[0:06]I'm going to ask you to imagine for a moment, that you're fleeing gang violence in El Salvador. You've seen your friends die, be murdered in brutal ways. And now you're getting threats. So you decide to move to another part of the country to try to get away from them. But it doesn't take long for the gangs to find you and let you know that they know where you are. And when their threats start including your five-year-old daughter, you decide you need to take more drastic measures. So you pack up and you go to the United States, where you know people and you think you're going to be safe. But when you get to the border, and you tell the border officials your story and that you're fleeing violence and are afraid to die, they laugh at you. They laugh and they say, we don't take your kind here, we don't want you anymore. You need to go back home to where you came from. But you know that going back means certain death or worse, death for your child. So you refuse, you insist that you need to stay and ask for asylum. And now their laughter turns into anger. They tell you you're wasting their time and that if you insist on staying, they're going to have to separate you from your daughter. This makes no sense to you because you explain to them that you're here to save your daughter's life. She can't be here without you. She needs you. But they don't listen. And as they pull your daughter out of your arms, she's crying, and she's saying, Mommy, don't leave me. This is Maria's story. And Maria wanted more than anything to tell her daughter that everything was going to be okay. But the reality is is that Maria was sitting in a prison. She was being threatened with prosecution for trying to enter the country without documents. And she had no idea whether she would ever see her daughter again.
[2:16]Maria's story is not an isolated incident. There are thousands of women like her trying to bring their children to safety, who are turned away, separated from their children, or detained. They're told that they have no right to asylum, even though they actually do. So, why am I telling you this story? These stories that I hear way more than I would like to, really just don't fit with my image of what this country stands for. I'm a mom, I have two kids, and I would do anything to save their lives to protect them, even across a border. I grew up immersed in the refugee story. My father's from Argentina and my mother's Hungarian. She left Hungary during World War two when she was eight years old. And when I was growing up, one of my favorite stories was the story of how her family crossed the border into Switzerland. My grandfather, her father, bribed German soldiers with gold watches and my mother's doll that she had just gotten for her birthday. So that they would fire their guns into the air when they crossed instead of at them. And it worked. They got across. But they when they got to the Swiss border, the Swiss officials said, nope, stop, you can't come in. Go back to where you came from. My grandfather stood in front of them and said, if we go back there, they will kill us. So if you're not going to let us in, you can shoot us right here. Because I'm not walking back there with my children to be shot. More than 70 years passed between my mother's story and Maria's. But they're strikingly similar. One difference, however, is that when my mother was trying to enter Switzerland, there was no international refugee convention telling countries how they should treat refugees coming to their borders, but today there is. After World War two, the United States led the way to create a an agreement among countries of the world that we would never again send people who are fleeing violence and oppression and threats back to a country where they would be killed.
[4:53]So, how did we get from there to here? When I was growing up, I believed wholeheartedly in the American fairy tale, that the United States was a place of freedom and of safety, that we protected the persecuted. We were actually leaders seen by millions in the world as leaders in the protection of refugees and asylum seekers. And refugees and asylum seekers are really the same thing. The difference is how they're processed. So refugees are processed overseas, and asylum seekers are processed here on the border of the United States. They present themselves, ask to come in, and we have a process in place for screening them and determining who really is at risk if they leave. So here we are now. Immigration and refugees and immigrants are in the news every day. We hear about MS 13, criminal aliens and unaccompanied children all in the same breath. And we're being told that hordes of these kids and families are crossing our borders and using loopholes to get around our immigration systems and take advantage of us. But what do the numbers really say? In 2000, there were over 1.6 million people who were apprehended trying to cross our southern border. In 2016, there were barely 400,000, and today there are even fewer. Only about 140 of those at their peak during the supposed crisis were women and children. Compared to the 65 million displaced people in the world, these are totally manageable numbers for a country like the United States. So why is everybody freaking out so much? Well, the demographics have changed. The people who were coming back in 2000 were mostly Mexican, they were coming to work, and they were not asking for protection. So we could very easily turn them back. No legal repercussions there. But today, many more of them, of the 400,000 are asking for asylum. And who are these people? They're coming primarily from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. These are three of the five most dangerous countries in the world. And a lot of the targeting is specifically at women and children. A lot of the persecution. In El Salvador, for example, the femicide rate, that's the rate, the women murdered just for being women, went up by 30% in one year. These women and kids are survivors who are determined not to be victims. They're exactly the kind of people that have made America great. As one little nine-year-old