Michelle Brané, senior director of WRC’s Migrant Rights & Justice Program, will testify at a hearing before the Senate Democratic Policy and Communications Committee.

On Tuesday, July 23rd at 2:45pm, U.S. Senators Mazie Hirono (D-HI), Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Tom Udall (D-NM), and Martin Heinrich (D-NM) will lead a Democratic Policy and Communications Committee hearing, “America Speaks Out: Stop Trump’s Cruel Treatment of Children at the Border.” The Senators will hear testimony from medical and legal experts who have witnessed the terrible conditions at the border firsthand, among other witnesses. This hearing will take place in the face of Senate Republicans’ refusal to hold a hearing on conditions at the southern border.

Watch livestream of the hearing here.

Read Michelle’s testimony here.

WHAT: Senate Democrats Hold Hearing on Treatment of Children at the Border

WHO: U.S. Senators Mazie Hirono, Jeff Merkley, Tom Udall, Martin Heinrich, and other Senate Democrats

Dr. Amy Cohen, M.D., child psychiatrist and Physicians for Human Rights Asylum Network member. She has served on the medical advisory board of the National Center for Youth Law since 2014 and as a medical consultant to Flores counsel since 2018. Dr. Cohen has extensive experience evaluating children in Office of Refugee Resettlement custody, as well as conditions of confinement in custody, most recently in Homestead, FL.

Hope Frye, legal expert and Executive Director of Project Lifeline, a nonprofit exclusively dedicated to education about and advocacy for detained immigrant children during confinement and post-release. On behalf of Flores counsel, she regularly leads monitoring visits into CBP, ORR and ICE facilities detaining immigrant children. In this capacity, she has supervised legal and medical teams interviewing hundreds of children.

Imelda Maynard, border community resident and Senior Attorney at Catholic Charities of Southern New Mexico, a non-profit that provides pro bono and low cost legal services to immigrant families in southern New Mexico and West Texas. It is one of only a few non-profits in the Southern New Mexico/West Texas region that routinely travels to Ciudad Juarez, Mexico to work with migrant families returned to Mexico under the Trump administration’s “MPP/Remain in Mexico” policy.

Michelle Brané, policy expert at the Women’s Refugee Commission, who will discuss inhumane conditions and overcrowding at border as well as the Women’s Refugee Commission recent report on the Family Case Management Program and alternatives to detention.

WHEN: Tuesday, July 23rd
2:45pm-5pm

WHERE: Senate Visitors Center
Room 208-209
U.S. Capitol