Pramila Jayapal

Ms. JAYAPAL

Ms. JAYAPAL. Mr. Speaker, my inquiry is this. My colleague across the aisle just referred to Members of Congress as ``anti-American.'' I believe that those words are defamatory, and I would like to ask whether that is appropriate for a request for the gentleman to take down his words.

Ms. JAYAPAL

Ms. JAYAPAL. Madam Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

Ms. JAYAPAL

Ms. JAYAPAL. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of H. Res. 432, a very important resolution that condemns the attacks on peaceful protesters and supports an immediate, peaceful transition to a civilian-led democratic government in Sudan. I am so incredibly inspired by the people of Sudan who organized peacefully and adhered consistently to a nonviolent strategy of protest in order to achieve a democratic future for their country. I especially want to call attention to the Sudanese women, who played an outsized role in holding strong in the face of violence, danger, and even death. In the words of Andrew Gilmour, the Assistant Secretary- General for human rights at OHCHR: What the world has seen in the past month and still now will go down in history as the greatest mass nonviolent movement of our generation. Because of this nonviolent people's movement that refused to accept no for an answer, even in the face of brutal and barbaric violence from government-linked militias, the people of Sudan have achieved a real opportunity for peace. Just last week, civilian leaders and the Transitional Military Council reached an agreement where they will share power to pursue a democratic future. In order for that peaceful transition to work, there must also be justice for those who were killed in the June 3 massacre through an independent investigation with real consequences for the perpetrators, along with true civilian oversight of the security forces. I am heartbroken for every life that was lost, but I am also deeply hopeful because we have seen the shining light of courage, resilience, and commitment to nonviolent resistance movements and to the possibilities they bring for lasting peace. The United States must stand with the people of Sudan and do everything in our power to help achieve that peace and stability. And, finally, Mr. Speaker, I just want to recognize a very important person in my home State of Washington, Mubarak Elamin, who has been with me on this issue of Sudan, his birth country, in making sure that we have all the information we need.

Ms. JAYAPAL

Ms. JAYAPAL. Madam Chair, I just want to say that this amendment is a smart, thoughtful way to think about how we reduce military spending over the long term without sacrificing national security. And, Madam Chair, I don't understand when patriotism got linked to how much money we give to defense contractors. That is not my idea of patriotism. Patriotism, to me, and protecting the troops means that we make sure that we do not send them into harm's way unless absolutely necessary, which means that we look at the threats of the future, we assess our response to that, and we take care of our troops. This bill does that in many, many, many, many ways. I have squabbles, as you know, with the top-line spending number because I don't believe that being patriotic means we just continue to raise the amount of money that we give. I think we need to be thoughtful and comprehensive about what our national security looks like internationally. And, Madam Chair, I also think that national security should mean how we treat people here in this country. If we send troops overseas and yet we cut their healthcare, we take away preexisting conditions for their family members, we refuse to provide public education, that is not helping our troops while they are overseas to worry about their families. So national security is a big picture conversation. It is not about how much money we give to defense contractors. This amendment is thoughtful. It says what we know about the future. If a private corporation lost track of hundreds of millions of dollars, its shareholders would find that completely unacceptable. The reality is that we need to make sure we are thoughtful, and we should pass this amendment. Madam Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

Ms. JAYAPAL. Madam Chair, let me start by thanking the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, Adam Smith, my colleague, for his hard work and leadership on this bill. My amendment requires a series of independent studies to evaluate potential cost savings with respect to our country's nuclear security enterprise and force structure. This amendment is a measured approach to ensuring that our military spending meets our national security needs while making the best use of every taxpayer dollar. It would require the Government Accountability Office to examine options for reducing service contracts, reducing the nuclear security enterprise, rebalancing force structure, and reducing or realigning our overseas presence. It would also examine realistic, cost-effective ways to use pre-award audits to negotiate better prices for weapons systems and services. Additionally, it would require an updated and comprehensive series of studies from Federally-funded research and development centers as well as a nonpartisan, nongovernmental think tank. These would supplement the GAO studies and look at cost savings resulting from alternatives to current force structures and our nuclear posture. Now, I know the other side is going to say that we have done these studies; there is plenty of information out there. But the reality is we operate in a different world, and we need an updated, comprehensive study that deals with our current situation in the world. Madam Chair, let me be clear that while I do have strong reservations about the top-line spending level in this bill, my amendment would not cut from the top line at all. Instead, it looks at ways that we can make better policy choices; we can better allocate a limited set of resources down the line. So, in the long term, I believe our defense spending levels are unsustainable, inefficient, and unnecessary. But we have to figure out how to cut that logically, comprehensively, with our national security in the center of that analysis. So my amendment is a thoughtful solution to give us some of the data we need. I urge my colleagues to support the amendment. Madam Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

