'Lawless Administration: Raskin Sounds Alarm Over Trump's Latest Attacks On Asylum Seekers

[00:00:00]So for the entire 119th Congress, which is now limping to an historically unproductive finish, we've been urging the majority to set aside the demonization of immigrants to pass comprehensive common sense immigration reform on a bipartisan basis. We should be able to agree that we need to make it a whole lot harder, as close to impossible as we can to enter or stay in the United States unlawfully and a whole lot easier for people to become Americans lawfully.

[00:00:32]After all, we've got crying labor shortages in nursing, construction, farming, seafood, landscaping, and the hotel and service sectors to name just a few. And after all, America is an immigrant society. All of us here, except for Native Americans and the descendants of people who were kidnapped and enslaved and brought to the country, all of us are descendants of immigrants in this country. Um, and yet that's not what's happening. We should be able to agree on these basic values. We should be able to legislate accordingly. We should be able to get the administration to stop poorly trained ICE officers from killing American citizens and immigrants in service of a lawless, authoritarian, and brutal clampdown on American communities. Two more people have been shot down in cold blood [cough] in one week on July the 7th and on July the 13th.

[00:01:35]But instead of engaging with us to map out a pathway to citizenship for dreamers, which the president promised to do a decade ago, instead of working with us to fortify the border, to expand the categories and numbers of lawful immigrants, instead of trying to get ICE to change their terrifying police state tactics, and just to focus on the worst of the worst, as they promised, our colleagues are wasting the last few days of this Congress playing summer rerun anti-immigrant propaganda and ignoring the brutal and often lethal federal government assault on the rights of both Americans and immigrants.

[00:02:14][clears throat] Masked immigration officers have shot and killed in broad daylight six human beings in the streets of America. Three of them American citizens exercising their first and their second amendment rights. Three of them immigrants posing no threat to anyone. and two of those not even the target of the operation by which they lost their lives. ICE killings are like having the death penalty in your state without a crime, without an arrest, without a prosecution, without trial, without conviction, without sentencing, without any judicial due process. just the sudden violent death of mothers and fathers in states that don't even have the death penalty like Maine and Minnesota administered by poorly trained and hastily recruited unqualified agents courtesy of billions of dollars provided by the taxpayers via the permanent Trump Republican caucus. Is there no one left in Donald Trump's party who will speak up for the rights of the American people against a federal government killing spree under the pretext of immigration raids? DHS agents have teargassed babies and shot pepper balls at pastors and members of Congress. They've packed tens of thousands of immigrants into mismanaged and dangerous for-profit detention centers whose corporate owners are plundering the taxpayers for billions of dollars while overseeing the deaths of a record 53 people in their custody.

[00:03:52]ISIS separated families, stolen breastfeeding mothers away from their infants, and caused the death of a three-year-old boy and the sexual abuse of a three-year-old girl. Our refugee system was once a proud, robust, well-vetted program that helped desperate people fleeing tyrants and dictators all over the world.

[00:04:14][clears throat] Now, it's a closed whites only presidential perk operation catering to Elon Musk's fellow Africconers and white South Africans. To be fair, Trump has also issued an emergency visa to a corrupt right-wing Polish minister, evading justice while categorically barring anyone from 40% of the countries in the world from even applying for a visa to flee oppression.

[00:04:42]President Trump today has among the lowest polling numbers of any president in the history since polling began.

[00:04:48]Immigration used to be his strongest issue, but after the lawlessness, cruelty, and corruption we've seen, it's now one of his worst issues. Opposed to Ipso's poll from last week found that nearly 60% of Americans disapprove of the way he's handling immigration in our country. And yet, here we are again today, rejecting oversight to curtail this reign of terror or the prospect of any reforms to repair our broken immigration system. The majority brings us another partisan red meat enforcementonly bill to make Trump's policies permanent. Congress has pumped an extraordinary $240 billion dollar into immigration enforcement. And yet this committee has done no oversight of ICE and no oversight of the CBP.

[00:05:33]Republicans have not brought in a single official from either ICE or CBP or from Geo Group or Core Civic, the private prison companies that are collecting billions of dollars from our constituents every year to operate these facilities. The only DH official official who's appeared before this committee was former Secretary Christine Gnome, who refused to apologize for defaming Renee Good, a mother of three, and Alex Prey, a VA nurse, as quote domestic terrorists, and failed to provide any explanation for her spending of hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer funds to buy luxury jets in lavish personal PR campaigns with pictures of her on horseback at Mount Rushmore. more. She was fired within 24 hours of appearing before this committee because she actually had to take questions and one saw the inevitable departure of Ms. Gnome. Why are our Republican colleagues abdicating responsibility to oversee and re in the continuing corruption and lawlessness at ICE and CBP? ICE has recruited domestic abusers who go out and kill people. In shooting after shooting, we're told there's no bodywn camera footage, either because they lack the funding to provide them to their agents or because the agents who have them can't turn them on because ICE has not paid for the subscription required for the cameras to work. All despite having an unprecedented $240 billion dollar of taxpayer money. Why do our colleagues have nothing to say about the waste, fraud, and abuse that we're seeing throughout that system? The majority wants to give the mega ICE bureaucracy even more power to make this cruelty machine permanent. The bill for before today would take the asyl asylum system already decimated by Trump and then permanently destroy it. It removes protections for unaccompanied children and opens the door to sending them to war torn countries, traffickers, and abusers. It would allow for the indefinite detention of children and the evisceration of long-standing safeguards for children. America's had enough of the violence and bloodshed and lawlessness. It's time to stop these lawless tactics in the streets of America. I yield back to you, Mr. Chairman. America's had enough of the violence and bloodshed and lawlessness.

[00:07:51]It's time to stop these lawless tactics in the streets of America. I yield back to you, Mr. Chairman.