Message from Oregon’s U.S. Senator Jeff Merkley:
Thank you all for coming out
today!
For generations, one of the
best-known symbols of our country, the Statue of Liberty, has shined as a
beacon to the world’s downtrodden. Inscribed on her base are the words:
“From her beacon-hand
glows world-wide welcome…
Give me your tired, your
poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of
your teaming shore.
Send these, the homeless,
tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the
golden door!”
But over the past several
weeks, the world has watched America turn its back on those words and shut that
golden door. Under the Trump Administration’s “zero-tolerance” policy, families
along our southern border—the tired, poor, tempest-tost, fleeing violence and
persecution—have been met with inhumane cruelty as children are ripped from the
arms of their parents.
We have all seen the photos
of the cages, the floor mats, the Mylar space blankets at the processing center
in McAllen, Texas. We have seen the images of six young boys sharing rooms
meant for four at the Brownsville detention center. We have listened to the
recording of young children wailing for their parents. We have read the
heart-wrenching stories of desperate parents who have no idea where their
children are, nor when or if they might see them again.
To justify his cruel policy,
President Trump has presented the American people with a false choice: Either
you are for closing off our borders and inflicting harm on innocent
children as a deterrent to the world’s asylum-seekers; or you are for
completely open borders, thereby risking the lives of the innocent Americans.
That is just wrong. That is a
false choice. And this false choice is insulting to the American people.
Through President Trump’s
misinformation and false choices, Americans said loud and clear, this is what
we know: We know that that is not who we are as Americans. We know that we do
not use cruelty, especially against innocent children, as a weapon. We know
that we are better than that.
That’s why over the past few
weeks, public outrage grew to a point that even President Trump could not
ignore. It was that public outcry—YOUR voices, YOUR action, YOUR pressure—that
forced President Trump to sign an executive order halting his cruel policy—a
policy that his team said did not exist, and that he claimed Congress alone had
the power to end.
But this story of cruelty and
terror did not end with the president’s executive order. In fact, that order
has created even more chaos in its wake. Thousands of children are still
separated from their parents, with no plan to reunite them. And the
administration’s “zero-humanity” policy might now be replaced by “Handcuffs for
All,” as the Trump Administration now proposes to throw entire families in
jail, possibly on military bases and in internment camps out in the desert.
Once again, we need YOUR
voices, YOUR action, YOUR pressure to send a clear message to the president and
his administration: Like “zero-humanity,” we will not let “Handcuffs for All”
stand. Our top priority needs to be ending this unnecessary cruelty and
reuniting thousands of girls and boys with their parents. We must put these
families back together and give them the opportunity to make their case for
asylum. We must restore the vision of Lady Liberty.
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