Ms. JAYAPAL. Madam Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

Ms. JAYAPAL. Madam Chair, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Smith), the distinguished chairman of the Armed Services Committee.

Ms. JAYAPAL

Ms. JAYAPAL. Mr. Chair, I thank the chairman for his leadership on this package. My amendment in this package would help curb the corrupt influence of foreign money in our politics. The Emoluments Clause of the Constitution already requires retired military officers who want to work for a foreign government to first receive permission from their service in the State Department and to disclose the nature of their work. My amendment would make the approved activities available to Congress and to the public. We still have a long way to go to constrain foreign influence peddling and corruption in Washington. We saw this with General Flynn, who concealed his work lobbying for the Turkish Government in a dispute with the United States in the 2016 Presidential election. We trust our retired military officials to speak in the best interest of the United States, and when they are being paid to further another country's agenda, we deserve to know. Mr. Chair, I urge my colleagues to support this amendment package.

Ms. JAYAPAL

Ms. JAYAPAL. Mr. Speaker, let me first thank our wonderful Immigration and Citizenship Subcommittee chair for her tremendous work over the years on all issues related to immigration and for her leadership on this particular issue. I am very proud to rise in strong support of H.R. 1044, the Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act, to provide relief to thousands of families that have been waiting for decades in employment visa backlogs. Among Indian nationals, the wait is upwards of 70 years. I also want to thank the ranking member of the Immigration and Citizenship Subcommittee for his support, as well. This is a truly bipartisan bill because these long backlogs are a result of our broken, outdated immigration system, and they are affecting States across the country. Despite the high demand for employment-based green cards, the system hasn't been updated in nearly 30 years. This bill solves one piece, by making sure that our colleagues and our neighbors who have been working in our tech sector and our hospitals, innovating in our communities can stay with a roadmap to citizenship. But, Mr. Speaker, our work is not done. We cannot tolerate the fact that we have no orderly functioning process for people to come to America, whether it be for family unity, to bring their talents to our economy, to serve the needs of our economy, or to seek safety. This bill, and the fact that we have 300 cosponsors on it, reminds me of another time when there were 68 bipartisan votes in the United States Senate in 2013 for a comprehensive immigration reform bill, and I deeply hope that, as we pass this bill off the floor with bipartisan support, that we can get back to the place where we can once again agree on a bipartisan basis that comprehensive immigration reform benefits our country, benefits our future, and is absolutely necessary. So I thank so much, again, Chairwoman Lofgren for her fierce determination and her years of service, and I look forward to passing this bill off the floor of the House.

