcommittee, thank you for the
opportunity to testify regarding our current crisis on the
southwest border.
Let me start by offering my condolences to Ms. Juarez on
the death of Mariee. I'm sorry for her loss. We must change
conditions that encourage people to bring or send their
children to the border.
I began my career in 1985 as a Border Patrol agent in
Laredo, Texas. It was a very different time and a different
border. Law enforcement knew well the threats of drug and alien
smuggling. Border communities that welcomed me and agents were
the ones most concerned about border security.
Let me describe a typical scenario of what I participated
in as it is occurring in some form on the border today. In most
of my career of the illegal traffic and smuggling were people
from Mexico. When arrested, people from Mexico without a
criminal history are offered a voluntary return, which in most
cases occurs within hours of their arrest.
After the arrest, the person is taken to a Border Patrol
station. They are interviewed. Their biographic and biometrics
are recorded, and they are safely returned to Mexico. When
someone from other than Mexico or Canada is arrested at the
border, they are similarly detained, interviewed, biometrics
and biographical records are taken in order to create a file
which is used to place them in removal proceedings.
The individual is then transferred into ICE custody. While
in ICE detention, they are placed on the immigration court
docket. Within a few weeks, their case is heard, perhaps
alongside an asylum claim. The court reviews their
circumstances and renders a decision. Those ordered deported
are held and repatriated in collaboration with their home
country.
When an unaccompanied child is encountered at the border,
the process is the same at CBP, interview, file creation, but
instead of ICE custody, the child is referred to Health and
Human Services, HHS. The HHS oversees grantees who operate
shelters for these children. At the shelters, they are cared
for holistically until such time as they can be placed with
family members in the U.S.
When families are encountered at the border, they face a
similar CBP process. They are interviewed, a file is created,
and they are eventually released. So far this year, CBP
apprehended 500,000 families and children. Most of them were
released into the United States. That's an average of nearly
2,000 people caught and released every day this fiscal year.
This catch-and-release scenario is adding the equivalent
population of Atlanta, Georgia, to the United States so far
this year.
The catch-and-release problem is incentivizing more people
to leave home for a treacherous journey that subjects them to
unscrupulous smugglers, criminal cartels, and foreign corrupt
officials. Once released in the U.S., some of them are in the
margins of our society. In 2016 and 2017, 28 murders took place
at the hands of MS-13 on Long Island, New York. This crisis
forced state, local, and Federal officials, including ICE, to
focus on the problem comprehensively.
After removing and arresting thousands of illegal gang
members, the murder rate dropped 90 percent. One-third of the
felony arrests that ICE made in this crackdown were gangsters
who entered the U.S. illegally as children. The border security
crisis and conditions at the border will only improve if the
flow is reduced.
I know this is the case because in 2014, under President
Obama's leadership, we faced a similar surge of children and
families at the border. The President declared it an emergency
and directed agencies to make every effort to address it. The
conditions were bad and the system was overwhelmed.
The 2014 surge was less than one-fourth as big as today's
surge. Border Patrol and ICE were given additional resources
and used those resources to improve conditions. Effectively,
those resources ended catch and release for families. For most
of 2015, the surge at the border ended. Why? Because DHS began
repatriating those families that did not qualify as asylees.
Without the release incentive, other would-be illegal
crossers elect to stay home. We cannot expect to control the
border if three-fourths of those arrested are released.
What I have learned is there's not one thing that can fix
what is occurring now. I urge Congress to give DHS and its
components authority and capability to end this crisis.
First, pass legislation that fixes Flores. The surest way
to reduce the flow is to change the incentives. Allow DHS to
hold families in custody during immigration proceedings. If
families are held in custody for their due process and removed
after a deportation order, others will stay home.
Second, fully fund the required resources to fully
implement the historic Migrant Protection Protocol, port
courts, and facilities for migrants waiting in Mexico to
quickly have a hearing and adjudicate their cases.
Third, pass legislation that allows for UACs to be treated
under the law the same way we treat Mexican and Canadian UACs.
Fourth, reduce the rhetoric that blames U.S. officials for
faithfully enforcing the laws that are on the books. The agents
and officers of DHS took an oath to follow the law. UACs must
be processed and turned over to HHS so they can be placed in
shelter care. Families must be placed in proceedings before
release.
Fifth, fully fund the Border Security Improvement Plan
designed to provide the necessary personnel, technology, and
infrastructure to substantially meet the expectation of the
American people for a secure border.
Sixth, pass legislation that sanctions state and local
jurisdictions for failing to cooperate with immigration
enforcement.
Seventh, fully staff and fund the Immigration and Customs
Enforcement, ICE, agency. If we believe in immigration is a
benefit to our country, enforcement must be funded.
Each of these items are required to fully address the
problem of an uncontrolled border and restore integrity to our
immigration system.
I appreciate the opportunity to inform this Congress and
stand ready to assist with expertise as needed. Thank you.
Mr. Raskin. Thank you very much for your testimony. I
appreciate it.
And, Dr. Gutierrez, let me start with you. What exactly is
the access that doctors and physicians outside of the system
have to kids and families that are presently in the custody of
the detention centers?
Dr. Gutierrez. Since we are not allowed into the border
detention--Border Patrol detention facilities, our group of
physicians, there's a core group of us, about six or seven of
us who are responsible for the day-to-day care of the refugees.
And so once they are released, the individuals are released
from Border Patrol facilities, they are sent to shelters around
the city. There's about 25 to 30 shelters in El Paso. And we
are call--we are responsible for a certain number of these
shelters.
When they arrive to the shelters, we physicians are called.
We go over there and make our daily rounds. We check on the
patients, and the most--the sickest ones, we take care of their
needs right away. I mean, we--there's no way we can see all of
them and--but we'll--at least we pick up the sickest ones and
we act on them as best we can.
And in our experience, some of the sick--real sick ones,
frankly, should have been picked up way before where they were
housed.
Mr. Raskin. Thank you.
Mr. Breen, I'd like to ask you, if you could galvanize
public and congressional attention to focus on it and we could
get one thing done at this point to improve conditions, what
would you do? And I want to ask that of all the witnesses here.
Mr. Breen. Sure. We know that when families are represented
by counsel who seek asylum, the appearance rate in court is 99
percent. We should end unnecessary detention. We should move to
a case management system, which DHS itself prototyped and then
ended in 2017, very successfully. And we should end the Migrant
Protection Protocol.
If you will allow, Mr. Chairman, I'd like to read you
something very briefly, very briefly.
Mr. Raskin. Okay.
Mr. Breen. Violent crime such as murder, armed robbery,
carjacking, kidnapping, extortion, and sexual assault is
common. Gang activity, including gun battles and blockades, is
widespread. Armed criminal groups target public and private
passenger buses, as well as private automobiles, traveling,
often taking passengers hostage and demanding ransom payments.
Federal and state security forces have limited capability to
respond to violence in many parts of the state.
Mr. Chairman, that is the State Department's assessment of
the section of Mexico near Nuevo Laredo where DHS is currently
dropping off asylum seekers to fend for themselves on a daily
basis. MPP is a human rights violation. It needs to end
immediately.
Mr. Raskin. Thank you very much.
Ms. Long, same question to you. If there is something that
we could do immediately to try to restore some order and safety
to this situation, what would you advise us to do?
Ms. Long. Well, I'll endorse Mr. Breen's call to end the
Migrant Protection Protocols. But I'll also say that the most--
the easiest way to ensure that children do not suffer harm and
that more children do not die in custody is to invest in
release and reunification, to invest in keeping families
together, ensuring that adult family members stay with
children, when that is in the child's best interest, which it
is in most cases, to ensure that the person who is making the
decision about whether that is in the child's best interest is
not a Border Patrol agent who is not qualified to make that
decision, but is instead someone who has professional
experience in child welfare.
You know, one of the things that, you know, we were
concerned about, about the supplemental bill, was the fact that
there is an overinvestment in increasing detention space but an
underinvestment in increasing resources dedicated to release
and to reunification.
Mr. Raskin. Very good.
Ms. Frye, same question to you.
Ms. Frye. Well, of course, I endorse what both of my
colleagues said. And I want to drill down a little bit on what
Clara said, because I agree that while the cruelty starts at
CBP, the real clog in the pipeline is at ORR and has to do with
release.
This entire situation--and, of course, we need the
protections of Flores at CBP. We need to look at that, and I
don't think that's a money issue. I think that's a release
issue. But we need to turn ORR from a detention agency to a
release protocol agency.
We need to look at the system of for-profit contractors
that we employ publicly to house for prolonged periods
children, migrant children, to see do they have robust programs
for release or are they deincentivized to do that by the per-
head, per-night, per-bed money that they get.
So I think--like Clara, I think focusing on release and the
many ways that there are affirmatively to do that is where to
start.
Mr. Raskin. Okay. Very good. And I want to just give our
two other witnesses a chance to respond.
Dr. Gutierrez.
Dr. Gutierrez. Yes, sir. There's two organizations that
have submitted their recommendations, basically what I would be
telling you right now. The American Academy of Pediatrics and
the National Hispanic Medical Association have both stated that
there is an abundance of pediatricians, doctors that are
willing to step in, step up to the plate, and provide care
right in their facilities.
But what I would love to see is, first of all, in a dream
world, I would love for you all to take action to allow us
entrance into the facilities so that we can take care of the
medical issues right away.
