Interview: Rep. Madeleine Dean at Border Detention Facilities

“They slid a note, children with a note under the door and said, ‘How can we help you?'”

On July 1, Rep. Madeleine Dean (D-Pa.) joined a group of congressional Democrats visiting border detention facilities in El Paso and Clint, Texas. The trip was organized by the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and was attended by approximately a dozen members of Congress. The trip came at the same time as a report was released by ProPublica indicating that a number of Border Patrol agents, both current and former, had been part of a Facebook group where they made sexually charged comments about certain female members of Congress—and also joked about the deaths of some migrants. Rep. Dean called in to Merion West’s Erich Prince from the airport after touring the Texas locations and described her observations. Below, she comments on facility guards discouraging members of Congress from bringing cell phones with them during the tour, a detained migrant suggesting that she had been told to drink water from a toilet, and sleeping conditions for some migrants that were far from desirable.

On July 2, Rep. Dean and her congressional colleagues continued their tour, visiting a center in Homestead, Florida, a location that had also been visited by a number of 2020 Democratic presidential hopefuls. Below is Rep. Dean’s conversation with Erich Prince.

Congresswoman, how are you?

I’m doing well, thank you. How are you?

Nice to hear from you again. How has your trip been going? I’ve seen some of the tweets coming through about some concerning things you’ve seen.

Very, very troubling. I think we expected to see very troubling things, but nothing really prepares you for it. I can talk to you about where I just was, which is Clint. And Clint had the fewest number of people being detained. But what was stunning was as we pulled in, it was about 110 degrees. And before we were able to tour any part of the facility, they gave us sort of an opening set of statement, telling us that there were twenty-five children currently in their custody, whom we would eventually see. But when I asked about the census, I said, “You had 350 children here, a facility that was not prepared for children.” And he said, “No, no. Two and a half weeks ago, we had 250.” And I said, “What was your all-time high? What was the highest number of children being held at this facility?” And I was staggered—we were all staggered to learn—that two and a half months ago, according to the man in charge, they had 700 children there. 700 children.