Janice Schakowsky: “I want to thank my dear colleague and friend from New York for holding this moment so that we can all speak out. Like so…”

“I want to thank my dear colleague and friend from New York for holding this moment so that we can all speak out. Like so many of my fellow Americans, I have absolutely been distraught the last several days, many days. Many days crying. We are getting hundreds of calls to my office here in Washington, my office in the district. Many of those people are actually crying as they watch what is happening to children. I have to tell you that, in my life--and I am a mother and a grandmother and, for the last 20 years, a Member of this United States Congress--I have never seen such state-sponsored cruelty, state- sponsored child abuse that we are seeing right now. There really isn't any other word for it. Child abuse. The President of the United States has announced some sort of a so- called improvement, trying to fool an enraged Nation into thinking that they have reversed course on this issue of children coming, with their parent, across the border. In reality, the President's executive order enables the indefinite incarceration of immigrant families and has absolutely no plan to reunite babies who were ripped from their families, ripped from the arms of their parents. There are children who will still be in cages, Mr. Speaker. Frankly, I can't stand it. I wonder if you can stand it, Mr. Speaker. I am the daughter of immigrants. Neither of my parents was born here in the United States of America.…”