At a pre-argument press conference hosted by Vice President Harris' campaign in Doral, Florida, on Wednesday night ahead of former President Trump's Univision town hall, three family members spoke about their forced separation at the hands of U.S. immigration authorities.
The event featured U.S. Rep. Veronica Escobar (D-Texas) and Harris Press Secretary Kevin Muñoz, who criticized the Trump administration's family separation policy and spoke about a 16-year-old who separated from her father in 2018 but later reunited with her father. I introduced Billy, a Guatemalan.
“After I ran to my dad, I hugged him and told him I never wanted anything like this to happen again, and he promised he would never leave me again,” Billy said. said.
“And even after that, we're still scared. We're going to therapists, but we're still scared that Trump will be re-elected and the same thing will happen again to me and other kids.” Yes, Kamala Harris helped us get back together, and she helped us become a family again, and this is happening to more children. I don't want it. I was separated, and so were my children.”
The Harris campaign has largely focused its immigration and border security messaging on enforcement, drawing some criticism from supporters seeking a sharp contrast with President Trump's increasingly tough rhetoric on immigration.
President Trump is expected to repeat the same message at a Univision event in Miami. He was originally scheduled to appear in court last week, but his appearance at City Hall was postponed due to Hurricane Milton.
Harris spoke at a Univision-sponsored town hall in Las Vegas last week, focusing her message on the economy and health care, and touting her immigration reform proposal ahead of the failure of a bipartisan Senate border security bill.
But Wednesday's event focused on the human impact of the Trump administration's “zero tolerance” policy, which has separated nearly 4,000 children from their parents for crossing the border without prior permission.
Two of the children who spoke Wednesday mentioned “la hierera,” or “icebox,” a slang term for a Customs and Border Protection (CBP) detention center.
“Hello, I'm Janice Adriana and I'm here to tell you my story. So when I was six years old, my mother and I decided to come to America to see my father again. But the immigration authorities locked us up in a place called La Hierera (which means icebox), and it was really cold and there were no beds or anything to use. And then it was empty. , they said they were going to separate me and my mother, and then all the bad things started happening,” Janice Adriana said.
Two brothers, Christian, 12, and Hamilton, 13, spoke about their experiences in foster care.
“She wouldn't let us eat in the dining room, the kitchen, only bring food to the room where we slept, and then she would take us to the park to have fun. But we weren't having fun, we were thinking about our mother, and the woman told us to speak Spanish, and we lost our language. [from] Guatemala, Cuanjoal, we lost it,” Christian said.
“And now we're back with our mom. We looked at her, we hugged her, we were crying, and then we started laughing for a little while.”
The Harris campaign's focus on President Trump's unpopular border policies comes as both campaigns aim to win over large numbers of Hispanic voters in each battleground state.
It's also part of Harris' attempt to portray President Trump as dangerous and unstable, a portrayal that has been difficult to stick with a candidate with near-universal name recognition.
“We are holding this press conference because we want to remind Americans of what Donald Trump has done to our country, not just at the border. We know it's broken, and as border residents, I can tell you that no one knows that our immigration system is broken more than those of us who live and work on the U.S.-Mexico border. We have been instrumental in immigration reform for decades,” Escobar said.
“But what Donald Trump offers is not a solution. Donald Trump doesn't bring policy ideas to the table. Donald Trump didn't fix a broken system. In fact, Donald Trump did The thing is, he takes a broken system and erases it. He uses brutality as American public policy. He dehumanizes immigrants in the most vile way. , calling people the most offensive names, using the most racist and ugly attacks, and you never hear Donald Trump talk about how to reform our outdated immigration laws.
