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Hearing Comes to Order
00:11:00
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unidentified
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The Port C-SPAN as a public service, along with these other television providers, giving you a front-row seat to democracy. | |
| Democrats on the House Homeland Security Committee met to discuss how children of undocumented immigrants were affected by Trump administration immigration policies and claims of use of excessive force by Border Patrol and immigration and customs enforcement agents without justification. | ||
| This is just over two hours. | ||
| The hearing will come to order. | ||
| I welcome the members to today's hearing on unmasking the truth, how Trump's immigration raids target U.S. citizens and terrorize communities. | ||
| I want to thank our outstanding panel of witnesses for joining us and for their courage to discuss their experiences today. | ||
| I'll begin by recognizing myself for an opening statement, followed by opening statements from the witnesses. | ||
| Good afternoon. | ||
| Democratic members of the Committee on Homeland Security are holding today's hearing for a very simple reason. | ||
| Donald Trump's immigration raids are targeting U.S. citizens and terrorizing Americans' communities, and our Republican colleagues refuse to do a damn thing about it. | ||
| Despite repeated requests from committed Democrats, Republicans have done no real oversight of the Trump administration or the Department of Homeland Security or Congress. | ||
| Though she's found plenty of time to fly around the world for staging photo ops, Secretary Christy Noam has appeared before the committee only once, far less than her predecessors under prior administrations of both parties. | ||
| Republicans have been complicit in allowing DHS officials to hide from accountability by holding what has to be the fewest hearings with administration witnesses in the history of this committee. | ||
| Even in the face of horrific video footage of masked Border Patrol and ICE agents roving through American communities, assaulting and detaining U.S. citizens, including pregnant women, veterans, senior citizens, clergy, and children, Republicans have remained, as we say in the South, as silent as the grave. | ||
| They are loyal to Trump over their fellow Americans, an appalling violation of the oath they swore to the Constitution that's not America first at all. | ||
| In fact, it's un-American. | ||
| So Democrats are doing what Republicans want, sounding the alarm on what Border Patrol and ICE are doing to American citizens and communities across the country under the Trump administration. | ||
| I want to show a video clip of what one of our witnesses, Reverend David Black, a U.S. citizen, experienced as he peacefully exercised his constitutional rights near the Broadview Detention Center outside Chicago this summer. | ||
| You will see armed agents hit the crowd, including Reverend Black, with multiple pepper balls, driving him to the ground in a cloud of caustic dust. | ||
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unidentified
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That leads us to Reverend David Black, pastor at the First Presbyterian Church of Chicago. | |
| Reverend Black was taking part in a protest outside the Broadview ICE facility last month when he said upon his arrival he felt moved to just pray for the ICE agents. | ||
| But Reverend Black says his prayers did not stop them. | ||
| Instead, those ICE agents opened fire on him, striking him seven times with pepper balls, those pellets that release a chemical irritant. | ||
| This is what it's come to under a Trump administration. | ||
| A member of the clergy standing with his arms outstretched in prayer, being assaulted by armed government agents and Republicans who so often loudly proclaim their faith are suddenly and conspicuously silent. | ||
| In another shocking clip, we see agents knocking a senior citizen to the ground, not once but twice, driving him into the pavement outside his place of business. | ||
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unidentified
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79-year-old business owner says he was body slammed and pinned to the ground by federal agents during an immigration raid despite being a U.S. citizen. | |
| We're hearing more from him tonight as he files a $50 million lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security. | ||
| You do not effigise, you do not advise, you do not effidize. | ||
| That's all they learn, I guess that's all they wish we knew. | ||
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unidentified
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That 79-year-old Rocky Hugh had describing what he says happened September 9th when federal agents descended on his valley car wash to arrest workers suspected of being in the U.S. illegally. | |
| This gentleman, a U.S. citizen, was later released from custody but sustained broken ribs and bruises over his body. | ||
| Other video clips taken by concerned citizens show Border Patrol and ICE agents smashing car windows and pulling Americans going about their daily lives from their vehicles, often profiling brown and black Americans who are repeatedly stopped and asked to show their papers simply because of the color of their skin. | ||
| We will see more of these videos today. | ||
| They are hard to watch because of the violence they show, but because of what they say about the state of our country under the Trump administration. | ||
| Even our brave veterans have been targeted in Trump's raids. | ||
| This summer, DHS agents pulled U.S. Citizen Army veteran and father of two, George Ritas, from his vehicle as he drove to work. | ||
| pepper sprayed him and locked him in immigration detention for three days and nights without letting him contact his family or a lawyer. | ||
| Unfortunately, this wasn't an isolated incident. | ||
| ProPublica recently reported that ICE detained over 170 U.S. citizens, including almost 20 children, two of whom have cancer. | ||
| This is an outrage and a disgrace. | ||
| Another of our witnesses, Mr. Jim Brown, is a decorated retired Navy combat veteran whose U.S. legal permanent resident wife, Donna, was thrown into immigration detention by the Trump administration after attending a family funeral in Ireland. | ||
| Besides being a green card holder, Donna is a home health care worker, a volunteer in her community, and is the mother of a United States Marine currently serving our country overseas. | ||
| The only mark on her record is from over a decade ago when as a struggling single mom trying to feed her kids, Donna passed two bad checks at a grocery store totaling less than $60. | ||
| That's it, less than $60 to feed her kids, and that debt has since been repaid, hardly the worst of the worst, as Trump promised to target. | ||
| Republicans claim to support our veterans and military, but again, they are suddenly and conspicuously silent about these cases. | ||
| Tragically, we've also seen heartbreaking footage of U.S. citizens' children being torn from their parents and news reports of kids being taken from their beds by masked Border Patrol agents in the middle of the night, zip-tied, and left outside in the cold. | ||
| Kids are terrified to go to the doctor or to go to school for fear of what might happen. | ||
| It truly is a special kind of evil to hurt children that way. | ||
| We are fortunate to have two pediatricians on our panel today who can speak to how these raids are hurting our kids and what we can do to help. | ||
| As Americans, we need to stand up for what's right and push back against those abuses by the Trump administration. | ||
| Our democracy literally depends on it. | ||
| I'd like to formally introduce our panelists of witnesses before recognizing them for their opening statement. | ||
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Associate Director's Insights
00:03:29
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| I'd like to also recognize our colleagues who are here in attendance. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| The interest of your participation today shows the gravity of what we are facing here in this country. | ||
| Our first witness, Nareen Shaw, is the Director of Governmental Affairs Equity Division at the American Civil Liberties Union, where she leads the ACLU's immigration policy and advocacy work. | ||
| Ms. Shaw is a human rights lawyer with experience as an advocate, researcher, and campaigner. | ||
| Jesse Fronsbaugh is the Associate Director of Policy at the National Immigrant Justice Center, which is based in Chicago. | ||
| Mr. Farbaugh works on NIJC's Transparency and Human Rights Project and conducts investigative research on human rights abuses at the U.S.-Mexico border. | ||
| Reverend David Black is an ordained teaching elder in the Presbyterian Church, USA. | ||
| He began pastoring at First Presbyterian Church of Chicago in 2020. | ||
| Reverend Black graduated from Princeton Theological Seminary in 2018 with the Masters of Divinity and Masters of Arts in Christian Education and Formation. | ||
| Jim Brown is a military veteran and private citizen. | ||
| Mr. Brown is here to share his and his wife's Donna's story to bring awareness to their case. | ||
| Dr. Menel Jiri is a pediatrician and founder and executive director of the Midwest Human Rights Consortium. | ||
| Dr. Jerry will share her experiences providing health care to children in Chicago suffering under President Trump's mass deportation agenda. | ||