And second, if you're not going to allow us in, please have
whoever is taking care of those individuals, please let them
communicate with us with what's going on there, so we know when
to expect a very sick individual, so we know how to be
prepared, best prepared to care for that individual.
The other thing is, if you're going to take away their
medicines, at the very least give us a list when they--we
receive them of the medications they've been on so that we're
not guessing, and, for all we know, we might give them the
wrong medicine and do more harm than good. So I would hope that
you all can act and act soon on those things.
Mr. Raskin. Thank you so much.
Mr. Vitiello.
Mr. Vitiello. As I said in my testimony, there needs to be
a change in the way the law is operationalized. If we do not
reduce this flow, these conditions will continue to exist as
they are now. When your capacity for short-term detention,
which is only designed for a 12-hour stay, right, they've made
lots of modifications to all these locations. But if you don't
reduce the flow, you're going to continue to get the same thing
that we've seen for the last seven, eight months. It's bad and
it's getting worse.
The supplemental funding will assist in ameliorating some
of the conditions that have been spoken about here today, but
next spring, we're going to be exactly in the same place we are
now if the law does not change.
Mr. Raskin. Thank you.
Mr. Roy, you're recognized for your five minutes.
Mr. Roy. Mr. Chairman, I think we're going to go first to
Mr. Meadows.
Mr. Raskin. Okay. Mr. Meadows, you are recognized.
Mr. Meadows. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
It's good to see you again. I miss you, and I thank you for
your expertise, because I know that, from my standpoint, you've
always shot straight with me, and you've told me the things I
didn't want to hear and also the things that perhaps I needed
to hear. And so I want to just thank you for your expertise.
Dr. Gutierrez, I am really intrigued, and so what I'd ask
you to do, one of the things I've thought about is sometimes
access with privacy, you understand that as a physician
probably more, you know, so than anybody else in terms of
patients and the right to privacy.
So maybe what we can do, and I'm looking for some of my
Democratic colleagues, maybe on a telemedicine, if we're
talking about short-term, 12 hours or less, working on that. So
if you'll get with this committee, I'm willing to work with
some of my Democratic colleagues to hopefully make sure that
pediatricians are addressing some of the health concerns.
And with that, I'll yield back the balance of my time to
the ranking member, Mr. Roy.
Dr. Gutierrez. Can I just answer real quick? Telemedicine
is good, but this is not going to cut it for what we're asking,
because telemedicine, you're trying to take a picture of an
individual, they can have a horrible rash----
Mr. Meadows. Yes, listen, I live in the mountains so we're
hours from healthcare a lot of times. So I get that. What I'm
saying is, is some of the obstacles we have, I'm willing to
work with you.
Dr. Gutierrez. Yes.
Mr. Meadows. Let's have some of that and we'll see what we
can do.
And I'll yield back.
Dr. Gutierrez. Thank you.
Mr. Roy. Well, I thank the gentleman from North Carolina.
Thanks, Doctor, for that.
Mr. Vitiello, let me just ask a couple of questions. Could
you paint a picture again about a little bit of the scale of
the numbers we're talking about, right? I mean, compare what
facilities are designed for by CBP along the border wherever
you want to in terms of the Texas, you know, by sector, but
what are the CBP facilities designed to do, and how many people
are they supposed to house, and what are we dealing with now,
that order of magnitude?
Mr. Vitiello. So they spoke today about the facility, the
McAllen Border Patrol Station. It's completely overwhelmed.
It's one of the newest----
Mr. Roy. Right.
Mr. Vitiello [continuing]. facilities that's online. It was
designed for taking people into custody for a short time. Most
of the traffic back in the day was adult males from Mexico, so
they were with us for a very short time.
It's designed for the book-in procedure, to take the
biometrics, to take the biographics, and then move people down
the line. But because of the crisis in 2014, we were forced to
adapt that facility. That's why Ursula was stood up. Ursula was
stood up for the flow in 2014, which is a fraction of what it
is today.
And so even in the best of times, when you're 400 percent
over capacity, you're not going to be able to give conditions
and have people safe in that scenario in any way. And so these
facilities were designed for that book-in procedure. They're
not designed to hold large numbers of families and children.
Now, the Border Patrol and CBP have adapted the best way
they can. But with this kind of flow, they're just overwhelmed.
Mr. Roy. So really quickly, the picture that we're putting
up right now, which was from, again, from 2014, which I would
again remind my colleagues it was used as a picture to talk
about kids in cages for marketing this hearing with respect to
current conditions, but okay.
This is what was happening in 2014. That was in response to
the unaccompanied alien children crisis of that time, right,
the children riding on the top of train cars, and in the
response by Secretary Johnson and the Obama Administration on
what do we do, right. We don't have any facilities. Now we've
got all these kids. Now what do we do with them? They're
unaccompanied. What do we do with them?
So you talk a little bit about the facilities and the
problem of dealing with children who are not with parents and
ensuring that they're safe, that we don't--we've got to be
careful who we give them to. Can you talk a little bit about
those two things?
Mr. Vitiello. That's correct. By law, under the way the law
treats unaccompanied alien children, they must be turned over
to HHS for placement with family in the United States. That
facility is a converted warehouse that we adapted for the
crisis that was occurring in 2014, again, which was much
smaller than what we face today.
The other thing that Jeh Johnson did under the Obama
Administration that ICE helped him with was establish these
family residential centers. And I get it, people don't want to
do immigration detention. But when they did establish a family
residential center, first in Artesia and then now in Karnes and
Dilley, the traffic dried up. People stopped coming to the
border with their children.
Mr. Roy. Are you aware--I've been told, and I want to see
if this would meet your understanding or knowledge. I've been
told that, for the most part, if you look at the roughly
700,000 individuals who have been apprehended--now, that's not
talking about those who are not apprehended--those who have
been apprehended coming between the ports of entry or being
dealt with at the ports of entry, of that 700,000, roughly half
are family units, and that for the most part, those family
units are being caught and released, and relatively quickly
today because of the numbers that we're dealing with.
And that it's roughly 60,000 or so that are unaccompanied
alien children, and then the rest are single adults. And one of
the problems, of course, is keeping single adults from the
children, especially those single adults who are falsely
claiming to be the parents of those children.
Can you talk me through a little bit of that, and then
I'll--I'm out of time.
Mr. Vitiello. Yes. So the Department has been successful in
addressing the single adult population. They're taken into
custody at CBP. They're processed as quickly as possible,
obviously prioritize the children and families first, but
eventually we get to the processing of single adults.
They're handed over to ICE for detention. And while they're
in detention, they're on the detained docket, which means they
get to an immigration hearing quickly. When they get relief, we
welcome them to the United States. When they don't get relief,
they're quickly repatriated with cooperation of the countries
that they're from.
Mr. Roy. Thank you.
Mr. Raskin. Thank you very much, Mr. Roy.
Ms. Kelly, you're recognized for five minutes.
Ms. Kelly. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Vitiello, when you listen to Dr. Gutierrez, would that
be helpful to you if pediatricians in the community could come
in? If there was some way we could work that out, do you think
that's a good idea?
Mr. Vitiello. Well, in this role, I can't speak for the
Department or the--or CBP, but in 2014, it was helpful. In the
supplemental request that just got authorized by this Congress
and signed by the President, there is money for CBP to put on
more contract medical staff.
In the beginning of this crisis, we started with using
support from the Coast Guard and our own ability--CBP's own
ability to contract. So it sounds like a commonsense idea. I'm
not opposed to the idea, but there are restrictions about
people's privacy when they're in the custody of the government
with--you know, through the privacy scenario that they're in,
their medical care, that has to be worked out. I think it's a
commonsense idea that's worth pursuing.
Ms. Kelly. And I'm sure with the witness we just had, she
would have appreciated that greatly.
Also, the other thing is, since you have an increase of
children and, you know, what you were just talking about, are
the officers getting any more training, or how are they doing?
I mean, they're parents and uncles and aunts, they have kids
and that kind of thing. What--it sounds like they're overworked
and----
Mr. Vitiello. They're absolutely overwhelmed. The Border
Patrol agents that I know and care about, and their families,
are compassionate, resilient people, but they're in a situation
that they didn't choose to be in. They're overwhelmed by this
particular mission.
According to the recent testimony of Chief Provost, 40
percent of our work force are assigned to the care and custody
of families and children and people who are in custody. That
means that 40 percent less deployed agents along the border.
They didn't sign up to do this mission, and you've heard
today that they're particularly trying as hard as they can. I
think they're doing the best they can under the situation that
they're in. But they have to be demoralized. The ones that have
been in a while, what I recognize is there's no help coming. If
we don't change the way the law works, this flow will continue,
and it will continue until something changes.
Ms. Kelly. So I'm assuming that you will say the negative
things that we're hearing, that's a small percentage of the
officers?
Mr. Vitiello. The negative things as it relates to their
behavior and misconduct, yes, that's not my experience of the
culture of the Border Patrol. These are hardworking men and
women who took the same oath that you did to protect this
country, and that's what they're most interested in. They're
put upon in a situation that's extraordinary in the history of
the border, and this isn't something that they choose to be a
part of.
Ms. Kelly. Yes, Dr. Gutierrez.
Dr. Gutierrez. I just want to add that the American Academy
of Pediatrics has offered at least two to three times the
ability to provide training to the Border Patrol individuals,
the workers, on pediatrics, on basic pediatric illnesses, and
to this day it has not happened. They have not accepted any of
that help.
