On the recordJune 20, 2018
America is keeping kids in cages. America is keeping kids in cages. Many people across our country have risen to say that this is not who we are. It doesn't represent our values, our ideals, or our Constitution. But the sad reality is that today, this is who we are. You are an American. I am an American. It is fellow Americans who are ripping toddlers from their mothers and fathers and guarding them in steel cages. And in truth, we have done this before. We herded American Indians into reservations. We turned our backs on Jews fleeing for their lives from the Holocaust. We ripped children from their parents when we sold them as slaves. But we all thought we had learned our lessons, moved past those hateful times. We have been on a march to grow into a country with the courage to live up to our values and serve as a beacon of hope for the world, not repeat the darkest parts of our history. The families in these detention centers aren't fleeing to the U.S. to take our jobs, they are running for their lives. They are fleeing a world of racism, ransom, murder, where their sons are being forced into violent gangs, and their daughters are being stolen on their way to school and prostituted as sex slaves. A nation that fails to learn the lessons of history, that fails to live up to its core values, that can't abide by the rights enshrined in its own Constitution, is not strong, Mr. Speaker, it is weak. Today, we are stealing kids from their parents and we are weak.…
