Does. As he is a twotime ironman try although on finisher. [applause] [cheering] 2012 ironman North Carolina and the 2016 ironman arizona which raised over 20,000 for the nonprofits along the way. So, that is amazing. [applause] the first book she will be discussing tonight is called america is better than this which tells the inside story of how one senator with no background as an activist became a leading advocate for reform of the brutal policies that have created a humanitarian crisis on the southern u. S. Border. It represents the heartfelt voice of a concerned american who believes his country stands for something bigger and better. Tonight senator merkley will be joined in conversation with ross reynolds, currently the executive producer of Community Engagement and the public radio where hes worked since 1987 having served as the news director and Program Director and also serving as the host of the record and awardwinning news program the conversation among many other programs. So, please help me in joining up here senator merkley and ross reynolds. [applause] theres been so much going on at the border just in the last few days that as i was trying to catch up i thought it might be useful to begin with whats been happening lately and i wonder if you would update us on whats been going on the last week or so on this immigration issue. Thank yo thank you everybody for coming tonight to talk about this because we are in a very disturbing phase and to answer your question i almost have to go back 14 months if you dont find and that is when i first went down to the border because i read Jeff Sessions speech called zero tolerance and it was six months before the election and i thought tough on crime, not surprising to hear that from a republican and then i read the details and thought this cant be. It sounds like theyre going to tear her children away from their parents and that would never happen in the United States of america. Some of my team said one way to find out whats go to the border. I thought thats right, so i did and thats when i became the first member of congress to see children who had just been removed from their parents put into cages in a warehouse and then an hour later of the road that was stunning enough put up the road advocates have said hundreds of boys who have been separated were being warehoused in a walmart so i went to find out about it and they decided they didnt want me to see what was going on and they said call the police and the video went viral and suddenly all of america was hearing about cages and secret warehousing of my grandchildren. How many of you have seen the video . That moment sent me on a journey i felt we have to speak up fiercely when we see something going horribly wrong and theres a lot going horribly wrong. But it was just a few weeks later trump held a press conference and said ive heard. My goodness i want to wouldnt want to hurt children. The press conference was a complete lie because he wasnt ending child of segregation. The court ended it. But he had on the table in front of him was an executive order that have three strategies for the imprisonment of children. When i say this is the background of whats happening, that strategies were first go to the court and ask them to reverse the settlement agreement, and that agreements that you have to treat children humanely thats what it boiled down to, you have to provide nutrition and a place to sleep and hygiene and you cant lock them up for more than three days or 20 days if there is a huge influx. Humane treatment of children that is what it was. They went to the court and they threw that out. That wasnt going to happen. Next was legislation which i became involved in blockading the legislation to allow the imprisonment of children. And the third strategy was to do a regulation to replace and thats a regulation that has just been introduced. It says florez goes away once there is a regulation to implement it. The thing however is the regulation doesnt implement it. It destroys and it says there will be no state licensing which is what they call for. No state inspection, no outside groups coming to inspect which is what florez gives power to lawyers and doctors and by the way, that requirement of children not be locked up in prison for three days, that is completely destroyed by this regulation that allows indefinite imprisonment of children. I dont know of any country in the world that says if you are a refugee we will imprison you for perhaps months or years until the agitation is complete, but that is what they are doing. Ive just been reading this week that they are going to deny flu shots to these children in detention. You think about this administration saying we dont want the state licensing and action because trust us. But this is the president who says im going to block the children from playing soccer because we cant afford to monitor them on a soccer field. Locking them up without exercise. This is the president ial team which as you point out even though three refugee children have died at least substantially as a result, there may have been other complicating factors we are not going to provide flu shots to the Processing Centers customs and Border Protection centers because we just dont do that was the explanation. And this is the administration that just appealed a District Court decision to a Circuit Court because they didnt like the fact that they were required to provide a setting daily account bedding and toothpaste and soap. Theres no way we should ever trust any administration to operate without some form of substantial oversight and theres also talk of perhaps the long terlongterm in internmentn the border. The president s team is operating from the premise its been spoken to for the first time 13 days into the administration following by john kelly the head o at the