00:00They've taken a further step into the darkness, even as our country's in war, as American service
00:05members fight and die in Donald Trump's illegal, unconstitutional, aimless, endless war of choice
00:11in Iran. ISIS decided to deport the spouses of U.S. soldiers and indeed entire American military
00:18families. Last month, the wife of an active duty U.S. citizen army sergeant, the mother of a six
00:24year old daughter, was deported after she was detained outside of a Walmart in front of her
00:29terrified daughter. In another heartbreaking story, the immigrant father of a sailor serving on the
00:35USS Abraham Lincoln was detained. His son had been deployed under stifling and miserable conditions
00:42on the Abraham Lincoln in the Middle East for nine months, and his father was anxiously waiting for
00:47him to come home when immigration authorities detained him. Only after a massive community outcry
00:53was the elderly father released. Under this administration, more than 50 parents
00:58and spouses of active duty service members have been detained by ICE.
01:05Mr. Chairman, greetings to all of our witnesses and greetings to all of the sheriffs who've come from
01:11the free state today. President Trump, whose approval rating has now fallen below 33 percent,
01:18promised us that they were going to repair the broken immigration system and make us safer by pursuing
01:23the worst of the worst. But his masked paramilitary squads bloated with tens of billions of dollars in
01:29tax money are attacking and killing ordinary people. American citizens, lawful permanent residents,
01:36and undocumented people who have no criminal records and no arrests. Rogue agents are terrorizing
01:42communities across America, shooting down U.S. citizens at point-blank rage in broad daylight just for
01:48exercising their First Amendment and Second Amendment rights. Since Trump returned to office,
01:55immigration officers have shot at least 22 people, killing six of them, including three U.S. citizens,
02:01Renee Good, Alex Preddy, and Ruben Ray Martinez. I was visited by a former detective in Maryland who
02:08retired after more than 20 years in office who told me that he drew his firearm once and made a
02:16warning
02:16shot in his entire career. But you have people getting trained for a few weeks by ICE who get out
02:22and start pulling their guns on people and shooting within several weeks of being on the street.
02:28Instead of targeting criminals, ICE has pounced on parents in the school pickup lane, arrested people
02:34at daycare centers and in churches, thrown tear gas outside elementary schools and under cars with
02:41children seated inside, smashed the windows of cars and dragged the passengers out, arrested students
02:47for writing op-eds, and held U.S. citizens against their will in immigration detention without bothering
02:54for days to verify their citizenship status. And that happened to one of my constituents. Just last month in
03:01Texas, a five-year-old child was detained with his father while on their way to a soccer game. They're
03:06beating
03:07people up. They're no longer going after the worst of the worst. They're acting like the worst of the
03:12worst. They've taken a further step into the darkness even as our country's in war. As American
03:17service members fight and die in Donald Trump's illegal, unconstitutional, aimless, endless war of
03:23choice in Iran, ICE has decided to deport the spouses of U.S. soldiers and indeed entire American military
03:31families. Last month, the wife of an active duty U.S. citizen army sergeant, the mother of a six-year
03:37-old
03:37daughter, was deported after she was detained outside of a Walmart in front of her terrified
03:42daughter. In another heartbreaking story, the immigrant father of a sailor serving on the USS
03:48Abraham Lincoln was detained. His son had been deployed under stifling and miserable conditions
03:55on the Abraham Lincoln in the Middle East for nine months, and his father was anxiously waiting for him to
04:00come home when immigration authorities detained him. Only after a massive community outcry was the
04:06elderly father released. Under this administration, more than 50 parents and spouses of active duty
04:13service members have been detained by ICE and DHS. As the national debt soars over $40 trillion,
04:23one quarter of it coming from the wild spending of one president, Donald Trump, our mega colleagues have
04:30provided the Department of Homeland Security with more than $240 billion for immigration enforcement.