| Dr. Alan Shapiro is a senior medical director and assistant professor of pediatrics, Bronx Health Collective, and co-founder and chief strategy officer, Terra Firma National. | ||
| Dr. Shapiro has been an advocate for immigrant children and families throughout his career and will share his experiences providing care to kids in New York. | ||
| I'll now ask each of our witnesses to summarize his or her statement for five minutes, beginning with Ms. Shaw. | ||
| Thank you, Member Thompson, members of the committee. | ||
| Thank you for the invitation to testify before you today on this important topic. | ||
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unidentified
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My name is Boyden Shaw and I'm proud to represent the American People's Meeting for you today as Director of Paul Grant of Harry Prime Moration. | |
| The ACLU has filed more than 200 legal actions since the beginning of this second Trump administration. | ||
| We have fought attacks on birthright citizenship and successfully blocked it two times. | ||
| We have fought to vindicate the rights of people in Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., Chicago, Colorado, as they experience raids in their communities. | ||
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Gratitude For Courage
00:15:44
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| And we have fought to free students and other scholars who were victims of an attack on the First Amendment and their rights to free speech. | ||
| We have so much more to do and we do it in partnership with so many of you in this room and I want to convey the deep gratitude of the ACLU for your courage, for all that you have done, for continuing to knock on the door of detention sites, for speaking for the people who are behind bars, who cannot speak, and for the families you have saved countless lives. | ||
| I know your staff have labored in the background and helped release people and reunite parents and children. | ||
| Like you, I am horrified by the images that we just saw on the screen. | ||
| There are images and reports that we hear every day. | ||
| Kids tear gassed on their way to a Halloween parade. | ||
| Federal law enforcement firing tear gas in front of people's homes, hitting even police officers. | ||
| Tear gas into an open car window exposing a one-year-old baby who struggled to breathe and open her eyes. | ||
| A 67-year-old U.S. citizen dragged from his car, thrown to the ground in front of children in Halloween costumes. | ||
| It is unimaginable, and yet it is happening. | ||
| I'm a parent, and I think of my own small children when I read these stories. | ||
| I think of the parents who have to live in fear that when they take their child to school, when they go to church, they may be separated from them forever. | ||
| And I think of all the parents around this country because every American is harmed by the chaos that is unleashed. | ||
| The administration promises safety but threatens the safety of all of us by unleashing agents in our communities and essentially promising them immunity, immunity that they do not have, and that we will fight. | ||
| We will fight back against that lack of accountability. | ||
| There are too many people in this country who fear that their child may be the one who experiences or simply may be the one who witnesses when a person is going about their daily life and is swarmed by mass agents who refuse to show their badge or say who they are, who bundle them into unmarked vans, mass agents who smash car windows without warning, who shoot pepper spray into cars with babies in their car seats, who slam old people to the ground. | ||
| This isn't a country that we recognize as ours. | ||
| It is not a country that is safe and free, and it is not the country that any of us deserve. | ||
| What we have already seen from this administration is disturbing enough, but I want to outline four particular ways we are concerned about what happens next. | ||
| And the first is attacks on our First Amendment rights, attacks on you all as members of Congress as you continue to exercise your oversight responsibilities, and the attacks on protesters that I know you'll hear more about today. | ||
| Despite an Illinois federal district court order enjoining excessive use of force against protesters and others in retaliation for their First Amendment activities, we continue to see abuses. | ||
| The second I want to outline is the danger of Border Patrol's ascendance as they descend upon American cities, now including Charlotte, North Carolina. | ||
| Border Patrol, with its culture of abuse and impunity, puts our country, our cities into danger, including Americans who will be racially profiled or simply caught up in these operations. | ||
| In the last 15 years, at least 200 people have died as a result of encounters with Border Patrol. | ||
| That includes more than 100 fatalities with Border Patrol-led car crashes. | ||
| Yet, upon taking office, the Trump administration rescinded a hard-won agency policy to restrict these dangerous car chases. | ||
| The third is surveillance of Americans. | ||
| Ranking Member Thompson, as you know, among the dangerous surveillance measures of the Department of Homeland Security is Mobile Fortify, an app that federal agents are using to take photos and retain them, including of U.S. citizens. | ||
| And they are taking steps to deploy this app to state and local law enforcement officers designated by the 287G program. | ||
| They take these photos as definitive determination of a person's status, even in the face of a birth certificate. | ||
| And as you have said, sir, that is frightening and repugnant. | ||
| The final one is the build out of a national paramilitary policing force. | ||
| Since June, the President has claimed unreviewable authority to deploy federal troops to American cities without geographic or temporal limit in response to political protests. | ||
| Yesterday, I'm proud to say that the ACLU joined with veterans organizations to bring 40 veterans to Capitol Hill to testify to talk with our members of Congress about the danger to our democracy that these deployments pose. | ||
| The ACLU stands ready to continue to partner with you, and we are very grateful for your continued efforts to shed a light on all of this. | ||
| Thank you so much for your testimony. | ||
| I now recognize Mr. Ponsbau to summarize his statement for five minutes. | ||
|
unidentified
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Thank you so much, Ranking Member Thompson and members of this committee and other members here. | |
| I am Jesse Fransbow, Associate Policy Director of the National Immigrant Justice Center, NIJC. | ||
| So for over four decades, NIJC has dedicated itself to ensuring human rights protections and access to justice for immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers. | ||
| Headquartered in Chicago, NIJC provides legal services to around 11,000 people a year, low-income individuals, and advocates on behalf of our immigrant communities through federal advocacy, impact litigation, and public education. | ||
| And NIJC serves people throughout the country with a focus on the Midwest and people who are facing rampant rights violations by federal immigration enforcement agents and inhumane conditions in immigration detention. | ||
| And today I'm going to focus briefly on two critical issues facing communities in the Chicago area and across the country, notably the egregious rights abuses by federal agents who are carrying out sweeping arrest operations and the discriminatory practices that are occurring along racial and ethnic lines. | ||
| And these issues are impacting U.S. citizens and non-citizens alike and represent a dramatic overreach of executive authority and a serious threat to democratic institutions. | ||
| So while the Trump administration officials are often denying that U.S. citizens are being detained during their ongoing immigration enforcement operations, mounting evidence is definitely contradicting those claims. | ||
| There are countless reports of U.S. citizens being temporarily detained. | ||
| The administration fails to report reliably on how many citizens have been held and detained, but a pro-public investigation found more than 170 cases this year where citizens were detained at raids or at protests. | ||
| New federal disclosures through an ongoing Casino-Nava settlement agreement also illustrate how the assault on immigrant communities is impacting U.S. citizens and non-citizens alike. | ||
| In this case, the judge in this case has ordered the Trump administration to release potentially hundreds of people from ICE detention centers who are believed to have been arrested without warrants or probable cause. | ||
| And the judge in that case has also addressed how citizens and non-citizens with legal status who share commonalities are now finding themselves increasingly subjected to ICE questioning for sometimes lengthy periods at time and potentially warrantless arrests during immigration enforcement operations. | ||
| U.S. citizens are being seized, taken from their jobs, prevented from working to support themselves and their families. | ||
| And an October 7th decision in that case discusses two U.S. citizens who are among five people arrested during a September 25th immigration enforcement operation in a Chicago suburb. | ||
| And the November decision in that case also discusses the South Shore raid that occurred in Chicago on September 25th. | ||
