After returning from a trip with a Democratic delegation to visit detention centers in southern Texas, Rep. Katherine Clark says the trip “confirmed [her] worst fears” about a state of disorganization at the border.
“The weakest people prey on children,” Clark told WGBH News Monday. “This administration and those who are silent on it are complicit in what we are doing to these families and the trauma we are inflicting on these children.”
Clark said after speaking with parents at the border, she doesn’t trust the government’s tally of children reportedly returned to their parents, which the Trump administration now counts at 522, according to a statement issued Saturday.
“I would be surprised, based on what these mothers told us,” Clark said. “None of the women we had spoken to had even been allowed to have a phone conversation with their child. And every question that we asked raised another question.”
Last Wednesday, President Donald Trump signed an order to reverse the policy of separating migrant children from their parents at the border.
According to Clark, if the chaos at the border is any indication, connecting those families will not be a simple task. “Some of the moms have been told where their children are,” Clark said. “One of the moms that I met, Carla, has been told her seven year-old son is in a New York facility, but she has requested every day to speak with him and so far has not been allowed to.”
“It’s very unclear if they know where the children are,” Clark continued, “and if they do know where the children are, why the moms are not being allowed to at least have a phone conversation with them.”
According to Saturday’s White House statement, the Trump administration is taking steps to reunite more than 2,000 migrant children who were separated from their parents during a recent crackdown.
“Clearly this is a very siloed system where information about where these children went when they were taken from their parents does not freely flow from the border patrol to the detainment center and to the refugee community,” Clark said, describing confusion “not only for the moms that we spoke to but for the people who are working in these different agencies on the border who say the guidance has not been clear.”
On Monday, Trump tweeted a two-part reaction to the system of vetting asylum seekers in immigration courts on the border. “Hiring manythousands of judges, and going through a long and complicated legal process, is not the way to go - will always be disfunctional,” Trump wrote. “People must simply be stopped at the Border and told they cannot come into the U.S. illegally. Children brought back to their country...If this is done, illegal immigration will be stopped in it’s tracks - and at very little, by comparison, cost. This is the only real answer - and we must continue to BUILD THE WALL! [sic]”
According to Clark, this latest comment is in direct conflict with the right of due process.
“That should be terrifying to everybody, those comments,” she said. “Whatever you think about immigration, whatever your policy, this president has showed through that comment, through comments before he was president, and many times, that he is no fan of due process.”
“Due process is something that he sees that gets in the way [of] what he wants to accomplish, rather than being the fundamental guarantee of our freedoms and justice in this country,” Clark continued. “I found that particular tweet one of the most dangerous and terrifying that a very dangerous and terrifying president has put forth.”
To hear Rep. Katherine Clark’s full interview with Boston Public Radio, click on the audio player above.