Ms. JAYAPAL

Ms. JAYAPAL. Mr. Chairman, let me first thank our Appropriations Committee chair, Mr. Price, as well as the members of the Rules Committee for making this amendment in order. This is a budget-neutral amendment that would increase the funds dedicated to Federal homeless assistance grants by $1 million. These grants fund programs that have been shown to play key roles in addressing homelessness. In my hometown, for example, these funds support providers like Catholic Housing Services, which supports people who are formerly homeless, and like Plymouth Housing, which offers housing using the highly effective evidence-based permanent supportive housing model. In my district, Mr. Chairman, we have 11,000 homeless folks, people who are experiencing homelessness, and they need help. We need more of these programs across the country. Across the country, neighbors are experiencing homelessness and housing instability, and that instability can take many forms. It can be the veteran sleeping under an overpass, the child whose family is staying with friends and relatives, the low-wage worker who just can't even earn enough to leave the shelter, or the former foster youth who bounces in and out of cheap motels. Some of these forms of homelessness are highly visible, others, like the housing instability experienced by families and by people living in rural areas, are often much harder to see, but every form of homelessness is deeply harmful. That housing instability harms children's health. Kids and families facing housing instability had an almost 20 percent increased risk of hospitalization. Being homeless exacerbates physical and mental health issues and causes illness where, before, people had been healthy. And women who are unstably housed face high rates of rape and sexual and physical violence. This suffering is cruel and unnecessary, and it is preventable. We all lose a piece of our humanity when we leave our unhoused neighborhoods behind. I hope we can do better with this amendment. Mr. Chair, I yield to the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Price), our distinguished subcommittee chairman.

Ms. JAYAPAL. Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.

Ms. JAYAPAL. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Ms. JAYAPAL. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Ms. JAYAPAL

Ms. JAYAPAL. Madam Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

Ms. JAYAPAL. Madam Chair, I thank Chairman Visclosky for his leadership on the Defense appropriations bill, as well as Mr. McGovern, our Rules Committee chair, for making this amendment in order. My amendment deals with one particular piece of the administration's escalation of our nuclear warfighting capability, and that is the long- range standoff weapon, or LRSO. This new nuclear-armed cruise missile does not add to our country's already strong strategic deterrent. Instead, it performs a redundant purpose that can already be accomplished with the standoff capability of other weapons systems. The CBO estimates that, over 10 years, canceling the production of this weapon would save us about $13 billion. That is $13 billion that could go into education or infrastructure or healthcare or housing or even investments in foreign assistance and diplomacy that would actually keep us safer. I am deeply concerned, Madam Chair, that continuing to pour more and more money into building up our nuclear arsenal puts us down a dangerous course. Just this past weekend, we found ourselves in yet another escalation of tensions with Iran, with the Secretary of State saying that the administration is ``considering a full range of options,'' including military options in response to the attack on two tankers in the Gulf of Oman. And just last night, President Trump announced that he is sending another 1,000 American troops to the Middle East. Meanwhile, let me remind my colleagues that this administration has recklessly torn up former President Reagan's Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces, or INF, Treaty with Russia, pulled out of President Obama's historic nonproliferation accord with Iran, and escalated inflammatory tensions and rhetoric with some of the world's most powerful nuclear- armed states. The President's agenda outlined in his 2018 nuclear posture review would also resurrect former nuclear capabilities that bipartisan administrations have wisely eliminated. According to many expert observers, some of the upgrades made to our nuclear program in the past few years could be interpreted as plans for a ``first strike.'' Let me be clear, the Trump administration's plan to develop the LRSO cruise missile is not only wasteful, but potentially dangerous. It will make our country, in my opinion, less safe. The weapon is expected to be significantly more capable than the cruising system it is replacing. It will be likely harder to detect, have a longer range, fly faster, and be more accurate. The weapon will also be deployed on advancing penetrating bombers, which are less detectable and designed to infiltrate enemy air defenses. In contrast, the system that the LRSO is replacing is only carried by the B-52, which flies relatively slowly and is easily spotted by radar. As a result, the new cruise missile and bomber could allow attacks on an array of targets without being detected first, and that could lead to devastating miscalculation and, potentially, to accidental nuclear war. Madam Chair, don't just take may word for it. Let me tell you that former Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis stated that he is not sold on the LRSO. Why are we appropriating money to something that the former Secretary of Defense for the Republican administration is not sold on? In a Washington Post op-ed in 2015, William Perry, Secretary of Defense from 1994 to 1997, and Andy Weber, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear, Chemical, and Biological Defense Programs from 2009 to 2014, wrote about the LRSO: ``Some have argued that a new nuclear-capable air-launched cruise missile is necessary to allow future Presidents the `flexibility' to engage Russia or China in limited nuclear war. That is Cold War thinking, and it is dangerous. Such `tactical' use of nuclear weapons would be a grave mistake.'' Our nuclear weapons arsenal is about deterrent capabilities, not warfighting. It is troubling, then, that proponents of the LRSO, including the Defense Department, have said that the missile is needed for capabilities ``beyond deterrence.'' The Pentagon argues that the LRSO could be used to respond ``proportionately to a limited nuclear attack.'' I would argue that this is dangerous Cold War thinking and that there is no such thing as a limited nuclear war. My amendment is specifically focused on halting development of the LRSO, which wouldn't be deployed until the early 2030s, but we also have to look at this weapon and the message that it is sending as part of this administration's dangerous escalation of our nuclear posture. This President has joked about his nuclear button being ``bigger and more powerful'' than Kim Jong-un's. This is terrifying, unacceptable, and it is our duty to exert congressional oversight on this issue. By canceling this weapon, we can send a signal that there is no such thing as limited nuclear annihilation, and instead of promoting weapons that enable nuclear warfighting, we can affirm that a nuclear war can never be won. Madam Chair, I urge my colleagues to support this, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Ms. JAYAPAL. Madam Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