| In this operation, which was very highly reported on and publicized, around 300 DHS officers ascended on an apartment complex with Black Hawk helicopters helping them in a predominantly African-American South Shore neighborhood in Chicago. | ||
| The building was reportedly targeted because of alleged ties of individuals there to a suspected gang. | ||
| But a pro-public investigation in that case has also found little support for the government's claims regarding the justifications for those raids. | ||
| And those raids are just one of the examples of how communities throughout Chicago have been traumatized by ICE and other federal agents. | ||
| So I would just close and just say that it's imperative for Congress to continue, as you are, to demand answers and accountability from DHS on the use of racial profiling. | ||
| It's imperative that Congress do everything in its power to end this impunity for ICE and CBP operations that are ravaging our communities. | ||
| And this means blocking additional funds through provisions and appropriations law. | ||
| Congress must continue to conduct vigorous oversight visits and advocate on behalf of people in detention and put an end to the misuse of funds and the impunity and work to protect constitutional protections. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Thank you so much for your testimony. | ||
| I now recognize Reverend Black to summarize his testimony for five minutes. | ||
| Thank you, Congressman Thompson, for all of your work on behalf of Americans and for organizing this hearing. | ||
| I'm honored to be here, and I especially want to thank Congresswoman Ramirez and Congresswoman Kelly for your tireless and faithful work on behalf of Chicagoans. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| My church is in Congresswoman Kelly's district. | ||
| I am here today in service to my God, the God of Abraham, Hagar, Sarah, Ishmael, and Isaac, and the Father of my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. | ||
| I'm a pastor, a pastor of a community church on the south side of Chicago. | ||
| My calling is as ordinary as they come, to preach the gospel and to care for the people of God. | ||
| I have often felt compelled by the Holy Spirit to minister in places where people are suffering and calling for justice. | ||
| This is what Jesus taught his followers to do, and I happen to be a Bible-believing Christian. | ||
| In late August, I learned about the ICE detention facility in Broadview, Illinois, which illegally operates as a detention facility in violation of the Illinois Trust Act. | ||
| I learned about the conditions inside, where my neighbors are held for days at a time without beds or basic hygiene, including soap, toothpaste, toilet paper, and menstrual products. | ||
| They are denied due process and the advocacy of lawyers and even the care of pastors. | ||
| We have seen the ways that ICE and Border Patrol treats our neighbors in broad daylight and in front of cameras, smashing car windows to drag people out by the hair, tear gassing toddlers, elders, pregnant women, violently abducting and disappearing people without regard for their citizenship status. | ||
| We know very little about what happens to people after they are detained by ICE, though many are sent to outsourced internment camps, which have been described by independent observers as death camps. | ||
| We know still less about what our neighbors experience in that time between their kidnapping and their deportation. | ||
| What we hear from survivors of the Broadview facility is nightmarish. | ||
| Former detainees have described holding cells with 150 to 200 people crowded inside so tightly that they have to sleep on top of each other's bodies or standing up, and toilets overflowing with human waste. | ||
| They have described ICE agents withholding food and water from them and only giving it as a reward for good behavior. | ||
| Jesus himself went to hell to fulfill his destiny to conquer evil and set free those who had been taken captive by the devil. | ||
| When I heard about the ICE facility in Broadview, it was clear to me that these are the gates of hell, and that I was called as one of Jesus' disciples to go there and proclaim the gospel, to minister healing, and to cast out demons. | ||
| I have been to the Broadview facility seven times. | ||
| Hundreds of other clergy have gone as well. | ||
| Muslim, Jewish, Methodist, Unitarian, Presbyterian, Lutheran, Baptist, Hindu, Mennonite, Roman Catholic, and many more. | ||
| The prominence of clergy has been a defining mark of the protests at Broadview. | ||
| One of the chants that you will often hear from religious and non-religious protesters alike is love your neighbor, love your God, save your souls, and quit your jobs. | ||
| Imploring ICE agents to choose a better way. | ||
| Our country needs teachers, nurses, social workers, and artists. | ||
| We don't need a masked and militarized gang of human traffickers paid by the federal government. | ||
| I believe that agents of ICE and Border Patrol have been put in a morally and spiritually compromised position and that they too deserve to be saved from it and delivered from their condition. | ||
| So on the evening of September 19th, I went to Broadview to express these views. | ||
| Shortly after I arrived, I was moved to share the gospel with three ICE agents who were standing on the roof of the facility. | ||
| I approached the building with arms outstretched in a gesture of prayer. | ||
| Drawing on the words of Jeremiah and Ezekiel and the Psalms, I warned these agents about the spiritual consequences of their sins. | ||
| I told them the truth as God had revealed it to me, that their grandchildren will be ashamed of them and pretend they never existed. | ||
| Their memory will be a curse, and their uniforms will be collected by Nazi enthusiasts. | ||
| And then I extended an altar call. | ||
| In the words of my Lord and Savior, Jesus of Nazareth, I invited them to repent and to believe the good news because the kingdom of God is at hand. | ||
| As I spoke these words, the agents opened fire on me, shooting me with pepperballs at least seven times, including twice on my head and face. | ||
| The manufacturer of pepper balls warns in their safety manual on page four that they can be deadly when shot at the head, the neck, and other sensitive area. | ||
| I was one of many clergy and journalists and other assembled peaceful protesters who were shot in the head and the face by ICE with pepperballs. | ||
| By the manufacturer's own testimony, it is a miracle that none of us has been killed. | ||
| In the moment, I was shielded by protesters and then led away and received help from volunteer medics. | ||
| Moments later, the gates of hell opened and more than a dozen ICE agents swarmed out. | ||
| Without warning and without provocation, they slammed protesters into the concrete and pepper sprayed anyone they could get within reach of. | ||
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Dismantling DHS and ICE
00:04:44
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| I was maced twice while still disabled on the ground with such a large quantity of the chemical that I was soaked from head to toe. | ||
| ICE and the Border Patrol's use of force against peaceful protesters and our neighbors across Chicagoland has consistently been vicious and excessive. | ||
| Agents of the Department of Homeland Security, led by their role model Gregory Bovino, have shown open contempt for the rule of law, for human rights, and for their own policy manuals. | ||
| They have continually deployed tear gas and other chemical weapons in Chicago neighborhoods without warning or provocation in open defiance to the restraining order and preliminary injunction issued by District Judge Sarah Ellis. | ||
| They have brutalized infants, elders, pregnant women, many disabled people, and many, many others. | ||
| Under Donald Trump, the Department of Homeland Security has been weaponized for a carnival of violence and gleeful cruelty. | ||
| It is being used to destroy families and communities and to dismantle our civil society. | ||
| I believe that Chicago has also been a testing ground. | ||
| As the Trump administration continues to consolidate its power, it is normalizing routine militarized violence that targets and violates Americans' constitutional civil rights. | ||
| And yet, as many of my conservative friends are quick to remind me, this vicious campaign of deportations did not begin with Donald Trump. | ||
| George Bush, Barack Obama, and Joseph Biden have also funded and deployed massive ICE operations. | ||
| This campaign of deportations is obscene and abhorrent under any administration. | ||
| Millions of Americans are yearning to see real vision and moral clarity come from the Democratic Party in this time. | ||
| If this party wishes to restore confidence in its leadership, A good place to start would be to dismantle the Department of Homeland Security and to abolish ICE. | ||
| Agents of DHS explicitly target people based on the color of their skin and the language which they speak. | ||
| They routinely brutalize, kidnap, and disappear people without regard for their documented status. | ||
| There are dozens of cases in Chicago alone where ICE has invaded the homes of American citizens and detained them. | ||
| These operations can no longer be categorized as immigration enforcement. | ||
| I am old enough to remember when the Department of Homeland Security was created, which means that most others in this room are as well. | ||
| It's time for us to embrace a vision of a United States in which the DHS and ICE have been dismantled. | ||
