| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| during Votoramas and tune in to history being made. | ||
| That's why on its 39th birthday, Senator Grassy and I wanted to highlight how important it is for all television providers, including major streaming services like YouTube TV owned by Google and Hulu Plus Live TV owned by Disney to provide the American public with C-SPAN and the opportunity to see their government work on the Senate floor. | ||
| C-SPAN does not receive one penny of taxpayer dollars. | ||
| It's funded primarily from satellite and cable providers. | ||
| We're at a different stage in our history and a lot of people are seeing their news this way so we need to expand it and make sure we're on all of those platforms as well as the ones we already are on. | ||
| So thank you again to Senator Grassley for working with me to highlight C-SPAN's critical role and thanks to everyone who has had a hand in C-SPAN's success. | ||
| Happy birthday. | ||
|
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C-SPAN 2, 39 years of bringing the U.S. Senate live into homes across the country thanks to the support of our cable partners. | |
| Together, we bring you democracy unfiltered. | ||
| Kenneth Rogoff is professor of economics at Harvard University and former International Monetary Fund chief economist. | ||
| In his most recent book, Our Dollar, Your Problem, he argues that America's currency might have reached today's lofty pinnacle without a certain amount of good luck. | ||
| However, as Professor Rogoff nears the end of his 345-page book, he writes, quote, if rapidly rising debt is left unchecked and there seems to be little political appetite to rein in massive deficits, the United States and the entire world is in for a substantial period of global financial volatility, marked by higher average real interest rates and inflation, unquote. | ||
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Harvard University professor of economics and former International Monetary Fund chief economist Kenneth Rogoff with his most recent book, Our Dollar Your Problem, on this episode of Book Notes Plus, with our host, Brian Lamb, BookNotes Plus is available wherever you get your podcasts and on the C-SPAN Now app. | |
| In a nation divided, a rare moment of unity, this fall, C-SPAN presents Ceasefire, where the shouting stops and the conversation begins. | ||
| In a town where partisan fighting prevails, one table, two leaders, one goal, to find common ground. | ||
| This fall, ceasefire on the network that doesn't take sides, only on C-SPAN. | ||
| Members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and House Democrats spoke to reporters about their recent visit to immigration detention centers across the U.S. Members shared their experiences at the detention centers, calling them for-profit prisons, and said the Trump administration is focused on targeted cruelty instead of immigration enforcement. | ||
| This is about 50 minutes. | ||
| Good morning, everyone. | ||
| Thank you all for being here. | ||
| This is an important press conference. | ||
| I want to thank Congresswoman Sylvia Garcia, tremendous leader in the Congressional Hispanic Caucus for putting this together. | ||
| As you know, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, as well as other members of the House of Representatives, are deeply concerned about detention centers and how they are housing folks that may have a work permit, individuals that are getting swiftly picked up as they make an appointment with their ICE officers or the courts. | ||
| So these are folks that are complying with what they agreed to do. | ||
| They want to stay on the straight and narrow. | ||
| They want to make sure that they're within the parameters of the law. | ||
| So they agree to periodically visit ICE officers or the courtroom. | ||
| And what's happening is they're getting handcuffed and sent to a detention center and ripped away from their families. | ||
| Both myself and Congresswoman Nydia Velasquez visited one of these detention centers and we found that many of the people that were there that have been arrested and detained are parents and spouses to U.S. citizen children and U.S. citizen spouses. | ||
| That in fact, many of them were complying with these appointments in a courtroom or in one of the ICE offices when they got stopped and detained. | ||
| That even some of them have asked to be deported, but these privately run prisons are keeping them for an extended period of time. | ||
| Some of them bounced around from detention center to detention center across the country while they asked to be deported back to their home nation. | ||
| They're unable to do that. | ||
| So this is a crisis, a crisis where we must determine whether these centers are motivated by the profit margins that they make and whether due process is being dramatically and vulgarly violated where families, | ||
| mixed status families of one spouse that's undocumented with a citizen spouse and citizen children are being ripped apart, weakening our nation. | ||
| So this is the state of affairs in America. | ||
| As we speak to you right now, there is fear out there and what will happen is that the word will get out, don't report, because if you try to comply with the rules and regulations, you will be penalized. | ||
| You will be picked up and deported. | ||
| And once that happens, they will come back with the excuse that these folks are violating the law. | ||
| So as a cash-22, on the one hand, comply, come to court, come and visit your ICE officer. | ||
| On the other hand, when you do, you come and get arrested, so you won't go. | ||
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And then you're in violation of the law. | |
| It's entrapment, I think. | ||
