WASHINGTON — One mother, carrying a 3-month-old, described how the gangs were killing people in her neighborhood. A second, a 7-month-old in her arms, talked about how kids were being kidnapped.

“These parents overwhelmingly face a choice: Stay and see my daughter raped or have my child put forcibly into a gang and if not, they die,” U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., said Friday after visiting the U.S. southern border with other Senate Democrats. “If that’s my choice as a parent, as a grandparent, I’m going to leave.”

Those are the migrants seeking entry into the U.S., not the criminals President Donald Trump keeps referring to, Menendez said.

The senators traveled to McAllen, Texas, where they visited a holding facility, a Catholic Charities center, a border patrol station and a processing center, and met with members of local organizations.

Menendez said he saw “a stain, a dark chapter in the nation’s history.”

“It gave me a first-hand ability to see it in real life,” he said.

While President Donald Trump has claimed that the U.S. is facing caravans of criminals, Menendez said Acting Homeland Security Kevin McAleenan told the senators that 98 percent of those trying to enter the U.S. were refugees fleeing violence in their home countries.

Menendez heard the same stories from the people he talked to.

“Nobody said to me, ‘I was hungry,’” Menendez said. “None of them said, ‘I wanted a better life.’ All of them said ‘horrific violence.’ That’s a powerful message to take back to our colleagues."

Trump has decried what he has characterized as a crisis on the southern border as he demands funding to build a wall he promised Mexico could pay for. He has blamed congressional Democrats for the problem.

But Menendez said Trump is the one responsible. The president has cut off funding to Central American countries to try to improve conditions there so families don’t feel their only choice is to emigrate.

And when they try to present themselves at checkpoints and legally request asylum, they are turned away, he said.

“When those people, thousands of miles, come to the border, they still seek to obey the law by presenting themselves at a legal point of crossing,” Menendez said. “And what are they told? ‘Oh no, not today,’ ‘Oh no, not a week,' ‘Oh no, not a month.’ We are purposely, under the administration’s policy, creating people who then have no choice but to take a chance and cross the river.

If they make into the country, Menendez said, they are given papers in English that order them to report for asylum hearings, but the documents don’t tell them where to go or when to show up. Then they get sentenced to deportation in absentia.

“They don’t get notification,” he said. “The system has been stacked in a way Trump wants these people to fail.”

“I don’t know what type of politics that is for the president of the United States, but it’s shameful and we all need to speak out as Americans,” Menendez said.