Rep. Elijah Cummings claimed today that divisiveness in the United States has gotten so toxic that his 10-year-old niece asked him whether they were “going to be put in cages.”
The Maryland Democrat, the chairman of the House Oversight Committee who has regularly clashed with the White House during his investigations into the Trump administration, related the story during a Wednesday speech.
He expressed anger over the deaths in El Paso and Dayton and said that America is “done with” hateful rhetoric, mass shootings, and white supremacist domestic terrorism, and that he was reminded of a conversation he’d had with his niece over the weekend.
“She said, ‘Uncle Elijah, are they going to put us in cages? Are they going to put us in cages?’ This is coming from a 10-year-old,” said Cummings. “We are better than that. We must stand together with those who we do not look like, who we do not agree with, and recognize that we have more in common than we have that separates us.”
“When I have my niece asking ‘Are they going to put us in cages?’ there is just something wrong with that,” said Cummings.
Cummings is a high-profile critic of the Trump administration’s policies on the southern border and has criticized the conditions in detention facilities as well as the way that federal law enforcement has treated the migrants in their custody.
“Elijah Cummings is a brutal bully, shouting and screaming at the great men and women of Border Patrol about conditions at the Southern Border, when actually his Baltimore district is FAR WORSE and more dangerous,” President Trump tweeted a couple weeks ago.
Cummings called Trump’s dayslong tirade against himself and Baltimore a “distraction” from more important issues. “I want President Trump to come to my district,” said Cummings. “I will ride with him for hours … Baltimore is a beautiful city.”
