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For over 40 years, I've been
a clinical social worker
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and a developmental psychologist,
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and it seemed almost natural
for me to go into the helping professions.
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My parents had taught me
to do good for others.
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And so I devoted my career
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to working with families
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in some of the toughest circumstances:
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poverty, mental illness,
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immigration, refugees.
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And for all those years,
I've worked with hope and with optimism.
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In the past five years, though,
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my hope and my optimism
have been put to the test.
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I've been so deeply disappointed
in the way the United States government
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is treating families
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who are coming to our Southern border
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asking for asylum,
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desperate parents with children
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from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras
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who only want to bring their kids
to safety and security.
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They are fleeing some of
the worst violence in the world.
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They've been attacked by gangs,
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assaulted, raped, extorted, threatened.
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They have faced death,
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and they can't turn to their police
because the police are complicit,
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corrupt, ineffective.
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Then they get to our border,
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and we put them in detention centers,
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prisons, as if they were common criminals.
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Back in 2014, I met some of
the first children in detention centers,
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and I wept.
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I sat in my car afterwards and I cried.
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I was seeing some of the worst
suffering I'd ever known,
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and it went against everything
I believed in my country,
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the rule of law,
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and everything my parents taught me.
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The way the United States has handled
the immigrants seeking asylum
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over the past five years, it's wrong,
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just simply wrong.
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Tonight I want to tell you
that children in immigration detention
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are being traumatized,
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and we are causing the trauma.
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We in America,
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actually those of us here tonight,
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will not necessarily be on the same page
with respect to immigration.
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We'll disagree on how we're going
to handle all those people
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who want to come to our country.
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Frankly, it doesn't matter to me
where you're a Republican or a Democrat,
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liberal or conservative.
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I want secure borders.
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I also want to keep the bad actors out.
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I want national security.
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And of course, you'll have your ideas
about those topics too.
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But I think we can agree
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that America should not be doing harm.
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The government, the state, should not
be in the business of hurting children.
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It should be protecting them,
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no matter whose children they are:
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your children, my grandchildren,
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and the children of families
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just looking for asylum.
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Now, I could tell you story after story
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of children who have witnessed
some of the worst violence in the world
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and are now sitting in detention,
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but two little boys have stayed with me
over these past five years.
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One of them was Danny.
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Danny is seven and a half years old
when I met him in a detention center
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in Karnes City, Texas back in 2014.
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He was there with his mother and
his brother and they had fled Honduras.
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You know, Danny is one of these kids
that you get to love instantly.
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He is funny, he's innocent,
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he's charming and very expressive,
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and he's drawing pictures for me,
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and one of the pictures he drew for me
was of the ??.
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The ??: this is the name
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that they gave to gangs
in the town that he was in.
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I said to Danny,
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"Danny, what makes them bad guys?"
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Danny looked at me with puzzlement.
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I mean, the look was more like,
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"Are you clueless or just stupid?"
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(Laughter)
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He leaned in and he whispered,
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"Don't you see?
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They smoke cigarettes."
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(Laughter)
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"And they drink beer."
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Danny had learned of course
about the evils of drinking and smoking.
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Then he said, "And they carry guns."
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In one of the pictures,
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the stick figures of the ??
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are shooting at birds and at people.
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Danny told me about the day his uncle
was killed by those ??
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and how he ran from his house
to his uncle's farmhouse
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only to see his uncle's dead body,
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his face disfigured by bullets.
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And Danny told me he saw his uncle's teeth
coming out the back of his head.
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He was only six at the time.
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Sometime after that,
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one of those ??
beat little Danny badly, severely,
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and that's when his parents said,
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"We have got to leave
or they will kill us."
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So they set out,
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but Danny's father was
a single-leg amputee with a crutch,
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and he couldn't manage the rugged terrain.
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So he said to his wife,
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"Go without me. Take our boys.
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Save our boys."
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So Mom and the boys set off.
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Danny told me he looked back,
said goodbye to his father,
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looked back a couple of times
until he lost sight of his father,
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and in detention he had not
heard from his father.
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And it's very likely that his father
was killed by the ??
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because he had tried to flee.
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I can't forget Danny.
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The other boy was Fernando.
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Now, Fernando was in
the same detention center,
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roughly the same age as Danny.
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Fernando was telling me about
the 24 hours he spent
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in isolation with his mother
in the detention center,
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placed there because his mother
had led a hunger strike
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among the mothers in the detention center,
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and now she was cracking
under the pressure of the guards
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who were threatening and being
very abusive towards her and Fernando.
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As Fernando and I are talking
in the small office,
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his mother burst in,
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and she says, "They hear you!
They're listening to you."
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And she dropped to her hands and knees,
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and she began to look under the table,
groping under all the chairs.
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She looked at the electric sockets,
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at the corner of the room,
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the floor, the corner of the ceiling,
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at the lamp, at the air vent, looking
for hidden microphones and cameras.