| And so we will fight back. | ||
| We will continue to hold these centers accountable. | ||
| It is our jurisdiction to have oversight over them. | ||
| And we have a tremendous group of members of Congress. | ||
| And by the way, the Louisiana system is particularly egregious. | ||
| And there's litigation going on right now as we speak, challenging the humanity of it. | ||
| So with that, I leave you with Representative Sylvia Garcia from Houston, Texas. | ||
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Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you all for joining us today. | |
| And thank you to all my colleagues who are here standing strong, standing strong to ensure that we as members of Congress continue and keep our oversight responsibilities and continue to visit these detention centers so that we can ensure that they're running properly, that they're not mistreating people, and that they're following the rules of the law. | ||
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Journalists in this room know how important it is to shine a light where others would rather keep the truth hidden. | |
| That's your jobs. | ||
| That's why I take my role in congressional oversight so seriously. | ||
| During the district work period, CHC members and House Democrats didn't take a break. | ||
| We went out into our communities and to detention facilities to see what's happening to people in ICE custody. | ||
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This administration has shown an abject contempt for the Constitution. | |
| They've twisted the Department of Homeland Security into a secret police force to terrorize immigrants and in many cases U.S. citizens as well. | ||
| They're wearing masks and ambushing people. | ||
| Republicans told the American people that immigration enforcement would target dangerous individuals. | ||
| They're rapers, they're murderers, they're drug dealers, they're cartel. | ||
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They would go on and on about all these heinous crimes. | |
| But that is not the case that we're finding. | ||
| We just saw another story last week in Massachusetts. | ||
| A high schooler on his way to sports practice was taken and vanished into an ICE facility. | ||
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As of today, I still don't know where he is. | |
| If that's what made it to the front page, imagine what's happening. | ||
| That's not making the front page. | ||
| That's not making the front page. | ||
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That's why these oversight, excuse me, investigations are so important. | |
| Last week, I visited a Houston contract facility, one of the privately owned, as the chairman put it, and met with the operators and an ICE representative. | ||
| We were able to tour the facility. | ||
| We didn't get much pushback. | ||
| They respected that I was there unannounced. | ||
| And we toured it. | ||
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We saw their medical facilities. | |
| We saw a pharmacy. | ||
| We saw family visitations happening in real time. | ||
| But the work is not over. | ||
| This was one of more than 150 ICE facilities currently in use, and that number is going up by the day. | ||
| There are nearly 50,000 people in detention, and Texas has more than 12,000 of them. | ||
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Democrats will crisscross the country inspecting facilities, demanding answers, and making sure that we use the powers of oversight to protect the rights of all. | |
| But again, this is not happening at the moment. | ||
| What is happening, in my view, is just sinister, cruel, and inhumane. | ||
| Of the 800 detainees at the facility the day I was there, I asked the so-called warden about how many of them. | ||
| And I looked at him, y'all, and just said, Look, you're a Texan, I'm a Texan. | ||
| We know what a felony is. | ||
| We know what a heinous crime is. | ||
| About all of these 800 people, about how many would fit that category. | ||
| And at first, he says, Well, man, we don't keep track of that. | ||
| I said, Well, I'm sure you do. | ||
| I said, Just guess. | ||
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I said, Just tell me what's your guess. | |
| You're the warden. | ||
| He said, Oh, I would say about 10. | ||
| 10 out of 800 are the people that that convict in the White House talked about during his campaign that he would go after the heinous murderers and rapists and killers. | ||
| But maybe 10 or in this facility of 800, because the people there are exactly the people that the chairman talked about: their parents, their spouses, their workers. | ||
| They're contributing to our country. | ||
| This administration is running up far too many people who have come here legally who have protections, and even some U.S. citizens, including citizen children. | ||
| They're acting like the Constitution just doesn't apply to them. | ||
| They're talking about taking away habeas corpus. | ||
| And I can tell you, as a former judge, I'm offended by what is coming out of the White House. | ||
| And I can tell you what they're planning to do, they cannot do under the Constitution. | ||
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I tell people all the time: democracy is a gift we pass from one generation to the next, but it is not guaranteed. | |
| It is frail, and it will only survive if we fight for it. | ||
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So, this is not just about immigrants. | |
| This is about the rule of law. | ||
| This is about our democracy. | ||
| This is about whether your government can kidnap a child from a bus stop because of their skin color and send them to a prison, because really that's what they are, without going to court, without a lawyer, and without any recourse whatsoever. | ||
