[W]ASHINGTON — Rep. Peter Welch will travel to the southwest border to investigate a new immigration policy that has resulted in the separation of thousands of children from their parents.
The Vermont Democrat joins a delegation of half a dozen other lawmakers on the trip to Texas on Sunday.
The numbers of immigrant children held by the government separately from their parents has skyrocketed recently since the Trump administration adopted a new policy of “zero tolerance” for illegal entry into the country.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced last month that all illegal entry cases would be referred for criminal prosecution, which has led to separation of children from parents because the parents are imprisoned.
The Associated Press reported Friday that the number of children separated from their parents has reached almost 2,000.
Welch called the situation a “national disgrace” in a statement announcing his trip.
“It is not the American way and it cannot stand. Congress must step in and end it before more children are harmed,” he said.
The group, all Democrats, tentatively plans to visit multiple sites near the border, including a former Walmart in Brownsville that is currently serving as a shelter for 1,500 children who were caught by authorities crossing the border illegally.
Anger has mounted among Democrats on Capitol Hill and across the country at the new practice.
Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., sharply condemned the policy at a Senate Judiciary meeting Thursday.
“We have to ask, where’s our soul, where’s our soul as a country?” he said.
He built on remarks from California Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein that with the new policy, the country has “reached a depth of immorality I never thought possible.”
Leahy and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., are both cosponsors of a measure introduced by Feinstein that would block federal agents from separating children from parents at or near the border.
Sanders has called the new policy “heartless.”
The Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy of separating children, including infants as young as one year old, from their parents at the border is inhumane, cruel and an affront to our values as Americans.
— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) June 13, 2018
While a spokesperson for Customs and Border Patrol said Friday the new “zero tolerance” instruction is “a nationwide policy,” the top federal prosecutor in Vermont said that northern border illegal entries are not subject to the same standards as those in the Southwest.
U.S. Attorney for Vermont Christina Nolan said Friday that the “zero tolerance” directive is not in place for her office, which handles cases of people entering the country illegally through Vermont’s northern border.
Nolan said her office can use discretion in handling different cases as they arise.
“We don’t have the same set of directives at this point,” she said.
Nolan said that cases of families apprehended crossing the northern border between ports of entry are very rare. She could not recall a recent instance.
If a case did arise, prosecutors would decide how to handle it based on a number of factors. The presence of children in the family would be one consideration, she said.
“We have to think about what our priorities are and triage our resources accordingly,” she said.
