Ohio senators visit camps at U.S.-Mexico border
Brown, Portman see humanitarian crisis, disagree on cause.
— Sens. Rob WASHINGTON
Portman and Sherrod Brown have both now received a firsthand view of the humanitarian crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border, and both agree that the situation is dire, but they appear to part on their conclusions on who is to blame.
Both Portman, who visited the new Donna Processing Facility and the McAllen Border Patrol Station, both in Texas on Friday, and Brown, who visited the Port of Entry in El Paso and stopped at a migrant shelter Sunday, agree that the situation at the bor- der is a humanitarian crisis that requires results.
But Portman, a Republican, argues the crisis is spurred by a broken immigration system. Brown, by contrast, argues that while the system is broken, President Donald Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell are largely to blame for resisting comprehensive immigration reform, and that the policy of separating family members illus- trates the failure of Trump’s border policies.
In a conference call with reporters Monday, Brown, a Democrat, said he went to the border to “bear witness” on the humanitarian crisis.
“I saw up close the inhumanity and the coldness of President Trump’s family sep- aration policy,” he said, saying the families he met were “coming to the country to flee violence, flee persecution.”
“Tearing them apart, lock- ing them in cages – that is not going to fix our broken immigration policy,” he said. “It goes against the values that make this country great.”
Portman, meanwhile, emphasized the need for Congress to act.
“It should now be clear to everyone that we have a crisis on our southern border,” he said, saying he saw how the system “is being overwhelmed” and “how important it is to provide funding immediately for humanitar- ian assistance.”
Portman was not available early Monday evening to elab- orate on his trip to the border, sending out a statement instead immediately after the visit, but in that statement called for Congress to pass sweeping bills to fix broken asylum laws, among other measures.
During his trip, he, a group of Republican senators led by Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. and Vice President Mike Pence, had access to detention facili- ties where they met with children and crowded facilities where adult men were packed behind chain-linked fences.
By contrast, Brown’s access was largely limited, with government employees effectively barring him from tour- ing some government facilities because he visited on a Sunday, when fewer employees are present.
He said he “didn’t see places where children were housed in cages,” but that he does not doubt footage and accounts taken by his fellow Demo- cratic lawmakers who have also toured immigration facil- ities.
He said he saw some adults housed in small cells “that didn’t appear to be inhumane,” but were “crowded, to be sure.” He was not allowed to talk to those immigrants.
He said he watched video of Pence and the Republican senators touring McAllen and Donna and said, “frankly I was embarrassed that the vice president of the United States would go to a place like that, would not interact with anybody, would show no real concern or compassion for this morally bankrupt, anti-American policy of separating children from families.
“I just don’t understand why the president of the United States and his surrogate, the vice-president, think this is anything but inhumane,” he said.