| And to the press, I hope you all stay on this. | ||
| Keep digging, keep reporting, because this caucus, these Democrats, these people behind me are here and committed to this fight. | ||
| And we will continue to fight and we'll continue our oversight duties no matter who says what. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| I yield now to my colleague from New York, Media Velasquez. | ||
| Good morning, everyone. | ||
| And Chairman Espayat and all my colleagues, thank you for being here. | ||
| Thank you for visiting centers and putting a human face into this issue. | ||
| As the chairman said, he and I visited the ICE Detention Center in Elizabeth, New Jersey. | ||
| And what I saw was heartbreaking. | ||
| We met people who have lived here for years, who have families, and who have built lives in their communities. | ||
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Now, suddenly uprooted. | |
| Some have been held for months with no end in sight. | ||
| No clear timeline, no answers, and no way forward. | ||
| Some of the people we met were detained after showing up for routine checks-ins. | ||
| They followed the rules and were taken away anyway. | ||
| What we and our colleagues witnessed was a system being used to punish people simply for being immigrant. | ||
| And we all know that cruelty is the point with this president. | ||
| And we saw a private prison system profiting of that mystery, making money hand over feast. | ||
| We asked and we were given information by the detainees, some of them who already asked to be deported. | ||
| One, a Russian woman, who asked to be deported a year ago. | ||
| When I asked the warden why, why is she still here? | ||
| Is she voluntarily want to be deported? | ||
| No answer, not concrete information. | ||
| Then I said, someone is making money out of the fact that she is staying here. | ||
| So all these private contractors are profiting from the pain and suffering of people that comply with the law and the rules. | ||
| That's what is happening. | ||
| Now the next step is to check how much contributions are some people getting out of these contractors. | ||
| The people we met were not violent felons. | ||
| Just more evidence that Trump was lying when he said he was only going after criminals. | ||
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He's going after immigrants, full stop. | |
| Mothers, union workers, green card holders, people who have lived here for decades, people with legal protections who are still being disappeared by this administration. | ||
| This is what happens when a president decides the rules do not apply to him. | ||
| When due process is treated as a nuance, when people are treated like they are disposable. | ||
| We have seen people deported to countries where their lives are in danger. | ||
| Legal protections ignored. | ||
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Court orders defied. | |
| And billions in taxpayers' dollars funneled to private detention centers with no real oversight. | ||
| And we are here to say, hell, yes, we will be conducting oversight because that is our constitutional responsibility. | ||
| Hear me loud and clear. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| And next, we'll have Pramila Yalepao. | ||
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Thank you so much, Representative Velasquez. | |
| Thank you, Chairman Espayal, for your leadership of the Hispanic caucus. | ||
|
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Also, to my colleague Silvia Garcia for putting this together. | |
| We miss her on the Judiciary Committee where she served so capably on the Immigration Subcommittee. | ||
| Thank you also to Lou Correa, who also is on the Immigration Subcommittee. | ||
| As ranking member of the Immigration Subcommittee, I want to thank all my colleagues who exercised our constitutional authority and responsibility To conduct unannounced visits to ICE detention centers over this last in-district work period. | ||
| As the Trump administration ramps up its mass deportation plan, sending masked men to snatch, kidnap, and disappear immigrants of all legal statuses across the country, | ||
| it is critically important that we members of Congress continue to investigate what are supposed to be civil detention centers, but instead operate as private for-profit prisons with substandard medical care that and they make billions of dollars, | ||
| as Congresswoman Velasquez said, in contracts from this administration, detaining people of all legal statuses, including legal permanent residents, spouses of U.S. citizens, and people who have been living in this country for more than a decade. | ||
| Today in America, we spend $3.4 billion in U.S. taxpayer money on immigration, quote, detention centers that are nothing more than prisons. | ||
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And they make, as I said, enormous profits, all paid for by taxpayers. | |
| Just contrast that with only $840 million that we spend on the immigration judicial system, the ability to actually process people and have people get what they need in the courts. | ||
| We are making it profitable to detain immigrants, most of whom are simply waiting for a bond hearing. | ||
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That's why they're in there. | |
| Not because they've been convicted of any crime, not because there's anything other than just waiting for a bond hearing. | ||
| And so it's profitable to detain people even when it's illegal, it's unconstitutional, there's no charge. | ||
| These detention centers make money over and over again. | ||
