Janice Schakowsky: “I thank the gentlewoman for yielding. We have talked about how shocking it is for our country, the United States of…”

“I thank the gentlewoman for yielding. We have talked about how shocking it is for our country, the United States of America, which is, despite any effort to change, a country of immigrants. I know the gentlewoman, herself, is an immigrant to the United States of America. My parents, neither were born in the United States of America. But this is a place where my family was able to find refuge from the pogroms in Eastern Europe and make a good life here. And yet, today, we are seeing such horror that, if it were another country, I think we would want sanctions. We would go to the United Nations. How could a country separate families? And it is not just at the border, as Members know. Inside our country, in my city of Chicago, we are finding families that are scared all the time, mixed families where the children might be citizens and the parents undocumented. The kids are afraid to go to school, wondering if their parents will be there when they get home. But that trip to the border that the Congresswoman helped organize is something that I will never, ever forget. Seeing people in cages, seeing that grandmother--remember?--who was inconsolable because she came with her 7-year-old granddaughter who was taken from her because our country did not recognize a grandmother as family. That child was redesignated as an unaccompanied minor, and she thought she may never see her granddaughter again, and maybe that is true.…”