Ms. Kelly. I'm looking at you, Mr. Breen. It seems like
you've wanted to say a few more things. I want to give you that
opportunity.
Mr. Breen. Thank you. I would just say that I saw this
myself in Iraq as a solider. I've done refugee work in places
like Syria, Lebanon, Jordan.
When you ask a law enforcement or military organization to
do something for which it was not trained or equipped and which
cuts against the personal and collective integrity of the
people in that organization, you get disastrous impacts on the
culture and you start to see the things we are seeing with CBP.
That is an entirely predictable result.
When you ask an organization that is set up for 12-hour
detention to handle long-term detention of children, to
forcibly separate children from their parents, that dehumanizes
the agents, and they, in turn, start to dehumanize other
people.
I am proud to have served as a U.S. Army officer. I can
tell you that happened to parts of the U.S. Army when they were
asked to do things they were not trained to do. This is an
entirely predictable result of terrible policy decisions, and
the Government of the United States should not be placing these
men and women in that position. It's outrageous.
Thank you.
Ms. Kelly. Thank you. I agree.
And, Ms. Long, it is my understanding that you've been
interactive with detainees that needed medication, including a
set of 11-year-old twins with epilepsy. Can you talk about
that?
Ms. Long. Correct. One of the children or the sets of
children I spoke with in Clint was a pair of 11-year-old twins
who were stoic and extremely upset that they had been separated
from a 19-year-old sister who had all of their parents'
information. And they told me: I'm worried that I'm never going
to connect with my parents again.
We got on Facebook. We sent messages to various family
members. Someone finally responded, and we connected them with
their father. When they started talking with their father,
tears just started running down their faces, because they had
been held for 13 days alone in a cell.
They had epilepsy. One of them was having a severe allergic
reaction all over his body, something that can be the result of
reaction to the wrong epilepsy medication.
They are still detained now in ORR custody. They've gotten
out of CBP custody. But I'm thinking of them every single day,
because they're still in the system.
Ms. Kelly. Thank you.
I know I'm out of time, but this is such a dark stain on
our history every day as we are putting people through this.
And I understand what you're saying, people feel overworked.
But this is a human crisis and people are losing their lives.
That is absolutely ridiculous. And when you think about the
Statute of Liberty and what that says, we are certainly not
following that.
Mr. Raskin. Thank you, Ms. Kelly.
Mr. Cloud is recognized for five minutes.
Mr. Cloud. Thank you all for being here today.
Mr. Vitiello, you mentioned that the situation at the
border has changed. The resources we have at the border were
basically set up when we were having single adult males come
from Mexico. Could you briefly explain what's changed? Why are
we seeing a difference now?
Mr. Vitiello. Well, I think conditions and the economic
picture in Mexico changed. In the 2010 or so timeframe, we
started seeing more people from the Northern Triangle coming up
to our border.
The demographics in those three countries is much younger
than Mexico. They are unstable. There is lack of opportunity.
And the policy and the way the law is operationalized sort of
incentivizes people to come here.
If they come here, they're--we talked about these
conditions. But when they come here, essentially they are being
released by U.S. authorities, and they're sent to all the
cities and towns in the United States. And so that's a much
better life for them, for most of them, not all of them. We
talk about some of the folks that are on the margin that get
preyed upon the same gangs they fled home for.
But that's the policy that we have here. It's a catch-and-
release policy. And every time in my career when we've
suspended the activity of catch and release--we did it in 2007
for Secretary Chertoff, we did it in 2014 for Secretary
Johnson, and we're not doing it now, so we're getting more of
the same misery and chaos that we're seeing on our border.
Mr. Cloud. So a lot of this misery is being caused by the
magnet that we've created. Is that fair to say?
Mr. Vitiello. There are push-and-pull factors, and the way
the law is operationalized, people are getting released and
they're getting set up for a hearing. And the data that the
Justice Department has now on the rocket docket for families
suggests that many of them will not avail themselves of an
asylum opportunity or an immigration hearing.
Mr. Cloud. Right. Well, Mr. Breen mentioned that this, what
we're seeing today, is entirely predictable results, and I have
to agree. There are many of us months, even a year ago calling
for action on this humanitarian crisis while for months the
opposition called it a manufactured crisis.
I'm concerned about that, because I'm from south Texas.
We've known that this is an issue for years. In 2006, a
tractor-trailer with 19 migrants was discovered 10 minutes from
my home in Victoria. When they opened it up, all 19 migrants,
including a five-year-old boy, were dead in the back of a
pickup truck in the sweltering heat of Texas.
And so we know that this is--I live at what is the pinnacle
point of what is called the fatal funnel, where cartels use
those major two highways to traffic humans, to traffic drugs,
to do their illicit activity to get it into the states and then
throughout the states.
And so what's really disheartening about this situation is
we've sat here for months and months and months and months and
watched this metastasize into the tragedy it is today while
doing nothing about it.
I appreciate the tears. I appreciate the concern for
children. But I think it's a far greater compassion to be able
to have the wisdom and foresight to look into the situation and
prevent it from happening in the first place.
I was sworn in a year ago today. And the frustrating thing
about this place is how much political theater is--so little
action--so much time--so little time is spent on actually
finding solutions to solve problems and so much time is spent
on political theater meant to posture for the next election,
because we'd rather run on an issue than solve a problem.
And so this is something that this House, this Congress
should have been acting on for months and months and months now
to deal with this situation, but instead we're putting
ourselves in a position to aid and abet the cartels who are
profiting off this situation and providing little results.
So anyway, that leads me to this point. I was down there
about a month ago, and we went there with a couple other
members from the oversight committee and we did a couple
things. We visited an unaccompanied minor facility that housed
a couple hundred young ladies. About 40 percent of them had
been sexually abused along the journey, according to the
staffers who worked there.
One story, which is kind of humorous but points to the
situation, is there was a family that showed up that had a
child with them, and the child needed to go to the restroom.
And so they asked the child just upon arriving at this
facility, ``Would you like me to show you where the restroom
is?'' And he's like, ``Oh, I already know,'' because he had
been there several times.
There is an issue with recycling children going on in this
situation. And we have Customs and Border Patrol--who, by the
way, about 30 percent of them are veterans--doing the best they
can to deal with this situation.
Mr. Vitiello, could you speak to the issue of recycled
children and our need to protect children as they come across
and what we need to do to do that?
Mr. Vitiello. So this is part of the difficulty with the
incentive. If you bring a child to the border and you make
officials believe that it's your child, then they're going to
take you in custody, they're going to process you, and they're
going to release you with that child. That's the situation that
we're in.
And when ICE and CBP dedicated resources to try to figure
out what was going on, they recognized that there is a
significant percentage of families who are pretending to be
related when they are, in fact, not. ICE made a case, at least
one case while I was there, where they uncovered corrupt
officials in Guatemala who were issuing residency documents and
birth certificates, if you will, from that country that
fabricated the family relationship that these families had.
So this is a big problem. The word is out. People know that
if they send or bring their child that their end result is to
be released in the U.S.
Mr. Cloud. I believe the number is 4,800 family units have
falsely presented this year.
Mr. Vitiello. That sound right.
Mr. Cloud. Thank you. I yield back.
Mr. Raskin. Thank you very much.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, you are recognized.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
And before I start, I think there's an important cultural
context that may be missed in this conversation about
unaccompanied children.
One is that in Latino families and in Latino communities--
not just Latino communities, mind you, I understand this
applies in many other cultural contexts as well--is that what
gets defined as family is different than what usually or
traditionally gets defined as family in the United States.
When I was a child, my parents would often send me to
Puerto Rico during the summers and I would live with my aunts
and my uncles and my cousins. My cousins were raised with me as
my siblings. I would call them brother, sister. My aunts and my
uncles were raised as secondary parents. In fact, the actual
word comadre or compadre means co-mother, co-parent.
And this is the cultural context with which children are
coming to the border with their loved ones. They are being
taken, they arrive, and then they are being called
unaccompanied children when, in fact, they are accompanied.
They are accompanied by their grandmothers. They are
accompanied by older siblings. They are accompanied by cousins.
And just because that person that is coming with them,
their guardian, is not their biological mother or father, then
they are being accused of human trafficking and they are being
accused and called an unaccompanied child. But they are
experiencing the same trauma that any child would be
experiencing if they were ripped from their own mother or
father.
Ms. Long, do you find that that's in agreement with your
experience?
Ms. Long. I am in complete agreement with how you have
summarized that situation.
And I also want to add that CBP currently maintains no
records to trace those families. And so when someone is
separated from, say, their tia who's raised them maybe for
their whole lives, there is no way for the agency to then trace
those family relationships and put those families back
together.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. And I myself have been in a similar
situation in that I have nieces and nephews. And there is an
already unspoken understanding that if anything were to
happen--so I call them my nieces and nephews, and they're
technically second or third cousins or whatever, however other
folks would call that. That if something, God forbid, were ever
to happen to my cousins, I would take those children as my
children. My nieces and nephews would be taken as my son or
daughter.
So quickly moving forward, under the Trump administration
at least six children have died in U.S. custody. I have their
names up here: Darlyn Cristabel Cordova-Valle, age 10; Jakelin
Caal Maquin, age seven; Felipe Gomez Alonzo, age eight; Juan de
Leon Gutierrez, age 16; Wilmer Josue Ramirez Vasquez, age two;
Carlos Gregorio Hernandez Vasquez, age 16.
