U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan, at left, joined a group of lawmakers over the weekend and toured immigration detention centers in south Texas where children are being separated from their parents.
After spending the weekend touring the detention centers in Texas where immigrant children are being held away from their parents, U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan has no qualms about comparing the Trump administration’s policy of separating families to Nazi-era Germany. “That’s the only time I know of in recent history that this kind of thing has been done,” the Madison Democrat tells Isthmus. “To separate mothers and fathers, children and parents, brothers and sisters, has absolutely nothing to do with American values.”
Pocan also has no time for semantic bandying about the type of enclosure in which the children are being kept. As coverage of the detention centers unfolded this week, government agencies and conservative pundits have objected to news reports describing the holding cells as cages, saying it implies that the children are being treated like animals. But Pocan says the word is accurate. “It’s the same material and construction as the dog run behind my house, only the walls are taller,” he says. “That’s a cage, that’s what that is.”
At the immigrant detention centers where the parents are being held, Pocan spoke with mothers desperate to reunite with their children, including one mother who was told that her children would soon be put up for adoption. Children age 4 and younger are allowed to stay with parents, but 5-year-olds are deemed old enough to be held in the communal cages with up to 50 people. “It’s an abhorrent policy,” Pocan says. “If a 5-year-old is lost in a mall, it’s a crisis. And here they’re supposedly old enough to be on their own?”
On Monday, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen briefed the White House press corps on the Trump administration’s new “zero tolerance” policy that has resulted in the separation of 2,342 children from 2,206 parents at the U.S.-Mexico border between May 5 and June 9. Or rather, she denied that such a policy exists, contradicting previous statements from White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, Attorney General Jeff Sessions and President Trump’s senior policy advisor Stephen Miller.
So far, the only images released by the government have shown detained boys, and during the briefing reporters asked about the location of detained girls, young toddlers and infants. Nielsen said she didn’t know, referring questions to the Department of Health and Human Services. The lack of information sparked a social media hashtag #WhereAreTheGirls.
Pocan also asked detention center staff about the location of the girls and infants and was told that they were being held in separate facilities. “They wouldn’t tell where they are,” he says. The HHS staffer accompanying the group of lawmakers suggested looking into Texas public records for the answer. “I was like, ‘Why can’t you just tell me?’” Pocan says. He later spoke with two mothers who were told their children had been taken to a facility in Florida, and another whose 9-year-old daughter was being held in New York. The White House has no plan in place for reuniting children with their parents, no protocols for keeping track of family members who are detained concurrently and separately, and there is a possibility that some families will remain permanently separated.
By Tuesday, the governors of Maryland, Delaware, Massachusetts, New York, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Virginia and North Carolina canceled plans to send National Guard troops to the border, in protest of the family separation policy. The group includes two Republicans: Gov. Larry Hogan of Maryland and Gov. Charlie Baker of Massachusetts.
“It’s cruel and inhumane, and we told the National Guard to hold steady and to not go down to the border, period,” Baker said Monday.
Later this week, two dozen Wisconsin National Guard soldiers and airmen are set to deploy to the the Mexico-Arizona border. A group of parents on Tuesday called on Gov. Scott Walker to cancel the operation, but Walker says the mission has nothing to do with Trump’s policy. He also declined to comment on the policy, saying it’s “a federal issue.”
