North Carolina Congressman David Price Recounts Border Facility Visit

Congressman David Price recently proposed a change in immigration policy after visiting locations holding immigrants from the southern border. In a weekend trip late last month to San Antonio and Laredo, the representative for North Carolina’s 4th district visited two Texas facilities holding immigrants. What the Democrat witnessed drove him to propose an amendment to the admittance process.

Price recalled the details of his trip in an interview with WCHL’s Aaron Keck. His visit to Laredo, which is located closely to the border, focused on a processing center. Price said his talks with families and individuals informed him of the dire situations they were running from.

“They’re victims of gang violence; they’re victims of domestic violence,” the Chapel Hill resident said. “They’re clearly fleeing desperate situations. That’s what prompted my amendment, and it succeeded. We’ll go back to a broader set of criteria, where someone with a credible fear of violence or death from gangs or a domestic situation can make an asylum claim.”

The amendment, which the House Appropriations Committee recently adopted, overrules Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ measures to prevent asylum to migrants coming to the U.S. because of these violent experiences.

In San Antonio, Price visited a detention center for children, mostly migrants from Central American countries. He was also critical of its state.

“It isn’t good,” Price said, “because these children are in limbo. A certain number of them have arrived at the border unaccompanied and others have forcibly been separated from their parents and rendered unaccompanied by our government. That’s the most recent crisis, which the courts have ordered the Trump administration to reverse and is happening with mixed success.”

Price proposed other amendments to current immigration policies over the summer but most have been rejected by Republican majorities. He said his next goal is to improve the screening process beyond asylum cases and address more problems he sees in the Trump administration’s ‘zero-tolerance’ stance.

“The combination of incompetence and malice in carrying this out is just astounding,” Price said. “There are some pretty difficult cases here, and they do need to be corroborated to determine who the real family members are. But we need to keep the pressure and scrutiny on to ensure the Trump administration undoes this mess they’ve created.”

Click here to hear the full conversation with Representative David Price.

Photo via United States Customs and Border Protection.