Political Quotes

“I rise to address a current-day scar, a wound in America--a wound in terms of how we are treating children arriving on our borders and seeking asylum. George Washington said America is a nation open ``to receive not only the opulent and respectable stranger, but the oppressed and persecuted of all nations and religions.'' This sense of the vision of America was repeated 100 years later through Emma Lazarus's poem that is carved into the foundation of the Statue of Liberty. Phrases of that poem include: ``Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. . . . Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,'' but that spirit is lost right now in the USA. We are a nation almost universally of immigrants, and yet we are treating those children fleeing persecution as if they are criminals when they arrive at our borders. I went down this last weekend with Senator Mazie Hirono of Hawaii and Senator Tina Smith of Minnesota, with Representative Judy Chu of California and Representative Beto O'Rourke of Texas. Four of us visited two family internment camps--one in Dilley and one in Karnes-- and all five of us went to the Tornillo child prison in the desert in Texas outside El Paso. This war against children--this Trump war against children--was most dramatically demonstrated back in May and June when the U.S.…”