On the recordMay 1, 2019
Innocent children shouldn't pay the price for the President's cruel immigration agenda. Steamrolling the facts and the law, he has implemented policy after failed policy, playing catch and release with his own cabinet. As the President ratchets up his threats to close the border and cut aid to Central America, thousands of migrants are fleeing their home countries to seek refuge in the United States. I recently met with the editors of the book ``Solito, Solita''-- Alone, Alone--a collection of oral histories that tells the stories of young refugees in their own words. I rise today to read excerpts from one of them, Gabriel Mendez. His story begins in a poor, dangerous neighborhood in the capital of Honduras. He says: When I was just a boy of 7, my cousins raped me for a long time--for a year. They raped me at the river, where they collected water--and in my own home. . . . Some of my fellow students who belonged to the maras took weapons to school. I told the mareros that I didn't want to bring weapons to school. I was afraid of them. They also wanted me to bring drugs into school. I didn't want to do it, so I left that school. . . . Now the maras were looking for me--to kill me. They were asking my neighbors if they knew me. When Gabriel was 14, he convinced his mother, who was living in San Francisco, to pay a coyote $6,000 to bring him to the United States. Gabriel recounted the horrors he encountered along the way. . . .…