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We in Congress intend to hold this administration and these for-profit prison companies accountable, and we will not be detained, deterred, or silenced in our responsibility and our authority to do so. | |
| As a longtime immigrant rights leader, even before I came to Congress, the organization that I ran did the first ever human rights abuses report on the GEO Run Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma. | ||
| And last week, with my colleagues, Representatives Randall and Representative Dexter, we paid an unannounced visit there. | ||
| Despite being delayed for an hour in entering the facility, which was completely needless, and we later heard an apology, and being denied the ability to speak to all the detainees that were there, we were able to speak to two people who I showed up with privacy waivers for them. | ||
| The first woman has been in the country for 20 years. | ||
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She was swept up in a raid at the workplace, and she was detained less than a week before she was going to get married to a U.S. citizen. | |
| The other person was a man who has been in this country for 31 years as a legal permanent resident. | ||
| He's a proud member of the Machinist Union, and he's the primary provider for his U.S. citizen wife and his U.S. citizen children. | ||
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These are not the so-called worst of the worst that Trump kept saying he was going to go after. | |
| These are simply people who love this country, who have been in this country for decades, who are married to U.S. citizens and have U.S. citizen children, and do not understand why the country they love would be doing this to them. | ||
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I think, I think we all believe, that if Americans knew who was being imprisoned in these for-profit prisons, they would be offended that their taxpayer dollars are being spent on this. | |
| And they would understand that if this administration can do this to people who have done no wrong, who are here with legal status, avoid due process, completely undermine all the protections that are built into our Constitution, they can do that to anyone. | ||
| And that is why it is so important that we continue to shine a light on this, that we call it out, and that we refuse to allow the Trump administration to get away with what they are doing. | ||
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And with that, it's my great honor to introduce a tremendous representative from Louisiana, one of the places we see a lot of immigrants shipped over to us, Representative Troy Carter. | |
| Thank you. | ||
| Thank you, Representative Jai Paul, and a huge thanks to the leadership and all of my colleagues behind me. | ||
| I want to thank you all for being here, particularly the press, because we depend on you to transcend the lies, to advance the truth, and to dig a little deeper and ask the question: why? | ||
| Why? | ||
| I stood alongside a powerful, principled congressional delegation that I led in my home state of Louisiana. | ||
| It was bicameral. | ||
| It was Senator Markey, Congresswoman Presley, Congressman McGovern, and Congressman Thompson. | ||
| As we visited ICE detention centers in Gina and Brazil in Louisiana, what we saw was disturbing. | ||
| What we heard was unacceptable. | ||
| We met with several individuals that were being detained. | ||
| We met with Wendy Brio, a New Orleans area mother of three from my district, detained after ICE asked her to come in for her routine checkup. | ||
| Ms. Brito is a volunteer in her children's classroom. | ||
| She's been in the United States for 17 years. | ||
| She's married to an American citizen. | ||
| All of her children were born in the state of Louisiana. | ||
| Ms. Brito is a model individual who shows up. | ||
| She volunteers in the schools. | ||
| She is an example of someone doing the right thing. | ||
| She was going in for her regular, I underscore, regular checkup when she was detained. | ||
| She was not told why she was being detained. | ||
| She was not afforded the ability to have counsel. | ||
| She was not given due process. | ||
| How could this possibly be right in America? | ||
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How could this possibly be right? | |
| The Fifth Amendment rights were violated. | ||
| This is not about immigration enforcement. | ||
| This is about targeted cruelty. | ||
| This is about the Trump administration using government and its power to silence dissent, intimidate communities, and chip away at the very foundation of our Constitution. | ||
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This has to mean something to everyone. | |
| Republicans and Democrats have to be concerned when our democracy and the rights that we all are afforded are chipped away unilaterally by one individual. | ||
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Yeah, you should all be scared. | |
| Republicans, Democrats, Independents, and the like. | ||
| Because if it happened to them, it could happen to you, it could happen to us. | ||
| We got to talk about this. | ||
| We got to turn the lights on. | ||
| And let me be clear for those who might misunderstand or choose to misinterpret. | ||
| No one should be thrown into a federal custody for simply speaking their mind. | ||
| No one should disappear from their family without cause. | ||
| No one should be punished for writing in their school newspaper. | ||
| No one should be challenged because you disagree with what they say. | ||
| Listen, our free speech is not built on only protecting speech that we like. | ||
| In fact, it is protected against those things even we grossly dislike. | ||
| That's not the point. | ||
