Lawmakers, demonstrators want families reunited
MCALLEN, TEXAS — Democratic lawmakers on Saturday said they aren’t convinced the Trump administration had any real plan to reunite immigrant families caught along the southwest border, while demonstrators gathered to protest the separation of parents from their children by U.S. border authorities.
After 25 Democratic members of Congress toured a U.S. Customs and Border Protection processing facil- ity in the U.S.-Mexico bor- der city of McAllen, Texas, they described seeing chil- dren sleeping behind bars, on concrete floors and under emergency “mylar” heat-resistant blankets.
Even when parents and children aren’t separated, they are often housed in adjacent cells that keep them apart, the lawmakers said. They added they hadn’t seen a clear federal system for reuniting those who were split up, since everyone — even infants — is assigned “A” or alien numbers, only to be given different identification numbers by other federal agencies.
“There are still thousands of children who are out there right now untethered to their parents and no coherent system to fix that,” Rep. Joe Courtney, a Democrat from Connecticut, told reporters after the tour.
After the lawmakers left, dozens of immigrant rights demonstrators temporarily blocked a bus carrying immigrants from leaving the facility, and shouted “Shame! Shame!” at border agents. Protests were also planned for Fort Worth, where the Texas Democratic Convention is being held, and Homestead, Florida.
In Wash i ngton, D.C., on Friday, a coalition that includes members of Latino organizations and immigrant rights the Justice groups Department rallied outside to protest family separations at the border, and another rally was held at the Department of Homeland Security.
The demonstrations were among several on the border issue to be held across the Washington region.
Krupskaya Elliott of the Virginia Legal Aid Justice Center was among dozens of activists gathered in the rain at Justice to speak out against the Trump admin- istration’s immigration policies. Elliott, who came here from Nicaragua 13 years ago, said she could not imagine being separated from her two children.
The Trump administra- tion’s separation of immigrant families on the border has stoked an outcry from immigrant and children’s advocates and many lawmak- ers. In recent weeks, more than 2,300 children were taken from their families under a “zero-tolerance” pol- icy in which people entering the U.S. illegally face pros- ecution.