I think Trump's people sit around 'thinking up new ways to be cruel': Senator

On Wednesday's edition of MSNBC's "All In," Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-HI) tore into the Trump administration for its treatment of migrant children, as yet more reports come in of children being denied basic services in squalid conditions, and as Trump considers ways to get around the federal consent decree placing limits on how long they can be detained.

"We already know from so many child specialists that detaining children in these kinds of facilities does irreparable damage to them," said Hirono. "There are alternatives to family detention this administration could care less about ... the only way to get around the consent agreement is by getting around it by proposing or having this rule, which will be immediately challenged. They want to detain families indefinitely, children indefinitely, held in situations that do them absolutely no good when there are alternatives."

We should say the facility where a lot of this detention is happening is in Dilley, Texas." said host Chris Hayes. "It is somewhat notorious, family detention was done under the Obama Administration and subcontracted to a private contractor that runs it. One headline in 2015. Recently another mother who had been there testified about her baby daughter dying of illness after being there. You’ve been to Dilley. What do you think about the conditions there?"

"Not good," said Hirono. "These families should not be detained. Thousands and thousands of migrant families being detained doing irreparable harm to children. I can’t forget when I was there, a little boy silently crying. Who knows what was going through his mind. Not good. There are alternatives I keep mentioning. I did have a shadow hearing on what happens in these facilities and the children. Clearly, they are harmed irreparably. Our country should not be imposing that kind of cruelty on I think the Trump Administration people sit around every single day thinking up new ways to be cruel to these migrants. Tomorrow, they will probably come up with something else."

"You co-sponsored with another senator a bill that would change the way the DHS is dealing with these families, monitoring release, case work, things like that," said Hayes. "Is there any universe on which Mitch McConnell moves on that?"

"Everyone has to be aware what our country is doing in our name supposedly, certainly not in my name or yours, that the people who vote have got to change," said Hirono. "That certainly starts in my view with Mitch McConnell, who is one of the most ruthless people I know and proud to call himself the grim reaper, who will never bring any of these bills to the floor of the Senate for a vote."

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