| DHS was created to protect Americans from terroristic threats, but it has now received a mandate to terrorize American communities. | ||
| The war on terror has metastasized into a war against democracy and civil rights. | ||
| That's a magic five minutes you got. | ||
| I understand. | ||
| I'm a preacher, so please excuse me. | ||
| I will move to a close. | ||
| I will move to a close. | ||
| Peaceful, freedom-loving protesters in inflatable fraud costumes and clerical collars are being designated now as domestic terrorists. | ||
| The time has come to submit to a simple moral clarity. | ||
| The Democratic Party must commit to dismantle the Department of Homeland Security and abolish ICE. | ||
| One last sentence, sir. | ||
| There is a new democratic movement in this country. | ||
| The good news is that the world is ending, and all the trouble of our present times are just the birthing pains of a new creation. | ||
| A world of abundance, harmony, and delight is sprouting even as I speak these words. | ||
| The time has come for us all to stop clinging to the ways of this old world, ways of abuse, exploitation, and waste, and turn with empty hands and clean hearts to receive the world that is being made new by God's grace. | ||
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Loud Advocacy for Detained Wife
00:12:10
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| Thank you, sir. | ||
| Thank you so much, and I'm sure my colleagues will have some additional questions. | ||
| We'll now hear testimony from Mr. Brown. | ||
| Mr. Brown? | ||
| Thank you, Mr. Thompson. | ||
| I want to recognize you for allowing me to be here. | ||
| And Mr. Magazine, thank you. | ||
| My name is Jim Brown. | ||
| I'm a decorated, retired Navy corpsman, surface warfare, air warfare, and fleet Marine Force combat veteran. | ||
| I'm a simple countryman who grew up dirt poor, living in a single-parent household. | ||
| I continued my medical knowledge from the Navy after retirement by working in healthcare's CT technologists. | ||
| I've been living the American dream. | ||
| That was until July 29th when ICE unlawfully detained my wife, Donna. | ||
| Donna is an Irish citizen born in England to Irish parents in 1966. | ||
| Her family moved to America in 1977 when Donna was 11 years old. | ||
| She's lived here ever since and calls America her home. | ||
| She's never lived in Ireland. | ||
| She has always been a legal permanent resident green card holder living here lawfully for 48 years. | ||
| Donna has always been gainfully employed and currently works as a home health care worker. | ||
| She has many clients who are currently missing her and depending on her to return to work as soon as possible. | ||
| She's even cared for a Korean War POW veteran. | ||
| who had no family and therefore she became his family. | ||
| She even still cares for his dog. | ||
| We adopted his dog when he passed away and President Trump actually gave her a letter thanking her for taking care of this POW vet. | ||
| And Donna has always been gainfully employed. | ||
| In 2012 and 2015, she fell on hard times financially. | ||
| She was a struggling single mother and wrote two bed checks, one in each year, in a local grocery store, which were the same store three years apart. | ||
| They were less than $60, totally combined. | ||
| She was charged with a misdemeanor and paid the restitution and completed one year of probation. | ||
| That was 10 years ago. | ||
| She never in a million years expected to come back and haunt her 10 years later. | ||
| She visited England in 2016 to bring her granddaughter to meet her mom and was cleared to re-enter America with no issues. | ||
| Remember, this was after her misdemeanors. | ||
| So when Donna and I went to Ireland this July for her aunt's funeral, we were completely blindsided when she was stopped and detained at O'Hare Airport in Chicago after clearing U.S. customs in Dublin. | ||
| Dublin is one of six places in the world that has a U.S. customs, and she was completely cleared in U.S. customs and Chicago arrested her anyway, which makes that flight a domestic flight, not an international flight. | ||
| ICE refused to accompany my wife, and I was told that she had to sign some paperwork and would be on the next flight home to St. Louis. | ||
| I patiently waited for Donna to call me to come pick her up after her flight, but ICE decided to detain her and put her in a prisoner transport van for a six-hour flight from Illinois to Kentucky with no seatbelts and no food or water for 12 hours. | ||
| By the time she and the others were checked in to the Campbell County Detention Center, since being detained there, she has been degraded and subjected to absolutely awful conditions. | ||
| I will spare you those details. | ||
| Somebody can ask me questions. | ||
| I'll tell you those details. | ||
| The reason I'm standing before you today is to plead for your support in the release of my loving wife. | ||
| The Department of Homeland Security illegally changed her status from legal permanent resident to arriving alien upon entering Chicago and cannot tell us why. | ||
| The Attorney General is the only one allowed to do that. | ||
| And DHS decided it upon themselves. | ||
| According to USCIS, which is who issues the green cards, Donna is still a legal permanent resident, lawfully able to live in America freely. | ||
| DHS is also claiming that Donna was a flight risk for fleeing the country when she's literally left the country twice in the last 20 years to visit family. | ||
| Her family means everything to her and this is where her kids and grandkids are and myself. | ||
| The stress this situation has caused our family thinking about her possibly being deported is unimaginable. | ||
| Excuse me. | ||
| Donna may not be perfect, but she's still an amazing, godly woman who cares for elderly and disabled, has volunteered thousands of hours working in equine-assisted therapy programs and dog rescues. | ||
| She's also keeping our local, we also do our local food pantries and we take care of single mothers, do all kinds of things like that. | ||
| We made two round trips bringing supplies from Missouri to North Carolina after Hurricane Helene destruction last year. | ||
| She has worked at the USO and is a proud military blue star mom. | ||
| Her son is currently serving in the U.S. Marine station in Okinawa. | ||
| We have a son that's a Marine. | ||
| Also, her brother's a retired colonel in the Army. | ||
| She organized supplies for her brother that's now a retired Army colonel in his platoon when they were deployed to Bosnia. | ||
| So that was in the 90s. | ||
| So she's been doing volunteer work for at least 30 years. | ||
| So I ask you this question honestly. | ||
| Does she sound like a hardened criminal that this administration and DHS and ICE claim that they're removing from our streets all while allowing this administration to pardon people in million-dollar fraud cases? | ||
| You know, my wife's got a $60 deal and we're pardoning people for millions of dollars. | ||
| It's just insane. | ||
| So I ask you this question honestly. | ||
| I have a direct quote from ICE stating, under the leadership of President Trump and Christy Noam, ICE is prioritizing the removal of criminal alien offenders who pose a threat to the public safety and the rule of law. | ||
| Individuals who are in the United States lawfully who have not violated immigration laws or committed crimes have no reason to fear enforcement actions. | ||
| That's a lie. | ||
| If your answer is no, then please, I beg you to help Donna achieve her freedom and put this nightmare behind her. | ||
| Thank you for the opportunity to address you about this devastating impact my wife's detention has had on her family. | ||
| Retired veterans and current service members and American citizens. | ||
| I have a little more time, so I'm going to. | ||
| My wife wrote this. | ||
| She said she was lawfully admitted as a permanent resident in 1978. | ||
| She's a staunch military supporter. | ||
| She's literally been doing care packages for deployed military for she was a member of the USO while her ex-husband was in Japan. | ||
| So she's done all kinds of things like that. | ||
| We do all kinds of non-profit. | ||
| I'm also a pastor that we do ministry work all the time. | ||
| And that's the type of person that they're arresting. | ||
| She's a member of the State of Missouri Family Care Registry in Pike County, Missouri Health Department as a home health aide in good standing. | ||
| She was detained in July till present. | ||
| During this time, she's in unsanitary conditions in the jail, including a clogged toilet that was there for a week with 30 people in the pod. | ||
| She's been given raw meat to eat. | ||
| Her dietary standards, they threw her on isolation because they threw her on isolation because she told them that she needed to have specific dietary standards because she's 59 years old and has high blood pressure. | ||
| So they said, well, you're being incorrigible. | ||
| Say they threw her on solitary confinement for a week because of that. | ||
| And that's the kind of stuff that they've been doing. | ||
| As I said, I'm privileged to come here because of the fact that this is just nonsense what they're doing. | ||
| And my goal is to get it as loud as we can get it and make as much noise as we can. | ||
| And a little-known fact is 70% of the people that are detained don't have a lawyer. | ||
| So they don't have a chance. | ||
| Not a chance. | ||
| The other 25%, my wife's telling us this from the inside, the other 25% have a DHS appointed lawyer, which says basically they're hired by Trump, so they're not going to get a chance either. | ||
