Lawmakers are taking action to try and secure access to detainment facilities in which children separated from their parents at the border are being held, as Democrats have complained in recent weeks about being barred from entry as they seek to draw attention to President Trump’s zero tolerance immigration policy.
Legislation introduced in the House would allow members of Congress to “visit the facilities during reasonable hours, and also ensure press access, by allowing media to accompany them on these essential inspections,” a press release from Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., announced on Thursday.
The Congressional Access to Children’s Detention Facilities Act is a companion bill to one introduced in the Senate by Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., to ensure congressional oversight.
“The American people were horrified by the separation of immigrant children from their parents, and to think these children would suffer further indignities under the care of our government is deeply disturbing,” Wasserman Schultz said in a statement.
She claimed in her initial attempt to visit a migrant child facility, Trump administration officials “wrongly prevented” entry.
Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a congresswoman from Florida, was a Republican co-sponsor of the bill.
Earlier this month, Merkley filmed himself being greeted by police after attempting to enter an immigration detention facility, where he claimed he was “trying to get answers” about migrant children who have been separated from their parents by the Office of Refugee Resettlement. The Oregon senator later claimed that he witnessed “hundreds of children locked up in cages” at a separate facility in McAllen, Texas.
White House officials then tore into Merkley for “irresponsibly spreading blatant lies.”
Wasserman Schultz was also blocked from entering immigrant children shelter in Homestead, Fla.
President Trump took executive action last week in an effort to stop separating family units apprehended between ports, a byproduct of prosecuting parents for illegally entering the U.S.
A federal judge in California on Tuesday ruled against the Trump administration over family separations, ordering immigration officials to stop separating immigrant parents from their children. U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw issued a preliminary injunction ordering the reunification of parents with children under the age of 5 within 14 days. Parents with children over the age of 5 must be reunited within 30 days.
