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As Congress approved some $45 billion to expand ICE’s immigration detention capacity, including the jailing of families and children, we look at the case of one family. In May, plainclothes ICE agents detained a 6-year-old boy from Honduras who has acute lymphoblastic leukemia, along with his 9-year old sister and their mother, as they left their immigration court hearing in Los Angeles. In detention, the boy missed a key doctor’s appointment, and the family said his sister cried every night. As pressure grew over their conditions, the family was released on July 2. “The little boy doesn’t want to leave his home. He’s terrified. He sobs, cries and screams when his mother takes him out of the house,” says attorney Elora Mukherjee, who represents the boy and his family and is director of the Immigrants’ Rights Clinic at Columbia Law School. She says the young children are traumatized after their month in ICE detention.

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman.

We begin today’s show looking at how the Trump administration is pushing ahead on its aggressive quota of as many as 7,000 daily immigration arrests, up from 3,000. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem spoke Friday at a news conference in Nashville, Tennessee.

DHS SECRETARY KRISTI NOEM: President Trump has been focused, ever since he’s been in office, on making America safe again. And that is what my job is as a secretary, is to make sure that we’re following through on exactly what he promised the American people, to make sure that we’re going after the worst of the worst every single day, get the murderers, the rapists, the child pedophiles and pornographers off of our streets and out of this country.

AMY GOODMAN: “The worst of the worst.” But according to figures from ICE itself that were obtained by the Cato Institute, over 93% of immigrants arrested this fiscal year were never convicted of any violent offense. Still, Congress approved some $45 billion to expand ICE’s immigration detention capacity, including the jailing of families and children.

We begin today’s show with a story of one Los Angeles family arrested after they dutifully showed up at their immigration hearing.........

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