| So my wife is the 5% that actually has a lawyer. | ||
| But they've actually refused my lawyer. | ||
| My lawyer drove from South Carolina to Kentucky to see my wife, and they wouldn't let her in the facility. | ||
| There's been clergy that have went there, they've refused to let them in. | ||
| They won't let you talk to her. | ||
| If you call and me as her husband, if she was put in, they put her in medical isolation for a week because of her high blood pressure, which was nonsense. | ||
| And they wouldn't let me find out any status or anything about her. | ||
| So I didn't know for a week what was going on. | ||
| So, I mean, my deal is when we do get her out, because we are going to get her out. | ||
| My goal is to advocate, and I've already talked to the pastor here. | ||
| He's just up the road from me, and we're going to make sure that this is loud and clear, that this is crazy. | ||
| This is wrong. | ||
| Well, we absolutely agree with you, and we're working with Mr. Magazina on your wife's situation. | ||
| But it was such a real situation. | ||
| We felt your testimony was important to the committee. | ||
| And thank you so much. | ||
| We'll now recognize Dr. Jeary to summarize her statements for five minutes. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you, Representative Thompson and this committee. | |
| Thank you to this committee for bringing us here today. | ||
| My name is Nina Geary. | ||
| I am a pediatrician. | ||
| Sorry, can you hear me? | ||
| I'm a pediatrician. | ||
| I am the founder and executive director of the Midwest Human Rights Consortium. | ||
| As a pediatrician, I have spent my career caring for children in immigrant families. | ||
| What we're seeing right now is unprecedented. | ||
| Children's medical care being disrupted as their parents are detained and deported by ICE. | ||
|
Pediatric Patients in Peril
00:15:21
|
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|
unidentified
|
In the past few months, we've documented cases where parents are being arrested or deported in the middle of their children's chemotherapy. | |
| Some of these children are U.S. citizens. | ||
| Their medical teams cannot speak publicly, but the children can, and they do. | ||
| Kids with stage 4 inoperable brain tumors have posted videos on YouTube begging for their parents' release, raising funds for their legal protection. | ||
| What these families are enduring is unfathomable. | ||
| When a child's parent is seized by ICE, it ripples through every aspect of that child's life, impacting their security, their safety, their very well-being in this world. | ||
| You've seen the videos of children crying and grabbing at their parents' legs as they're being torn away by ICE agents. | ||
| And for a sick child, for a child who depends on their caretaker for comfort, for hope even, their entire care plan and their worlds collapse. | ||
| Medications go unfilled, transportation to the hospital disappears, insurance coverage lapses. | ||
| Suddenly, the caretaker and the decision maker at their bedside is missing. | ||
| For a child with asthma or diabetes, that can mean an emergency admission. | ||
| For a child fighting cancer, it can mean a lost chance at survival. | ||
| And for the medically fragile children, those who need ventilators and feeding tubes to survive, it can mean the unthinkable. | ||
| Without two trained caregivers to manage this equipment, interventions cannot continue. | ||
| So families are sometimes forced to withdraw life-sustaining treatment. | ||
| That means a child who could have lived instead goes home to die. | ||
| And this is happening. | ||
| This is happening at our finest medical institutions. | ||
| Families are now afraid to seek even the most basic care for their children or send them to school because they've seen immigration agents in hospital parking lots and helicopters hovering over their daycare centers and their high schools for hours on end. | ||
| One family was chased through the parking lot of a federally qualified clinic in Logan Square. | ||
| Luckily, they made it inside the clinic in time and the doors were locked. | ||
| A medical institution near the Broadview Detention Center routinely has shackled patients marched through its doors, accompanied by armed, unidentified men with rifles, men with rifles in hospitals. | ||
| The staff is afraid. | ||
| The staff must be quiet. | ||
| Can you imagine how the children feel? | ||
| What happens then? | ||
| Parents send their sick kids to the ER alone. | ||
| Hospitals and clinicians are caring for the children whose parents are absent, trying to discharge medically complex patients with no legal guardian available, and worrying that calling a parent for consent could expose them to arrest. | ||
| Hospitals are scrambling to find emergency guardians or ethics consultations instead of focusing on their job, which is taking care of sick kids. | ||
| Most devastatingly, children in hospitals are dying alone. | ||
| And this is happening. | ||
| This is the human cost of the current environment of enforcement. | ||
| This is not just an immigration issue. | ||
| It's a public health emergency. | ||
| When enforcement enters the spaces where children are supposed to feel safe, it undermines trust in health care itself. | ||
| Public health depends on trust, and when trust is broken, care gets delayed, diseases spread faster, and children get sicker. | ||
| A few concrete steps we can take. | ||
| Number one, codify hospitals, clinics, and schools as enforcement-free zones. | ||
| Number two, guarantee humanitarian parole or deferred actions for any parent or child in active, life-sustaining medical care. | ||
| Number three, establish a confidential reporting process for health care providers to document when enforcement disrupts treatment. | ||
| Families are torn between safety and survival. | ||
| When ICE is in our hospitals and communities, it makes us all less safe. | ||
| Children in treatment for cancer, premature infants, should not lose access to care because their parent is detained. | ||
| Every child deserves to finish their treatment with their caregiver by their side. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| We'll now hear from Dr. Shapiro for five minutes. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you, Ranking Member Thompson, members of this committee, and my fellow panelists. | |
| I am trying to absorb everything that you've said today. | ||
| I've been a pediatrician for the past 35 years. | ||
| I am the medical director of a federally qualified health center in the South Bronx in the poorest congressional district of the United States. | ||
| I am the co-founder of a nonprofit organization, Terra Firma National, that provides co-located medical and legal services to unaccompanied migrant children and migrant families seeking humanitarian protection in the United States. | ||
| Throughout my career, I have cared for the most vulnerable members of our society, children in homeless shelters, children living on the streets of New York City, and for the past 12 years, thousands of migrant children and families. | ||
| I'm here today as a professional witness, you might say, to tell you that the kids are not all right and that our country is suffering from a pandemic of amorality and cruelty that is harming children, families, and the fabric of this nation. | ||
| Children cannot be made to suffer. | ||
| Children cannot be collateral damaged for the failure of our elected officials to enact comprehensive, humane immigration policy. | ||
| Yet that is exactly what is happening. | ||
| The policies and practices of this administration are creating an atmosphere of terror in this country. | ||
| As adults, we cannot fathom what we are seeing, but can you imagine what it is like from the perspective of a child? | ||
| Children throughout the country are seeing images of parents ripped from their loved ones' arms on the news and in social media. | ||
| How do you explain this to your children and grandchildren? | ||
| But even worse, children are seeing their own parents arrested in front of their eyes, parents at their homes and outside their schools. | ||
| Children are also seeing bands of masked law enforcement agents sanctioned by the government sweeping through their cities. | ||
| I wonder how the immigrant children I care for can tell the difference between these masked agents and the mass transnational gang members that terrorize them in their countries of origin. | ||
| These policies are also affecting my pediatric practice and those of my colleagues around the country. | ||
| The administration is creating so much fear that parents are afraid to bring their children and themselves to health care visits. | ||
| We are seeing this chilling effect throughout the country. | ||
| Avoiding care can result in harm to children and contribute to public health crises, not unlike we saw with the COVID pandemic or with a recent measles outbreak. | ||
| And the pediatric office is no longer a safe place for parents to bring their children. | ||
| It is particularly worrisome to me that protection afforded through the sensitive location designation has been lost. | ||
| Now schools, health care facilities, houses of worship, playgrounds, and courthouses are for fair game for the indiscriminate arrests of adults taken in front of their children. | ||
| Think about this from a pediatric perspective. | ||
| What counseling could I possibly provide to mitigate the trauma our children are experiencing? | ||
| And I recently wrote a protocol and trained my staff on what to do if ICE agents enter our facility, teaching them the nuances of arrest warrants. | ||
