00:00Good morning and I welcome all of our witnesses to the committee. Today we are here to talk about
00:05the tragic consequences of policy decisions. Unfortunately the erratic disturbing policy
00:11decisions of the Trump administration have left countless tragedies in their wake. Right now in
00:17Donald Trump's America people are dying from a disease that we declared eliminated in 2000
00:23because his Secretary of Health and Human Services cannot stop spreading lies about vaccines.
00:3018 service members have died and over 700 were injured as a result of Trump's illegal war of
00:37choice against Iran that has no strategy no exit plan and has driven up gas and grocery prices
00:44for Americans at a time when too many are already struggling. Service members have had to fend off
00:50attacks from foreign governments as well as our own government. After enduring nine months of the
00:55horrifying conditions on the USS Abraham Lincoln that drove another sailor to attempt suicide,
01:02Joshua Aviles, who is risking his life to serve our country, learned that Trump's ICE had detained
01:09his father. Donald Trump's out-of-control ICE has also deported seven spouses of active duty service
01:17members. Meanwhile, federal agents have killed people who are simply driving home after celebrating
01:23their birthdays. People like Ruben Ray Martinez or driving to work like Lorenzo Salgado Araujo and
01:30Yohan Sebastian Guerrero or exercising their constitutional rights like Renee Good and Alex Preddy. Not a single ICE or CBP
01:39officer has been held accountable for any of these fatal shootings. In fact, it took almost six months for the
01:46Department of Justice to turn over key evidence to the Hennepin County Attorney's Office to even allow local
01:53investigations around the murders of
01:56Rene Good and Alex Preddy to proceed. The extent of disregard for the American people from this president and his
02:04cabinet is stunning.
02:06Trump has called affordability a hoax. He got the Attorney General, who still serves as his personal attorney,
02:13to approve a deal that gives him and his family immunity from tax fraud, even as he has enriched
02:20himself with unconstitutional crypto and business deals that have now made his family 2.2 billion dollars
02:29in the past year alone. But the distraction, the corruption, and the cruelty are backfiring.
02:3670% of Americans disapprove of Trump's performance overall. Even on immigration, where Trump claimed
02:45that he was going after the worst of the worst and got some people to believe that that is what
02:49he would
02:50do. What the American people have seen instead is kidnapping, disappearing, and incarceration of all
02:57people of all statuses, including U.S. citizens, kids, parents, and spouses of U.S. citizens, and people
03:05with legal status that he took away. ICE's own data show that the majority of people that they arrest have
03:13zero criminal charges or convictions. Arrests of immigrants without a single criminal conviction have
03:19surged by 770 percent. In their recent operation targeting people in the D.C. suburbs, ICE actually
03:27bragged that 70 percent of the immigrants that they arrested lacked any criminal charges or convictions.
03:34Perhaps even more disturbingly, Trump is releasing people with criminal charges and convictions from
03:40immigration detention to make room for folks without any criminal history. In fact, in stark contrast to
03:48Republican talking points, DHS's own data shows that under Donald Trump, ICE is releasing 23 percent
03:56more people with criminal convictions from immigration detention than it did during the Biden administration.
04:04Republicans want you to think that they care about public safety, but none of this does anything to
04:10improve public safety. They've pulled agents off of fentanyl investigations to roam the streets searching for
04:17people who, quote, look undocumented. And as a result, according to the Trump-appointed DHS inspector
04:24general, federal agents are spending 30 percent less time working on fentanyl cases, leading to a 40 percent
04:33drop in fentanyl seizures. DHS goes into federal prisons to pick up immigrants in the middle of their criminal
04:40criminal sentences to put them in deportation proceedings. Letting people with criminal convictions
04:45out early so that you can boost your detention and deportation numbers does not make America safer.
04:53Perhaps even worse are the many instances where DHS has picked up people with criminal charges
05:00before their trials and deported them or allowed them to self-deport long before a judge is able to hand
05:08down a sentence. Not only does this grant them a get-out-of-jail-free card, but it also deprives
05:14their victims of justice and restitution. The administration lets these people go free so that
05:21they can fill up their immigration detention centers with people who have never harmed anyone.
05:27Nuns and pastors, care workers, moms, dads, children. Last month, I visited the Stewart Detention Center in
05:34rural Georgia and what I saw was absolutely unacceptable. A private, for-profit detention center that
05:42incarcerates over 1,900 people every single night with unsanitary conditions, substandard medical care,
05:51and severe overcrowding. One 24-year-old man with absolutely no criminal history who came to escape
05:58the war in Yemen has spent 24 months in detention and was even bleeding from the mouth during our visit
06:05because ICE pulled his tooth instead of trying to fix it. A 72-year-old man who has lived in
06:12the United
06:12States for more than 30 years, no criminal record, married to a U.S. citizen who is in final stages
06:19of
06:19renal failure, went in for his green card interview after he had applied through the legal process,
06:26and instead was arrested by ICE for actually trying to obey the law and follow a legal pathway that was
06:33there for him. And a woman who can no longer conceive children because the last time she was in ICE
06:39detention, under Trump, a doctor conducted an unnecessary medical procedure without her consent.
