 Welcome to San Antonio everyone. Thank you. Hi. Hi. Everybody ready? Let's do it. All right. Well, I'm Joaquin Gostro. I'm Congressman for District 20 here in San Antonio. And I'm honored to welcome to San Antonio several members of Congress who have come to visit the Family Detention Centers at Carnes, which we do today, and Dilly, which we'll do tomorrow. You know, recently many have assigned a letter about 135 members of Congress expressing to the Obama Administration that we don't believe that women and children should be kept in these detention centers. We also strongly believe that many of these folks should have their chance to apply for asylum, and we believe would qualify as asylees. And it's in that spirit that we visited Carnes today. And I'm going to turn it over to first, Zoe Loughburn, who is from California, and she is the ranking member on the subcommittee within the Judiciary Committee that deals with immigration issues to give you heard impressions of what we learned today. Thank you very much, Joaquin. It is great to be in the District of Congress and Caster who is such a leader in the House of Representatives, newly there but very well respected. We did have a chance to visit the facility at Carnes today, and we wanted to see firsthand and hear from the mothers and children who were there how the experience that they were having. We did learn a lot from listening to those families, but before talking about that, I think it's important to lay the groundwork that American immigration law provides that if you have been a victim of oppression, you can legally present yourself at the border of the United States and make an application for political asylum. It's not illegal. That's what the law allows you to do. And in fact, that's what these young families have done. Now, they are in a locked facility that feels quite a bit like a jail. I would say it is a jail camp. And they are, the children are experiencing various forms of distress, and it is very difficult for lawyers to get out to this facility to actually put the cases together. You know, we're not saying that every mom who's in that jail camp should get political asylum. That's for a judge to decide. What we are saying is that they committed no crime. Their cases should be heard in an orderly manner and there's no way to choose their most expensive possible alternative for them while their cases are pending. We know that the religious community has stepped forward and offered to manage their cases to make sure that these families show up for court, and they will see if their application is successful, they will get asylum. If it's not successful, they will have to leave. That's what the law provides and we would ask no more than that. What we would ask is that the jailing of mothers and especially the children be stopped in exchange for a more effective and more cost-effective way of ensuring that these individuals have their day in court. And with that, I would turn it over to Mr. Gutierrez who is the leader on immigration in our country. First of all, thank you, Joaquin, for hosting. Joaquin Castro once said to us that if we're going to truly be a country of fairness and justice and we need to understand that our asylum laws need to be a reflection. He made clear to us one day and I think today we learned it once again that in America, Joaquin said that we become used to and we understand and we appreciate and we accept when somebody needs a country because there's a desperate there, right? And there's a tyrant and their liberties of free speech are trampled upon and their jail sometimes killed. We understand when people come to them. But then we also need to understand that sometimes people come to countries in which there is no protection where there are murderous gangs, cartels that murder, rape, pillage and control the everyday aspect of people's lives. Worse than any dictator that someone has come here fleeing. And that those children and those individuals should be afforded the same right to what? To have their day in court. That's all we're asking for. In the interim period, if you jail people and we met a woman who's going to meet her who's going to have her first anniversary, one year she had a child who was three years old when she came to America. The child has turned four years old. A quarter of that child's life has been in a detention center. All that kid knows those four walls in that detention center. It's been here a year. It's just utter, it doesn't make any sense. It's cruel punishment. And it's punishment. And so you say to yourself, well Louise, they did something wrong. What did they do wrong? I ask you, what did they do wrong? They appeared before agents of the government of the United States and said, help me. I need help. I need to be protected. And our asylum laws afford them that opportunity. You shouldn't jail a person and punish a person for following the law of the United States of America. Otherwise they just eliminate the asylum laws of the United States because we really are turning our backs upon them. And so I think that's what we learned today. You know, it's not about what colors you paint the rooms and how many nurseries you have and dentists and doctors and what the food tastes like. Although all of those things are important. That's not really what this is about. They can make this the nicest, most beautiful place in the world. It's still jail. Those children are still suffering a reputable harm. They're suffering. Anybody would tell you, ask any social worker, any expert, anybody that knows anything about children what happens when they are jailed and incarcerated on this. And then they came fleeing. They came fleeing what? Crime. And then we treat them as though they're criminals. That's wrong. Lastly, I want to say to Joaquin to all of my colleagues and Steny, thanks a lot. It's really good to have the second ranking member of the Democratic Party and the House of Representative Joaquin with you here in San Antonio. Thank you so much. The rest of us, you know, we're all good, right? But it's good to show, because it shows the leadership that we have in the House of Representative and the importance that this issue has. So, look, the woman that we met with and the children, I wish you would have an opportunity to be surrounded by not five, not 10, not 15, not 20, 50 women with children. All saying, you should have seen the hope that all of them brought to their eyes today. You can see they said, nobody has come. They watched them inside the facility. They get it. They know. And I've never felt so good about being a member of Congress