Ms. JAYAPAL. Madam Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

Ms. JAYAPAL

Ms. JAYAPAL. Madam Speaker, I thank the Dreamers, TPS and DED holders, the families, friends and advocates, many of whom are right here in this Chamber with us. Thank you for your courage in speaking out. Thank you for demanding a different and more just future for our country. Thank you for knowing that we always make the road by walking and for never giving up. Madam Speaker, we have a chance to affirm the hope and promise of America. I urge a ``yes'' vote on this bill. Announcement by the Speaker Pro Tempore

Ms. JAYAPAL. Madam Speaker, I am so very proud to rise in strong support of H.R. 6, the American Dream and Promise Act. At the heart and the core of this bill are 2.5 million people who are American in every single way but paper. Dreamers, and those with temporary protective status and DED, are integral parts of our communities and families; a community of strivers who have given and will continue to contribute to America in the finest of our traditions as a Nation. Over 400,000 U.S. citizens live in a household with TPS holders. They own homes in our communities and fill critical workforce gaps central to our economic and community development, including in construction, food service and landscaping. And Dreamers, too, have long-called the United States their home. One of those Dreamers is Esther, who interned in my office last year. Esther came to the United States on a visa when she was 3 years old from South Korea. Her parents sought to obtain more permanent legal status. They gave an immigration lawyer most of their money, and he ran away with all of it. Esther's parents' visas expired. They pushed their kids around in a shopping cart because a stroller was too expensive. But they started over and they built their lives here, raising a smart, passionate daughter who went to Harvard. The DACA status that Esther obtained in 2013 helped her to pursue her own American dream. And this bill would give her, and so many millions more, true freedom. At the core of this bill, Madam Speaker, is the dignity and respect that we accord to human beings, the way in which we see people and exercise our own compassion. We have a rare opportunity today to provide permanent protections for Dreamers and TPS and DED holders, not just for them, but also for the approximately 1 million U.S.-born children whose parents would get permanent protection. This is a first step, not a last. We must stop criminalizing immigrants at every turn, even as we willingly accept their labor and contributions. We cannot allow xenophobia and racism to permeate our country from its top ranks. We must continue the work to pass germane and just, comprehensive immigration reform that provides a roadmap to citizenship for 11 million undocumented immigrants, strengthens family-based immigration, and protects workers' rights on the job. But today, Madam Speaker, we have a chance to right real wrongs for these young people and TPS and DED holders. And I thank Chairman Nadler, the incredible Immigration and Citizenship Subcommittee Chairwoman, Zoe Lofgren, and my colleagues, Representatives Roybal- Allard, Velazquez, and Clarke for their hard work to bring this forward. I also thank our staffers--including mine--Jennifer Chan in my office, but most of all, Madam Speaker, I thank the Dreamers, TPS and DED holders, families, friends, and advocates, many of whom are here in this Chamber.

