Family Separation

Floor Speech

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Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, do you remember children being separated from their families? This crisis is far from over. As a matter of fact, we found out it is not 2,000 children; it is 3,000 children.

A district court judge in San Diego has ordered the administration to reunite all of the families who were separated at the border by Thursday. Yet with the deadline looming this week, the administration continues to cite the many obstacles it says that are hindering the work they are trying to do to comply with the court's order.

When I went to the detention center in Homestead, FL, they said they were going to reunite families soon thereafter. That was more than a month and a half ago. As a matter of fact, of the 1,300 children that had been separated from their parents, there were 70 of them who were there.

They would not let me speak to them, so I inquired about whether the children had been able to speak to their parents on the phone. I was told that of the 70, 62 of the children had spoken to their parents. It has recently been made clear why some of those families have been unable to connect for so long. A report that was just published stated that the administration--the Trump administration--has been charging detained parents--get this--as much as $8 a minute to call their children. These children were separated from their parents because the administration separated them. That is $8 a minute if you want to talk to your child. That is a new low.

Charging these families an exorbitant fee such as this, just to talk--just to talk--to their children, when the cost of providing that service is minimal, that is not even a conscionable act.

Many of those families have come and asked for political asylum. They are asking for what the law provides, and yet we have separated the children from their parents and have prevented those parents from simply using the telephone to contact their children. Many of those children are just terrified, and they are being held thousands of miles away. It is not only unnecessary, it is simply cruel.

It also seems to fly in the face of ICE's own policy to permit calls by detainees to immediate family members in case there are family emergencies and to do so at a reasonable cost, certainly not $8 a minute for poor families who don't have $1, much less $8. A number of us in the Senate have now sent a letter urging the administration to stop this ridiculous practice and allow those parents the ability to talk to their children.

The list of obstacles this administration claims it is facing in order to reunite the families seems to be never-ending. But I would suggest that the list of obstacles the administration has created for these families to overcome, just to see their children again, seems to go on and on.

As a country, the United States is better than this. We should be making it easier for these families to reconnect and ultimately bring them back together, as the court has ordered. There are many in this Chamber who would certainly join with me. We are not going to turn our backs on these children. We will continue to fight to ensure that they and everyone else are being treated the way the American people want them to be treated.

I urge this administration to do the same, and I urge the administration to pay attention to the letter by a couple of dozen Senators that is coming to them today.

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