there. So let me just say, end with this. Look, they told us that it costs $127,000 a year. Oh, you don't have a $5,000 bail bond. So I'm going to spend $127,000 a year keeping you in jail, because you don't have a $5,000 bond. Tell me where that makes sense to keep somebody in jail at the expense of hundreds because you don't have a $5,000 bond. It makes no sense. Gracias. Yo creo que es bien importante. Joaquín, gracias por habernos recibido y gracias por las tensiones y la generosidad de tu tiempo. Joaquín Castro lleva poco tiempo en el Congreso, pero ha dejado ya sus huellas claras. Él me ha enseñado a mí mucho. Yo sé que muchos te daban el aspecto de inmigración. Joaquín me enseñó que en este país nosotros tenemos que enseñarle a la gente que un dictador es malo y recibimos la gente cuando vienen huyendo dictadoras políticas. Pero hay dictadoras de establecimiento y carteles criminales que son tan viciosas y malas como cualquier dictador y en este país necesitamos entender que las dos son causa para que este país abre su corazón aquellos que vienen buscando al ciblio. Gracias, Joaquín. Gracias, Luis. Y antes de que me abren las preguntas, les voy a decir que es una visión muy emocionante con muchos de los niños y escuchar sobre su experiencia y todo lo que están pasando. Pero para reiterar, creemos que estas mujeres que vienen buscando al ciblio son personas que vienen buscando al ciblio. They didn't try to evade border patrol. They presented themselves at the U.S.-Mexico border that they are not hardened criminals but by keeping them in these places we are treating them that way. And that we really need to rethink our conception of Asilees and refugees in this country and Luis was saying to the president last year and I believe it that when we think of refugees we often think of folks seeking political asylum we think of people who are fleeing communism for example those who fled from Videl Castro or those who fled from Vietnam and other places that were wrecked by communism. But in the world today people also flee very desperate situations and if you could hear all the stories that these women told and the persecution that they fear at the hands of these drug lords and a society societies that have not been able to fully contain the violence then I think that you would have a picture of the depth their claims for asylum and so today was very important for us. I mentioned earlier in one of the interviews all of us wanted to see firsthand and speak to these folks firsthand I think you have a responsibility in the United States Congress whenever you can to go see for yourself firsthand what's going on and these members of Congress have taken upon themselves to live up to that responsibility and so thank you all for coming to San Antonio Earlier today we also had a chance to thank the many advocates in San Antonio who have helped in the non-profit world social services those of really of every race and ethnicity and of every faith Catholic, Lutheran, Evangelical everybody from San Antonio this is a hub for the social services and the advocacy that has been provided for the women and children in Carins and Dilly and hosting my colleagues here I couldn't be more proud today to be from San Antonio so with that we're going to open it up for questions and we're joined by a wonderful colleague Sheila Jackson Lee from Houston, Texas thank you Sheila for making it also let me announce the other members we have now Stanley Hoyer who is our minority whip Raul Rihaba who is head of the progressive caucus in the U.S. Congress he is from Arizona and represents the border there Judy Chu from California and Lucille Roy-Bowl-Allard from Los Angeles thank you all for coming we have to go inside obviously it was like a show they didn't allow a lot of the women that were in problems to speak to us much less do any interviews with them they chose who to speak to and all that what kind of access do you have today was it a show for you just to be there or what is it where you can tell us the vision was very compelling we had individual private time with women and their kids we selected the people that we wanted to speak to because we knew of their cases prior to that when we walked in the yard area people freely came up to us there were some constrained parts a little overbearing sometimes in terms of where we could go and couldn't go but generally open and I think part of that dilemma is you have a bifurcated decision-making system there you have a private for-profit prison and you have homeland security that issues the contract and has oversight transparency and oversight and this that question continues to be critical and the role of the for-profit prison continues to be critical those still need to be looked at but beyond that my friend Mr. Costa's point and the point that he reiterated before is women and children do not deserve to be in detention and should not be in detention and the process should be done in a completely different way well ok the point that you have to investigate and recognize is the role that the detention companies that are there to win the role that they have with the treatment of these women and children and also the role of homeland security the agency in terms of how they pay attention to the work and the activities of this company and besides that, as I said this visit was emotional we had time to discuss in detail with many women that we chose for the interview but at the end of the day that detention center has to be closed and these women and these children should be in a process where they should not be there in jail gentlemen along the ladies along those lines do you have any concern that these women may face retribution for speaking to you all and secondly I know that in your news conference last week there were many concerns that you all voiced be it suicide attempts, hunger strikes mistreatment was it as bad as you thought last week? well we would not want to believe that there would be retaliation to any of the mothers who spoke with us but we did hand out our business cards and our phone numbers and ask them to give us a call if there were any adverse ramifications for their speaking and you know I'll let others speak but we did hear us stories from women who expressed very serious concern about the adverse impact on them and on their children who are not thriving because they're in essentially a jail treatment that I think would fall short of what we would expect but as I think Louie said you can't make a good jail the problem is that you can't have little children little four year olds and their moms in jail I don't