Ms. JAYAPAL

Ms. JAYAPAL. Madam Speaker, I rise in strong support of my colleague Representative Schrier's Stronger Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act, which increases funding for under-resourced child protection agencies. I am particularly proud that we could reach bipartisan agreement on a top priority of mine in this bill, which is ensuring that State plans of safe care for infants exposed to substances in utero do not unfairly target pregnant women who need to remain on medication in order to stay healthy. Prior to 2016, States only developed plans of safe care for infants exposed to illegal substances in utero. It became clear during the opioid crisis that we needed to look at the abuse of legal drugs during pregnancy. In 2016, Congress updated the law to ensure that all infants and families impacted by substance abuse could get the care they need. Unfortunately, as an unintended consequence, some States are now referring all infants exposed to substances in utero to child protective services and opening CPS investigations even if the mom was using the substance in a treatment plan that was prescribed by a doctor. In some States, new mothers using antidepressants during pregnancy are being referred automatically to CPS for investigation. This is not only unjust but also a waste of limited resources. Untreated depression during pregnancy is linked to premature birth, low birth weight, and developmental problems, not to mention increased risk of postpartum depression and poor health for pregnant mothers. There is already incredible stigma that prevents people from seeking treatment for mental illness, with communities of color facing greater barriers to that treatment. What is more, mothers who made a safe choice to transition to medication-assisted treatment for opioid withdrawal shouldn't automatically be investigated by CPS. I am so grateful to Representative Guthrie on the other side of the aisle, the chair and ranking member, and experts in pediatric medicine for finding a solution. This bill clarifies that CPS will only undertake an investigation when the findings of a family assessment warrant it, not when moms are simply following their doctors' advice to stay healthy. Stronger CAPTA will prevent unnecessary trauma to families.

Ms. JAYAPAL

Ms. JAYAPAL. Yes, begging for help. And I think about the children, the parents that I talked to, and some of the reunifications that we saw when I led that trip to the border and thinking about these parents who had to experience their children not wanting to come to them. Representative Schakowsky talked about one mom that we met who was reunited with her 8-year-old daughter. The daughter had been told that the mother had abandoned her, and for months, she thought the mother had abandoned her and that she was going to go into a shelter, or a foster home because her mother had abandoned her. So you can imagine when the mother came to be reunited with the child, the mother was so happy that she finally was getting to see her child, and the child did not want to go to her mother. She didn't want to go to her mother. It took some time for them to actually be reunited and for the mother to say: No, I did not abandon you. But if you are an 8-year-old child, how do you understand that?

