With all eyes on South Florida this week as 20 Democratic presidential candidates debate for two days in downtown Miami, local politicians want to make sure the issues that impact us most at home are front and center.
“These are national issues but they are hurting us locally tremendously,” said 
Sen. Annette Taddeo, who will join Sen. Jason Pizzo and Miami City Commissioner Ken Russell for a pre-debate press conference at the Adrienne Arsht Center’s Books and Books, 1300 Biscayne Blvd., Wednesday morning to talk about immigration and child detention policy, gun reform and climate change.
“For climate change, we’re ground zero,” Taddeo told Political Cortadito.
“Immigration is in our backyard with the Homestead facility for children, with a governor who signs a law even though we don’t have any sanctuary cities in Florida,” she said.
“And when we have a school mass shooting, what do we do? We arm our teachers.”
Read related: By putting guns in schools, Republicans send a clear message: Elect Democrats
Complaining that the presidential wannabes are “walking on eggshells” when it comes to these topics, Taddeo says they need to talk about demanding TPS for Venezuelans and an end to family separation and providing humanitarian and developmental aid to Central and South American countries to stem illegal immigration.
Congresswoman Debbie Mucarsel-Powell thinks the Democratic 
presidential candidates should not just talk the talk, but walk the walk: She wants them to take a field trip to the Homestead Migrant Children Detention Facility, where an estimated 3,000 minors are being held in dire or, at best, questionable conditions that are not entirely known.
So far, only Beto O’Rourke has said he would drop by at 10 a.m. Thursday, the morning after his debate night. Betcha he don’t get inside.
Mucarsel-Powell, Congresswomen Donna Shalala and Debbie Wasserman Schultz have been hammering President Donald Trump’s family separation program for months and recently called for a closure of the secretive Homestead facility, 920 Bouganville Blvd. (SW 28
8th St.), which has turned journalists and elected officials away repeatedly when they come unannounced.
The Congresswoman and a few others, including some child advocate attorneys, have gotten a few tours and talked to some of the children only to find the conditions deplorable and the children frightened and confused.
“What is happening at the Homestead Migrant Children Detention Facility is appalling. The Trump Administration’s practice of separating children from their families must end,” Mucarsel-Powell said.
“Just last week, I met a 13 year old child at the detention center who has been separated from his family for 44 days, despite his mother and sister waiting for him in America. He should have already been released to their custody.”
Read related: Gimenez spars with Daniella Levine-Cava over immigration
Mucarsel-Powell has also called for the resignation of Health & Human 
Services Secretary Alex Azar for the Department’s gross mishandling of the facility, the failure to provide a safe and secure environment for migrants, the lack of an adequate hurricane preparedness plan — for a facility that sits in the middle of an area devastated by Hurricane Andrew in 1992 — and the deaths of several children while in detention.
She said immigration should be a top issue in this presidential election.
“Every 2020 presidential candidate ought to visit the Homestead Detention Center and join us in denouncing Trump’s cruel immigration policies,” Mucarsel-Powell said. “We need to place these children in safe homes and facilities and close this detention center down.”
The Homestead Migrant Children Detention Facility — the largest in the 
country and the only one run by a private company — currently houses nearly 3,000 children who have been separated from their families. Recent court filings document several instances of poor conditions — including trauma-inducing treatment, children cutting themselves, and prison like conditions where they are given 15 minutes to eat, 5 minutes to go to the bathroom or shower and two 10-minute phone calls a week.
There’s no hugging allowed, no touching, no lending of clothes to one another. The tiny bit of funding there was for classes and sports has been cut.
What’s worse is that it looks like another pay to play scenario.
In May, Caliburn International, the for-profit company whose subsidiary operates the facility, announced that former White House Chief of Staff John Kelly would join its board of directors. This is the same company that got a 
no-bid $341 million contract shortly before that, one of three awards for more than half a billion dollars in federal funds in 16 months.
Mucarsel-Powell, Shalala, and Wasserman Schultz have called for an investigation into Kelly’s potential role in securing that contract. The Administration has yet to respond to their request.
Why haven’t any of the presidential candidates asked for an investigation?
It would certainly help shine a light on a gross and inhumane treatment of children at a Trump-blessed, privately-run, for-profit detention center if one of these hopefuls talked about this on national TV this week.
Local politicos ask Dem debaters to focus on ‘local’ national issues added by Ladra on
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