think that's what civilized societies do and so we're suggesting we need a better alternative while these cases are finding the moms and these little babies should not be in jail they should be out where they guarantee that they show up for their hearings and some systems in place to make sure that happens with the churches that are asking to be part of the compliance plan that moms and kids show up for their hearings we also know that when the volunteer lawyers are representing these people well over 95% of them show up for their hearings so that not only is more humane it also saves the taxpayers a ton of money but the women are courageous they're brave and they spoke to us clearly about the situation that they confront and I think our nation owes a great degree of gratitude to their courage and to their bravery and to the clarity with which they spoke to us today we're going to all get on a conference call with all of them in about a week and we're going to ask them how things been going they got our business cards we made sure that there is a collect call telephone that they can access and they know to call us my staff as the staff of every member here have been informed somebody calls from the San Antonio detention centers outside of San Antonio you take the call and you say we accept the charges because we want to know about you Steny Hoyer on the Democratic whip in the House of Representatives we know them and everybody knows that we know the women with whom we talk I'm absolutely convinced that Secretary Johnson would not countenance in any way any retribution for these women showing the courage to come forward and tell us of their plight of their fears of their aspirations so my expectation is not on that conference call but I think we're all going to make it very clear to Secretary Johnson that he and his people need to make sure that there is no retribution to women who at our request talk to us that is our responsibilities as representatives of the American people to see what is being done concerns have been raised but others have raised concerns as well and as I said as we were leaving whatever the law is these women needed to be treated with the humanity that America projects itself to be and we expect that to be the case let me say in closing as well because we haven't mentioned it here but one of the things that we see here is a stark example of why comprehensive immigration reform is absolutely essential there are 435 members of the House of Representatives all 435 believe that the immigration system is broken and the failure to address in a comprehensive way immigration reform is a failure of the Congress of the United States the United States Senate of course passed a comprehensive bill I am very hopeful that the House of Representatives can follow suit that will not solve all the problems but I am very pleased that Luis Gutierrez and Lucille Rubble invited me to come on this delegation I wanted to be here with them I signed the letter saying that we had concerns about conditions this is not the first prison I've been in I've been in a prison a lot as a lawyer not as an incarcerated out there I've been in prisons in many countries of the world I've been in detention facilities and every one of those I've urged those who run those facilities to treat the detainees or the imprisoned in a humane manner that is what we all expect of ourselves and these women were compelling in their stories in the abuse that they had been subjected to the threats they had been subjected to now all three of the women that we talked to were from Honduras our State Department knows that Honduras is one of the if not the most violent dangerous nation in the world so it should come as no surprise that a mother with small children would want their children out of such an environment gang infested threatening families, children and all the citizens so I appreciate very much Lucille who's dad was a mentor of mine in the Congress of the United States who has been the extraordinary leader in this country on behalf of immigration reform now as I understand it the U.S. policies of this detention is not supposed to be punitive in nature but we're hearing conflicting reports about solitary confinement at these facilities also there are reports that there is a quota system for each detainee in each detention center let me have Zola African refer to that because she is the expert she's the ranking member on the immigration subcommittee we were all there together and we saw what was happening but let me have her respond what we did was because there were so many women we broke down into small groups and we each interviewed a number of women and then when we went out into the common area we were just swarmed with women and children some of the children crying who wanted to tell their stories we did hear reports of people detained in a solitary confinement with conflicting stories that's very troubling and we plan to follow up with that I can guarantee you as for a quota we did not hear that I did not hear that from the women but I will say that well they wouldn't know that is correct I will say that what I saw today did nothing but confirm walking through the door that we should end the jail of women and children in these proceedings it is by its nature punitive whether it's intended to be or not if you're doing bed counts at night you're lining up children and mothers to count them you're regimenting their lives disciplining their children it is a lock up it is punitive whether it's meant to be or not it's not appropriate for this population what can be done to really shut these centers down I mean the island secretary has already said that this is his policy and it's going to continue how do you intend to try and shut these places down especially given international law given court challenges and here they are still well I certainly wouldn't want to speak secretary I actually have a very high level of respect for secretary johnson he is I think a man of integrity he is a good lawyer he is a smart person how this will end could come several different ways as you know there is a court proceeding under way right now pointing out that these facilities do not comply with the floor settlement that the US government entered into a number of years ago there was just a weeks extension for settlement discussions but that may a result may come out of that proceeding sooner than anything else certainly the administration has the authority to underlaw right now to use alternatives to detention that will allow these families to show up in court at a more affordable price and in