Our Leaders Should Know Better

Floor Speech

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Mr. GUTIERREZ. Mr. Speaker, yesterday, a group of about 30 of us, including 10 Members of Congress, decided we had had enough of this administration's policy to scar children for life by taking them away from their parents when they turn themselves in to American authorities and ask for asylum.

We went down to the Ronald Reagan Building on 14th Street because we had not heard from the three Cabinet Members we had written last week to give us answers about where the children at the border have been taken to and what our government was going to do to reunite them with their parents.

So John Lewis, Joe Crowley, Jan Schakowsky, Al Green, Raul Grijalva, Adriano Espaillat, and I, joined by hundreds of allies, went down to the CBP headquarters to protest their action and their secrecy.

And when we blocked the entrance to the building--ironically, a building named for the man who gave the famous shining city on a hill speech, who spoke so eloquently about immigrants, and was no fan of walls--yes, we blocked the entrance to the Ronald Reagan Building, but the Border Patrol did not arrest us.

No, they feel comfortable arresting 10-year-olds and taking 10-month- old babies from their moms and dads, but when 10 Members of Congress show up to demand answers they get a little camera shy, a little weak- kneed. But we will be back and we will do it again and again if we have to.

Right now, today, there are people who lawfully enter the United States and ask for asylum under our laws and international law, and then they are taken straight to jail to await Federal prosecution. And if they have children, the officers think of some pretext, maybe telling the parents that they are taking the child for food or for a bath, and then the kids never return, simply disappear, kidnapped. Many are taken to facilities that are hundreds or thousands of miles away.

The parent is given a mass trial, so their individual case may never be heard or evaluated, and most are deported back to the country they fled to face continuing violence and rape again and again.

And are their children given back to them? Well, we don't know. We can't get answers, which is why we went yesterday.

Then on Monday Attorney General Sessions had one of the most stunning, newspeak, 1984, mind-control moments we have ever heard. He said that if a man beats a woman, or if a family is systematically extorted, threatened, targeted by a gang, that that is a private matter and cannot be the basis of an asylum claim.

Rape and abuse, that is just a private matter, according to the Attorney General, between a man and a woman. According to the chief law enforcement officer of our country, that is just a private matter between a man and a woman, between the family and the gang of terrorists they are facing.

Only in the Trump administration could someone say something so thoroughly and utterly wrong, dangerous, ridiculous.

My friend, Trey Gowdy, is a Republican who is known around here on the Oversight and Government Reform Committee and the Judiciary Committee as a pretty no-nonsense former prosecutor. I went to his website to look at his biography. You can all Google it. It says it right there: ``As 7th Circuit Solicitor, Trey led an office of 25 attorneys and 65 total employees. During his tenure, he started a Violence Against Women Task Force.'' Right there in his official bio.

So wife beating isn't a private matter in South Carolina. If you are being beaten, raped, or tortured by your domestic partner, your husband, the police, the prosecutor, the judge will get involved because it isn't a private matter in South Carolina or anywhere in the United States of America.

Go listen to Trey Gowdy's speeches on the YouTube channel or his Facebook. Watch the video of his speech on the House floor in support of the Violence Against Women Act. Trey Gowdy will move you to tears no matter what your political party or ideological persuasion.

But according to the Attorney General, it is a private matter between a man and a woman. He expects every domestic violence victim to hire their own lawyer and sue their husband to get a court order and be protected.

We have a prosecutor for domestic violence in Cook County and probably every county in the United States of America. This is a matter of public health, law enforcement and, come on, this is a matter of good men and women living by a moral code that says we should help those in danger when the weak are being preyed upon by the strong.

But apparently not to our Attorney General or President. To them, those are private matters. That is just wrong.

Sleeping with an adult film star and then paying thousands of dollars to keep it quiet, that is a private matter to be worked out between private attorneys. Fleeing death, and violence, and rape, and torture, that is a public matter, and our leaders should know better.

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