Floor Speeches

Over the 4th of July weekend, I toured a detention facility in Aurora, Colorado, where I met dozens of law-abiding immigrants.  There are more than thirty thousand immigrants like them throughout the country who find themselves in detention.  Some of these individuals include teenagers, torture survivors and the elderly.  Others are asylum-seekers who asked for protection upon arrival in the United States, only to find themselves locked up for months or years like criminals at taxpayers’ expense.   

For thousands of immigrants in similar circumstances throughout the country, even if the Department of Homeland Security rules in their favor, while they wait, we are paying $132 a day to feed them, clothe them, house them.  They want to be out working and paying taxes, but we insist that they avail themselves at our own expense.  

While at the Aurora detention center, I met immigrants who were placed in detention following minor traffic infractions or car accidents that weren’t their fault.  Due to the complicated nature of our immigration system, many are stuck in the nebulous grey area between being lawfully and unlawfully present as they await a decision of an immigration judge.  But regardless of the final outcome, separating parents from their children by placing them in detention at taxpayer expense goes against our most basic values as Americans.

As Congress begins to work toward a comprehensive reform of our broken immigration system, I urge my colleagues to deal with the detention issue as part of the debate.