The Senate Judiciary Committee is demanding answers from federal immigration officials about the Trump administration’s separation of migrant children from their families and its struggle to reunite them, a fraught effort that’s drawn election-year criticism from both parties.
But a hearing scheduled for Tuesday on the topic may have a wider focus after the committee’s bipartisan leaders asked federal investigators to probe reports of sexual and other abuse of immigrants at government detention facilities.
Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and top Democrat on the panel, Dianne Feinstein, of California, asked late Monday for an examination of alleged sexual, physical and emotional mistreatment of immigrants held at agency facilities, saying the problems may have been occurring since 2014 or earlier.
With President Donald Trump already under fire for taking thousands of migrant children from their detained parents — and botching the reunification of many — the request for the investigation elevated yet another issue to the administration’s list of immigration headaches.
“These allegations of abuse are extremely disturbing and must be addressed,” Grassley and Feinstein wrote in a letter to the departments of Homeland Security and Health and Human Services. “This is not a partisan issue, as reporting suggests, many have been occurring for years. Immigrant families and children kept in federal custody deserve to be treated with basic human dignity and respect and should never be subjected to these forms of abuse.”
The hearing also comes as Mr. Trump has once again threatened to shut down the federal government as Congress has yet to formally act on providing legislation to address outstanding immigration issues. Mr. Trump cites lack of support for funding his border wall as an area of contention — telling U.S and visiting reporters from Italy on Monday that he would have “no problem” with shutting down the government over immigration disputes on Capitol Hill.
Officials from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Border Patrol and other agencies are testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Highlights from Tuesday’s hearing
Congressional inaction
While Chairman Grassley criticized the administration’s family separation family, saying it “ought to be revised immediately” he said that Congress has failed to take a “simple step that could have prevented the family separations we now decry.” He demanded that the decades old Flores v Reno case, which in 1997 led to national standards for facilities holding migrant children, be repealed as a first step in that process toward immigration reform. He said it would be the “best way to ensure this crisis doesn’t happen again.”
Abuse allegations
Grasley says members of Congress “ought to be disturbed” by the allegations of sexual abuse at detention facilities along the border. He said such reports of abuse are “unnacceptable and the American epople expect better.” He noted, however, that the issue isn’t new, saying that some of the cases of abuse date back to at least 2012 with more troubling cases occuring in 2015 and 2016.
He said it presents a “larger systemic issue that needs to be addressed.” Grassley added, “no one no matter their immigration status should have to suffer such abuse.”
ICE’s Matthew Albence said that detention facilities regularly undergo a “very rigorous inspection process and oversight process” and that any allegations of abuse or wrongdoing in any detention facility is automatically reported to appropriate resources. He went on to describe family residential centers, FRC’s, as being comparable to “summer camps”, saying children have access to food, water, educational opportunities and outside time.
Legislative fixes
Ranking Member Feinstein said that lawmakers have a “constitutional and moral obligation to intervene” in the border separation crisis, and as a result, raised a narrow bill that she, along with several Republican colleagues, have proposed in the Senate. The bill would “prohibit the separation of children, require ongoing reporting by the administration and public reporting about what has occurred.”
Feinstein adds that the bill would also provide “additional judges, lawyers and resources to ensure families are treated humanely and not left ignored in facilities without proper sanitation conditions.” She said that she was “hopeful” lawmakers were close to an agreement and that the limited bill could enjoy broad bipartisan support.
Albence appeared to suggest that while DHS and ICE handle the legal aspects of family separation, it’s incumbent upon Congress to find a “permanent fix” to outstanding immigration issues in order to provide “operational clarity for officers in the field.”
“Congress must act to eliminate the loopholes that incentivize illegal immigration, and must also provide ICE with the lawful authority and requisite funding needed to ensure that families can be kept together throughout the course of their immigration proceedings,” Albence urged.
He added that under existing policies, it would be “impossible” to wrap up immigration proceedings in 20 days thus presenting border authorities to have “no choice” but to release individuals that arrive with children back into the community, a process the Trump administration has dubbed s “catch and release.”
Border Patrol’s Carla L. Provost meanwhile said that the issue of separating children from parents is not “unique” to the Trump administration alone, adding that CBP has prosecuted adults who have come into the U.S. illegally in prior administrations. Provost noted, however, in her opening remarks “action taken by lawmakers, the judiciary, policymakers and operators—while made in good faith by people grappling with complex issues—can have unintended consequences on the functioning of the immigration system as a whole.”
“Consistent application of clear immigration laws enables access to the system’s resources by those legitimately seeking its benefits while diminishing chaos on our border sought by transnational criminal organizations,” said Provost.
