Family Internment

Floor Speech

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Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I come to the floor tonight with a simple and clear message, which is that we must not allow internment camps to be built in the United States of America.

I come with this message because we have heard on Capitol Hill that even as I speak, individuals are planning to bring forward legislation that would, in fact, create internment camps as a strategy of family incarceration--a strategy that President Trump has been championing. So I say tonight, absolutely not. We must not allow internment camps to be established in the United States of America.

When we look at the history of the world and the history of America, we realize that in many ways, we are still a very young nation, with less than three centuries behind us. In that comparatively short time, we have accomplished great things. We have helped save the world from tyranny and fascism, while pushing the boundaries of science. We spread democracy and human rights to nations far and wide. We have broken down barriers of race and gender and sexual orientation here at home in a vision of equality and opportunity for all.

Yet we cannot forget that along with those great accomplishments, there have also been some dark chapters in our history. We all are aware of these chapters when the United States embraced slavery from its founding up through the Civil War; that we embraced discrimination through segregation and Jim Crow laws; that we had in World War II a strategy of creating internment camps to imprison our citizens who were of Japanese ancestry.

Now, we have another dark chapter--a chapter in which our government has decided to treat those fleeing persecution from around the world as if they are criminals, to greet them not with Lady Liberty and a torch, saying, ``Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free'' but a different saying--a saying that if you are fleeing persecution and you wash up on the shores of the United States, we will treat you as a criminal. We will tear away your children, and we will throw you in prison.

In the span of just a few weeks, from May 4 and into June of this year, the Trump team tore around 2,600 young boys and girls from their parents' arms. They were families coming to the United States. They were fleeing persecution. They were seeking asylum. They were going through all kinds of trials and tribulations back in their home countries. They were going through all kinds of difficulties on the path of arriving in the United States. They had, in their minds, that vision that we are a nation where almost everyone has in their family history someone who fled persecution, who fled civil war, who fled drought and famine, who fled religious persecution, so surely they would be treated with dignity and understanding as they sought asylum from the persecution they faced back home.

Instead, many were stopped from coming through the entry points to claim asylum. Many resorted, therefore, to coming across other points in between the official border points, and they faced this new policy-- this policy concocted by Attorney General Jeff Sessions, President of the United States Donald Trump, the Chief of Staff, and Steve Miller. This plan was deterrence--deterrence by afflicting children so as to send a message, if you flee persecution, do not think of coming to the United States.

Let us recognize that the whole idea of establishing a political tactic, a political goal of deterrence through the infliction of trauma on children is a dark and evil place for our government to have gone. One that--now that light has been shed on it, now that America has cried out from boundary to boundary, from East to West and from North to South and said that this is wrong, it is immoral, no religious tradition in the world would support this, the administration has ended those family separations, those children being ripped out of their parents' arms. They are now under a responsibility to reunify the children with their parents. They have been ordered by the court to have deadlines for those children under 5 and for those children 5 through 17. They missed the first and second deadlines, and 700 children are still not reunited with their parents.

Reports are coming in on the impact, the trauma inflicted on the children and how seriously this modified their behavior. A recent piece in the New York Times told the story of a 5-year-old boy from Brazil who was separated from his mother for 50 days.

Thiago used to love playing with toys of the Minions from the ``Despicable Me'' movies, but now his new favorite game is patting down and shackling migrants with plastic handcuffs, and now when people come to their home, he flees. He runs away. He hides behind the couch, afraid he will once again be torn from his mother's arms.

His story is not unique. In fact, we hear story after story after story of children and the reverberations of the trauma they have experienced at the hands of the Trump administration; children terrified of being separated from their parents for even just a few moments; children whose whole outlook on life--their whole disposition--has been modified; children afraid of engaging in a life outside the house.

The act of tearing families apart has supposedly stopped with the President's order. He has an Executive order which I have in my hand, but what this Executive order plans next is also horrible and shameful. This is a plan to establish internment camps in the United States of America. The President has gone from family separation, tearing children out of their parents' arms, to family incarceration, where families would be detained indefinitely together. Internment camps, tent cities out in the middle of the desert or maybe on military bases. We have seen this type of policy before. We know how badly it ends for our Nation. We made a huge mistake in World War II locking up Japanese-American families in internment camps, and we are still dealing with the consequences.

