Connecticut Delegation Sees Family Separation Crisis At The Border First Hand

Several members of Connecticut’s congressional delegation are calling on the Trump administration to step up efforts to reunite families separated as they crossed the southern U.S. border. 

Senator Richard Blumenthal was among lawmakers who visited detention facilities in Texas where children are currently being held. He spoke outside the border patrol station in El Paso, saying the human cost is severe.

“This so-called plan is really no plan at all," he said in a video released on Twitter. "There is no strategy, no plan to reunify the children with their parents, and what we have here is utter chaos and confusion.”

Blumenthal has written to Defense Secretary James Mattis, calling the incarceration of immigrant children on military bases immoral and unlawful.

Meanwhile, four Connecticut representatives joined a Democratic delegation touring immigration control facilities. The group went to see where unaccompanied migrant children and families are being detained as a result of the president's recent immigration policies.

Fifth District Congresswoman Elizabeth Esty, speaking outside a Customs and Border Patrol processing center in McAllen, Texas on Saturday, called the situation a humanitarian crisis, and said she sympathized with border patrol agents.

“These agents are concerned and confused," she said. "They are public servants trying to do their job. We need consistency and compassion out of this administration. And to work with us to solve this problem.”

Third District Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro said they also need information about how the Trump administration is planning on reuniting families.

“Where is the plan, where is the list of the names, their names, where they are from, where they are going, what shelters they are in?” she asked.

The Second District's Joe Courtney and the Fourth District's Jim Himes also joined the delegation on the two-day tour.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security released a statement saying that there is a coordinated process in place to reunite families and that the government knows the location of the more than 2,000 children in its custody.