06:47She was weeping over her U.S. citizen daughter who is suffering severe mental health problems because
06:53her mother is in immigration detention, even though she has multiple legal pathways in process.
06:59The stories we will hear today deserve our attention, as do all of the ones that I have mentioned.
07:07I would hope that this committee would treat the issues that I mentioned, those individuals,
07:13those U.S. citizens, with the seriousness that they deserve. Until then, I thank our witnesses for being
07:20here today, and I give my sincere condolences for the horrific injuries that your daughters have
07:27suffered. I yield back. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Beer, I want to start with you. I want to try
07:34to
07:34zoom out a little bit on the central arguments that are being made by Republicans and that we hear
07:40constantly in this room and also outside, because I think it's difficult to just focus on one story or
07:47another. And so the central argument is often that there is a legal immigration system that works and that
07:56people should just go through the legal immigration system. And as one of only two dozen naturalized
08:02citizens to serve in the United States Congress, I actually know a lot about that legal immigration
08:07system and how it hasn't been fixed in over 30 years. So we're dealing with a system that is extremely
08:14antiquated. And then you add to that something that you referenced in your opening statement,
08:20that the Trump administration has essentially decimated any other legal pathways that existed.
08:26And so I just want to spend a minute on is there a legal immigration system that works today in
08:35this
08:35country that allows people to regularize status if they're married to a U.S. citizen,
08:41to be here for work that our corporations are putting out there to serve in the roles that we
08:50need for a growing U.S. economy. Is there a legal immigration system that works?
08:54The legal immigration system does not work as it's intended. The goal here is to have a process by
09:00which people can come legally to this country. You look at some of the wait times for people,
09:04we are processing people who applied before 9-11. 2001, we're processing people for family-based green
09:12cards right now. And those are for the people who have a process, who have U.S. citizen family
09:18in this country. For people from India who are highly skilled individuals, they have already,
09:27the people who are being processed applied a decade ago. The people who are applying right now have
09:33such a long wait in front of them, they will likely die before they receive a green card, even though
09:39they're the highest skilled people in our immigration system. So no, the immigration system is not
09:45working. If you look at the biggest hole in the immigration system, it's really for people going to
09:51jobs that are year-round, they're not seasonal, they're not temporary jobs, but they don't require a
09:56college degree. That's where, when you look at the people who crossed the border over the last four
10:01years, where are they going? Those are the jobs they're going into, meat packing and processing, dairy,
10:06and so on. That's where we need workers, and there's no visa at all for those people. And there's
10:11literally no process right now where we can say, these are the jobs that we need in the United States,
10:18and so we're going to make sure that we fill those jobs. I mean, there just hasn't been any changes
10:23to
10:23the immigration system in a positive light for over 30 years. So let me go to the next central argument,
10:28which is around public safety. Well, actually, before I do that, let me ask you, if Trump and the
10:33Republicans were successful in getting rid of all immigrants in this country, what would happen to
10:38our economy? Briefly, because I have two other questions I want to ask you. It would be a devastating
10:42blow to our economy, because they work at higher rates. You're talking about trillions of dollars in
10:48economic activity, a massive reduction in the rate of net tax flows, so a huge contraction, an increase in
10:55our deficit, almost 800 billion dollars in 2024. So a very significant impact both to government budgets
11:04as well as the broader economy. So let me go to the public safety argument, because I think that
11:10there is this idea that if we just got rid of everyone who's undocumented, and maybe even people
11:16who are documented, because so much of this is cutting off legal pathways to the United States,
11:21that you would be safer as a society. And I want to ask you about public safety and the rule
11:30of law,
11:30because Republicans are always claiming that they're the party of public safety. Is this strategy
11:37of harsher immigration enforcement, the only way to deal with this is to crack down on all the
11:42immigrants who are here, does that help public safety in the United States? No, it doesn't. If you
11:48look at the people who they're arresting now, the marginal person, the next person that they're
11:53going to arrest is going to be someone who does not have any criminal convictions or charges against
11:58them. That is the majority of the people who they are arresting right now. And when you think about
12:03it more broadly, if you want to prioritize resources, you want to go after the people who do have criminal
12:09convictions, who are on the run. And if you want to deal with this problem in a more fundamental way,
12:14in a better way that will actually cure the rule of law problem, is have a legal process for the
12:20people who want to get on the right side of the law. Which is what you said. So very quickly,
12:25why are they pursuing this strategy, Mr. Beer? Why do you think Republicans are pursuing this strategy
12:31that they're undergoing? I hate to speculate why they're pursuing this strategy. I honestly think
12:37there's a better approach here. It's to fix the legal immigration system and let people get in line,
12:43get vetted, start contributing to this country. The general lady's time has expired.
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