head ofe Department Secretary of the department of homeland security. A month later they launched an operation at the San Diego Center that is a child Center Operation done essentially secretly, but the premise that has been throughout from then until now has been if we inflict drama on the refugees including refugee children, we will discourage immigration, and they justified it in morality what i find is utterly evil and dark and unacceptable under any code, religious tradition, moral framework they justified by saying that it will deter immigration. This is wrong. Its like Lady Libertys torch has been snuffed out. [applause] i wrote this book to say we have to rewrite it and restore decency in the United States of america. [applause] you worked with Jeff Sessions on the successful legislation and went and talked to him as the attorney general about this policy. What kind of reaction did you get . I thought i could have a personal connection or conversation because i knew him and had worked with him, and i have seen how this was unfolding on the border and Jeff Sessions havent really seen it himself. Even though he was an architect of it. I wanted to call him up and i said this is not unfolding the way you think it is. And the American People are not going to stand for it. It was a fairly lengthy conversation but all i got were the talking points. It is our job to deter immigration because we dont like it. And furthermore, then we will be helping children. He says if they dont take it difficult journey, then they dont face the difficulties of the journey. And therefore he has helped the children. So, herding children became helping children in this kind of twisted world. The zerotolerance policy has been going on for a while. Is there any evidence that it is achieving its goal . That is a great point. No is the answer. The premise that people are on the verge of being killed or tortured or in the middle of a civil war or famine that they are not going to migrate because of a distant policy on the future border, it just doesnt work like that. Let me give you an example. There was a woman and her 56 dayold child on the border. It was gabrielle and her daughter andrea. After my first trip to the border, i took a congressional delegation back. We went to the bridge near mcallen and on the bridge there had been 50 people camped out in some of them had been there seven to ten days because they were not through the doors of the u. S. Facility so they were stranded. I wanted to see that and i wanted my colleagues to see it. However, we were told there is nothing to see. I said we will go out anyway. We saw at the centerline of the bridge three members of the customs and Border Protection blockading anyone from crossing that line who didnt have a passport or visa. They were being sent back into mexico. By the way, this is the principle of the Refugee Convention and about the federal law that says if someone presents themselves on the border asking for refuge, then its our responsibility to provide safe harbor since we were not providing safe harbor we were shoving people back. So, we came off the bridge and i asked why arent you doing this. This isnt our responsibility under the federal or international law. They said we are just overwhelmed. While some of the Conference Rooms were empty back of the Border Patrol station the rooms were far fewer people than i had seen earlier. They said theres a problem so we are not letting anybody cost. This was the beginning of what became, but there was half a dozen or so people and i said is there anyone in there who crossed without a visa or passport, and they said yes we will bring them out. So out came gabrielle and her baby in her arms, her less than two monthold baby. I said so the Border Guards technically cbp at the ports of entry Border Patrol outside of the ports of entry but the cbp guards like you across because you have your baby in your arms and she says no, i was rebuffed and sent back into mexico three times and absolutely scared because we have the resources and family come you are at the mercy of gangs. I didnt know what to do. I said how did you get here to the american side, and her face lit up for a moment because she had beat the cards on the bridge. She said well, i saw there were two bridges, pedestrian and car and on the car bridge there were cars washing windows for tips and someone had an extra squeegee. I borrowed it and washed one car window, one close to the United States and i washed car windows into the United States of america. Maybe we need people with that kind of problem solving here in the United States. [applause] do you know what happened to her and her baby . Did you follow their story . I dont know where she is or what she is doing. She was treated as if she had crossed between ports of entry because she bypassed the pedestrian bridge. Where is the opposition to this at this moment in the courts were colleagues in the senate particularly on the republican side who are as concerned about this as you are. The effective mechanism to stop the administration from doing things time and time again, for example, the administration said we are not going to give an opportunity for an asylum process for anyone who crosses between the ports of entry. This is wrong on two premises. People cross between the ports of entry are crossing between them because they were rejected at the point of entry and they are desperate because they would rather surrender to a Border Patrol officer can be vulnerable to the games in the border cities in mexico. The second reason is that u. S. Law says you cross between ports of entry and you can apply for Refugee Status and this was a very deliberate part of the wall enacted years ago when i think it was under the Bush Administration they were seeking to return them rapidly but the new you couldnt do that