“The moms of America are tremendously grateful that the federal shutdown – and with it the immense suffering it caused so many families – will end, at least for now. This shutdown was painful and unnecessary and the harm it caused families, communities, our economy and our country cannot be fully undone. Never again can we allow this President, or any president, to hold federal employees and the federal government hostage to a politically-motivated, completely wasteful spending priority.

“Our government has a process to debate policies and appropriate funds. It’s past time we return to that process, resume the regular order, and appropriate funds in a sensible, timely fashion. When Congress is forced to pass Continuing Resolution after Continuing Resolution and, even worse, when the government shuts down due to lack of funding, children and families suffer the most.

“MomsRising members placed thousands of calls to their U.S. Senators, sent emails, wrote letters of protest, visited congressional offices, shared personal stories about how the shutdown was affecting their families, and in other ways spoke out for sensible spending and against President Trump’s racist, heartless immigration priorities.

“It was a bad idea to waste $5.7 billion on a wall in December and January, and it will be a bad idea to do so after this three-week agreement expires. We thank the Democratic leadership in Congress, and the Republicans who supported them, for refusing to waste money on a wall the country neither wants nor needs. Their resolve must remain unshakable.

“We remain outraged by the revelation from the Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that thousands more migrant children were separated from their parents than was previously known -- and that the Department doesn’t even know the precise number because it failed to track families as they were being separated. As Congress negotiates the homeland security bill over the next three weeks, we demand that members hold immigration enforcement agencies accountable for these human rights abuses and defund policies and programs that separate and incarcerate children and families. 

“We are also deeply concerned that President Trump repeated so many lies and used such inflammatory language when he announced the agreement today. Whether this conflict is truly over will depend on his willingness to change his tactics and base his priorities on reality going forward.”