Ms. JAYAPAL. Madam Speaker, I thank Representative Schakowsky for her incredible leadership in the Congressional Progressive Caucus on so many issues, including bringing truth to the Mueller investigation and making sure people understand exactly what is going on. Madam Speaker, for the rest of the Special Order hour, which is the Congressional Progressive Caucus' Special Order hour that we do each week, we are focusing on the 1-year anniversary of the family separation crisis. Any of our Members here who would like to speak are welcome to do so. Let me start by saying, 1 year ago, I became the first Member of Congress to go into a Federal prison where hundreds of men and women, mothers and fathers, had been separated from their children and were being held in the prison system, in the Federal prison just south of my district. I cannot, even today, 365 days later, forget the stories that these mothers and fathers told me. They told me about how immigration agents said to them, ``Your families don't exist anymore,'' and that they would never see their children again. At the time that I saw them, it was already 3 to 4 weeks after they had been separated, and the majority of those parents had no idea where their children were. In fact, that morning, some of them had been handed slips that supposedly had the names of their children written on those slips of paper. One woman came over to me crying and she said: These are not my children. That slip that supposedly had the names of her children did not match her actual children. Can you imagine? I just think, as a mother, and for all the mothers and fathers out there, as a parent, can you imagine being separated from your child, in some cases children as young as 6 months, later we found out 3 months old, babies, who were torn off the breasts of their mothers? These moms described immigration agents tearing them from their children without the opportunity to say good-bye. Some of them told me that when they went to go to the bathroom, they were told their children would still be there. When they came back, their children were gone. But they could hear them in the very next room crying for them, screaming for their parents, and these mothers were not able to go. They told me how immigration agents put them in line with their children, and they would send the parents in one direction and the children in another direction. One of the mothers told me how she left Guatemala with her 8- and 12- year-old children. Her husband is in prison. He was put in prison for raping a young child around the same age as her daughter. He was just about to come out of prison, and she was afraid that he would come out of prison and then go after their child, rape her daughter. Another woman from El Salvador told me how she got a protection order against her ex-husband, who is a police officer, but the protection order was meaningless. He continued to antagonize her family, so she left. Many of these mothers told me how they had left one or two of their children behind because they wanted to try to save one. It was too difficult to bring small children on the long journey that they were taking--the incredible sacrifice as a parent of trying to save one child. One mother told me that she had three children. The first was shot and killed by gang members. The second was shot and paralyzed by gang members. She left the paralyzed child at home because she knew that he would not be able to make the journey. She took the final child. She tried to bring that child to safety. After everything these mothers experienced--the trauma in their home countries, the cruel separation from their children--the treatment that they experienced in immigration custody was just outrageous. Immigration agents told them that they were ``filthy.'' They used that word. Immigration agents laughed at these mothers when they cried about losing their children. And these mothers told me how they were detained in cells that were so cold that they called them ``the ice box'' because it was so cold. Many of these mothers described being put there after crossing the Rio Grande River; and they were still wet, and they were put into these freezer boxes, these ice boxes, without blankets, without sleeping mats. Some mothers described how they went without water for 5 days. After public outcry and pressure from elected officials, the government set up a number for parents to call to get information on their children, but some of the parents that I spoke to in Texas said that the number didn't work or that ICE wouldn't allow them to speak to their children. One mother mentioned that she repeatedly tried to call her child to try to locate her child, but the number would not go through. One mother told me that, when she requested to talk to her child, the ICE agents would get mad; and agents mentioned that, in some instances, families would have to pay for these phone calls. And this isn't just anecdotal. The DHS inspector general's September 2018 report found mixed results among parents attempting to call their children and that important information about how to contact separated children was not always available. Just this week, 2 days ago, Members of Congress had hoped to do the Special Order hour on the day of the anniversary. We had to do it today because this is our scheduled time. But the group Families Belong Together, a coalition of groups working on this issue, did an installation on our Capitol lawn with the shoes of tiny children all throughout and then an incredible 3-D statue of a mother reaching out to her child, and the child was in a cage. I cannot imagine that this is the country that we call the greatest country in the world. I cannot imagine that my country that I am proud of, that I serve here as a Member of Congress for would do this to children. And this administration has consistently demonized and vilified immigrants, but this policy of cruel family separation is hard to even describe, hard to imagine that it is happening in our borders. I was privileged to co-chair, with Congresswoman Lucille Roybal- Allard, the Women's Working Group on Immigration Reform, and we led a trip to the border. I see my good friend Representative Jan Schakowsky, who was on that trip, and I just want to ask the gentlewoman, Representative Schakowsky, who has been so eloquent on this issue, I want to see if she wants to say a few words. And then I know my friend Barbara Lee is here, as well, about this crisis and about our commitment, as Democrats, to refuse to allow this to continue. Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Illinois (Ms. Schakowsky).

Ms. JAYAPAL. Madam Speaker, I thank Representative Schakowsky for her comments. My colleague, the gentlewoman from California, Barbara Lee, has been such a champion for families, for children, for people of color, for low-income families across this country and knows the history of this country. This is not the first time that we have separated children from their parents. Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Lee) to say a few words on this, as well.

