Appearing Tuesday on CNN’s New Day, Rep. Karen Bass (D-CA) made claims similar to claims made by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), accusing the Trump administration of torturing migrant children housed in detention centers at the U.S.-Mexico border.
A partial transcript is as follows:
ALISYN CAMEROTA: Some of the watchdogs have gone down, different professors say from universities that have gone down and interviewed these kids. Let me read to you one of their assessments. Listen to this. “A bracelet on a second graders wrist had the words ‘U.S. parent’ and a phone number written in permanent marker. We called the number on the spot and found that no one had informed her desperate parents where she was being held. The most emotional moments of our visit came witnessing children speak for the first time with their parents on an attorney’s phone.” So yes, children are still being separated.
REP. KAREN BASS: This is a human rights abuse. This is such a stain on our country. I have spent the last 20-plus years working to transform our nation’s child welfare system. And this is a situation, like my tweet said, if any parent did anything that is going on on the border, the children would literally be taken away and put in foster care. You can’t tell me that this problem cannot be solved. You remember that President Trump just a few days ago said, he was going to cancel education, cancel recreation, cancel the hygiene needs. This was deliberate. How dare you torture children to try to get a compromise out of Democrats. And I am sorry, but hearing about children walking around in soiled diapers, hearing about children taking care of toddlers, you are talking about straight up child abuse, and I think that this needs to be condemned internationally, frankly.