| The framers of the Constitution were very clear. | ||
| We don't want tyranny. | ||
| We don't want a king. | ||
| We want a democracy where you're free to challenge your leaders, to challenge their policies, to speak freely without fear of persecution. | ||
| This president clearly doesn't like that. | ||
| And we're seeing it acted out every single day. | ||
| These abuses demand transparency. | ||
| They demand accountability. | ||
| They demand congressional oversight. | ||
| And we're going to do just that. | ||
| We won't stop fighting for the Wendies of the world. | ||
| We won't stop fighting for the individuals of the world who are being persecuted for no crime. | ||
| When we visited Louisiana, one of the things that was most telling is that none of these individuals that we spoke to were being held for a crime. | ||
| Many of which, as my colleagues have just said, offered to just send me home. | ||
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And they wouldn't. | |
| It's because it's a for-profit entity. | ||
| Louisiana is different in most because we are above the 72-hour frame. | ||
| Most of the centers across the country are required to release them after a short period. | ||
| In Louisiana, you can keep them longer. | ||
| Hence, you see people go from center to center to center. | ||
| Why? | ||
| Because they're timed out, they send them to another center. | ||
| They're timed out, they send them to another center because they're making money. | ||
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Because as long as there's a body in the cot, there's a check in the bank. | |
| We cannot allow this gross miscarriage of justice to go on. | ||
| We cannot allow them to continue to profit from an illegal action, from an unconstitutional action, from an action that ignores the rule of law. | ||
| That's why we're here today. | ||
| And that's why we aren't going anywhere. | ||
| We're going to continue to stand. | ||
| We won't stop fighting for every person caught in this system without a voice. | ||
| And we in Congress must uphold the values of our founding fathers and the rights of all people in the United States, regardless of whether we agree with what they say or not. | ||
| None of us support hate speech, anti-Semitism, or hate violence of any sort. | ||
| Let's be clear. | ||
| None of us are supporting anyone who incites violence or anti-Semitic or anti-gay or anti-black or anti-Asian or anti-Hispanic or anti-anything. | ||
| But we're not going to sit back idly by and shirk our responsibility as people with oversight To check and make sure our Constitution and individual rights are being upheld to the highest extent of the law. | ||
| I thank you for being here next. | ||
| I will bring up the esteemed member, Emily Randall, for comments. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| It was my second visit to Northwest Detention Center in my district this last week with Congresswoman Jarapaul and Congresswoman Dexter, and I was so grateful that they made the time to come so that we could present a united front and show members of our community and our neighbors within the walls of the Northwest Detention Center that we were watching, | ||
| that we were there for them, that we were listening, and that we wanted to fight for a better immigration system for all of us. | ||
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You heard two of the stories of the individuals we spoke with. | |
| And just the day before we visited, another legal permanent resident, a green card holder, Auntie Lin, an SCIU worker from the University of Washington, was released after being held for three months, for three months in the Northwest Detention Center as a legal permanent resident. | ||
| And that her release gave hope to one of the detainees that we spoke with, who's also a legal permanent resident, who is getting support from an organization that had helped Auntie Lin. | ||
| But three months to hold someone who has proven that they belong in this country, who has shown up to renew their green card, their legal permanent resident status multiple times over the course of their life without incident. | ||
| To be snatched off the street in front of your house on the way to work or from the airport and be held is unconscionable and unconstitutional. | ||
| My neighbors in Tacoma and around the district have long protested outside the fence line of the Northwest Detention Center, and we have incredible organizations like One America, who accompanied us, and La Resistencia, an organization that works with families of those detained. | ||
| And my community has been crying for change. | ||
| This administration wants us to believe that they are arresting and rounding up the worst of the worst. | ||
| And you have heard from all of my colleagues that that is simply not true. | ||
| There are our neighbors who are hardworking community members who are contributing to our society, who are building our economy, who are raising American citizens who just want to build a strong life and a strong future. | ||
| But this system is using immigrants as a distraction, as a scapegoat, and as a tool to divide our country. | ||
| And this Pride Month, I have been thinking a lot about the intersectional fight that we are in. | ||
| The work to protect the most marginalized, our immigrants, LGBTQ immigrants, communities who are easily pushed aside and who this administration are over and over using as fodder in their war to consolidate power and control. | ||
| And we will not stand for it. | ||
| That's why we stand before you today and why we'll continue to show up at detention centers and at protests and pride parades and Every opportunity we have in district and around the country to stand with our immigrant neighbors and to fight for a better system, | ||