Ms. JAYAPAL. Madam Speaker, I thank Congresswoman Lee for her work, for her leadership. I was thinking about what she said about children and the impact on them, even within 24 hours. We had the then-Director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, Scott Lloyd, who was in to testify before us in the Judiciary Committee. We also had other career child welfare experts that were there on the panel, including one who testified to us on the committee that he warned the director and those above him about the increasing family separations and the incredibly significant, and potentially lifelong risks to those children; not only the ones that weren't reunited-- because at that point there was still, as there are today, over 300 families today that still aren't reunited--but not only to the ones that weren't reunited, but he said even the ones who were reunited with their families, but they spent 3 months or even a week, or even 3 weeks--most of them spent months separated from their parents--that lifelong--and he used that--lifelong damage to those children would be intense. I asked Scott Lloyd as the then-director of the Refugee Resettlement Program: Did you do anything? Did you take that information that you got, that this was going to be lifelong, irreversible--he used the word irreversible, the witness who testified about the damage to children-- did you do anything with that information about the lifelong, irreversible damage to thousands of children that you, this administration, has caused? And he said: No, didn't share it with anybody. Didn't do anything about it. On the same day that the Trump administration said that it would reunite thousands of children--because this is not a Democrat or a Republican issue--people across this country were outraged by what they saw. I remember First Lady Laura Bush wrote an amazing op-ed talking about this is not us, this is not America. Independents, Republicans, and Democrats knew that the Trump zero-humanity policy was wrong, it was cruel, and it was un-American. The same day that the Trump administration said: Okay, we hear the outrage. We will reunite thousands of children that it had separated through a central database, a government official admitted in an email that the Trump administration only had enough information at that point to reconnect 60 parents with their kids; 60 parents out of nearly 3,000 children that we know of. Because later, we also found out that there were more children that we didn't know about in a ``pilot project'' that was even before the scrutiny came. Let me remind people that at the time that this was happening, DHS Secretary, then-DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and other Trump officials claimed repeatedly--not just once, not just twice--but repeatedly in testimony, in hearings, that they were keeping track of separations, and that claim had simply no basis in reality. The truth is that DHS has better systems in place to track the property that people who were in custody left, but not the children. Trump's Department of Homeland Security did not see fit to track children, including infants and toddlers. A Federal judge recently ordered the Trump administration to locate the children that were still remaining, potentially numbering in the thousands, over the next 6 months as opposed to the 2 years that the Trump administration requested. Just imagine, the Trump administration said give us 2 years to try to reunite these kids with their parents. But the truth is, Congresswoman Lee and everybody that is watching, we may never know the number of children who were separated by the Trump administration. There are children who may never ever be reunited with their parents. We are, of course, trying to get to the bottom of this. We are trying to get accountability on this, but we know that DHS is still separating families. We see the relentless efforts of this administration to cut people off from seeking asylum, which is, by the way, a lawful act, not only by our own domestic laws. We are signatory to human rights treaties, international treaties, which require us to allow people to seek asylum. Last week I reintroduced my Dignity for Detained Immigrants Act with my colleagues, Congressman Adam Smith, and Senator Booker introduced it in the Senate. Last cycle, this bill had over half of the Democratic Caucus. I think it was like 167 cosponsors. We intend to get more of our Democratic Caucus. My office spent 8 months working on this bill in the last Congress with stakeholders from across the country. I am proud to say that as we reintroduce it, we have also made sure-- and, frankly, it would have addressed the humanitarian crisis that we saw through family separation. Last year already made it extremely difficult to detain children and families. This year, what we did is, we added explicit language that bars Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials from detaining children under 18 years. We actually had the provision of not allowing for pregnant women to be shackled. Why do we need provisions saying pregnant women can't be shackled? What this bill is about is denying this administration and any administration in the future--Democratic or Republican--from using detention to facilitate the cruel separation of families. I am hoping--I know the gentlewoman is either on the bill or is going to be on the bill--but I am hoping that every single one of my colleagues joins me in transforming a cruel, abusive system; a detention system that takes these children and puts them--we should call them jails because that is what they are. They are not detention facilities. Most of the actual facilities, as the gentlewoman saw, are just like jails. And, in fact, they are using more and more jails. But that system is now detaining 52,000 people a day, which is why we need to make sure that we address this in appropriations. We need to make sure that we address this through legislation. So I am still astounded by the profound cruelty of this administration and this policy of family separation, of zero humanity that was imposed on children and families seeking asylum.

Ms. JAYAPAL. Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from California.