Audiencia sobre inmigración centra atención en demócratas
New Details on Separated Children as House Liberals Testify
WASHINGTON (AP) — Cuatro nuevos legisladores demócratas que reportaron condiciones deplorables en centros de detención para migrantes serán el centro de atención en una audiencia en el Congreso, en medio de fuertes tensiones partidistas en torno a las políticas migratorias del presidente Donald Trump.
La audiencia del viernes de la Comisión para la Supervisión y Reforma del Gobierno ocurre en momentos en que numerosas familias, menores de edad y otros migrantes al entrar desde México han abrumado las capacidades de las autoridades estadounidenses para alojarlos debidamente.
Republicanos y demócratas están enfrascados en una amarga batalla política sobre el tratamiento que se le da a los migrantes, cuya cantidad recientemente superó 100.000 mensual, y los demócratas progresistas acusan a los moderados de ser demasiado dóciles ante los republicanos sobre el tema.
Los cuatro demócratas, entre ellos la representante por Nueva York Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, estaban en un grupo de legisladores que visitaron instalaciones en Texas la semana pasada. En la visita estaba incluida una instalación en El Paso, donde según los legisladores, había numerosas mujeres abarrotadas en una celda sin agua corriente.
“Era palpable, cuando uno camina dentro de esa celda, uno siente el sufrimiento, el trauma y el miedo”, declaró la representante Ayanna Pressley el jueves.
Los demócratas acusan a Trump y a los republicanos de aplicar políticas crueles hacia los migrantes intencionalmente, a fin de desanimar la inmigración ilegal. Trump ha dicho que algunos migrantes que han huido de Centroamérica “viven ahora mucho mejor” en los centros de detención que según él “son administrados maravillosamente”. Sin embargo, legisladores, abogados, periodistas e incluso inspectores del propio gobierno han reportado condiciones insalubres.
English:
WASHINGTON (AP) — Democrats revealed distressing new details Friday about migrant children separated from families as four of the party’s star freshmen prepared to tell a House committee about the squalid conditions they saw at migrant detention stations at the U.S.-Mexico border.
Friday’s House Oversight and Reform Committee hearing was coming with partisan and internal Democratic tensions running high over President Donald Trump’s hard-line immigration policies. That friction was likely to increase further after the panel’s Democrats released a report on 2,648 of the children the Trump administration separated from their families last year before abandoning that policy under widespread pressure.
The report, based on data the panel demanded from federal agencies, found that 18 children under age 2 — half who were just months old — were kept from their parents up to half a year. Hundreds were held longer than previously revealed, including 25 kept over a year, and at least 30 remain apart from their parents.
The figures reflected “a deliberate, unnecessary and cruel choice by President Trump and his administration,” the report said.
The four Democrats testifying Friday, including progressive firebrand Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., were among a larger group of House members who visited three Texas border stations last week . That included one in El Paso, where lawmakers said they saw women packed into stuffed cells without running water.
“It was just palpable walking into that cell, you just felt suffering and trauma and fear,” Rep. Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., said Thursday, ahead of her testimony.
Democrats accuse Trump of tolerating badly overcrowded and putrid holding facilities in a purposeful effort to discourage future immigrants. Trump has said many migrants who’ve fled Central American are “living far better” in detention centers than they were at home and has said the stations are “run beautifully,” though visiting lawmakers, attorneys, journalists and the government’s own inspectors have reported foul conditions.
