5:48 p.m. ET, June 22, 2018
This senator just toured a detention facility. This is what she saw.
California Sen. Kamala Harris just toured a detention facility in San Diego, and said her "heart is broken."
Harris, speaking to a crowd outside the Otay Mesa Detention Center, said she sat down and talked to migrant mothers who were separated from their children. The mothers, she said, "think that they are alone."
"These mothers have given testimony, if you will, have given the stories, have shared their stories ... of a human rights abuse being committed by the United States government," the Democratic lawmaker said Friday.
"And we are so much better than this and what we have got to do is fight against this. This contrary to all the principles that we hold dear and that give us a sense of who we are when we are proud to be Americans. But we have no reason to be proud of this."
Harris, a career prosecutor, blasted the Trump administration's "zero-tolerance" policy and the President's executive order.
She said there is no doubt these mothers are being held in prisons, not detention facilities. Harris said they are being held in cells. She said they are paid $1 dollar a day for work, and must pay for phones calls, which cost 85 cents a minute.
"A society will be judged on based how it treats its children and the least among us," Harris said. "We will be judged harshly for this."
She urged demonstrators to stand up, march and fight for the thousands of migrant children.
"The government should be in the business of keeping families together, not tearing them apart," Harris said.