Those are just the ones that we know of. We didn't even
hear of Darlyn's death until eight months after she died. And
this is not including the children like Mariee, who we heard
about earlier, who fell gravely ill due to the neglect and lack
of sanitation inside DHS custody, but they died only after
being released from detention facilities. So her death doesn't,
quote/unquote, count.
In the 10 years prior to that, there were no similar
deaths, zero, of migrant children in U.S. custody. This is a
new phenomenon under the Trump administration.
Ms. Frye, how many migrant children are similarly falling
ill and dying but are not being counted as a death in CBP
custody?
Ms. Frye. Congresswoman, I don't know the number. I have no
idea of the number. You'd have to ask the government.
But I can verify for you the reasons why this is happening
now so much, it's so much a greater incidence, and that goes
back to the question of release. When you don't promptly
release children, they go to ORR and they're held there.
They're not released. The mechanism isn't working. The
requirements under the TVPRA and under Flores for prompt,
expeditious release are ignored.
Then you get a backup in these unsanitary places where you
pack kids in a kind of a congregant care. The WHO says to
prevent the spread of disease, wash your hands. There's no soap
and water.
So we make a situation there by the way we detain kids,
because they can't go upstream because they aren't being
released, that is conducive to illness. And I think that's part
of the reason. In the family facilities, we just aren't
providing care with doctors.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. Ms. Long, very quickly, is there any
policy that you know of that requires ICE to count pregnant
women and women who are pregnant, record them?
Ms. Long. Not that I know of, no.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. So we don't even know how many of these
women--there's no requirement to even acknowledge, count, or
record a woman who is pregnant in custody. And we know of at
least 28 miscarriages, at least.
Ms. Frye. Congresswoman, that is also true of children. And
we saw at the RGD girls who were pregnant who weren't being
given any medical care, and nobody seemed to even care that
they were pregnant. And that's really serious.
Mr. Raskin. Thank you. The gentlelady's time has expired.
Mr. Vitiello. Could I just add that when females are taken
into ICE custody and they're contemplating being detained, that
they're all given a pregnancy exam. And so soon after they're--
within the first 24 hours they're in ICE custody, medical
practitioners are aware of their pregnancy.
Mr. Raskin. Thank you. The gentlelady's time has expired.
Mrs. Miller, you are recognized.
Mrs. Miller. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
You know, just a few months ago the leadership was accusing
President Trump of exaggerating that there was a crisis on the
border. In fact, minority--majority at that time--Minority
Leader Schumer stated that this President just used the
backdrop of the Oval Office to manufacture a crisis, stoke
fear, and divert attention from the turmoil of the
administration. And it's shocking to me that it has taken this
long for my colleagues to finally address that there is a
crisis.
In 2019, we've had more than 593,000 illegal aliens
apprehended at our southern border. From October 2018 to May
2019, we've had 23,944 unaccompanied alien children attempt to
cross the border. I'm glad that we finally realize the
situation that we're in and that we can now move forward and
look for solutions. It's not time for political games. It's
time to act swiftly to get this crisis in hand.
Mr. Vitiello, how long is a typical trip from the Northern
Triangle to the southern border of the United States? How long
does it take?
Mr. Vitiello. It could be weeks that people travel through
Mexico.
Mrs. Miller. Approximately how many children will arrive at
a facility on a given day?
Mr. Vitiello. The data that I saw most recently in the
press was that two-thirds of the groups coming to the border
every day. So two-thirds of 2,000.
Mrs. Miller. Are many of the children who arrive in need of
medical care? And, if so, what are the issues that you're
seeing that they have?
Mr. Vitiello. It's a difficult journey. You know, it's
difficult for them to sleep on the journey. They're not fed as
well. They're in the hands of smugglers, people that don't care
about them as individuals, that care about them as a commodity.
And so when they get to the border, they're often very sick.
Early days, when I was still in CBP, scabies, lice,
respiratory infections, fevers, et cetera, all the things we've
heard about here today, that's part and parcel of what comes to
the border every day.
Mrs. Miller. So infectious problems?
Mr. Vitiello. Correct.
Mrs. Miller. OK. How many children are treated for the
ailments that they have? And are the results from the trip or
are they the results because they are here?
Mr. Vitiello. Well, CBP does its best. When I was still in
government, we spent thousands and thousands of hours, millions
and millions of dollars taking people from CBP custody into the
hospital and safeguard them and bring them back. So there's
many, many hours and many, many dollars spent on this
particular problem.
Mrs. Miller. Is there soap and water?
Mr. Vitiello. There is.
Mrs. Miller. Several news organizations have alleged that
pregnant migrant women are not properly cared for once they
cross the border. Can you explain how those pregnant migrants
are processed and handled? I know you mentioned them.
Mr. Vitiello. So you can imagine a facility that's 400
percent over capacity. So they could be in custody with CBP for
some time before they're interviewed by an agent or an officer.
And so the agent and officer won't know unless they ask or
maybe that individual won't tell them.
When they're in detention with ICE, in ICE custody, the
single adults that do make it into ICE detention, they're
quickly assessed medically within the first days of their stay
in detention, and part of that assessment is a pregnancy test.
Mrs. Miller. So within a week?
Mr. Vitiello. Yes. Sooner in most cases.
Mrs. Miller. Can you tell the difference between the
testing between ICE and CBP?
Mr. Vitiello. Well, CBP doesn't do pregnancy tests. The
mission at CBP at the border is to move that individual
downstream as quickly as possible. So if it's a family, they
get released. If it's a child, then they get referred to HHS as
quickly as possible. If they're a single adult, they get
referred to ICE for detention.
Mrs. Miller. So you would assess their ability to process
as appropriate for the migrants that are pregnant?
Mr. Vitiello. No, this is an extraordinary circumstance.
There's 500,000 people so far that have come to our border this
year.
Mrs. Miller. Okay. In CBP holding facilities and ICE
detention facilities, what types of onsite services are
provided to the pregnant migrants and their children?
Mr. Vitiello. So the ICE detention has the full range of
medical care, law libraries, safe and sanitary conditions
that's designed for a long-term stay. So everything you would
find in a modern facility.
At CBP, they've adapted as best as they can, but these
locations and these facilities were not designed to hold large
numbers of young people or families and children alone.
Mrs. Miller. What resources do you believe would help CBP
to do its job effectively, given the number of migrants that
are here?
Mr. Vitiello. Well, they'll continue to make these
modifications. They're going to add floor space to these
locations where they're seeing the large influxes of children
and families. But I don't believe that that's going to get them
out of the situation that's being discussed here today. Without
a change in the law, these people are going to continue to come
to our border in the conditions that they come in.
Mrs. Miller. Thank you.
Mr. Raskin. The gentlelady yields back. Thank you very
much.
Before I yield to Ms. Pressley, I want to enter six
statements into the record: a statement from the American
Medical Association noting that the CBP facilities we've been
discussing are not appropriate places for children or pregnant
women; the statement expressing concern about detention center
conditions from Amy Kahn, a clinical psychologist and trauma
expert who has provided psychotherapy to the recently arrived
immigrants; a statement from Carol Martin, executive director
of Trauma Recovery, EMDR Humanitarian Assistance Programs, a
nonprofit working on treatment of psychology trauma; a
statement from Church World Service, a religious-based
humanitarian group with refugee resettlement offices in 17
states, opposing any undermining of current legal protections
for immigrant children; a statement from the National
Association of Pediatric Nurse Practitioners, whose members
work to provide care for refugee children; and finally, a
statement from Myra Jones-Taylor, the chief policy officer for
Zero to Three, a nonprofit advocating on behalf of babies and
toddlers.
Without any objection, I will admit them into the record.
Mr. Raskin. And I recognize Ms. Pressley for five minutes.
Ms. Pressley. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
A couple of my questions were asked and answered, so I'm
going to skip around here a little bit.
Mr. Vitiello, you indicated that CBP agents are simply
following the letter of the law, so to speak. I'm just curious,
because I happen to think the law's a cruel and inhumane one.
And, Mr. Breen, I hope you'll elaborate further on the
general culture, dehumanizing culture for all parties involved.
But I'm just curious, in that oath that CBP agents take,
does it offer anything about humanity? And we know that they're
not getting the training on the medical side in order to get
the indicators of children that are in distress. Is there any
sort of antibias training or cultural competency or trauma-
informed training, which I think would be beneficial whether
you were talking about 72 hours or the 60-plus days many are
currently being detained.
Mr. Vitiello. They do receive cultural training. That's
part of the indoctrination. When they come back from the Border
Patrol Academy, there is curriculum specifically designed for
that.
In the 2014 crisis, we developed a curriculum for agents to
take as it relates to the crisis that was underway then, how to
speak to children in a more accommodating way, how to get to
their needs quicker. So that training is part of what agents
experience.
When you talk about the family members and what the law
requires, we talk about adult family that weren't moms and
dads. Congress could help us here, right? They could change the
law to relieve the liability from CBP so that if someone is
traveling with an adult relative, they can be held together and
kept together, because they're not a mom or a dad.
Ms. Pressley. I appreciate that. Thank you. I'm going to
reclaim my time. I just want to get a couple more questions in.
But thank you so much.
