HARTFORD—U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), Chairman of the U.S. Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security, on Monday held a press availability in Hartford to discuss his recent trip to the U.S.-Mexico border and call for additional support to address the root causes of migration. Murphy was joined by Chris George, Executive Director of Integrated Refugee & Immigration Services (IRIS).

“Our Republican colleagues want to make this out to be a crisis created by President Biden, that's not true. The increase in presentations and apprehensions at the border started in the last four months of the Trump administration because of conditions on the ground in places like Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras,” Murphy said. “They've continued to rise during the first few months of the Biden administration. Second, the only change Joe Biden made was to say that children would be able to stay in the United States and make an asylum claim because what was happening in 2020 is that we were turning these kids away and sending them back into Northern Mexico abandoned and left for dead.”

“The conditions are better than 2019. These are not cages. There are now childcare workers and medical professionals,” Murphy continued. “…[W]hat we're seeing at the border is a symptom of a crisis that exists outside the United States. And I want to support President Biden's plan to try to enforce the rule of law in a compassionate and humane way, but I just don't believe it's good for America for us to turn these kids away and send them back to countries where they face death or bodily harm.”

“[R]ight now, the only way these kids can apply for asylum is to show up at our border. We should allow them to apply for asylum in their home country. That will be part of the solution to stop the flow of unaccompanied minors to our border. And then once kids apply for asylum, we need to get them out of these detention facilities faster,” Murphy added

“We need to deal with the challenge at the border, we need to provide more resources to be able to move kids out of these detention facilities, we need to allow them to apply for asylum. But we also need to stay focused on what matters most to families in this country. And that's getting people vaccinated, that's getting people back to work, that's saving thousands of small businesses that are about to go under,” Murphy concluded.

On Friday, Murphy joined a bipartisan group of U.S. Senators and Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas on a trip to El Paso, Texas, to get an update on the situation at the border, including how government agencies are processing and caring for unaccompanied children. Murphy discussed his trip on Saturday with NPR Weekend Edition and Monday with CBS This Morning.

A full transcript of Murphy’s opening remarks can be found below and you can watch the Q/A with reporters here:

Murphy: “I have the honor of representing Connecticut in the United States Senate. I'm very pleased to be joined here today by Chris George from IRIS, one of Connecticut’s refugee resettlement agencies. He’ll be able to talk about the work that they do and his perspective on the current conditions at the border.

“Friday, I went down to El Paso, to the US-Mexico border with Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and three of my senate colleagues, two Democrats, two Republicans in total. I went there in my new role as the chair of the Subcommittee on Homeland Security in the Appropriations Committee. For the next two years, I will be chairing the committee that writes the budget for the Department of Homeland Security which includes all of our operations on the border.

“There is a humanitarian crisis today in Central America, and it is being reflected on our border. What I saw at the border is the direct result of an epidemic level of violence in countries to our south. As I wrote about, I visited one of the detention facilities and there I met with children who have made the harrowing journey, sometimes by themselves, from as far away as Central and South America because the dangers of that journey and the conditions of that detention facility were better for them than remaining in their home country.

“Some neighborhoods of Guatemala are more dangerous than any warzone on the planet right now. And so as a parent, I can understand the difficult decision that faces many of these families, whether they should keep their kids in a city like San Pedro Sula, Guatemala, where kids are routinely recruited into vicious drug gangs, or send their kids north to a detention facility that will at least be a waystation to a better life.

“A couple of things to say about this. One, the increase in apprehensions and presentations at the border started at the end of 2019. Our Republican colleagues want to make this out to be a crisis created by President Biden, that's not true. The increase in presentations and apprehensions at the border started in the last four months of the Trump administration because of conditions on the ground in places like Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras.

“They've continued to rise during the first few months of the Biden administration. Second, the only change Joe Biden made was to say that children would be able to stay in the United States and make an asylum claim because what was happening in 2020 is that we were turning these kids away and sending them back into Northern Mexico abandoned and left for dead.

“Smugglers bring these kids to the border, and then the smugglers disappear. So when we turned these kids back around and didn't allow them to apply for asylum, these kids were just left in unacceptable situations in a very dangerous part of Northern Mexico. So what we're doing now is we're still turning around any adults that show up at the border because of the pandemic, any families that show up at the border still get turned right back around, but unaccompanied minors are being let in.

“The conditions are better than 2019. These are not cages. There are now childcare workers and medical professionals. But I still wouldn't want my child in these detention facilities for more than 30 seconds. There’s somewhere around 100 kids per room. There are so many of them that the mattresses are lined up only a few inches or a few feet from each other. They spend four to five days in these detention facilities and then they get moved to group homes and eventually, after a few weeks, they get reunited with family members in the United States where they can make their asylum claim.

“But what we're seeing at the border is a symptom of a crisis that exists outside the United States. And I want to support President Biden's plan to try to enforce the rule of law in a compassionate and humane way. I just don't believe it's good for America for us to turn these kids away and send them back to countries where they face death or bodily harm. 

“I think the best things about America are our ability to bring people in and rescue them from terror and death and violence, and this is an opportunity for us to recapture one of the defining features of America. They need more help at the border, and so I'm going to work with my colleagues to get more funding so that we can expand services in these detention facilities and we can move kids more quickly out of the detention facilities.

“Chris can talk about the work that IRIS does, but the second conversation we have to have is about broader immigration reform. Our immigration reform system is broken. We should be allowing many more people to come here legally, but we also should have much more efficient pathways for people to come to the United States from very dangerous places like Central America. 

“And there are two ways to do that. One is to expand out the refugee program. The asylum program and the refugee program are different. We've talked about the differences, Chris knows it better than I do. The refugee program is a program by which you apply for refugee status in your own country and then you get brought to the United States and enrolled in a program like IRIS.

“We bring in very few refugees from Mexico and Central America. We should greatly expand the number of refugees that we bring in from those countries, and we should set up new processing facilities. 

“Second, for people who want to file asylum claims, we should allow them to apply for asylum in their own country. That's something that happened during the Obama administration that was stopped under the Trump administration. So right now, the only way these kids can apply for asylum is to show up at our border. We should allow them to apply for asylum in their home country. That will be part of the solution to stop the flow of unaccompanied minors to our border. 

“And then once kids apply for asylum, we need to get them out of these detention facilities faster. And so we need to be working with groups like IRIS that know how to resettle kids and families to move kids out of detention facilities into more appropriate settings. And we have community providers right here in Connecticut who can help us figure out how to move kids out of these detention facilities into safer places.

“Last thing before I turn it over to Chris, let me say this. The real crisis of America today is COVID-19 and the continued economic struggles of American families. What's happening on the border is serious. It's a challenge. But my Republican colleagues are trying to make Americans believe that the crisis on the border is more important than the continued healthcare and economic crisis facing American families. 

“We need to deal with the challenge at the border, we need to provide more resources to be able to move kids out of these detention facilities, we need to allow them to apply for asylum. But we also need to stay focused on what matters most to families in this country. And that's getting people vaccinated, that's getting people back to work, that's saving thousands of small businesses that are about to go under. 

“Republicans know that this president is really popular, they know that the Rescue Plan is popular, and so they're going to do everything they can to focus attention on what's happening at the border. It's a serious situation and I have a responsibility to help alleviate the conditions for these kids, but I'm going to be honest, I'm going to still spend the vast majority of my time working on the crises that matter most to people here in Connecticut and that's the jobs crisis and the healthcare crisis.”

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