| This was not theoretical, but a response to having ICE agents roaming on our block in the Bronx. | ||
| It is also not okay that our pediatricians must now include alternative guardianship to their anticipatory guidance. | ||
| In other words, counseling parents on how to identify an adult they trust to become the legal guardians of their child in case they are arrested and detained. | ||
| I assure you, this is not a standard part of pediatric training. | ||
| Fear among the patients I care for are pervasive. | ||
| Let me give you two examples to illustrate this. | ||
| Vanessa, a 15-year-old girl, witnessed the killing of her father by political opposition in Venezuela. | ||
| She and her mom fled the country seeking asylum in the U.S. | ||
| They lost TPS status granted to them by the previous administration. | ||
| She is terrified about being deported back to Venezuela. | ||
| After finally recovering from severe post-traumatic stress disorder, she is now suffering from crippling anxiety. | ||
| And Brian, who was a 17-year-old boy who was brought to my office because he suddenly refused to go to school, when I interviewed Brian alone in the room, he confided to me of being terribly fearful that his mother would be deported while he was in class. | ||
| You see, they fled Honduras in 2018 due to his mother's life being threatened and unfortunately arrived during zero tolerance policy was being enforced. | ||
| They were separated. | ||
| His mother was sent to Washington State. | ||
| He and his brother were sent to New York City. | ||
| I'll never forget the day that his sobbing mom came into our health center looking for her children. | ||
| Brian prayed this would never happen again. | ||
| So now I ask you, the members of this subcommittee, where is the moral outrage? | ||
| I know most of you are working hard to change things and thank you for sounding the alarm, but I have to tell you from where I'm sitting, we are not seeing enough change. | ||
| And we do not see what our elected representatives are doing in their power to change the situation and for children to being harmed. | ||
| My ask today is simple. | ||
| All immigration policies and procedures that harm children cease immediately. | ||
| This means end the practice of family separation 2.0 by the indiscriminate arrest and detention of parents and caregivers of children. | ||
| Restore parental interest directive guidance to promote parental rights and family unity. | ||
| Reinstate the sensitive location designation so that health care facilities, schools, playgrounds, houses of worship, and courthouses are off-limits for immigration enforcement agents. | ||
| And to stop deployment of mass law enforcement agents throughout the nation that terrorize us all but is especially harmful to children. | ||
| And lastly, form, please form a bipartisan bloc that stands up loudly and forcefully for the rights of children and puts an end to these egregious practices. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Thank you so much, Dr. Shapiro, and for all our witnesses for your testimony here today. | ||
| I'll remind each member of the committee that he or she will have five minutes to ask questions of other witnesses. | ||
| I'll now recognize myself for questions and Try to be as quick with your answer as I'll be for my question, and we can get through. | ||
| Ms. Shah, the ACLU is concerned that our rights as Americans are under attack by the Trump administration, particularly as they relate to so-called immigration enforcement. | ||
| Some Americans may wonder why they should care about the federal government and what they're doing to immigrants or other Americans if it doesn't affect them personally right now. | ||
| Can you explain why they and all Americans should care? | ||
| Thank you so much, Ranking Member Thompson, for the question. | ||
| We have seen again and again in our nation's history that what is first done to vulnerable groups of individuals who are in our country is then imported and done again to American citizens. | ||
| And what is justified on the grounds of immigration enforcement affects all Americans. | ||
| And a great example that you have been one to point out is the use of the Mobile Fortify app, which threatens the privacy rights of millions of Americans because when federal agents are on our streets, they are taking photos of all of us. | ||
| And they are claiming to retain those images for long periods of time, even of U.S. citizens. | ||
| So the $170 billion that unfortunately was passed this summer as part of the reconciliation bill will be part of the way the federal government deploys its assets against protesters, against anyone who does not toe the line. | ||
| It's done in the name of immigration enforcement, but it goes far beyond that. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Reverend Black, how concerned are you that the Trump administration is infringing on the rights of clergy and all Americans to practice their faith? | ||
| I'm extremely concerned. | ||
| I'm seeing a systematic strategy from this administration to suppress the faith witness of Christians around this country and even to mark faithful Christian witness as domestic terrorism, with some of the directives that have come from the White House claiming that any speech which is in certain categories which, in my mind, all resonate with Christian values, | ||
|
Orleans' Arrests Affecting Children
00:15:23
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| such as being anti-capitalist and anti-racist and caring about migration and gender that these are all categories of groups that they would designate as domestic terrorists. | ||
| So myself and many of my clergy colleagues are very fearful for how this administration that was elected by a plurality of evangelical Christians is actively persecuting faithful Christian biblical witness. | ||
| Thank you, Dr. Jury. | ||
| I think all of us understand the harm to children for those who seek treatment and care, and it's being interpreted by immigration enforcement in hospital and clinic. | ||
| Some pamp families may even be unable to continue their child's life sustaining treatment. | ||
| This is unconscionable. | ||
| Members on both sides of the political aisle need to speak out to protect our children. | ||
| What specific steps would you recommend to these members here that we could take? | ||
|
unidentified
|
So again, as Alan Shapiro also mentioned, codifying the sanctity of hospitals, medical centers schools, churches as safe spaces. | |
| Number one, number two, I believe we should offer some type of humanitarian parole to these families, to the parents, children who are receiving life-sustaining treatment, so that they may complete their treatment and be well. | ||
| And finally, I believe that health care providers need protection in order to speak out against abuses when they're happening, both by ICE agents or even by their institutions which may be complicit. | ||
| Dr. Shapiro, you want to add anything to that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
So there's about 5.6 million U.S. citizen children who live in mixed immigrant families. | |
| So what are we talking about here? | ||
| Like, are all of those kids' parents at risk for getting deported? | ||
| And then what happens to them? | ||
| This affects me as a doctor because what I'm seeing is children whose parents are deported become poorer, they become homeless, they have worse mental health outcomes, they have worse health outcomes because they're afraid to seek care. | ||
| So we are talking about a huge number of children and families. | ||
| Health centers, hospitals, schools where children receive health care cannot be targets for ICE agents. | ||
| That is absolutely creating a block for them to receive care. | ||
| And that means we're going to miss diseases and kids are going to end up sicker and end up in the emergency room, in the hospitals, and in the ICUs. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| I'll now recognize other members for their questions. | ||
| I will try to do it in the order in which they arrived and our seniority. | ||
| Those members coming in later will be recognized on their arrival. | ||
| Mr. Carter has another speaking engagement. | ||
| After that, we'll get to Mr. Correa, but I want to give him a chance to ask his questions before he has to depart. | ||
| Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you all for being here. | ||
| Thank you for the opportunity to speak. | ||
| Your comments have been powerful, compelling, courageous. | ||
| We appreciate your time to be with us. | ||
| New Orleans welcomes partnership. | ||
| You may have read that there is going to be a sweep to send some 250 agents into New Orleans. | ||
| We welcome partnership, but we do not welcome occupation. | ||
| What's being planned for our region is not real public safety. | ||
| It's a political stunt wrapped in badges and guns. | ||
| Up to 250 Border Patrol agents being lined up to sweep through New Orleans, Jefferson, St. Bernard, and beyond with almost no notice, no transparency, no meaningful coordination with local leaders. | ||
| These are militarized federal agents who are not trained in municipal laws, not trained in de-escalation in our neighborhoods, do not know our communities, our culture, or our people. | ||
| This is a recipe for fear, confusion, and mistakes. | ||
| We've already seen what this looks like in other cities. | ||
| In Charlotte, more than 20,000 children stayed home from school because families were terrified of raids. | ||