One other thing just for the purposes of the record. Is
there anything in that oath that speaks to the humanity and how
CBP agents should be treating those that they're charged with
their care and custody?
Mr. Vitiello. Congresswoman, the oath is the same one that
you take. It's an oath to the Constitution and the people of
the United States.
Ms. Pressley. Okay. All right. Very good.
CBP is the country's largest law enforcement agency but
with the least amount of transparency and accountability. The
same agencies that claim that they did not have the resources
to provide basic necessities, toothpaste and blankets for
children, continue to find the resources to detain thousands of
additional migrants.
And, in fact, it was recently reported that three new ICE
facilities have opened throughout Louisiana and Mississippi in
the last month. And since 2000, the number of Border Patrol
agents has increased from about 9,000 to 19,500 agents. Since
2006, CBP's budget has more than doubled, going from $7.1
billion to $6.7 billion.
And, again, we continue to see these abuses persist, which
would lead me to surmise that this is not about capacity and
everything to do with culture and a callousness and a
corruptness and a chaos.
Mr. Breen, does that sound right to you?
Mr. Breen. It does. Money alone is not going to solve this
problem, there's no doubt about it. Oversight is necessary.
I'd make a couple of quick points, if I may.
Congressmen earlier mentioned that they felt that U.S.
policy was aiding and abetting criminal cartels. I have to
agree, and I would point to two policies.
The first is metering at points of entry. So yesterday in
Juarez I spoke with a mother of an eight-month-old child. She
had tried to present herself at a port of entry, follow the
law, follow the rules and say, I seek asylum in the United
States. She was told to take a number and wait her turn.
They're taking about 10 or 15 people a day on that bridge. She
is holding number 17,000-plus.
She is in Juarez, because the U.S. Government has seen fit
under the obscenely named migrant protection protocols that she
should sit in Juarez, where these cartels have absolute access
to her and her family.
Now, do you think she is better off? Do you think we are
aiding and abetting the cartels by having her sit in Juarez
where they can actively prey on her or by placing her in a case
management program in the United States where ICE itself has
run a family case management program pilot in which there was
99 percent--99 percent--attendance for ICE check-ins and
appointments and 100 percent attendance at court hearings?
Ms. Pressley. And pardon me, Mr. Breen. And also that
program was much cheaper----
Mr. Breen. Absolutely.
Ms. Pressley [continuing]. than locking up children and
families. It was costing $36 per family compared to $319 per
person----
Mr. Breen. Absolutely.
Ms. Pressley [continuing]. at a family detention center.
Mr. Breen. Absolutely.
I would make one other point on the culture if I could, and
I apologize for taking so much time.
Ms. Pressley. Please, I hope you'll elaborate.
Mr. Breen. Mr. Vitiello has used the common term ``catch
and release'' multiple times in this hearing. I'll make a
couple observations.
These are human beings, not trout. Presenting yourself at a
port of entry to seek asylum is exercising your right under
international law. You have not been caught; you have
volunteered yourself. And being released implies that you will
escape or attempt to escape when, again, on case management,
100 percent of these people showed up at their hearings.
Everyone I have spoken to is trying to figure out how to
follow the ever-changing bizarre rules this administration is
creating on the fly. They're all trying to do the right thing.
So I think this language matters. Thank you.
Ms. Pressley. Absolutely. Thank you, Mr. Breen.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez.
[Presiding.] Thank you. The gentlelady's time has expired.
The chair now recognizes the gentleman from Wisconsin, Mr.
Grothman.
Mr. Grothman. Thank you.
Mr. Vitiello, I'd like to ask you a few questions.
I was down on the border twice myself this year, once the
Tucson sector and once the Laredo sector, and was horrified at
the situation. I know the Border Patrol down there was so
frustrated hearing politicians call this a manufactured crisis,
because they lived the crisis every day and they knew it wasn't
manufactured.
I know this hearing focuses on children dying, but I heard
in the Tucson sector alone about 250 people are dehydrated to
death coming into this country. I don't know how many in the
other sectors. And I also heard in the Laredo sector these
drownings in the Rio Grande are not unusual.
And it frustrates me that so many people, however, do try
to come in this country when we don't necessarily want them.
Now, I was just looking at map a second ago in Guatemala.
If you wanted to leave in Guatemala, if you felt you were in
danger there, I believe there are eight countries you could
walk to quicker than the United States. Nevertheless, people
apparently continue to keep trying to come to the United
States.
What can we do to prevent that? Because to me, as long as
we continue to have people come here from all around the
world--and it's growing more all the time--we're going to
continue to have people dehydrate to death in the Arizona
desert, we're going to continue to have people drown in the Rio
Grande, and we're going to have the wonderful but overworked
Border Patrol trying to deal with this flood of people.
What can we do to stop this flood of people who I don't
think should be here?
Mr. Vitiello. Throughout my career and at several important
timelines, in 2007 and 2014, we were facing similar surges,
although the magnitude of the one we're in now is much bigger
than anything I've ever seen. It's extraordinary.
But when we put the policies in place where people can be
held in detention until the pendency of their immigration
hearing, then they are either given relief under the INA or
they're repatriated with the cooperation of the country that
they came from.
Mr. Grothman. Under current law, as I understand it, if
somebody here and says--asks for asylum--and everybody I know
feels that the vast majority of these claims are unnecessary.
You don't have to go through tons of other countries to get to
the United States if you're so concerned there's danger at
home.
What they told us, they're releasing them inland and they
give them a hearing three to five years out. In other words, in
essence, you just show up, ask for asylum, you get in the
United States.
Is that system contributing to people continuing to come
here?
Mr. Vitiello. Right. It's a completely rational act for
people to come here, knowing that they're going to be released
and they're going to be out in this economy.
In September, the Department of Justice, at the urging of
the Department of Homeland Security, asked DHS to put a rocket
docket together in 10 locations across the country for
immigration proceedings for families to be heard quicker.
When you're in detention, you're on a rocket docket. You're
going to be--you're going to see the judge quickly. When you're
on the nondetained docket, in some of these big cities it will
be years before you get to a merits hearing.
So DOJ in September put together that rocket docket in
those 10 locations. Before I left government, they had heard
3,500 of those cases. Most of those cases, most of those 3,500
cases, those individuals were ordered in absentia, because they
never appeared for their asylum claim or their immigration
proceeding.
I subsequently notified those 3,500 people and asked them
to come in on an order of supervision so that they could then
get back into the court cycle. Thousands of those people,
again, did not show up.
And so that has happened. Thousands more have had their
hearing since then. And so there's a large population who have
come to the border recently who claimed asylum, were released
from CBP or ICE custody, and then failed to pursue their claim
in court.
Mr. Grothman. What percent do you think wind up not in
court if you just had to take a stab at it?
Mr. Vitiello. In April, that percentage was 90 percent no
show rate, ninety percent----
Mr. Grothman. Ninety percent no show?
Mr. Vitiello. Ninety percent ordered in absentia by the
judge.
Mr. Grothman. And here we're trying to get more judges and
we beg and beg and we can't get more judges here to make sure
we find out right away what's going on. No wonder people are
trying to come here and overflooding our poor Border Patrol.
Any other suggestions you have to prevent people--and maybe
you want to comment, too, because this hearing is supposed to
be about the kids. Two hundred and fifty people dying a year,
about 250, in the Arizona desert in the Tucson sector alone,
because people won't build a wall because they want the current
system to continue.
Mr. Breen. Congressman, I'm sorry. If I may, but the
appearance rate among families represented by counsel is 99.9
percent, 99.9 percent of families represented by counsel
appear. The newest TRAC immigration report says 81 percent of
recently released families apprehended at the border attend
their court hearings.
Mr. Grothman. Of those people released under the current
system that's three to five years out, Mr. Vitiello, what
percentage of people after hanging around for three to five
years wind up showing at their hearing, do you believe?
Mr. Vitiello. Well, the rocket docket speaks for itself.
From September to April, 3,500 cases were heard, and 90 percent
of them were ordered in absentia, which means they did not
appear.
Mr. Grothman. Obviously, there's a big disagreement there.
Thank you.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. Mr. Breen, sorry, you seemed to have
wanted to respond to that.
Mr. Breen. Sure. I think, yes, if you rocket docket people,
the less due process and information you provide to people and
the less access to counsel people, that they're less likely to
show up in court. Yes, absolutely, of course they are.
So the answer is not let's deprive people of due process.
Again, ICE's own case management process, they ran this pilot
and then canceled it inexplicably in 2017, and it worked. It
saved taxpayer dollars and the appearance rate, again, was
close to 100 percent.
Instead, we're detaining people who have been accused of no
crime whatsoever and then we're listening to a narrative that
says we don't have the capacity and the resources to detain
them.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. Thank you.
Ms. Long. May I also say quickly, Representative?
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. Briefly, yes.
Ms. Long. Very briefly. It turns out that the immigration
court system is also under government control. And this body
could be taking actions to change that three to five-year
delay, investing in the court system, investing in due process,
investing in representation, which makes that court system much
more efficient and more fair.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. I see. Thank you, Ms. Long.
The chair now recognizes the gentlelady from Michigan, Ms.
Tlaib.
Ms. Tlaib. Thank you so much, Chairwoman.
And I want to thank all of you so much for being here. As a
former immigration attorney, I can tell you the system has
completely deteriorated, broken down. We should have been
changing it 20 years ago.