After visiting one of those camps in 1943, Eleanor Roosevelt remarked that ``to undo a mistake is always harder than not to create one originally, but we seldom have the foresight.''

In this instance, we should have the foresight. We know the history of the horror of internment camps. We have the ability to stop our Nation from making a terrible mistake. We know how history will look on us if we fail to prevent this mistake and follow the President's plan for internment camps, which he has laid out.

In the aftermath of the attack on Pearl Harbor, we allowed fear and bigotry to consume us. We took away the freedom of more than 110,000 Americans. Freedom, the most basic human right, was taken away by our government from 110,000 American citizens. We locked Japanese-Americans in prison camps behind barbed wire fences in some of the most inhospitable parts of the Nation for no other reason than their Japanese ancestry. Children grew up not in their communities but behind barbed wire. Adults were torn off their land, their farms, their orchards. They were torn away from their professions, which ran the full spectrum of professions across America, to be able to earn just a few cents a day, working inside those prisons. Families who once owned their homes, had a vision for the future, had a vision for the children's future were crammed together for years in wooden shacks behind barbed wire.

In a 1943 radio interview, Dillon Myer, the head of the agency in charge of the camps, spoke out against them. Mind you, this was the middle of the war. He was in charge of the camps. He knows it is wrong; he knows it is destructive. He said: ``Public opinion feeding on prejudice and fanned by hatred and fear of the unknown will do some peculiar things.''

He went on to say: Even though the war relocation authority is responsible for the operation of the relocation centers, we are convinced that they are not good things. It is not a normal way of life. It produces many kinds of abnormal conditions that are not desirable.

Indeed, as former First Lady Laura Bush pointed out in her op-ed article in the Washington Post a few months ago: ``We also know that this treatment inflicts trauma; those who have been interned have been twice as likely to suffer cardiovascular disease or die prematurely than those who were not interned.''

One Japanese-American hero, Fred Korematsu, challenged this racist policy. He challenged it all the way to the Supreme Court. In a 6-to-3 decision the Court would long regret, it upheld the constitutionality of these camps. Seven decades later, history embraces the view of the three dissenting justices. In the words of Justice Frank Murphy:

Racial discrimination in any form and in any degree has no justifiable part whatever in our democratic way of life. It is unattractive in any setting, but it is utterly revolting among a free people who have embraced the principles set forth in the Constitution of the United States [of America].

This is why a commission, created by President Jimmy Carter in 1980, found that the internment camps were a ``grave injustice'' that stemmed from ``race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership.''

It is why, when awarding him the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1998, President Clinton said:

In the long history of our country's constant search for justice, some names of ordinary citizens stand for millions of souls: Plessy, Brown, Parks. To that distinguished list, today we add the name of Fred Korematsu.

Fred Korematsu challenged the legitimacy of internment camps under the Constitution of the United States. In fact, just earlier this year, 2018, Chief Justice John Roberts said: ``Korematsu was gravely wrong the day it was decided, has been overruled in the court of history, and--to be clear--'has no place in law under the Constitution.'''

So it was called a failure of political leadership that we established internment camps in World War II, and it would be an enormous failure of political leadership if we were to establish internment camps in 2018; yet I keep hearing this very plan is being cooked up to be put on the floor of the Senate when we return. That is why I am speaking about it tonight to say: No, absolutely not; those among us who are planning such a deed will face enormous opposition, not just from me but from everyone who cares about justice in the United States of America, everyone who cares about decency and fairness, everyone who knows that the strategy of ripping children out of their parents' arms was dark and evil and wrong. We are not going to allow family separation to be replaced by family incarceration.

But here we are, with this Executive order, and it says, in somewhat bland language, ``Affording Congress an Opportunity to Address Family Separation.'' This Executive order--this order right here--is an argument for establishing internment camps in the United States of America. This strategy, laid out by the President, must not happen.

