“I believed them. I believe these women,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez testifies on conditions she witnessed during her visit to a border detention facility. “This is a manufactured crisis because there is no need for us to do this.”
Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez gave defiant, emotional testimony on Friday in which she insisted a woman being held at a border facility told her a guard had told the woman to drink from a toilet after the connected sink broke.
“It is a policy of dehumanization implemented by this executive administration laid at the feet of Stephen Miller that creates a tinderbox of violence and dehumanization where hurt people hurt people,” she said, referring to the president's hard-line adviser on immigration policy.“That women were being called these names under an American flag," she said."We cannot allow for this.”
Democrats also are calling out the administration’s ongoing policy of separating kids traveling with aunts, uncles and grandparents – a practice that contributed to a backlog of some 2,500 children stuck at Border Patrol stations in recent weeks while the government scrambled to find longer term shelter.
In a new report released on Friday by the House Oversight Committee, House Democrats revisit the impact of the administration’s “zero tolerance” policy last year, which resulted in at least 18 infants and toddlers under two years old being separated from their parents and kept apart from 20 days to half of a year.
The Trump administration does not classify the practice of separating children from relatives who are not their parents, like an aunt or uncle or grandparent, as a family separation – citing legal requirements put in place to ensure the child’s security. “This is the cultural context with which children are coming to the border with their loved ones,” she said. “They are being taken, they arrive and then they are being called unaccompanied children, when in fact, they are accompanied.”
CBP cites immigration law that says a child must travel with a parent or legal guardian. Otherwise, they are separated during immigration proceedings. The adult is taken into custody by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement; the child referred to the Department of Health and Human Services.
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