04:36In this Congress alone, the agency has hundreds of thousands of employees and 80,000 sworn law enforcement
04:44officers, more than the number of officers in Washington, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles,
04:50Dallas, Baltimore, Las Vegas, and Dallas combined. Yet because ICE refuses to focus on the worst of the
04:57worst despite these unprecedented and staggering resources taken from the taxpayers, ICE is failing
05:03at its duty to keep us safe. In June of this year, a Republican witness, a county sheriff, testified that
05:10his
05:10office notified ICE on eight different occasions that individuals were in its custody and available for
05:16pickup by ICE. Despite its gargantuan budget, ICE completely failed to respond in two of those eight
05:23cases, or 25%, resulting in two felony offenders being released into the community. That was testimony
05:30in this committee, but that's actually much better than Loudoun County, Virginia, generally. In Loudoun County,
05:36generally, ICE issued detainers for 419 people, but ICE only picked up 253. That means 166 of them were
05:45never even picked up by ICE. 40% of them weren't picked up by ICE, and that's the crux of
05:50their
05:51whole complaint here. Instead of trying to conduct oversight of DHS and demand accountability for this
05:59catastrophic and colossal waste of public resources, the administration and our colleagues keep throwing
06:05more money at the problem. For example, the administration has diverted over 28,000 officers from their law
06:12enforcement roles to work on civil immigration enforcement instead. A few weeks ago, the DHS
06:18inspector general, a Trump appointee, released a report detailing how badly this monomaniacal focus
06:25on immigration was undermining our fight against opioids. Federal agents are spending 30% less time
06:32working on fentanyl cases, and as a result, fentanyl seizures have dropped more than 40%.
06:38That means more opioids getting into our country, onto our streets, and into our bodies so they can have
06:46ICE officers picking people up in the kindergarten drop-off lane. The judiciary republicans' solution
06:54this week is to rededicate themselves to this failed strategy. They passed a bill to force underfunded
07:01state and local jurisdictions to use more of their funds and resources to do the bloated federal government's
07:06job of immigration enforcement. That means cities and localities would have fewer officers, less money,
07:12and fewer resources to protect their communities from violent crime, guns, drugs, and drunk driving.
07:19What's worse, our colleagues have proposed defunding police departments across America in any jurisdiction
07:26that decides that state and local governments and not ICE should get to decide how state and local police
07:32police departments are governed and run? Even the speaker and the rest of the GOP majority are
07:37refusing to endorse and advance this defund the police anti-sanctuary city bill. Here in judiciary,
07:45we've already debated and voted on this defund the police bill. Republicans passed it out of this
07:51committee in March of this year. Six months ago, the legislation that all of this is about has already passed
07:57out of our committee.
07:57Yet for the last six months, the speaker has refused to put their bill on the floor.
08:03It seems even the speaker realizes that after Trump's poll numbers have sunk like a stone and the majority of
08:09Americans reject their authoritarian police state tactics, it's just bad politics and terrible policy
08:16to bring this bill out. Republicans on our committee have voted to strip protections for military families
08:22with pending green card applications. They voted against requiring ICE officers to wear body worn cameras.
08:29They voted to strip children, including toddlers who are in the U.S. without a parent, of their right
08:34to have an attorney even represent them in immigration proceedings. And they've refused to conduct any probe
08:40into the hundreds of millions of dollars DHS has squandered on private luxury jets, complete with bedrooms and
08:48bars and glamorous photo shoots on horseback for Kristi Noem, the prior secretary of DHS. Our colleagues keep
08:57holding these hearings because they want the public to believe that they somehow have policies backstage
09:02that they haven't unveiled yet that they will reveal in the next Congress to make it safer. But they don't.
09:08Their policies are so divisive, so toxic, so purely symbolic and off point that even Speaker Johnson won't put them
09:17on the floor.
09:17It's not fair to keep running the same hearing over and over again, to keep bringing the same witnesses back
09:23again
09:24for legislation which this committee has already passed, but which the leadership refuses to bring to the floor.
09:30In the ordinary legislative process, you have hearings so you can pass legislation out and advance it in the process.
09:38Here, our colleagues have totally turned it upside down. They've introduced a bill just so they can keep
09:43having hearings, but they're not doing anything with their bill. I want to thank our witnesses for being here today.
09:49I would especially like to thank Ms. Fox and Mr. Coleman. Your stories need to be heard by America,
09:54and you deserve a national, nonpartisan audience for your story, and you deserve justice.
10:01I'm terribly sorry for what you and your families have been put through and continue to go through every single
10:06day.
10:06I hope that your daughters, Delilah and Carissa, draw strength from your fierce and passionate advocacy on their behalf.
10:13You and the American people deserve better than today's hearing, which is just running the same play over and over
10:20again.
10:20You deserve more than empty promises. We all deserve an America where our children are safe,
10:26where law enforcement officials around the country are focused on actually protecting our communities
10:30and not meeting quotas imposed by Stephen Miller or some other ideologue. You deserve, we all deserve,
10:36a Congress that will finally repair a broken and cruel immigration system with comprehensive,
10:43common sense immigration reform. I yield back, Mr. Chairman.
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