This statement says that it is the official policy of the Trump administration to detain immigrant families together. What are they talking about? Internment camps--not handcuffs for the parents where the children are ripped out of their arms; it is handcuffs for all. It is an Executive order calling on the military to provide facilities for housing the immigrant families and, if they can't find them, to construct them, if necessary. This document instructs the Attorney General of the United States to try to find a way to overturn a legal settlement known as the Flores consent agreement, which says that children cannot be detained indefinitely.

So this document lays out two strategies to internment camps: one, by getting the courts to overturn the Flores consent agreement and the second, affording Congress an opportunity to address family separation. It calls on Congress to act, to make it legal to establish internment camps. Have we learned nothing?

Here is what I have to say about this Executive order: no internment camps in the United States of America, not now and not in the future. I will absolutely resist such a strategy. This Presidential vision is anything but Presidential--this vision of a President who is operating in a fashion outside of a vision of the Constitution. I know there will be many among us who will join in this effort to resist this strategy.

So if my colleagues--any one of them--should bring this to the floor, I want them to know this will be a fight. This will be a battle. We will call up the horror of the past and say that it will not be accompanied by a horror of the present. We will not go from family separation to family incarceration. Internment would be just as wrong today as it was seven decades ago. If we allow this to happen, it is more than a failure of political leadership. It is to allow America to dwell in a deep and dark and evil place.

Some may say that families fleeing persecution are coming to America to ask for asylum, which they are allowed to do under the Refugee Convention, of which the United States is a member.

They may say: Senator Merkley, you believe it is wrong to rip children out of their parents' arms, and you believe it is wrong to establish internment camps. What would you do? Well, here is what I would do: I would reestablish the Family Case Management Program. That is a program that worked well--that worked very well--but was dismantled by this administration approximately a year ago to pave the way for family separation, to inflict trauma on children.

What is the Family Case Management Program? I don't think the President of the United States knows about this program--the program he ended--or he doesn't want to know about it. He wants to paint some other vision. So let's remind the President of the United States how this works, the program that he got rid of, the program that worked so well.

A family comes seeking asylum. They present themselves with that case. They are treated with respect and dignity because we are a nation of individuals with family histories of individuals fleeing persecution. We understand what that is like. We understand what it is like, and we treat people with decency.

The families are put into a case management program while their asylum case is being prepared. The whole point of the program is to make sure they show up for their court appointments, make sure they show up for their check-ins, make sure they have someone who guides them through the system so they understand how it works. If they understand how it works, they know when to show up and where to show up, and they know how to prepare for those meetings.

This program was created by ICE and Homeland Security. They put their heads to work: How do we treat people with dignity and respect and make sure they show up at their check-ins and their court appointments? They designed a very good program, the Family Case Management Program. So families lived their life in preparation for their appearances in court, and we did not inflict trauma on the children. We did not treat them as pawns in some broader scheme of deterrence. We treated families with basic dignity.

Then, if they won their asylum case, then they came into a country that had received and treated them with dignity. If they lost their asylum case, they went back to their country. They were deported, but they had memories of a country that treated them with respect and decency until that asylum case date arrived.

This program had such a phenomenal success rate that I was stunned when I got hold of the inspector general's report. I want to make sure that folks can see this. This inspector general's report says, based on the information provided by ICE, that the overall program compliance for all five regions is an average of 99 percent for ICE check-ins and appointments and 100 percent attendance at court hearings.

That number is stunning, and I wouldn't share it if it were anything other than from the inspector general himself or herself reporting after a thorough investigation--99 percent for ICE check-ins, 100 percent attendance at court hearings. Wow. How often do you see a program that works that well?

There is another report, and that report came when the program was terminated. That report proceeds to have some additional numbers in it. This one came after the second report. It was an afterprogram report. It is called the Family Case Management Program Closeout Report, February 2018. This was in the hands of the Trump administration even as they were planning to end the program, actually did end the program.

