Political Quotes

“I would like to just remind my colleagues again that ICE has plenty of money to carry out their activities. What we are asking for through this amendment is to have some oversight and accountability to make sure that we are not seeing the kind of abuse and turn backs that we have been seeing. Let me just remind my colleagues of the grave and critical need on one level to address sexual assault and abuse in detention. Between May 2014 and July 2016, the Office of the Inspector General received, at minimum, 1,016 reports of sexual abuse and detention. In other words, they received more than one complaint of sexual abuse each day over the course of 26 months. According to CIVIC, a detention watchdog, only 2.4 percent of those complaints were investigated. So I could go on, Mr. Chairman, but I think what this amendment is trying to say is we desperately need to ensure that we use the funds that we are appropriating here, the funds that we are taking away, in order to make sure that we have accountability for the Department of Homeland Security, and to make sure, for example, that when we have Prison Rape Elimination Act regulations to prevent sexual assault in immigration detention, that we have adequate funding to the Department of Homeland Security's Civil Rights and Civil Liberties department so that they can carry out the audits to ensure that immigration detention facilities are in compliance with those regulations. Mr.…”