DeGette Follows Refugee Path over U.S. Border, Including Detention Centers for Adults and Children

McAllen, Texas – Congresswoman Diana DeGette (D-CO), Chief Deputy Whip, today followed the path of refugees coming into the United States via its southwestern border, visited a "tender age" facility for very young children arriving undocumented in this country, and considered how the scenes she observed and the data she had gathered will inform related policy upon her return to Washington once she has touched base with immigration rights advocates and other constituents in Denver on Sunday.

"There's no substitute for being on the ground," DeGette said from the airport as she awaited her flight back home to Colorado. "The most shocking thing I saw all day was a group of 45 refugee women at the Port Isabel ICE detention center who had been separated from their children. Many did not know where their kids were, and even the ones who did could only talk to them once a week. Two were breastfeeding and had their babies taken.

"We were allowed rare access to a ‘tender age' center where they are holding kids as young as nine months. While they are apparently being well cared-for, these kids need to be back with their moms and dads."

DeGette took part in a delegation of more than two dozen House members, largely composed of fellow members of the Democratic Women's Working Group, who made several stops on Saturday in and near McAllen, TX, including a border patrol station, a processing center for those who had been arrested without documentation, and a detention center. As most of those House colleagues dispersed at the program's end, DeGette went on to cross the Gateway International Bridge in Brownsville – where she spoke with people who had been waiting for hours and even days to enter this country – and to spend time with youngsters detained at the Casa Presidente tender age center.

DeGette is a senior member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which has jurisdiction over the Department of Health and Human Services; HHS operates the Office of Refugee Resettlement, a controversial bureau responsible for the care of minors who enter the United States undocumented and are unaccompanied by their parents or guardians.\

Earlier this week, DeGette called on President Donald J. Trump to do better than the vague Executive Order he had issued to halt, at least temporarily, his campaign of separating families at the border under a "zero-tolerance" policy. She noted that the order does not provide direction on how the families shattered during the Trump Administration's needlessly cruel campaign – among them more than 2000 children – would be reunited, and that it still requires families that had not yet been separated to be kept behind locked doors, fences, and even the gates of military bases.

"We need to stop this as a nation – now," DeGette said. "And we need to reunite these kids with their families. They have already been through more than enough."

Tomorrow, DeGette plans to share further thoughts with her constituents and discuss solutions, including existing legislation that has yet to be brought to the House floor for a vote by the GOP leadership. She will hold a news conference immediately after a visit to the Denver Contract Detention Facility in Aurora on Sunday morning and has been invited to speak a rally in Denver that afternoon.