On Saturday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “AM Joy,” Senator Jeff Merkley (D-OR) stated that “trauma is being inflicted” on migrant children in shelters “as part of a political strategy, to hurt children deliberately as part of a political strategy.”

Merkley said that “almost every conversation we have,” the number of children in the shelters increases.

He continued, “And we’re told that number is now 15,000 children. And think of that, 15,000 children in child prisons, Trump administration child prisons across America. And they are planning to add a couple more. … And so, this is — this system of locking children up behind the barbed wire…don’t call them anything other than child prisons or internment camps. That’s what’s going on here. And we’re told that there are children who have been here three, four, five, even six months long. And the trauma is being inflicted as part of a political strategy, to hurt children deliberately as part of a political strategy. We need to have everyone in Congress and in America rise up and say, this is wrong. It has to end.”

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