On the recordJune 13, 2018
I thank Mr. Correa from the great State of California for taking the time to really allow those of us who are in pain to express that pain. I know that my colleagues, each one of them--as we say sometimes in our religious institutions--have come in their own way. I come in a series of ways. One, as a years-long member of the Immigration and Border Security Subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee. Being present when we designed a policy for unaccompanied children to be protected and to get to their rightful guardian and not go into the hands of sex traffickers. That was, in fact, a stated policy of the United States for unaccompanied children. And in many ways it happens. In the last 4 or 5 years I was at the border when the surge of unaccompanied children came because of the violence, particularly in Central America. These children came. We knew they were coming, and we had standup facilities run by nuns and other religious organizations to take unaccompanied children until a legitimate legal guardian in the United States could be documented, or some other legitimate family documented. When I say, documented, documented that they were able to take the child and that they were legal to the extent that they were not human traffickers. That is what policies we had. There is no policy. There is no regulation. There is no statute. There is no law.…