If you have an issue with asylum, and some of us even
currently do, and it does take too long, because there are
people that actually want a decision right away. And having
their lives literally on hold because they haven't had a
decision is really impractical for their lives. And they get so
rooted here waiting three to five years.
You think they want to. They don't. I have clients, and
I've worked in the pro bono area for years, and I'm telling
you, my heart breaks, y'all. Honestly, the horrific suffering
of these vulnerable immigrant children and families, seeing
what I saw in El Paso.
But what is even more upsetting is realizing that the Trump
administration's cruelty toward migrants--and I'm going to just
call them families, families and children--isn't just a bug in
the system. It's the entire point. It's an ideology.
Last week President Trump tweeted: If illegal immigrants--
it's his words--are unhappy with conditions in the quickly
built or refitted detention centers, just tell them not to
come. All problems solved, exclamation point.
He seems to be admitting that detention conditions are
terrible and that was intentional to deter migrants from
coming.
Mr. Breen, would you agree with that assessment?
Mr. Breen. Absolutely not. If you and your children are
trapped in a burning building, it does not matter how miserable
I make it on the street. You're going to do whatever you can do
to get out of that burning building with your kids. Deterrence
is a completely ineffective policy. All it does is ramp up
human suffering.
Ms. Tlaib. But that's exactly what he's trying to do. He
thinks this is going to deter folks from coming. That's the
whole point of the policy.
And I can tell you, I talked to three incredibly I think
sincere CBP agents. I mean, these Border Patrol agents took me
aside, not in front of the others, because the model is honor
first. So there's this culture you don't tell on each other.
But three of them took me aside. One specifically said: Stop
throwing money at this. The issue is separation. That I wasn't
even trained to separate a two-year-old from their mother, I
wasn't trained to be a medical care worker. I wasn't trained to
be a social worker, is what one agent told me.
And the other agent said: Do you understand, like
everybody's blaming us, but this is what was handed to us, is
the separation policy.
Ms. Frye, do you believe the cruelty is intentional?
Ms. Frye. Absolutely.
Ms. Tlaib. Ms. Long, do you agree that all the problems
will be solved if we tell asylum seekers not to come?
Ms. Long. You know, as a poet has said, no one puts their
child in a boat if the water is not--you know, if the water's
not safer than land. And that is, indeed, what people, when you
talk to them, the people who are going through this cruel
system, they are saying: I had to leave. There was no option
for me.
And can I just say one thing, Representative? You know,
there has been concern raised about trafficking of children in
this hearing. And that is why I feel skeptical that that
concern is real unless policymakers are ready to invest in
having decisions made and assessments made----
Ms. Tlaib. Oh, I know, absolutely.
Ms. Long [continuing]. by people who are actually qualified
to make those assessments.
Ms. Tlaib. I know. Ms. Long, we're here. They have every
power to introduce legislation to actually tackle some human
trafficking issues that we all know do exist and we all want to
be able to address it.
But I want to pull up a slide of one of the children's
drawings that has been in one of the cages, detention centers,
camps, whatever you refer to.
Ms. Long, as a mother, if my child drew this, I would be
horrified. Is this normal behavior? Should we be worried when
we see children drawing pictures like this?
Ms. Long. The American Academy of Pediatricians has warned
against the long-term consequences of child detention, even
child detention that occurs over short periods of time. This
image is an image that shows, I think, what that looks like,
what that feels like to a child. It's incredibly traumatizing
and it could have lifelong impacts.
Ms. Tlaib. The increase in immigration detention reflects
only one thing: that this administration's use for prolonged
incarceration of asylum seekers in massive operations, rounding
up of long-term community members who pose no safety risk.
Relying on incarceration is the primary focus of immigration
law currently, and it's a policy choice by this administration.
I want you to know it hasn't always been this way. In the
1980's, I want to tell you, in the 1980's, when numbers on the
border were even higher than they are today, the use of
detention for immigration purposes was very unusual. In the
1990's detention averages hovered like around 5,000, less than
one-tenth of where we are today.
There is a better way, and some of my colleagues talked
about this. Instead, we could look at guidance on international
agencies, evidence-based approaches showing that community-
supported programs that allow asylum seekers to live in the
community while their cases are processed is actually cheaper
and more effective. And more importantly, it would put an end
to the suffering of children.
Thank you, Madam Speaker, I yield the rest of my time.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. Thank you so much. The gentlelady
yields.
The chair now recognizes the gentleman from Ohio, Mr.
Jordan.
Mr. Jordan. I thank the chair.
Mr. Breen, I'm not that familiar with the pilot program you
talked about. In that program, does the asylum seeker
determine, make the determination if they want to be in the
program and get access to counsel?
Mr. Breen. No. My understanding is that the way it works is
that the program--and we have a study on this that I'm happy to
provide you--but that the program essentially used professional
social workers to provide education to individuals, family
service plans, and other case management support.
So this was a pilot to see that ICE performed, is my
understanding, to see whether providing that, which is much
less expensive--it was also done through private contractors,
by the way--providing that was more effective at getting people
to show up for court than detaining them until they showed up.
And, again, to detain a family, it's about $300 a day in
taxpayer money. This program was about $12 a day per individual
in taxpayer dollars. We would recommend repeating this program
at scale with nongovernmental organizations.
Mr. Jordan. You used a 99 percent figure. What was that in
relation to?
Mr. Breen. That is attendance for ICE check-ins and
appointments.
Mr. Jordan. For those who have counsel, I thought you said.
Mr. Breen. No, those were the participants in this program.
Mr. Jordan. In this program. But when they come to their
court date, their court appearance, do they have counsel with
them?
Mr. Breen. Most do. Some don't. But that's 100 percent
attendance at court hearings, again. And this is, again,
professional social workers providing an individualized case
management approach.
Mr. Jordan. Does the asylum seeker make the choice on the
front end to be in the program?
Mr. Breen. I actually don't know the answer to that
question.
Mr. Jordan. Well, you'd think they would. You're not
forcing people to be in the program, right?
Mr. Breen. ICE decides. In the case of the pilot, ICE
decided who went into the program.
Mr. Jordan. My point is, you had one stat that said 99
percent show up. Mr. Vitiello said hardly any of them show up.
And I guess the point would be that there's probably a little
self-selection going on there.
Mr. Breen. No, Congressman. ICE made the determination
about who was in that program and who wasn't, not the asylum
seekers.
Mr. Jordan. They just picked them----
Mr. Breen. That is correct.
Mr. Jordan [continuing]. and they had to be in the program?
Mr. Breen. That is correct.
Mr. Jordan. They were forced to be in the program?
Mr. Breen. That is correct.
Mr. Jordan. Okay. All right. Well, that's interesting. But
my guess is if you----
Mr. Breen. My point, Congressman----
Mr. Jordan. If you make a decision you're going to show up,
you're probably going to want a lawyer if you show up. If you
make a decision you're not going to show up, you probably don't
want a lawyer because you're not going to show up.
Mr. Breen. But that's not how it works. Again, this was a
program to determine which was the most cost-effective taxpayer
expense and the most effective way to get people to show up for
court. And it turns out this is a hell of a lot more effective
than detention, and cheaper.
Mr. Jordan. All right. I'm more than willing to look at it.
Mr. Vitiello, can you comment on that?
Mr. Vitiello. I would just say that in the 2019 funding
bill, the one that was signed after the shutdown, has resources
for ICE to restart this program in some form or fashion.
The sample that we're talking about is a very small sample.
It's less than 2,000 people. Lots of incentive to be in the
program, lots of social services around the individual as
they're in the United States waiting for their hearing.
So it doesn't surprise me that the compliance rate was
high. But very few people that were in that program, less than
2,000, I think a handful of them got removed. The rest are
still here.
Mr. Jordan. Okay. And how many of those 2,000 were
legitimate asylum seekers? Do we know?
Mr. Vitiello. That's a matter of the courts.
Mr. Jordan. My guess is the percentage would be about the
same. But what I've been told is like 85, 90 percent of people
seeking asylum are not legitimate asylum seekers under our law.
Is that accurate?
Mr. Vitiello. Well, there is a wide disparity between the
number of people who are authorized for credible fear screening
and then going through the process, then eventually gain
asylum. There's a big difference. Almost everybody gets a
credible fear screening----
Mr. Jordan. Right, I understand that.
Mr. Vitiello. And the number of asylees are very small by
the time they make it all the way through.
Mr. Breen. The process we're describing, these court
appearances are specifically to adjudicate who has a legitimate
asylum claim.
Mr. Jordan. No, I get that. I understand that. But I'm
actually----
Mr. Breen. So it's impossible to say outside that process.
Mr. Jordan. I asked you questions earlier. I'm actually
talking to Mr. Vitiello now.
Mr. Vitiello, I'm just curious about another unrelated or
different subject, different area. The folks who present
themselves at the border and are actually--you know, the
144,000 that happened in the month of May alone, do we know how
many of them have--what percentage of them have family here or
what percentage are just first time? Do we know how that--do
most of them have family? That would be my assumption, but I
just don't know.
Mr. Vitiello. Yes, I think typically they do. I mean,
they're coming for a reason. If they don't have family, they
soon will have people following them behind. That's typically
the way immigration takes place, right? There's the Diaspora in
the United States that people are connecting to.
Mr. Jordan. Right. Okay. Okay. Sorry, I expected to give
more time to the ranking member, but you got 30 seconds and
then your five minutes.