| a system that invests money not in locking people up, but in processing, in ensuring that we have an immigration system that is humane and effective and doesn't create these long delays and allows us to build the America in whose promise we believe. | ||
| I'm honored to be a member of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and to serve alongside longtime immigration advocates like Congresswoman Dryapal and my fellow freshman, Congresswoman Dexter. | ||
| I know that when we work together as members of Congress and with community, we are more powerful and we are not giving up this fight. | ||
| I'm now so honored to introduce Maxine Dexter, Congresswoman from Oregon. | ||
| Good afternoon and I want to reiterate what my colleague said, my thanks for you all being here today. | ||
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My name is Maxine Dexter. | |
| I'm a mother, a physician, and the very proud representative for Oregon's 3rd Congressional District. | ||
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And last week, as you've heard, I conducted my duty, my duty to perform oversight with my colleagues, Congresswoman Jayapal and Congresswoman Randall. | |
| We were unannounced. | ||
| We arrived at the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma, Washington. | ||
| What I have to continue to underline is this is a for-profit institution that benefits from the unconstitutional imprisonment of people throughout our districts. | ||
| This facility serves all of the North Pacific Northwest. | ||
| And Donald Trump, as you've heard, is claiming that he is targeting violent criminals, the worst of the worst. | ||
| But what I saw, what we saw, is very different. | ||
| He's going after union members, lawful permanent residents, people who have lived in this country for decades, people who pay taxes, raise families, and contribute to our communities in the ways that you've heard. | ||
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They're very meaningful. | |
| And their children have had their parents ripped away from them, or they themselves have been ripped away from their families. | ||
| These are breaking up families. | ||
| They are citizens. | ||
| We are undermining trust. | ||
| We are decreasing the likelihood that people believe in the promise of America when we do this. | ||
| He's detaining our neighbors, our coworkers, and our loved ones. | ||
| And again, he's doing it without ensuring due process, without meaningful oversight, and with blatant disregard for human dignity. | ||
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At the Northwest Detention Center, we met Maximo, a lawful permanent resident, a proud member of the Machinist Union, and a father, as you've heard, of three U.S. citizens. | |
| He came to the United States at age 12. | ||
| He is married to a United States citizen, and his family said he has no history of violent crime. | ||
| And yet he was detained by ICE while returning from a trip with his wife to celebrate their 20th anniversary. | ||
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He was then sent to the Northwest Detention Center after being kept in the airport facility for five days. | |
| No explanation to his family, no explanation to him why he was being detained. | ||
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This is not an outlier story. | |
| It is emblematic of a system that has been weaponized to instill fear, break families apart, and funnel billions of dollars into the pockets of for-profit prison contractors. | ||
| And let me be clear, Trump's cruel immigration agenda is not about your safety. | ||
| It is about cruelty, chaos, and control. | ||
| And I'm here to say the emergency isn't coming. | ||
| It is here. | ||
| This is what authoritarianism looks like. | ||
| But here's what gives me hope. | ||
| Our communities are not powerless, and we will not stand for this cruelty. | ||
| People across this country are rising up saying, enough. | ||
| We refuse to accept a system that dehumanizes immigrants, tears families apart, and funnels billions into private prisons with no accountability. | ||
| We are organizing, we are speaking out, and we are demanding justice. | ||
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And the stakes could not be higher. | |
| Neither could our resolve. | ||
| We must stay loud, we must stay focused, and know this. | ||
| Every single person beside me will keep fighting every single day for a just, humane, and accountable immigration system that reflects the values that we hold as Americans. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
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unidentified
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And I now are sorry to go back to our chair. | |
| Our last speaker is Louis. | ||
| Oh, I'm so sorry. | ||
| That was very good. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| I want to thank the press for being here today to make sure that these stories don't go unnoticed. | ||
| These are serious violations of our law of due process. | ||
| And if I can, I also stand, echo the comments made by my colleagues here today. | ||
| But let me give you a bigger context here of what we're talking about. | ||
| I'm out of Orange County, California. | ||
| I'm home to the biggest number of DREAMers in the country. | ||
| We're the fourth largest economy in the world, California. | ||
| Biggest ag sector in the United States, California. | ||
| Most of those workers in the ACT sector are undocumented. | ||
| We have the biggest manufacturing center in the United States, California. | ||
| Most of those workers are what? | ||
| Undocumented. | ||
| My point is simple. | ||