if they were a refugee so you could ask for status between the ports of entry. Its written in the law. The Administration Simply adopts a regulation that is in violation of the law and the court has to join it. Clearly the president thinks this is a winning policy for him politically. You are in a state that has many different people, many different views and you have encountered them since youve been friends. They might tell you they support this idea of keeping out immigration. What do you say to them . Democrats and republicans in the senate, we are deeply divided, and is the result of the pressure of the presidency. And let me give you an example. The second strategy that was in that executive order from the president was in the legislati legislation. There was a senator that had a bill to allow a. In the internment camps of the United States of america i could not believe that that so many website onto that fission. There wasnt a democrat on it. I cant get a single republican senator. That is the best division. In general, republicans are trusted more on National Security issues than democrats. They voted for more defense spending and therefore they feel if they have a fear factor it will help them in the elections. Democrats have been in a fight for education, living wage jobs and feel like they are more dependent on a Health Factor to do well. So, how do you get a fear factor . A look at the issues from two years earlier. Ebola was no longer feasible because it wasnt scaring anyone. It barely reemerged in a remote section of the column out. Isis has scared people, but that no longer was such a factor because they were mostly out of the territory. And the idea of crime in our cities didnt really scare people because crime rate had gone down. Taking away guns didnt scare people because the republicans were in charge of all of the branches of government, and so what was left . Immigration became the fear factor. This was the conscious strategy of the administration was to drive that and therefore it has really disrupted the collaboration to find solutions. We have democrats and republicans in the senate in 2013 that did a comprehensive immigration bill. We had a dreamers though that was bipartisan and the senate. The first bill that we passed in the senate, the competence of immigration, it went to the house and republicans in the hospital this. This was in 2013. The dreamers though the president pulled in democrats and republicans and had all the president s on a tuesday the cameras rolling for over an hour and it was a big bipartisan bicameral festivity and the president s that i will take the heat, we will solve this problem, bring me a bipartisan bill. Two days later from a conservative senators, moderate senators, liberal senators went together and said here is our Bipartisan Senate bill and the president for his tantrum because he had taken heat for two days from breitbart and the conservative side. So we are deeply divided. Weve got a president and a Democratic Senate holding firm on this on what is to be done. Can we change that . [applause] i say that because we have to publicize this and have people know about it and understand its not just one little piece of information here and here. That is a major reason i wrote this book is to take all these visits are done in all of these facilities and conversations and then try to lay out a coherent and understandable fashion along with stories of the migrants that are fleeing persecution. So, that is what we can do now. That means book groups, conversations, people talking to their neighbors but in the near future, we are kind of almost there. It means campaigns because it is through campaigns that we can change the incumbent in the oval office and Mitch Mcconnell out of control of the u. S. Senate. Im sure when you talk to constituents they dont say we approve the Publishing Industry in children this way. We share concerns of the covenant on the border happened is the drug cartels have moved in. Money comes from selling drugs in america. The arms come from the United States of america. And if those factors, you think of a drug cartel that has both money and guns it means they can bribe their way in one strategy and threat in your life with another strategy and those are two powerful instruments and they overwhelmed the traditional institutions of government and justice. So, if we want things to change for people fleeing death threats, then we are going to have to help the traditional institutions reestablish control. Its going to have to be an investment when the president says. Second of all, that wont fix it. We have to help those institutions be a lot stronger. Second of all, virtually everyone agrees we should have an approved asylum process where there is timely as adjudication in the range of four to six months so people had enough time with the assistance to get their information from their own countries so they can present their case to an asylum judge that so that it doesnt go on forever. Advocates and republicans worked together on making that happen. And when you say what im arguing for is simply when a person goes through that process and we treat them with respect and decency that way we would want our family to be treated if they were to arrive on the border as refugees, people kind of get it. How Many Americans have ancestors who fled persecution of some form and came here to the United States of america and so something we can really identify with. What president ial candidate has the best ideas on this issue . Theres some really bad ideas way over here i guess on the audience and theres a whole cluster of capable individuals that have very similar ideas. Essentially every senator is running for office as a member of a cosponsor of my bill and has the same basic understanding of the issues that is decent treatment of peop