Adriano Espaillat: “I thank Chairman Nadler, I thank Ms. Jayapal for advancing this important resolution. Last week I visited the Irwin…”

“I thank Chairman Nadler, I thank Ms. Jayapal for advancing this important resolution. Last week I visited the Irwin Detention Center in Georgia along with a dozen of my colleagues. I have visited some of these ICE detention centers before, and I have seen the horrible conditions that immigrants and refugees face across the country. We all remember the unspeakable stories about how children were separated from their mothers and fathers and how they cried for them in the middle of the night and how they were separated thousands of miles apart. Mr. Speaker, I came to the United States from the Dominican Republic as a young boy knowing this Nation was a beacon of hope and opportunity. Never in my wildest dream did I ever think that I would be a Member of Congress. But I also never had the nightmare that I would be summoned, that I would be asked to investigate this horror story that has manifested itself at Irwin. While there, I spoke to a handful of women whose stories made me so angry about this country, the country that I had grown to love, angry about how our laws have been twisted by a sick administration that treats innocent women so cruelly, women who want nothing more than the same freedom and opportunities that I once sought myself, women who put their lives on the line to get here.…”