Political Quotes

“Madam Speaker, in order to make sure that we start to solve this problem, there is legislation that the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and others are pushing immediately. There are a few specific things that we need to do. One of them is that we need to raise standards of care. Many of us went out to Antelope Wells, New Mexico, parts of rural New Mexico, and we witnessed that CBP is understaffed, underprepared, and under-resourced to handle medical emergencies by these asylum seekers, the folks who come in with medical emergencies. Maybe they go into diabetic shock. They encounter some respiratory illness, and they are very sick. It is not that they were unprepared to handle medical emergencies by asylum seekers. They are also very unprepared to handle emergency situations by their own workers, Federal employees, CBP agents. Dr. Raul Ruiz, also from southern California, is an emergency room medical doctor. He was in Haiti after the earthquake. He has been in disaster situations. He and his staff have done an excellent job and spent a lot of time coming up with legislation that raises those standards of medical treatment and of care. We believe, based on everything that we have seen, that some of these deaths of these young children could have been prevented if the standards of care had been appropriate and if these kids had just been treated better. We have to raise the standard of care.…”