| Our economy relies on this workforce. | ||
| We also, by the way, give $100 billion more to the federal government every year as Californians than we get back. | ||
| We're like everybody else. | ||
| We want safe streets. | ||
| We don't want serious violent criminals as our neighbors. | ||
| And I would ask you, would a serious violent criminal show up in a courtroom? | ||
| Of course not. | ||
| In my district today, these individuals are following the law, showing up according to DHS rules, ICE rules, showing up to court hearings, and they're having their removal cases dismissed. | ||
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unidentified
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Do you get that? | |
| Show up to court for your removal case, it's dismissed. | ||
| What do these individuals do? | ||
| They walk out of the courtroom. | ||
| Immediately as they walk out of that courtroom, they are rearrested and put into what is called an expedited removal process. | ||
| You get that picture? | ||
| Dismissed, expedited removal process for a process that's more expedited. | ||
| Quickly get them out of the country. | ||
| I would ask ICE, DHS, to think really hard. | ||
| You've got individuals that are workers, part of our economy, contributing. | ||
| Some have been here 20, 30 years. | ||
| They're trying to comply with the law. | ||
| They're following DHS directions, Homeland ICE. | ||
| And when they think I'm clear, they're rearrested. | ||
| What's the incentive that you are creating or giving other individuals out there to go deeper underground? | ||
| Ladies and gentlemen, this is not the way you want to run a country, the fourth largest economy in the world, or this great nation. | ||
| Thank you, the press. | ||
| Please follow these stories. | ||
| Make sure you report them because the world needs to know what's going on. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Thank you, Lou. | ||
| Thank you, Sylvia. | ||
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unidentified
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Any questions right here? | |
| Well, I would like to ask you about the yesterday's decision of Donald Trump in relation to the entry, the entry restrictions to the country. | ||
| So, what's your opinion? | ||
| Yeah, the travel bound. | ||
| I mean, he tried that before in his first term. | ||
| It was one of the first actions you may remember that he took, and we stood up against it, and we're going to stand up against it again. | ||
| You know, many would like us to be silent. | ||
| Many will like us to hide under a rock. | ||
| We will not. | ||
| We will speak out. | ||
| We will fight back. | ||
| We will hold these detention centers accountable. | ||
| We will comply with our jurisdiction to have oversight. | ||
| We will ensure that due process is followed to the letter of the law. | ||
| We will make sure that no human rights are violated and that people are truly treated fairly. | ||
| And we will continue with these visits to these detention centers. | ||
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unidentified
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Can we have also a Spanish answer, please? | |
| Los Otros vamos aguir está lucha, muchas personas lo mejora algunas persona quiere en que no callemos no los vamos hacer, vamos seguir con nuestra responsablidad de hacegural de que el systema de detención, de esta personas se a un systema justo que no violente los derechos de ellos, que realmente los derechos en general a un proceso justo se a protegido por la ley. | ||
| Así que estremos en vigilancia y en apoyo de estos imigrantes. | ||
| I was about to add, I looked at that list of countries, the travel ban. | ||
| I believe one of them was Afghanistan. | ||
| And this last week, I noticed American veterans of the Afghan war in our hallways fighting for Afghan refugees to keep them in the U.S. | ||
| So you're talking about people that fought along Americans who backed, watched their back of Americans, saved Americans in the battlefield, and now you are saying you can't come to the U.S. Again, what is the message we are sending the world when it comes to being in the battlefield with Americans? | ||
| This is not good. | ||
| Yeah, I just want to add that I'm very hopeful that just as the Supreme Court held his first travel ban, and I think the second and third version, he went to two or three versions of it, held it unconstitutional that they would do that again because there's no rhyme or reason as how he picked and choose all those countries. | ||
| It's just deplorable. | ||
| I think it's unconstitutional. | ||
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unidentified
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And I'm sure that it will be lawsuits filed as quickly as they can. | |
| Question? | ||
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unidentified
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Are you getting from ICE and ICE contractors all the access that you're seeking at the detention sites he visited? | |
| I must say that the Elizabeth, New Jersey detention center that we visited, there was no objection from them. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Can I say something? | ||
| We visited a for-profit center, so it was their decision to make there was a representative there from ICE. | ||
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unidentified
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But anything that we asked for in writing, like a copy of the inspection report, a profile of the 800 population that was there, you know, by age, by sex, things that we wanted in writing, they just said no. | |
| And he would always just look to the, the warden would look to the ICE guy and he'd go like, well, no, we'll have to ask ICE. | ||
