The fundamental right to seek asylum

Last summer I got a call
from a woman named Ellie,

and she had heard about
the family separations

at the southern border, and wanted
to know what she could do to help.

She told me this story

of her grandfather and his father.

When they were kids in Poland,

their father,

fearing for his son's safety,

gave them a little bit of money
and told them to walk west,

to just keep walking west across Europe,

and they did.

They walked all the way
west across Europe,

and they got on a boat
and they got to America.

Ellie said that when she heard
the stories of the teens

walking up across Mexico,

all she could think about
was her grandfather and his brother.

She said that for her, the stories
were exactly the same.

Those brothers were
the Hassenfeld Brothers,

the Hasbros.

The Hasbro toy company,
which of course brought us

Mr. Potato Head.

But that is not actually why
I'm telling you this story.

I'm telling you this story
because it made me think

about whether I would have the faith,

the courage, to send my teens,

and I have three of them,

on a journey like that.

Knowing that they wouldn't
be safe where we were,

would I be able to watch them go?

I started my career decades ago

at the southern US border working
with Central American asylum seekers,

and in the last 16 years,

I've been at HIAS,

the Jewish organization that fights
for refugee rights around the world,

as a lawyer and an advocate,

and one thing I've learned
is that sometimes

the things that we're told make us
safer and stronger actually don't.

And, in fact, some of these policies
have the opposite of the intended results,

and in the meantime cause tremendous
and unnecessary suffering.

So why are people showing up
at our southern border?

Most of the immigrants and refugees
that are coming to our southern border

are fleeing three countries:
Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador.

These countries are consistently ranked

among the most violent
countries in the world.

It's very difficult to be safe
in these countries,

let alone build a future
for yourself and your family.

And violence against
women and girls is pervasive.

People have been fleeing Central America

for generations.

Generations of refugees
have been coming to our shores,

fleeing the civil wars of the 1980s

in which the United States
was deeply involved.

This is nothing new.

What's new is that recently,
there's been a spike in families,

children of families,

showing up at checkpoints
and presenting themselves to seek asylum.

Now, this has been in the news lately,

so I want you to remember a few things
as you see those images.

One, this is not a historically high level
of interceptions at the southern border,

and, in fact, people are presenting
themselves at checkpoints.

Two, people are showing up
with the clothes on their backs;

some of them are literally in flip-flops.

And three, we're the most
powerful country in the world.

It's not a time to panic.

It's easy from the safety
of the destination country

to think in terms of absolutes.

Is it legal or is it illegal?

But the people who are wrestling
with these questions

and making these decisions
about their families

are thinking about
very different questions.

How do I keep my daughter safe?

How do I protect my son?

And if you want absolutes,

it's absolutely legal to seek asylum.

It is a fundamental right in our own laws
and in international law.

And in fact

(Applause)

it stems from the 1951 Refugee Convention,

which was the world's response
to the Holocaust,

and a way for countries to say never again
would we return people to countries

where they would harmed or killed.

There are several ways
refugees come to this country.

One is through the US Refugee
Admissions Program,

and through that program the US
identifies and selects refugees abroad

and brings them to the United States.

Last year, the US resettled fewer refugees

than at any time since
the program began in 1980,

and this year it'll probably be less.

And this is at a time when we have
more refugees in the world

than at any other time
in recorded history,

even since World War II.

Another way that refugees
come to this country is by seeking asylum.

Asylum seekers are people
who present themselves at a border

and say that they'll be persecuted
if they're sent back home.

An asylum seeker is simply somebody
who is going through the process

in the United States to prove
that they meet the refugee definition.

And it's never been
more difficult to seek asylum.

Border guards are telling people
When they show up at our borders

that our country's full,
that they simply can't apply.

This is unprecedented and illegal.

Under a new program

with the kind of Orwellian title
"Migrant Protection Protocols,"

refugees are told
they have to wait in Mexico

while their cases make their way
through the courts in the United States,

and this can take months or years.

Meanwhile, they're not safe

and they have no access to lawyers.

Our country, our government,
has detained over 3,000 children,

separating them from their parents' arms
as a deterrent from seeking asylum.

Many were toddlers,

and at least one was
a six-year old blind girl,

and this is still going on.

We spend billions to detain people
in what are virtually prisons

who have committed no crime.

And family separation has become
the hallmark of our immigration system.

That's a far cry from a shining city
on a hill or a beacon of hope

or all of the other ways we like to talk
about ourselves and our values.