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I watched Fernando
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as he watched his mother spiral
into this paranoid state.
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I looked in his eyes
and I saw utter terror.
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After all, who would take care
of him if she couldn't?
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It was just the two of them.
They only had each other.
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I could tell you story after story,
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but I haven't forgotten Fernando.
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And I know something about
what that kind of trauma,
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stress and adversity does to children.
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So I'm going to get clinical
with you for a moment,
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and I'm going to be
the professor that I am.
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Under prolonged and intense stress,
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trauma, hardship, adversity,
harsh conditions,
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the developing brain is harmed,
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plain and simple.
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Its wiring and its architecture
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are damaged.
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The child's natural stress
response system is affected.
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It's weakened of its protective factors.
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Regions of the brain
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that are associated with cognition,
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intellectual abilities,
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judgment, trust, self-regulation,
social interaction, are weakened,
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sometimes permanently.
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That impairs children's future.
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We also know that under stress,
the child's immune system is suppressed,
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making them susceptible to infections.
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Chronic illnesses like diabetes,
asthma, cardiovascular disease,
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will follow those children into adulthood
and likely shorten their lives.
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Mental health problems are linked
to the breakdown of the body.
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I have seen children in detention
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who have recurrent
and disturbing nightmares,
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night terrors,
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depression and anxiety,
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dissociative reactions,
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hopelessness, suicidal thinking,
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and post-traumatic stress disorders.
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And they regress in their behavior,
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like the 11-year old boy
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who began to wet his bed again
after years of continence,
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and the eight-year old girl
who is buckling under the pressure
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and was insisting
that her mother breastfeed her.
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That is what detention does to children.
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Now, you may ask,
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what do we do?
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What should our government do?
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Well, I'm just a mental
health professional,
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so all I really know is about
children's health and development.
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But I have some ideas.
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First, we need to reframe our practices.
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We need to replace fear and hostility
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with safety and compassion.
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We need to tear down the prison walls,
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the barbed wire, take away the cages.
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Instead of prison, or prisons,
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we should create orderly
asylum processing centers,
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campus-like communities
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where children and families
can live together.
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We could take old motels,
old army barracks,
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refit them so that children and parents
can live as family units
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in some safety and normality,
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where kids can run around.
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In these processing centers,
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pediatricians, family doctors,
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dentists and nurses,
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would be screening, examining,
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treating and immunizing children,
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creating records that will follow them
to their next medical provider.
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Social workers would be conducting
mental health evaluations
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and providing treatment
for those who need it.
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Those social workers
would be connecting families
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to services that they're going
to need, wherever they're headed.
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And teachers would be teaching
and testing children
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and documenting their learning
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so that the teachers at the next school
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can continue those children's education.
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There's a lot more that we could do
in these processing centers,
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a lot more.
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And you probably are thinking,
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this is pie-in-the-sky stuff.
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Can't blame you.
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Well, let me tell you that refugee camps
all over the world are holding families
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like those in our detention centers,
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and some of those refugee camps
are getting it right
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far better than we are.
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The United Nations has issued reports
describing refugee camps
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that protect children's
health and development.
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Children and parents live in family units
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and clusters of families
are housed together.
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Parents are given work permits
so they can earn some money,
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they're given food vouchers
so they can go to the local stores
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and shop.
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Mothers are brought together
to cook healthy meals for the children,
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and children go to school
every day and are taught.
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Afterwards, after school,
they go home and they ride bikes,
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hang out with friends,
do homework, and explore the world,
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all the essentials for child development.
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We can get it right.
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We have the resources to get it right.
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What we need is the will
and the insistence of Americans
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that we treat children humanely.
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You know, I can't forget
Danny or Fernando.
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I wonder where they are today,
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and I pray that they
are healthy and happy.
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They are only two
of the many children I met,
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and of the thousands we know about
who have been in detention.
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I may be saddened
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by what's happened to the children,
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but I'm inspired by them.
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I may cry, as I did,
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but I admire those children's strength.
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They keep alive my hope
and my optimism in the work I do.
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So while we may differ
on our approach to immigration,
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we should be treating children
with dignity and respect.
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We should be treating children
with dignity and respect.
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We should do right by them.
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If we do,
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we can prepare those children
who remain in the United States,
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prepare them to become productive,
engaged members of our society.
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And those who will return to their
countries whether voluntarily or not
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will be prepared to become the teachers,
the merchants, the leaders
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in their country.
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And I hope together
all of those children and parents
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could give testimony to the world
about the goodness of our country
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and our values.
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But we have to get it right.
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So we can agree
to disagree on immigration,
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but I hope we can agree on one thing,
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that none of us wants to look back
at this moment in our history,
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when we knew we were inflicting
lifelong trauma on children,
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and that we sat back and did nothing.
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That would be the greatest tragedy of all.
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Thank you.
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(Applause)