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Rashida Tlaib's Public Statements

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07/28/2019 CNN "State of the Union" - Transcript: Interview with Rep. Rashida Tlaib
07/15/2019 CNN "The Situation Room" - Transcript: Interview with Rep. Rashida Tlaib
07/03/2019 CNN "The Situation Room" - Transcript: Interview with Rep. Rashida Tlaib
07/02/2019 MSNBC "All In with Chris Hayes" - Transcript: "HAYES: Here with me now House Oversight Committee member and Democratic Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib of Michigan who`s among members who toured several border facilities yesterday. Congresswoman, how does what`s described in that IG report compared with what you witnessed firsthand yesterday? TLAIB: I think many of my colleagues when we walked in, we had heard the rumors, we had saw the media reports, but we actually saw firsthand some of the conditions, but we actually were able to speak to women some up to 40 days that have been in the facility not access to showers and so forth, but also the trauma that has been created. Many of them not knowing what`s going to happen, not knowing where their children is. I talked to a grandmother who`s been there for 40 days, had not seen her grandchild she came with, doesn`t know where she -- where he is. And another woman who`s 30 years old found out she was pregnant while she was there, has not seen an OB/GYN. She`s been there for 27 days. She doesn`t know how far along she is. But you also -- what you saw in the eyes of many of them is fear, is the sense of loss, just glassy eyes, they look exhausted. And one of the things that I noticed is just holding their hands in those moments of realizing that even that moment that human contact made them feel at least a little bit more whole because of the treatment that they are enduring while in custody while in our care in the United States of America. And I can tell you seeing the children through glass door -- and they knew we were coming. I mean, we went to a facility Clint, Texas where there was 700 children in this facility two months ago. We get there, there`s only 25 children. We`ve been told that they move people around consistently maybe to avoid any kind of further inspection but I`m wondering how do you move 675 children in two months. Where did they go? You know, the current administration continues, continues to deny access to information. The subpoena bipartisan supported through oversight that we issued to the administration has yet to be abided by. They completely obstruct any kind of access to information. And that`s the problem is I don`t want to wait a year or two years to find out about the other horrors that we yet to have to know about where the children are. And we`re not talking about a few hundred, we`re talking about thousands. I`ve heard up to 16,000 to 20,000 children have been separated from their parents. The other thing too is really important as I was there and it was my colleagues all agreed is we`ve been focused so much on the children, that meeting the parents, meeting the abuela, meeting the father, they looked right in the eye. I mean, we are also not giving justice to this travesty that is happening at the border if we`re not also understanding the human impact on the parents. HAYES: I just wanted -- that number 16,000 and 20,000 children, those -- I`ve never heard that number as the number separated. The number they gave the administration was 2,000. It could be thousands more. Do you mean unaccompanied minors? What do you mean by that? TLAIB: Unaccompanied. So they said up to 14,000 at the last time I heard from Oversight Committee staff of children that again we don`t have accessed the information. These are rumors that we understand from the fact that the policy when it was put into place, how many children were directly impacted. Again, in this one facility, there were 675 more children that were there two months ago, now we don`t know where these children are. I don`t know how you move that many children, again, without their parents. Even the CBP agents that we`re giving us a tour did not know where the children went. Many of them couldn`t answer some basic questions of when`s the last time they`ve seen a doctor, how long have they been in the facility. That alone tells you that there is complete chaos. And many of them, all of them actually, every single one I asked specifically from the chief town that gave us the tour said throwing money at this is not going to fix the problem. And that`s one of the key things that needs to be really pushed forward is when the administration asks us to continue to fund the separation of families, continue to fund these camps at the border, I`m asking many of my colleagues, many people to say enough. We need real policy change to actually bring humanity back into this situation. We need immigration reform. HAYES: All right. So if money is not the solution, clearly something`s broken here. What is the solution? TLAIB: I mean, the solution is to talk about discontinuing, completely abolishing the camps. So that means no separation of families. That means let`s go by the legal process of asylum. If you`re coming to the border and you seek asylum, let`s go through those legal processes. Let`s talk about the fact that there are standards and those Flores standards. Each place that has any child should go through these what they call the Flores standard where they have to be processed, they have to see care, that they actually are given the basic standard of human rights that any person should be given. These are the things that are not happening. The for-profit industry has their teeth into this. You know, 75 out of 100 detainees are going to for- profit agencies and companies. To be honest, these are for-profit corporations, many of which support this current president, many of which supported an inauguration committee. We have to follow the money and show that that`s what`s fueling the continuation to look the other way, and that`s something that many of my colleagues when we got there we said we`re not going to look the other way. We`re going to expose the fact that this is broken system and throwing money at it is not the solution. That is something that it needs to be very, very clear to my Democratic and Republican colleagues in the -- in the Congress. HAYES: But respectfully just on the final -- the final point here, but respectfully the private contractors that are -- that are dealing with some of the housing the immigrants are coming through, that`s not the CBP facilities. I just want to be clear like the facilities that you`re touring, those are the government ones that where -- it does see the most acute and worst humanitarian crisis is taking place. TLAIB: Absolutely. And that`s one of the things the agent said to us as they went through is you know go see these HHS facilities, go find out where those children are because they don`t know. But what they do know is that they are given this problem, this crisis -- literally handed hundreds and thousands of people all at once and the facility that we were even in, they said we can only really house -- it`s only built for 106 and it wasn`t built to house children. HAYES: Right. TLAIB: It wasn`t -- you know, they said look, we weren`t trained to be social workers or medical care workers. We were not trained to deal with the situation. And that`s the problem is that we haven`t actually dealt with the thing that created the crisis which is this continuation of the separation policy that is un-humane and un-American. HAYES: All right, Congressman Rashida Tlaib, thank you for making the time."
05/26/2019 NBC "Meet the Press" - Transcript: Interview Rep. Rashida Tlaib
04/22/2019 MSNBC "All in with Chris Hayes" - Transcript: Interview with Rep. Rashida Tlaib
03/17/2019 CNN "State of the Union" - Transcript: Interview With Rep. Rashida Tlaib
02/28/2019 MSNBC "All in with Chris Hayes" - Transcript: Interview with Rep. Rashida Tlaib
01/16/2019 MSNBC "All in with Chris Hayes" - Transcript: Interview with Rep. Rashida Tlaib
01/08/2019 CNN "Erin Burnett Outfront" - Transcript: Interview with Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib of Michigan
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