FOR BREAKING NEWS VISIT WWW.QNS.COM JUNE 28, 2018 • THE QUEENS COURIER 19
Suozzi fumes over lack of effort to fix immigration in America
BY ROBERT POZARYCKI
rpozarycki@qns.com / @robbpoz
Solving the refugee crisis on the
U.S./Mexico border will require cooperation
Local Congresswoman visits immigration facilities in Texas
BY RYAN KELLEY
rkelley@qns.com
Twitter@R_Kelley6
While the separation of families at the
U.S./Mexico border may have been halted,
one Queens Congress member said
there is a lack of guidance among immigration
officials as to how to reunite those
who were already split up after a recent
visit to immigration facilities in Texas.
Congresswoman Grace Meng — representing
a large portion of northern
Queens — traveled to McAllen and
Brownsville, Texas, on June 23 to tour the
McAllen Border Patrol Processing Center
and the Port Isabel Detention Center to
see where immigrant children were being
held and speak to mothers who have been
separated from their children.
One of her biggest takeaways from the
visit, Meng told the Courier on June 25,
is that preventing family separation going
forward is not enough.
“It’s going to take more than signing
a piece of paper,” Meng said. “We know
President Donald Trump signed the
order, but from our visit it has not trickled
down to the actual agents and the people in
charge of working with them. There is little
guidance on how families will be reunited.”
Meng’s visit came as a followup to a
letter she sent to the president on June
20 requesting that his executive order to
ensure that families no longer get separated
at the border also include a statement
describing how recently separated families
will be reunited.
While families have been separated at
the border under past presidents on occasion,
a “zero tolerance” policy enacted by
Attorney General Jeff Sessions in April
to prosecute all adults who illegally cross
the border resulted in more than 2,000
children being separated from their parents
or guardians, according to multiple
reports.
The Congresswoman described the situation
inside the McAllen facility as “very
eerie,” as the scene of children being
housed inside chain-link fences, lying
on ground pads with space blankets that
she had seen on the internet proved to
be true. The children had just been fed
lunch, and Meng said she was able to
touch a carton of milk to make sure that
it was cold.
The McAllen facility is approximately
55,000 square feet with adequate medical
equipment as well, but officials did
not give a reason for why the children are
housed the way they are, Meng said. There
was also a separate area for infant children
under the age of 3, the Congresswoman
said, where parents were allowed to
remain with them for the time being.
Boys and girls were separated by sex,
Meng said, and although many of them
were sitting and “staring into space”
unsure of their fate, they were being treated
well as far as she could tell. The border
patrol agents are doing their jobs despite
the lack of guidance, Meng said.
“It was just very heartbreaking to see
that,” Meng said. “No one is talking to
them or touching them or hugging them,
and it doesn’t portray the values we all
share as Americans.”
At the Port Isabel Detention Center,
Meng had the opportunity to meet with
approximately 30 mothers who had been
separated from their children after crossing
the border, and that was even harder
to see, she said. The mothers were able
to tell Meng what they went through on
their journeys, and most of them had not
spoken to their kids and had no idea were
they were.
Most of the mothers’ main concern,
Meng said, is that they don’t know who
is looking after their child, and that their
child won’t be able to explain how they’re
being treated because they don’t understand
English.
The story that stood out to Meng the
most was that of a mother who was
allowed to stay with her 5-month-old
child at first because she was still nursing,
but one morning the child was taken
away from her.
“Regardless of how you feel about
immigration, I think we can all agree that
infants or 2-year-olds shouldn’t be separated
from their parents in a strange
country,” Meng said.
Upon her return to Queens, Meng said
that is the message she hopes will ring
true with her constituents. She also plans
to keep representing those in her district
who are confronted with controversial
immigration policies.
and compassion, according to
Congressman Tom Suozzi, who represents
northeast Queens.
Along with a bipartisan delegation of
his colleagues, including Long Island
Congresswoman Kathleen Rice, Suozzi
traveled this weekend to the unofficial
epicenter of the crisis, Tornillo, Texas.
The town on the U.S./Mexico border
includes many government-run and nonprofit
operated facilities housing immigrants
who recently crossed the border
illegally into the United States.
Suozzi, Rice and their colleagues in
the delegation sought to see for themselves
the conditions at detention centers
in Tornillo. They toured the detention
centers, spoke (through interpreters)
with some of the children being detained
there, met with those caring for the kids
and also discussed border security with
the U.S. Border Patrol.
“We need to move beyond all this finger
pointing, all this blame game, and
solve a problem that we’ve faced in this
country over the past 30 years,” Suozzi
said in the video.
Suozzi said he toured one of the facilities
where migrants are being held, which
is being operated by the Department of
Health and Human Services – Office of
Refugee Resettlement. While describing
it as clean and “well run,” the facility
includes “400 beds in tents in the middle
of a very dry, hot desert.”
“What appeared to be sufficient staff
with small groups of children between
the ages of 13 and 17.95 percent are
boys,” Suozzi wrote on Facebook. “Only
23 of several hundred are separated children
and everyone else is an unaccompanied
minor.”
Suozzi anticipates that the Trump
administration will launch “an aggressive
reunification effort over the next 10
days,” but even as the White House tries
to “move on from this issue,” Suozzi said
that “we should not let them forget.”
Suozzi also spoke with members of the
U.S. Border Patrol, and stressed that they
have some of the toughest law enforcement
jobs in the country.
“Border Patrol officials are the most
assaulted federal officials,” Suozzi wrote
on Facebook. “They have to worry about
many infectious diseases, lice, scabbard
and worse. They are trying to guard
against illegal entry of many desperate
people. Many fleeing violence, rape,
gangs, poverty and oppression, some
on their own. Many using professional
smugglers, coyotes, human traffickers and
other illegal operations. There were about
20,000 people detained last year from the
El Paso post.”
In the end, Suozzi noted that the situation
cries out for cooperation among
Democrats and Republicans alike.
“This issue can be solved. We simply
need to work together on a comprehensive
solution,” Suozzi wrote.
Photo courtesy of Congresswoman Grace Meng’s office
Congresswoman Grace Meng stands outside
the McAllen Border Patrol Processing Center in
McAllen, Texas, on June 23.
Photo via Facebook/Rep Tom Suozzi
link
link