fact there are discussions under way with the losers and with the Catholics about doing those case management systems at quite an affordable price and certainly a very high level of appearance in the court what's your response that these are the only this is the only way to keep families together to get through the court system well it's simply incorrect it's not direct the city of san antonio just the citizens of the city and san antonio would tomorrow I have no doubt open up their homes to these families and allow them to be here with love and respect and with dignity while they await their court look let's we're making too little of our nation Americans are great people give them an opportunity and they'll stop off I have absolutely no doubt number one number two just think about it you guys are seasoned veteran reporters how many times haven't you seen someone charged with serious crimes allowed to be set with an ankle brace and a monitoring brace outside of a jail while they await trial let me reiterate what is what is so devastating about this is that these people have not been accused of any crime and yet they are still held in detention at a higher level of detention by the federal government than someone that has been prosecuted for a crime in very serious crimes look there are many other forms the American people are ready I want to say that one of the ways you change things is to bear witness to the inhumanity of the situation and that's what we're here to say and last I want to join and echo something that's said and and so if you needed to have a secretary of homeland security with whom you could have a conversation a dialogue a very serious one that you know is a man that really believes in justice and fairness we've already had those conversations with him I know we're going to continue to have those conversations so I have a lot of faith in that ability to take our stories back to him he was here last week I don't think that was an accident that the secretary was here last week so why don't you let us continue to give you the reports of what's going on at the other detention center we will be meeting with the secretary let us put our thoughts and ideas together and give you a comprehensive view of what we saw I think one of the who beg the question your question and that's I mentioned earlier that if the next if the decision is being made by homeland security as to who goes in and who gets out of detention and that the for-profit president after then obviously that's an easy decision less people but indeed and then I think people have to really dig into that if the private prison industry is driving the policy of who gets in and who gets out guaranteed or unguaranteed minimums of bed occupation then I think we have a substantive issue one of the areas I think is for us to do is to dig into that part of the question we're not going to quit till these detention centers are closed that's it, we're not quitting what possibility is there that these women are actually telling the truth what they are telling us and if there is the possibility that there is a violation of human rights in this place look I think a practical sense is always to believe in women we have a lot of history to question women when women don't speak of abuse when women I believe in women because in all historical instances it has been proven that they have not told the truth I believe in those mothers they spoke to us and opened their hearts to us but not only that I want you to think for a moment they are almost in a prison in detention and yet they had the courage to go out and tell them I want to talk to those congressmen obviously I want you to think for a moment many times you stay quiet they didn't keep quiet I believe as the congressman Hoyer said look I don't want less pricey but Honduras is a very dangerous place El Salvador is in the gangs of cartels in Guatemala women come running and I think for a moment every one of those who are reporting every one of the reporters asking if you live in El Salvador Guatemala and that little boy who was going to suffer death or the tragedy what would you do you would also come here to this country asking for help we shouldn't respond as a country we are the most powerful country 50,000 children shouldn't cause a trauma should cause us joy we can receive it self appointed task force different committees but for those of us who were at the border last year and the horror of the nation believing we were under siege we now know that we are not under siege that no terrorists were coming across the border and these were women and children and I think the comment that congressman was the one I want to emphasize and that is I believe not conspicuously and openly but the private prison system drives these numbers these are contracts with the federal government and I too have them in the secretary of homeland security so I think there are ways for us to address the question of closing these prisons or at least closing them to people who are seeking asylum and begin to utilize the vast array of nonprofits that go from San Antonio to college district and the great work you have done on this issue all the way to Houston, Texas who opened their doors last year to say we have nonprofits and alternatives so my issue on the judiciary committee alongside the law firm is not only the immigration side but the private prison side I am not against people's jobs but I do believe that the economic aspect of the prison should not drive the humanitarian needs of women who are seeking asylum and are seeking refuge that is what I hope as we go forward we'll have the opportunity to do so the secretary has indicated his interest in looking for alternatives and I think this team, this task force this group of members will drive that engine and we will see some results very soon can I just say one thing though and I think it's also important just our impressions that we're talking about there are credible psychologists social workers who have gone down there and have testified and have written about the negative impact that these facilities are having on the development and mental health not just the women but especially the children so this isn't just our impression I'm just going to say that I came in thinking that we should end family detention and after being swarmed by women who had these stories with children that were crying with $10,000 bonds making it impossible for them to get out I knew that we were right and so we go back and we are we are resolved to end family detention thank y'all I'll stay back and answer we are going to get them upstairs