Mr. Roy. I'm going to ask the chairman, is it just me at
this point?
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. Yes.
Mr. Roy. Okay. All right. Well, I'll take the 30 seconds
and then my time and go.
First of all, thank you all for being around here so late
in the day. Obviously, it went long. We've been in this room
all day. But thank you all for doing that.
Just following up real quick on what Ranking Member Jordan
just talked about. I guess my question is, I don't know all the
data here in terms of who's in the pilot and who's not. My
concern has been in all of this is that--and I think, Mr.
Vitiello, you kind of referenced this before--is the magnet,
right, the pressure, right?
We've got Northern Triangle problems, right? Desire to come
to America, great. No disagreement on having an ability for
that to occur and no disagreement on figuring out how to have
an asylum process where people seeking asylum can seek asylum
in the safest way possible, right?
The question comes is when we're allowing that to be an
enormous magnet, based on cartel profiting, which I think there
is generally no disagreement that cartels are profiting on the
back of moving people from the Northern Triangle to the United
States, might be some disagreements on the amount and it's hard
to know for sure, but a significant amount of profit, my
concern gets to the point of that what, Mr. Vitiello, you were
saying before and Mr. Jordan referenced.
When they get through to immigration judges, okay, so you
get past the credible fear screening, you get through the
process and you get to the immigration judge, roughly right now
12 percent are being found to have a legitimate asylum claim.
Now, that is the data that I am aware of.
Mr. Vitiello, does that marry up with your understanding?
Mr. Vitiello. I know the percentage is much lower than the
actual flow of people that are coming to the border, right.
Lots of people get a credible fear screening because they ask
for it, and that's the way the law works. That threshold is
very low. But many of them then do not go on to get asylum.
Mr. Roy. And the reason I ask that is, is what I'd like to
know is I'd like to know the answer to that, right? We're
asking DHS that question. That's something from an oversight
perspective I'd like to know the answer to. Because if that
number is like 90 percent, then that's a very different reality
than if it's 10 or 12 percent, right?
I'm being told it's 10 or 12 percent. So if I go with that
as my logic and I'm going, holy cow, we've got this massive
attraction, understandably, and we're allowing cartels to
profit and drive people across our border, then we're going
through a whole process, then getting to the end and saying 12
percent are qualifying for asylum under the traditional
understanding of what our asylum laws represent.
Now, that's for persecuted individuals and so forth as
opposed to, hey, your economy is bad or it's dangerous and so
forth. This is what I'm trying to get at.
Mr. Vitiello, can you put a little bit more of
understanding as we close out here on the extent to which the
Reynosa faction of the Gulf Cartel, the Cartel del Noreste Los
Zetas are profiting and moving people across the border for
profit, people?
Mr. Vitiello. So there's a couple of things there. It's my
experience on the south side of the border the cartels control
territory. Just like a street corner in a big city, a drug
cartel will control the retail sales. At the border, the cartel
controls the traffic and who uses particular parcels of land
and there is a tax for anyone that moves through those
territories. And so at the immediate border, people are making
money off the backs of these people as they're crossing the
border, no matter where they cross.
The other thing that's happening is in Mexico people are
forced to pay bribes. Smugglers are forced to pay tax to
whatever cartel controls the territory that they operate in.
And then the smugglers themselves are making money in the home
countries of where these people are, because they promise or
they actually pay criminal organizations for the trip up.
Mr. Roy. Let me address one other issue, and that is
something that my colleague from New York addressed earlier,
because I think it's a reasonable point that she raised about
cultural distinctions and people who show up at the border who
might be claiming family members and they're not or they're
distant or whatever, right? They're not necessarily a parent.
My question is, though, is it not a reality, whatever the
numbers are of that being a legitimate problem, is it not a
reality that we have people that are definitively not family
members that are using children as a passport to come to the
United States?
Mr. Vitiello.
Mr. Vitiello. Yes, that is true. I will forward for your
team up here some media that CBP put out on--I don't know the
date here--but it, in fact, talks about ICE's surge to the
border to try to identify how many families were actually
legitimate. They did some pilot DNA testing and they found out
there was a significant percentage of people who were
manufacturing their relationships in order to get into custody
and then quickly be released, because they had children with
them.
Mr. Roy. And is there intelligence indicating that, in
fact, they wouldn't, to my colleague's point, be a nonblood
relative who is claiming to be a parent, culturally or
otherwise? Is there indication that cartels or other bad actors
or people for profit are moving people across, falsely claiming
to be a parent or guardian?
Mr. Vitiello. Yes. So I think it's an accurate depiction,
the analysis that sometimes the adult relative is not a parent
but, in fact, are family, but that's not how they qualify for
release under the law. If they're not an adult parent then they
can't be released to that other relative.
So the Congress could act here to expand the definition of
adult relative to include the sibling or the aunt or the
grandmother.
Mr. Roy. I appreciate, Mr. Vitiello, your testimony.
And I would yield back to the chairman.
Mr. Raskin.
[Presiding.] Thank you very much, Mr. Roy.
And we thought it was almost over, but we have a late entry
from Mr. Gomez, who's a member of the committee.
Mr. Roy. Saving us from the clutches of going to dinner.
Mr. Raskin. There we go.
So you are recognized for five minutes, Mr. Gomez.
Mr. Gomez. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Before I go on to my remarks, Ms. Long, you were shaking
your head. I wanted to see if you wanted to address that.
Ms. Long. Thank you so much.
I just want to take issue with how Mr. Vitiello has
characterized U.S. law. There is no law that requires the
United States to separate nonparent families at the border. In
fact, this is part of the administration's policy to punish
children and families.
There are a variety of policy options that could be
employed here, even maintaining the designation as
unaccompanied child under the TVPRA, but then providing a
screening by a qualified child welfare professional, who could
determine what the best interest of the child was in that
context and release them under that--you know, after that
screening to proceed with their immigration cases in the United
States.
Mr. Gomez. Thank you for clarifying that.
One of the things I want to kind of talk about--I'm just
going to free flow a little bit--is that I like to remind
people how this zero tolerance policy started. Remember that--I
believe it was Jeff Sessions that said that it was to be a
deterrent for families to come up here. If you come up here,
your kids are going to be taken from you, and, thereby, don't
come.
Yes, they claim that there's no zero tolerance policy, but
what they decided to do is go from a civil administrative
procedure to a criminal. Basically, everybody that comes here
that goes between the points of entry, that they are in
violation and, thereby, ripping the kids away from the adult
that they're with.
That in itself is the policy of family separation. The mess
that we've seen at the border has been predictable, because a
lot of the ideas are not based on sound policy and rationale,
but based on politics. How can I seem as tough as possible even
though that they're not going to truly solve the problems?
This President claimed that he was the only one that could
fix all our issues. Well, he's proven that he's the only one
that can make them even worse than they were before he started.
So I want to make sure that people remember that, that this
is something that we've seen.
I want to get to some questions regarding the border
station in Clint, Texas. People have seen it. It's become
infamous about the chaotic scene.
Ms. Long, you visited and interviewed children at the Clint
facility, correct?
Ms. Long. Correct.
Mr. Gomez. How long were you there and how many children
did you talk to?
Ms. Long. I was there from June 17 to June 19, and I
personally spoke with about 16 children in the El Paso sector
as a whole. I spent the day of June 18 in the El Paso Station 1
and the Santa Teresa Border Patrol Station and the 17th and the
19th in Clint.
Mr. Gomez. Thank you.
The New York Times recently reported that the, quote,
``stench of the children's dirty clothing was so strong it
spread to the agents' own clothing,'' end quote.
Ms. Long, is that description consistent with your
experience?
Ms. Long. That is.
Mr. Gomez. Can you describe what else struck you the most
about the conditions of Clint or other border stations you
visited?
Ms. Long. The children were scared. They were hungry. They
told us that they had no one to take care of them and their
selves. They were being held incommunicado from family members
who we began to contact. When we contacted their, you know, in
some cases their parents, the parents were desperate, had had
no idea where their children were.
Under the Flores agreement we do not have the right to
inspect the facilities, but what we heard again and again from
over 50 interviews with children detained at the facility was
consistent: Children were denied access to showers, access to
toothbrushes, sleeping on the floor.
Mr. Gomez. On Sunday, Acting DHS Secretary McAleenan was
asked about allegations of inadequate food, water, and
sanitation at Clint. He responded by saying, quote:
``Unsubstantiated allegations last week regarding a single
Border Patrol facility in Clint Station in Texas created a
sensation.'' That's balanced somewhat since several media
outlets toured the Clint station and saw the actual conditions
there, a clean and well-managed facility and well-equipped
process,'' end quote.
Ms. Long, do you agree with the Secretary that the
allegations at Clint were unsubstantiated?
Ms. Long. I would ask the Secretary whether he is--you
know, whether he believes his own Department's Office of
Inspector General and its inspections of other facilities in
the area, whether the--why after we raised the alarm at
conditions at Clint the agency was able to immediately transfer
the majority of the children into the Office of Refugee
Resettlement custody even before a supplemental funding bill
was approved.
Mr. Gomez. Ms. Long, my interpretation is this, that they
don't do the right thing unless a light is shone onto these
facilities. And once it is, then all of a sudden they start
abiding by the laws, doing the right thing.