| An American citizen was arrested. | ||
| In Chicago, there were reports of helicopter deployments and tactics that look more like a war zone than a neighborhood. | ||
| Now they want to bring that same approach to New Orleans under names like Swamp Sweep or Catahoula Crunch. | ||
| This is not cute. | ||
| There's nothing cute about our families living in fear. | ||
| There's nothing funny about workers being told not to show up to work because their boss fears they will be picked up and disappeared into systems that they do not understand. | ||
| Most immigration violations are civil matters, yet operations are being designed and marketed like parliamentary shows of force. | ||
| If President Trump truly wants to help New Orleans and the surrounding parishes, there are ways he can do it. | ||
| Help us recruit retained, well-trained police officers. | ||
| Help fund modern two's technology and data-driven policy. | ||
| Help invest in training for de-escalation in mental health responses and community engagement. | ||
| Help strengthen the partnerships between federal, state, and local agencies in a way that is transparent and coordinated and accountable. | ||
| But not like this. | ||
| You do not build trust by dropping in armed agents who answer to Washington, do not understand local laws, and then sweep through commercial corridors and neighborhoods. | ||
| You do not build safety by driving families into shadows, emptying out workplaces and classrooms, and creating an atmosphere where people are afraid to call police when they're victims or witness of crimes. | ||
| As a congressman from New Orleans, I'm saying very plainly, we will always stand for the rule of law. | ||
| We will always stand for safe communities. | ||
| We will always stand against tactics that terrorize families and undermine the trust that true public safety requires. | ||
| Our community is not a backdrop for political theater. | ||
| Our people are not props. | ||
| If this administration wants to partner, then be a partner. | ||
| Sit down with local officials. | ||
| Share your plan. | ||
| Respect our laws and leadership and our lived reality on the ground. | ||
| Help us, but not this way. | ||
| Don't terrorize us. | ||
| Don't treat people like animals. | ||
| I cannot tell you how much I appreciate your courage to be here today, all of you, for your advocacy and for your experiences. | ||
| Ms. Shah, based on what you've witnessed with the Trump administration, weaponizing the government and military against citizens in Chicago, what can the residents of Louisiana expect if the Trump administration follows through plans to send U.S. Border Patrol and National Guard to our state? | ||
| Congressman Carter, thank you so much for your remarks and how clearly you delineate the real problem here, which is that the Trump administration is putting forward a false public safety pretext for what it is doing. | ||
| In fact, the Border Patrol deployments, the troop deployments, they're about consolidating power. | ||
| They are not about creating safety. | ||
| They are creating chaos. | ||
| That is what we have seen in Chicago and Los Angeles. | ||
| The Trump administration is also misusing government resources that are supposed to be devoted to public safety. | ||
| As a Cato Institute report recently showed, 25,000 federal law enforcement officers have been redeployed from their main missions, which include combating human trafficking and sex trafficking and drugs. | ||
| They've been redeployed to civil immigration enforcement, going after people who pose no threat, who just want to be with their families and continue to working and living in to be working and living in this country. | ||
| That threat of misuse of federal resources is all the more acute as we come up on the World Cup and in cities across this country where the FBI and federal law enforcement are supposed to be focused on preventing sex trafficking and child trafficking. | ||
| Are they going to be redeployed to go after our neighbors and our loved ones who do not pose any threat? | ||
| Thank you, Reverend Black. | ||
| Thank you, Michelle. | ||
| Reverend Black, I've got one quick question and my time is already far spent. | ||
| Ruben Black, it is nothing less than shameful that you were assaulted by massed ICE agents simply for praying outside of an ICE processing facility. | ||
| I represent many Catholics, and I was glad to see that the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops issued a special message last week that expressed strong concern about the vilification of immigrants and recognized the fundamental dignity of all persons. | ||
| Do you agree with these statements? | ||
| Absolutely, I do. | ||
| And thank you for representing New Orleans. | ||
| I love New Orleans and the soul of that city. | ||
| And as you were speaking, I was just reminded that oftentimes the soul gets stronger as the body is attacked and weakened. | ||
| And that's what we're seeing across this country right now. | ||
| And I'm grateful for the solidarity across faith communities, that Protestants and Catholics are coming together without any regard for theological difference because there is a moment of solidarity and uprising that we share across faiths. | ||
| And New Orleans is a city of many faiths and so much soul. | ||
| So thank you for representing it well. | ||
| Thank you, sir. | ||
| And Mr. Chairman, I yield. | ||
| Thank you very much for your generosity in allowing me to speak. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| I will now recognize the gentleman from California, Mr. Correa. | ||
| Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | ||
| I want to thank our witnesses for being here today. | ||
| Dr. Shapiro, you talk about doing something. | ||
| Most important thing we can do today, any day, is make sure that this kind of behavior on our streets does not become normal, does not become routine, because that's exactly where we're going right now. | ||
| Mr. Brown, I want to thank you for your service to our country. | ||
| Your wife, Donna, in the U.S. for almost 50 years, you talked about statistics. | ||
| Right now, the administration is saying that they're going only after criminals, hardened criminals. | ||
| Tell you the numbers I've seen, 70% of everybody they've apprehended, no criminal record whatsoever. | ||
| So I would say 30%, 30% of the others would be criminals. | ||
| Would you call Donna a hardened criminal because she had a misdemeanor? | ||
| My wife and I, when we don't work, we're ministers. | ||
| We help the needy. | ||
| That's what we do. | ||
| And that's who they're arresting. | ||
| It's not criminals. | ||
| My wife is in jail right now, and there's a French person there, I won't mention names or anything, that literally came up to the immigration counter getting her green card, and they arrested her and put her in jail. | ||
| This is a very common story, but let me ask you, sir. | ||
| Mr. Brown, it's my understanding you also voted for President Trump. | ||
| Yes, sir. | ||
| Why did you vote for him? | ||
| Because I was an idiot. | ||
| Can you be more specific? | ||
| 80% of the evangelical Christian people were lied to, if you really want to know the truth, and that's exactly what happened. | ||
| They said criminal, you know, and I believe criminals need to be off the street. | ||
| I just want to make sure people watching this understand who you are and who Donna is. | ||
| They need to be off the street, and I agree with that. | ||
| They're not criminals. | ||
| Correct. | ||
| But if you watch the news channels even today, they're talking about all the heinous criminals that they're getting. | ||
| And truth be told, there's been about 800 actual criminals that they've gotten off the street. | ||
| Donna is also the mother of a Marine. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| An active Marine in Okinawa today. | ||
| Yes, sir. | ||
| We actually have his dogs. | ||
| And I think it's important in my back home in Santa Ana, I have a father to three U.S. Marines who's also been apprehended. | ||
| And I asked that Marine, do you know any Marines in your situation? | ||
| He says there are many Marines in Camp Pendleton whose parents have been apprehended, but they're all terrorized of coming forward to speak about their situation. | ||
| Yes, sir. | ||
| So we know then President Trump is not focused on criminals, but rather average families. | ||
| You're an honest, hardworking family. | ||
| Yes, sir. | ||
| And they're going after you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, sir. | |
| You're a mixed family. | ||
| Actually not. | ||
| Donna has a green card. | ||
| Yes, sir. | ||
| You're an American citizen. | ||
| Yes, sir. | ||
| Her son's a Marine. | ||
| Yes, sir. | ||
| How do you explain the fact that she's been apprehended? | ||
| You can't explain it. | ||
| It's absolutely nonsense. | ||
| And there's two separate laws for immigrants and U.S. citizens. | ||
| Let me ask you something. | ||
| Got a minute left. | ||
| President Trump was asked in 60 minutes, when he was asked if his tactics had gone too far, President Trump said, no, I think we haven't gone far enough. | ||
| There's zero reason to hurt people and families. | ||
| We've literally had migrant workers in this country for a thousand years. | ||
| Good, productive, migrant farm workers. | ||
| 100%. | ||
| I grew up in southeast Texas, sir. | ||
| Without migrant workers, things wouldn't get done. | ||
| It's that simple. | ||
| 250 farms in California have shut their doors because of the fact that they've taken all the workers away. | ||
|
Speak Up!