What it says is, the program operated for 17 months. It says it was launched in the following cities: Baltimore, Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, New York City, and Newark. It had different nonprofits that operated it: Bethany Christian Services, the Frida Kahlo Community Organization, the International Institute of Los Angeles, the Youth Co- Op, Inc. in Miami, the Catholic Charities of New York. They served over 2,000 immigrants. It treated them by educating them about how this worked as they prepared for their asylum hearing. It provided them with individualized needs assessments and service plans, orientation and information sessions on legal rights and responsibilities and obligations, tracking and monitoring of those obligations, including showing up for check-ins, which they did 99 percent of the time, and showing up for court hearings, according to the IG, 100 percent of the time.

ICE concluded it was an overall success. This evaluation came after the IG's report. It was no longer 100 percent attendance of court hearings. Instead, it was 99.3 percent--a 99-percent success rate, 99- percent compliance with ICE monitoring requirements, including telephonic and in-person check-ins.

When participants reported on how they were treated, they talked about positive relationships with their case managers, and it centered on the trust that was established between the case manager and the participant. That is pretty amazing success for a program that the administration shut down in favor of choosing to deliberately inflict trauma on children.

We have not one report, not one evaluation; we have two. This report from February this year, with all this positive information about how the program worked, is not easy to find online. It has essentially been hidden.

After I raised this issue of the Family Case Management Program, a person brought this report to my team and said: Hey, did you know there is this other closeout evaluation that lays out the vision of how well the program worked in far more detail than the IG report?

I said: No, I didn't know about that. Great, I will share it with my colleagues, which I am doing right now.

I don't know why it wasn't circulated. Maybe it is because it had such glowing reviews of the program the administration shut down that they were embarrassed by their argument; the fact of this report says their argument that people wouldn't show up for their court hearings is simply wrong. I imagine that is why it wasn't circulated.

In this Family Case Management Program, they talk about costs in this evaluation. They go through the different strategies. The Family Case Management Program costs $38 per day. That is per participant, per day, $38. That compares with family residential facilities at an average cost of $237 per day. That is $38 versus $237.

The program worked incredibly well, and it was far less expensive than detention--family residential facility detention. In addition, we now have some recent numbers that have been put forward. Health and Human Services has told news outlets that it costs American taxpayers $775 per person, per night to house people at tent city internment camps--$775 per person per night versus $38. Thirty-eight dollars, no trauma--a relation of respect and trust versus incarceration at $775 per night.

This Trump strategy of inflicting trauma on children is wrong at every single level you can imagine. It is a costly, inhumane, damaging program, with lifetime consequences for the children versus decency and respect and trust, and the program costs just a fraction, one-twentieth of this reported $700-plus per night.

If you have those two options, which one would you choose? Would you choose the program that costs a fraction, one-twentieth, of the tent city internment camp strategy? Would you choose a program that builds trust and relationships and has a 99- to 100-percent rate of success in people showing up for their check-ins, a 99- to 100-percent rate of showing up for their court hearings versus a program that does so much damage to so many.

I have come to the Senate floor to say one thing as clearly as I possibly can to every colleague. If you are part of the plan to bring an internment camp strategy to the floor of the Senate, I will fight that plan with everything I have. It is an evil and dark place for this country to go. We know that from our history.

We know history has said it was a failure of political leadership to allow it to have happened in World War II. I will do everything I can to make sure we do not have another failure of political leadership that allows the vision of internment camps imbedded in the President's Executive order to occur in the United States of America.

Lady Liberty says: ``Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.''

It speaks to the fact that almost all of us come from family roots that involved immigrants, involved people fleeing persecution.

In that poet's words, Emma Lazarus, goes on to speak about ``the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!''

Let's keep that lamp lit here in the United States of America. Let's treat those fleeing persecution with respect and decency. That is what is in our blood as an American. That is what is in our DNA--a vision of compassion and freedom and opportunity that knows, through all too personal of family experiences, what it is like to flee religious persecution or famine or war and what a beautiful thing it is to be treated with respect and decency if you come to the shores of the United States of America.

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