In the News

While the Trump administration’s “zero-tolerance” immigration policy was causing a crisis on the U.S.-Mexico border, three members of Congress were introducing a bill to try to stop the flood of migrants coming in the first place. On June 22, Reps. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.), Norma Torres (D-Calif.) and Adriano Espaillat (D-N.Y.) introduced the Central America Family Protection and Reunification Act, which aims to strengthen the State Department’s role in monitoring and addressing the root causes of migration from Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras.

U.S. Rep. Adriano Espaillat is the first Dominican member of the United States Congress. As part of an exploration of rising political power among Latino Americans, National Geographic interviewed Espaillat about his life and experience.

More than 350 migrant kids — as young as 9 months old — have been sent to a single Harlem foster care provider since the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy on separating children from parents at the border began, Mayor Bill de Blasio said Wednesday.

On one level, the divisions between the groups who convened at a New Jersey detention center this past Father’s Day could not have been more stark; seven of them were lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives — positions of both power and privilege — while the other five were immigrants who, facing imminent deportation proceedings, find themselves at the very hands of the government their fellow attendees are serving in.

Like every father I know, my children and my grandson are my greatest joy. This past Father’s Day was a day of action, during which I, together with six of my Democratic colleagues in Congress, visited immigrant fathers who have been forcibly separated from their children at the southern border and who were currently being held at a detention center in Elizabeth, New Jersey.

Democrats expanded their campaign on Sunday to spotlight the Trump administration’s forced separation of migrant children from their families at the U.S. border, trying to compel a change of policy and gain political advantage five months before midterm elections.

Several Democrats decided to use Father’s Day to call attention to the practice of separating children from their families at the border amid growing outrage. A group of Democratic lawmakers from New York and New Jersey went to an immigration detention center on Sunday and talked to immigrants who had been separated from their families. The seven Democrats — Reps. Frank Pallone, Albio Sires*, and Bill Pascrell of New Jersey and Reps. Jerrold Nadler, Carolyn Maloney, Hakeem Jeffries, and Adriano Espaillat of New York — made the surprise visit to the Elizabeth Contract Detention facility in Elizabeth, N.J., where they had to wait for about an hour before finally being allowed inside.

Today Harlem Congressman Adriano Espaillat issued the following statement calling for the immediate resignation of New York City’s Taxi and Limousine Commission (TLC) top official, Meera Joshi following a number of suicide deaths of NYC taxi drivers.