DeGette at congressional hearing: "Forcibly" tearing families apart at border "cruel"
Colorado U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette oversaw a congressional hearing Thursday on a Trump administration immigration policy that separated thousands of migrant children from their parents if they entered the United States illegally.
DeGette called the policy "cruel" and said the hearing by the House Energy and Commerce oversight subcommittee was intended "to make sure it never happens again."
"These are real kids, real families, that were forcibly torn apart," DeGette, a Denver Democrat, said in her role as the new chairperson of the oversight subcommittee.
The hearing was prompted partly by a report last month from the inspector general for the U.S. Health and Human Services Department.
The report said thousands more children than originally known were separated from their families at the border during an influx that began in 2017.
One day after the report was released, DeGette sent Health and Human Services Acting Secretary Alex Azar a letter demanding that he turn over internal documents explaining the agency's role in the administration's policy that allowed family separations.
"We are concerned that instead of prioritizing what is in the best interest of the children in [Health and Human Services'] custody, you have allowed your agency to be turned into a mechanism for immigration enforcement," DeGette wrote to Azar.
The oversight subcommittee asked Azar to testify at the hearing Thursday but he declined, prompting further criticism by DeGette.
Instead, the 10 witnesses consisted mostly of other representatives from federal agencies, child welfare organizations and civil rights groups.
The Health and Human Services Department was unprepared for the influx of migrant children that were separated by the Trump administration policy, said Ann Maxwell, an assistant inspector general for the agency.
The agency tried to monitor separated families but was confronted by "the absence of reliable data about their circumstances," Maxwell said.
The separations followed a memo in April from former U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions that set a "zero tolerance" policy on illegal immigration.
DeGette Calls Trump Immigration Policy Cruel for Separating Families
Colorado U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette oversaw a congressional hearing Thursday on a Trump administration immigration policy that separated thousands of migrant children from their parents if they entered the United States illegally.