I spent the night at the border in California with refugees
that were seeking asylum. I know what some of their conditions
and some of what they're dealing with. So unless we find a way
to really focus on that, to bring more attention, it's going to
continue.
Mr. Chairman, I know I'm out of time, but there has been a
lot of discussions about some of the culture within Customs and
Border Patrol, and I wanted to submit for the record a
ProPublica piece, ``Inside the Secret Border Patrol Facebook
Group Where Agents Joke About Migrant Deaths and Post [Sexist
Memes]''----
Mr. Raskin. Without objection.
Mr. Raskin. Thank you very much, Mr. Gomez.
Mr. Gomez. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Raskin. The gentleman's time has expired.
And we recognize finally Mrs. Maloney for five minutes.
Mrs. Maloney. First of all, I want to thank you, Mr.
Chairman, really, for your attention to this, and to all of the
panelists.
And I want to ask some questions about the treatment of
pregnant women at the border. But really, I'd like to ask each
of you to comment on where we stand. As you know, we just voted
$4.7 billion to go to the border. Many of us had humanitarian
concerns and humanitarian requirements and oversight and
accountability requirements.
This was refused to be part of the bill by Leader
McConnell. So it came back to the House. And we knew it was
going to the border, but many of us voted against it because
these conditions were not added to it.
And I'd like to just go down the line, starting with you,
Mr. Breen, on what you think we can concretely do through laws
to clean this mess up? This is not America. It's a horror show.
I can't believe the stories that we're reading.
So what do you think? We're now legislating the amendments
that we tried to put in that were stripped out. But I'd like to
hear from you, because you're on the front lines every day
addressing this problem. I want to thank you for your work. And
I want to hear, if you were a legislator what would you be
working on to make this better for America, for migrants, for
everyone?
Mr. Breen. Thank you, Congresswoman.
I have to say I agree that money alone will certainly not
solve this problem. There are a number of policy choices that
have been made here that are making things considerably worse,
not better.
There are a number of very specific recommendations in my
submitted written testimony and in the report. In the interest
of time, I'll just kind of quickly summarize. There is a lot
that Congress can do.
One is to end the unnecessary and unjust detention of
asylum seekers for the duration of their proceedings. We are
detaining all kinds of people who have been accused of no crime
and who are overwhelmingly likely to show up in court, given
the opportunity and access to counsel.
I think we should be legislating access to custody and bond
hearings for all asylum seekers. There's, again, no reason to
be detaining a lot of these people at taxpayers' expense.
Conduct intensive oversight of Trump administration
violations of U.S. asylum laws at the border. That includes
detention. It also includes the migrant--perversely named
migrant protection protocols that deliver people back into
horrific conditions on the border, where they are preyed on by
cartels, as Mr. Roy said.
We should be providing oversight and legislative compliance
with the Flores settlement agreement and with other policies
and legal obligations that limit the number of days children
and adult migrants are to be held in CBP facilities.
Upgrade the immigration adjudication system. Continue to
fund humanitarian needs of arriving refugees. And we should be
supporting regional solutions through legislation and
oversight. Cutting aid to the Central Triangle at the moment
that this crisis is occurring is the exact opposite of wise
policy.
I could go on, but I'll let others.
Mrs. Maloney. Okay. Ms. Long.
Ms. Long. Thank you very much. In the interest of time,
I'll try to focus on recommendations that differ from the good
ones that Mr. Breen has put on the table.
First, I want to emphasize the closed nature of CBP
facilities like the one at Clint that I visited several weeks
ago and like the ones in the Rio Grande Valley that Hope has
visited previously.
Congress should urgently push CBP to develop an access
policy, allow independent monitors in those facilities, allow
independent doctors in those facilities, ensure that they do
not remain black sites where children can be held incommunicado
for weeks.
Mrs. Maloney. Now, let me just throw out real quick. A lot
of people want to help. They want to donate. We have Doctors
Without Borders going around the world to help people. They
want to go to the border and help and volunteer, and they are
cutoff from helping.
You know, this toothpaste, I mean, I could call--I would
send the toothpaste and toothbrushes down. Everybody would. But
they're blocking donations.
You know, I think if they're not going to give blankets and
toothpaste and other things, we can give it. The private sector
can give it. Congress can personally give it. But they block
even that help coming in.
How do we break through that?
Ms. Long. It's actually a great segue. You know, there are
communities along the border--Dr. Gutierrez is part of one of
them--that are providing excellent models of humanitarian
response for arrivals of asylum seekers. The Annunciation House
in El Paso, the Sacred Heart Church in McAllen, these are among
many others, shelters that are taking migrants now when they
get out of CBP custody, providing them with medical care, clean
clothes, hot food, a bit of respite.
That is the model that the United States should be
exploring when it comes to the reception of asylum seekers at
the border.
Mr. Raskin. The gentlelady's time has expired. Thank you
very much.
Mrs. Maloney. If you want to submit it in writing, I'd love
to see it. Thank you.
Mr. Raskin. I know Mr. Roy is seeking one minute just to
address this question of charitable donations, and he has some
legislation related to that.
Mr. Roy. Yes. So I would just like to add that I, too,
believe that we ought to make sure there are no barriers
between the American people and anybody who wants to be able to
provide services and help in any way. That's why I introduced a
bill I'm happy to talk to my colleagues about allowing--that
would get the Antideficiency Act out of the way or make it so
that materials can be delivered.
We ought to certainly look at potentially expanding that,
as I think Congressman Meadows was referencing earlier, to make
sure if doctors want to provide their services pro bono, we
should have those conversations as well. I certainly believe
that wholeheartedly.
I would just add one little thing, the thing on the
toothpaste. I mean, the rooms I've seen down there, my chief of
staff was in Clint over the weekend, and there were rooms full
of those materials. There's some discrepancy on the
information, what is or is not true, but we should remove all
barriers.
And it does--I see the looks--it does matter. I mean,
because you have Border Patrol who are working hard every day
to do the right thing, and I think the witnesses would agree
with that. Some may not. That's fine. We can have that debate
and that's what oversight is for. But it is important to
recognize the hard work, the lives being saved by Border Patrol
and law enforcement every day.
So thank you.
Mr. Raskin. And I want to thank the ranking member. I want
to thank vice chair, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, Mrs. Maloney. I want to
thank Mr. Jordan. And you're on for five minutes.
Mr. Jordan. No, no, no. I just want to sneak in. I've
already had my four minutes and 30 seconds.
Mr. Raskin. Okay.
Mr. Jordan. But if I could get an extra 30.
Mr. Raskin. Okay.
Mr. Jordan. I just have a quick question for Mr. Breen.
I'm just curious, Mr. Breen, what do you think the number
is of folks who are in the country in some illegal capacity,
whether they're overstays, visa overstays, or they're asylum
seekers who didn't show up for their court date, or they got
across the border?
And this is not any type of gotcha. I'm just kind of
curious what the panel thinks, because we hear 11 million all
the time, but we've seen this influx over the last couple
years. I'm just curious what you think the overall number is.
Mr. Breen. Congressman, my response to that is to say
that--I mean, I'm a lawyer by training, as many in this room
are. I believe in the American justice system. I believe in the
rule of law.
We have a system to adjudicate that question. As an asylum
seeker, do they qualify for asylum under U.S. law? And I think
we ought to make it as easy as we possibly can for an
individual who wants to make that claim and exercise that legal
right to do so under the system of justice that we have.
So there's been a lot of discussion here about how many
people in the system are legitimate or illegitimate asylum
seekers. We have a system to adjudicate that. That system is
under-resourced. It is backlogged.
Mr. Jordan. I agree with that.
Mr. Breen. And there are a number of policies in place
right now that are, intentionally or not, the consequences are
to make it much slower.
Mr. Jordan. And I don't want to prolong a long day. We've
all been here since 10 this morning. And I'm not trying to get
into a debate. I'm just actually curious what people who are in
this field and study this from both sides, maybe all sides of
the political spectrum, what you think the number is, because I
don't know that we know.
We also--actually, it's a slightly different issue--but we
got this question about asking that question on the Census. It
seems to me the easiest way to figure it out. But I'm just
curious what you all think it is.
Mr. Breen. I'll defer to others if they want to give you an
answer on that.
Mr. Jordan. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Raskin. We'll pick it up another day, and we're
definitely not going to get into the Census before we close
here.
But I wanted to thank you, Mr. Jordan, for hanging in, Ms.
Ocasio-Cortez, vice chair of the committee, the ranking member,
Mr. Roy.
I want to thank all of our wonderful witnesses today. It's
been an emotional roller coaster. We saw extraordinary
testimony from Ms. Juarez, which I think has shocked the
conscience of the country.
You all have offered us tremendous factual information,
great analytical frameworks for understanding this, and some
terrific ideas going forward. We've taken scrupulous notes on
it, and don't think that it disappears into the ether. We're
going to followup on all of the great ideas that you have
suggested to us today.
And we've seen a great bipartisan discussion. Let's hope we
can move together across the aisle to confront this situation.
Mr. Roy. I want to just thank the chairman for his
indulgence and flexibility in working together to make this
long day work as well as it can. Thank you.
Mr. Raskin. Thank you, Mr. Roy.
And thanks to all of you.
Without objection, all members will have five legislative
days within which to submit additional written questions for
the witnesses to the chair, which I will forward to the
witnesses for their response. I ask our witnesses to please
respond as promptly as you can to any further questions.
This hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 7:06 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
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