girl, Anna, she came here by herself at nine, said to me, I am not going to let those people control my life. If I die, I'm going to die trying to live. I can't get that little girl out of my mind because the reality is is that most of the kids coming, they're coming fleeing gangs. They're not part of gangs. These are the very people that our asylum system was created to protect. And they're doing exactly what they're supposed to do. They're presenting themselves at the border, finding the first official they can and asking for protection. But instead of putting through them through the system and not sending anybody back to death, our political leaders and the media are saying they're using loopholes. That they're illegal and that we need to find a way to keep them out. Our government panicked, they started talking about building walls, about changing our laws so that they couldn't use these supposed loopholes. The loopholes are our asylum system. They're our system that we created as leaders in the world for protecting people and to commit to our promise of never sending people back to their death. But we've gone from really being the a country where the Statue of Liberty is a beacon of hope to a country that's turning people away at our borders, even though it does mean sending them to their death. We're told that there are only two options. Close our borders, change our laws, keep people out and protect ourselves, or we're going to be overrun by undocumented people who cause wreak havoc in our communities. So, the problem is that if we close our borders to refugees and asylum seekers, they don't go away. They don't disappear. Their reality, the threats to their life continue. And so, just like anybody who would be fleeing a burning house when you lock the front door, they're going to find another way out. So look to smugglers and more dangerous ways of getting to safety. And as a result, we're seeing people, children dying in the desert or in the back of container trucks as they try to reach safety. I'm here to tell you, it does not have to be this way. I have a solution, and here's what I suggest. What if instead of backing off of our commitment to protect refugees, what if we showed the world, we leaned in, we leaned into that promise, and showed the world that we can respect human rights, protect refugees, and secure our borders, even in times of crisis. First, let's look at root causes. Instead of locking the door on the burning house and walking away, why don't we try putting out the fire? Investing in rule of law and accountability in Central America and countries where people are fleeing, could create stability and stop people from having to leave in the first place. What if we created protection systems in the region? Believe it or not, not everybody who flees Central America wants to come to the United States. Countries in the region saw a 1,000% increase in the number of people coming coming to their countries from these three really dangerous places. So what if instead of telling those countries to build walls and keep people out, we helped them build up an asylum system like ours, so that people could find safety closer to home? And on our own shores, what if we've seen that when there's a legal system for people to use, they use it. Nobody wants to live in the shadows and be undocumented. What if we invested in our screening programs and help determine the viability of everybody's case in a timely manner? What if instead of detaining people and separating children from their parents, we used alternatives to detention that showcase American creativity and ingenuity? We have alternatives to detention that have been 99.8% effective in making sure people go through the legal process. 99% of children who have an attorney show up for their hearings, and nine out of ten of those children win their cases. We can do this. Our system would work if we believed in it and acknowledged that the people arriving at our shores, some of them anyway, are the exact people we promised to protect. So you're wondering now if I'm completely insane and how I can believe this is possible given what's happening in Washington today. This is why I think it's possible. On the day that Trump's refugee band went into effect, hundreds of thousands of people, hundreds of thousands of you showed up at airports across this country. You showed the world that you are here. 90%, almost 90%, that's a lot of people, believe that dreamers that we just heard, should be given a path to citizenship. And 70% of Republicans think that. 71% of Americans believe that we should give refuge to anyone who shows up at our border and is fleeing persecution. So how do we get our leaders to listen? Well, these images work. These images gave hope to millions of people around the world that Americans still stand for something. That Americans still believe that we should protect human rights and protect refugees. It's time for us to ask ourselves whether we really stand for that, what we stand for and who we are. And this is as much to protect our own identity as it is to protect and save the lives of these people. So keep marching, keep protesting. Get to know your neighbors, get to know immigrants and refugees in your community. Vote, support organizations doing this work, and do not believe the rhetoric. I know you're tired, because I'm tired. I'm really tired, but you know who's really, really tired? That 23-year-old Salvadoran woman who walked 1500 miles with a five-year-old, only to get to the United States, be locked in a cell, have her child taken away from her, and be told that there's no more asylum in the United States. She didn't give up because she doesn't have that choice. She can't. So let's give people like Maria and nine-year-old Anna, the chance to live. Standing up for our ideals, it's hard work. It takes time and it takes perseverance, it's not going to happen in a day, but now is our time. Now is the moment, because if we don't, if we don't do something, the very fundamental ideals on which our country has been based, our identity, is going to change, possibly forever. Thank you.
