{"id":656813,"date":"2018-12-15T15:39:17","date_gmt":"2018-12-15T22:39:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/?p=656813"},"modified":"2018-12-15T15:39:17","modified_gmt":"2018-12-15T22:39:17","slug":"orourke-other-dems-urge-public-to-keep-tornillo-migrant-facility-in-spotlight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2018\/12\/orourke-other-dems-urge-public-to-keep-tornillo-migrant-facility-in-spotlight\/","title":{"rendered":"O&#8217;Rourke, other Dems urge public to keep Tornillo migrant facility in spotlight"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_656818\"  class=\"wp-caption module image alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 771px;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-656818\" src=\"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/Beto_in_Torillo_Dec_15_IPA_TT-771x517.jpg\" alt=\"Beto O'Rourke\" width=\"771\" height=\"517\" srcset=\"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/Beto_in_Torillo_Dec_15_IPA_TT-771x517.jpg 771w, https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/Beto_in_Torillo_Dec_15_IPA_TT-336x225.jpg 336w, https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/Beto_in_Torillo_Dec_15_IPA_TT-768x515.jpg 768w, https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/Beto_in_Torillo_Dec_15_IPA_TT.jpg 850w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 771px) 100vw, 771px\" \/><p class=\"wp-media-credit\">Ivan Pierre Aguirre \/ for the Texas Tribune<\/p><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">U.S. Rep. Beto O&#8217;Rourke, D-Texas, flanked by U.S. Sens. Tina Smith, D-Minnesota (left) and Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, speaks to the news media after touring the tent city that holds thousands of immigrant children in Tornillo, Texas on Saturday.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>TORNILLO, Texas \u2013 It\u2019s been six months since a group of lawmakers first joined hundreds of people here to protest an immigration facility for undocumented minors that had been erected just days earlier in this small farming community.<\/p>\n<p>Since then, President Donald Trump\u2019s administration has tried to deter immigrants from seeking asylum through executive orders and increased <a href=\"https:\/\/www.texastribune.org\/2018\/06\/20\/immigrant-families-asylum-seeking-border-aclu-el-paso\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">enforcement<\/a> at ports of entry, deployed active duty troops to the border and asked the U.S. Supreme Court to <a href=\"https:\/\/thehill.com\/regulation\/court-battles\/415075-trump-administration-asks-supreme-court-to-hear-daca-case-ahead-of\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">finally eliminate<\/a> the Obama-era program known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA.<\/p>\n<p>In that same time period however, the population at the detention center has quietly swelled from a few hundred to about 2,800, according to the U.S. Rep. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.texastribune.org\/directory\/beto-orourke\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Beto O\u2019Rourke<\/a>. The El Paso Democrat returned to Tornillo on Saturday to lead a delegation of lawmakers to tour the facility and try to find out what\u2019s next for the juveniles being held there.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"module align-left half type-aside\">\n<h3>About this article<\/h3>\n<p>This article originally appeared in\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.texastribune.org\/2018\/12\/15\/beto-orourke-democrats-tornillo\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">The Texas Tribune<\/a>,\u00a0a nonpartisan, nonprofit media organization that informs Texans and engages with them about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.<\/p>\n<\/aside>\n<p>But the group was also there to deliver a message to the immigrant rights groups and their supporters in attendance: Don\u2019t let up.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe public pressure that you brought to bear after Father\u2019s Day, that ended the practice of family separation. We need that same pressure again brought to bear on this administration to close down Tornillo,\u201d O\u2019Rourke said, referring to the former federal policy that resulted in undocumented immigrant children being separated from their parents. The policy was later halted after a public outcry.<\/p>\n<p>The detention center at Tornillo, referred to as a \u201ctent city&#8221; by critics, was originally thought to be a temporary fix that wouldn\u2019t be needed for more than 30 days. That&#8217;s what the incident commander that oversees operations there said in June. But the contract with the facility operators has been extended several times since, costing taxpayers about $144 million through November.<\/p>\n<p>The other members of Congress who toured the facility with O\u2019Rourke \u2013 U.S. Sens. Mazie Hirono of Hawaii, Tina Smith of Minnesota, Jeff Merkley of Oregon and U.S. Rep. Judy Chu of California, all Democrats \u2013 said about 800 children at the facility had sponsors ready and waiting to receive them. But Hirono said those sponsors are still undergoing background checks and fingerprinting before those children are released.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s doing two things: It\u2019s creating tremendous delay in approving these sponsors,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd I think it has a chilling effect on sponsors coming forward because this information, and many of the sponsors are undocumented, is shared with [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] &#8212; and what ICE does is deport people.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>O\u2019Rourke said 170 of those potential sponsors have been arrested, and the majority of those had no criminal history.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>\u201cMy request of the contactor was not to renew the contract unless HHS stops sharing information with ICE,\u201d O\u2019Rourke said. \u201cThere is no reason to spend $144 million going forward and to keep these kids locked up.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The current contract is set to expire on Dec. 31. O\u2019Rourke said it\u2019s unclear what will happen to the children there if it isn\u2019t renewed.<\/p>\n<p>Officials from the federal Health and Human Services agency, which overseee the Trump administration&#8217;s policies for unaccompanied minors, said in an email it does not monitor its media-request email on holidays or weekends. But an agency fact sheet about Tornillo confirmed there are about 2,800 minors at the facility, 21 percent of them female. Since it was erected, about 6,000 children have been placed there and more than 3,100 have been released.<\/p>\n<p>Following the November elections, Democrats are weeks away from taking control of the U.S. House. Some expect to use that power in part to demand more oversight of the Tornillo facility should it continue operating into 2019.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen we take over the [U.S.] House on January 3rd, I want to make sure that one of the first things we do is have a hearing on this situation,\u201d Chu said. \u201cThe American public doesn\u2019t know how outrageous this is.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Merkley said a bill has been filed in the U.S. Senate that would guarantee lawmakers access to detention facilities for oversight in one day. Lawmakers sometimes have had to wait weeks before being granted permission to visit Tornillo, he said.<\/p>\n<p>O\u2019Rourke won&#8217;t be part of any of those efforts in Congress. He is set to leave office in less than a month after choosing to give up his seat to unsuccessfully challenge U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz. But his successor, El Paso Democrat Veronica Escobar, made clear Saturday that she\u2019s happy to continue O\u2019Rourke\u2019s efforts to keep the issue in the spotlight until Tornillo is shut down.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s all about the 24-hour news cycle, it\u2019s all about the next piece of information, it\u2019s all about the next scandal coming from the White House,\u201d she told the crowd. \u201cWhile we have to pay attention to all of that, we cannot forget the children that are being held in U.S. government prisons for having the audacity to seek refuge in the arms of America.\u201d<script src=\"https:\/\/dot.texastribune.org\/static\/dist\/dot.min.55eef7d282ec435600d1.js\" integrity=\"sha384-kWHbWWrJHsBy04\/FLYpSF8whX7iznTaWu7KCwxjA7qmPD3La29VFha61MJDfKQ+e\" crossorigin=\"anonymous\" data-tt-canonical=\"https:\/\/www.texastribune.org\/2018\/12\/15\/beto-orourke-democrats-tornillo\/\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The population at the detention center for migrant children has swelled from a few hundred to about 2,800 in about six months.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":656818,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[140,234],"class_list":["post-656813","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-and-analysis","tag-border-and-immigration","tag-children","prominence-top-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656813","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=656813"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656813\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":656825,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656813\/revisions\/656825"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/656818"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=656813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=656813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=656813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}