| We'll have to ask ICE. | ||
| So yes, we got a tour. | ||
| Yes, we were able to visit. | ||
| But we got no data, no monthly reports, nothing to back up some of the things that they were saying. | ||
| And in addition to that, when asked about the finances of the place, they had no answer. | ||
| So we want to find out about the finances here, right? | ||
| And they had no answer when we visited them. | ||
| But we'll be looking at that as well. | ||
| Right here and then right here. | ||
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unidentified
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We obviously saw one of your colleagues, actually a group of your colleagues, be denied entry to an ICE facility and then an altercation ensued and then the Trump administration through their district attorney filed charges against one of your colleagues, Congresswoman Mick Iber. | |
| Do those charges and does that sequence of events give any of you pause about conducting oversight? | ||
| And are you giving any of your colleagues advice for how to conduct these oversight visits so that you can get as much access as possible? | ||
| Well, we will not succumb to any intimidation tactics. | ||
| We will continue to comply with our duty to have oversight of these detention centers and we will visit them within the parameters of the law. | ||
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unidentified
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Sylvie? | |
| Well, CHC and a number of other groups have what we call the toolkit that kind of has guidelines of what to ask, you know, sort of a checklist and also things to do and how to respond to some of their actions. | ||
| So yes, we provide some guidance. | ||
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unidentified
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Some of the more alarming details you got to share, the masks, the apprehension that seems to happen to children on bus tops, that sort of thing. | |
| I guess that makes me wonder what's the normative process that governs the way that ICE acts, especially when I think some Republicans look at that and say there is no due process supported on documented immigrants. | ||
| In your mind, what is supposed to happen in Berlin? | ||
| What governs what ICE does and how they go about these apprehensions? | ||
| And where can you point to like, where do you see a departure from that? | ||
| First, let me direct you to a particular case that occurred recently where a Honduran mom was being handcuffed and she went into a panic attack and it took her little boy, you know, maybe like a five or six year old little boy, to step up and say, Mom, I'm here for you. | ||
| Listen to that. | ||
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unidentified
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That's the state of affairs here in America right now. | |
| And of course, anybody that steps foot on soil in the United States is already protected and guarded by the U.S. Constitution. | ||
| And there should be due process extended to that person. | ||
| But I will defer to the attorney in the room, Sylvia. | ||
| Well, there sure. | ||
| Or two of you. | ||
| Well, you know, there is immigration law. | ||
| There's immigration law that's been in place. | ||
| And I think the key thing that we should remember is that immigration law is not criminal law, period. | ||
| The convict in the White House seems to think that any violation of immigration law, they need to be deported. | ||
| Their crimes are criminals. | ||
| That really is just a complete exaggeration. | ||
| It's civil. | ||
| It's what we call in the law administrative law. | ||
| It's a regulation. | ||
| So, the entire premise of this whole notion that immigration law is criminal law is just contrary to what immigration law has always been. | ||
| And they should always have an opportunity, be able to have afforded an opportunity to go before an immigration law judge. | ||
| They should be afforded the right to be able to hire an attorney. | ||
| They should be afforded. | ||
| Imagine children as young as five and six taken to a judge without a lawyer, without a guardian at Leiden, without parents. | ||
| I mean, how can a five or six-year-old present a case? | ||
| I read that last week somewhere, I forget where right now, children were zip-tied. | ||
| Children. | ||
| There's no reason for that. | ||
| So, if you ask me how do we normalize it, we start from square one because this administration not only has a sort of kind of tosses the Constitution aside, they've tossed immigration law aside, any notion of due process. | ||
| They really just want to do whatever they want to do to pick you up. | ||
| And the bottom line here is: if they are picking up U.S. citizen children, if they're picking up LPRs, permanent residents, if they're picking up people who have status, including students, they're masked, they just show up two or three at night. | ||
| I've seen the tapes. | ||
| That means the next one they could stop is you. | ||
| They could just decide because it's all profiling. | ||
| Oh, well, you look like an immigrant. | ||
| Well, we're going to stop you. | ||
| That never, anytime you profile, you're on the road to calamity. | ||
| But I'll yield to the other lawyer in the middle. | ||
| Yeah, I just want to simply say the Constitution affords due process the rights to everybody. | ||
| Period. | ||
| Period. | ||
| One last question. | ||
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unidentified
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Earlier, you said it's a catch-22 for these people going to these hearings that they've been going to for years. |