00:02:26
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| In the last 19 seconds I have, I would just ask everybody in the audience, anybody who's watching this, do not be silent. | ||
| Speak up. | ||
| I want to know how many people have gotten victimized, how many people have gotten wrongly arrested, because according to our Homeland Secretary, no American citizen has gotten detained or arrested. | ||
| There's been over 10 years. | ||
| We all know that it's incorrect, and that's an absolute lie. | ||
| Yes, sir. | ||
| Yes, sir. | ||
| Please, we cannot hold our silence. | ||
| This is a very critical time in our histories of our country. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| Chairman, my answer, sir, is I'm going to be an advocate for the rest of my life for this. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| And I'm with you, sir. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Now I recognize for five minutes a gentleman from Rhode Island, Mr. Magazina. | ||
| Thank you, Chairman. | ||
| Mr. Brown, thank you for being here. | ||
| Your courage, your strength, fighting for your family is truly remarkable. | ||
| And I know you said earlier you're a Navy veteran, but you're actually a combat veteran, is that right? | ||
| Yes, sir. | ||
| You served in Desert Storm? | ||
| Yes, sir. | ||
| Well, I thank you for your service. | ||
| You've given a lot to your country, and your government owes you an apology, much more than an apology. | ||
| I was with the 1st Battalion, 5th Marines in Desert Island. | ||
| Mr. Brown, how do you – your wife, Donna, is also a mother and a grandmother. | ||
| Yes, sir. | ||
| How do you explain to her children, grandchildren, what is happening and why? | ||
| It is not explainable, actually. | ||
| My 14-year-old granddaughter, they're very close, and we're very close, and she just doesn't, she doesn't get it. | ||
| I mean, she's been the biggest advocate for helping us out. | ||
| And the little ones don't get it at all. | ||
| There's, well, the one son, our grandson is in Okinawa with his dad and mom. | ||
|
Locked Up Veterans and Children
00:15:25
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| And then we have three others that live close by, about 45 minutes away, but they don't understand at all. | ||
| They don't understand why, you know, somebody that actually paid for a restitution for two checks and for and it's funny because Homeland Security didn't find the second one for the first three months. | ||
| That's why she's been in jail for so long. | ||
| So it's actually their fault that that happened. | ||
| And the fact is, it was actually funny because it was three years apart for two checks, which is nonsense. | ||
| And that almost makes me think that they made it up. | ||
| I can't imagine explaining this to a child why his grandmother has been locked up when she never did anything wrong. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Uh-uh. | |
| So let's talk about the conditions that she's in currently because she's been locked up for almost four months now. | ||
| Yes, sir. | ||
| For no crime other than writing bad checks totaling less than $60. | ||
| But that's not even a crime because she actually paid for it in January of 2017, sir. | ||
| January of 2017, they made that in the statute of Missouri. | ||
| They've changed that to where it's not even a crime. | ||
| It's a $25 fee that you pay for an overdraft check. | ||
| So how would you describe the conditions that she's in? | ||
| Are her medical needs being met? | ||
| Is she able to access? | ||
| No, sir. | ||
| She's got high blood pressure. | ||
| They've actually punished her and put her in solitary confinement because she said something about her high blood pressure. | ||
| She lived in a pod that left the toilet clogged for a week. | ||
| And there's 30 people in a pod. | ||
| One of the guards made her eat a pill off the floor from medication. | ||
| And I called the jailer about it, and the jailer told me I was a liar and so was my wife, that they denied everything. | ||
| And we've turned them into the Attorney General and the prison system, correctional prison system in Kentucky, and to no avail because they're actually tied together so they don't actually do anything because you can't send a private unless you pay a lawyer several thousand dollars to privately inspect them. | ||
| They're not going to tell on themselves. | ||
| Mr. Brown, you said earlier that you voted for President Trump. | ||
| If he was watching now, what would you say to him? | ||
| I would say that he can't not lie about anything. | ||
| And that's the problem, is everything that was ever said was lied. | ||
| I knew this panel would, but as I said, and the pastor can tell you, 80% of the evangelical Christians voted for that because we didn't. | ||
| But when you practice true Christianity, everything that he said was a lie. | ||
| Well, Mr. Brown, you're absolutely right. | ||
| President Trump lied to the American people. | ||
| He said he was going to go after the worst of the worst, violent criminals and drug dealers. | ||
| That's not what he's been doing. | ||
| He's been locking up children with cancer, been locking up and deporting veterans who serve this country, and locking up a 40-year legal resident of the United States who never committed any crime other than writing a bad check and who is a good member of her community, your wife. | ||
| And it is wrong. | ||
| It is infuriating. | ||
| Yes, sir. | ||
| And we have to do better than this as a country. | ||
| Listen, I know I'm low on time, but let me just say, with respect, all due respect to the Reverend, most people I talk to, they don't want Homeland Security to be abolished. | ||
| They want border enforcement. | ||
| They want violent criminals who aren't here legally to be deported. | ||
| But they don't want this. | ||
| They do not want massed agents terrorizing neighborhoods. | ||
| They do not want people being tackled in the streets who are not criminals. | ||
| They do not want children with cancer being deported. | ||
| They do not want innocent people who pose no threat to their community being detained and deported. | ||
| They do not want veterans being deported with no due process. | ||
| This is not what the American people signed up for. | ||
| And all I can say to you, Mr. Brown, is you are not alone because I do think this country is waking up to what is happening. | ||
| We are not going to let Donna be forgotten and we are not going to let all of the other people who have been unjustly locked up, detained, and terrorized by this administration be forgotten. | ||
| So thank you, sir, for your courage. | ||
| Thank you, gentlemen. | ||
| Time has expired. | ||
| We now recognize the gentlelady from California from Chicago. | ||
| Not California. | ||
| Not California. | ||
| Ms. Ramirez. | ||
| The ranking member knows I'm very proud of being from Chicago. | ||
| Ranking Member Thompson, thank you so much for convening this hearing and our witnesses, all of you for being here. | ||
| It is gut-wrenching to hear what you're saying, and I see and hear this every single day, and I still struggle not to get into tears. | ||
| Look, as a Chicagoan, I know firsthand the terror that DHS's immigration rates have had in our communities. | ||
| We have been surveilled, threatened, tear gassed, hit with pepper balls, shot, subjected to warrantless arrest, and precision immobilization technique maneuvers. | ||
| We've been kidnapped and disappeared. | ||
| Neither Trump's administration nor DHS gives a damn if you're a U.S. citizen, a baby, a senior, or a pastor. | ||
| There is no respect for the rule of law. | ||
| Terror is unleashed indiscriminately, and fear and cruelty is the point. | ||
| I want you to take a look at this. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Bring Homeland Security is defending actions taken by federal officers in Chicago over the weekend that sparked outrage from some residents. | |
| Tear gas at Old Irving Park. | ||
| Right now, our own neighborhood scaring our children. | ||
| A Halloween parade for kids canceled after agents deployed what appear to be tear gas. | ||
| Can you bring up the body? | ||
| There's an ice bath. | ||
|
unidentified
|
There's a little bit of terror. | |
| It's good to babies. | ||
| Are you okay mama? | ||
| Are you okay? | ||
| Are you okay mama? | ||
| Are you okay mama? | ||
| Are you okay? | ||
| That weapon! | ||
| Hey, watch out! | ||
| What's wrong with you? | ||
|
unidentified
|
You hit her! You hit her! You hit her! You hit her! | |
| You guys hit her! | ||
| You guys hear it! | ||
| What's wrong with y'all? | ||
| Y'all hear her? | ||
| Y'all about to hope you turn in the middle of the street. | ||
| She did shit! | ||
| She didn't even do shit! | ||
| She's trying to go to work. | ||
|
unidentified
|
She's trying to go to work. | |
| What the fuck? | ||
| Oh, what? | ||
| Crazy shit. | ||
| That's some crazy. | ||
| I got no heart. | ||
| For real. | ||
| No heart. | ||
| Let go. | ||
| That's my mom. | ||
| A one-year-old U.S. citizen, taragast, and her father, a young man who was born in this country. | ||
| On Saturday, October 25th, Border Patrol agents aggressively disrupted a children's Halloween parade and terrorized and injured a 67-year-old citizen, pulling him out of his vehicle, tackling him to the ground, and detaining him. | ||
| On November 8th, as you saw, ICE agents pepper sprayed a family and their one-year-old daughter while they were grocery shopping. | ||
| On Friday, October 10th, an unmarked vehicle driven by federal agents crashed into Diane Figueroa's vehicle and they exited their vehicle with weapons drawn to forcibly draw Figueroa out of her car as her child said, that's my mom. | ||
| Mr. Franz, well, I've said it before and I'll keep saying it. | ||
| The greatest threat to public safety right now is Department of Homeland Security, ICE, and CBP under it. | ||
| Can you describe why ICE and Border Patrol agents under DHS jurisdiction who do not identify themselves properly can lead to dangerous situations? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, and I think that the images speak louder than any words, but there, of course, are regulations where DHS agents are supposed to identify themselves. | |
| There is language, of course, around particular instances. | ||
| They're supposed to identify themselves when carrying out arrests when it is safe to do so. | ||
| As we've seen just again and again, they are absolutely failing to do so. | ||
| And it's, of course, not only ICE. | ||
| CBP is increasingly carrying out arrest operations. | ||
| The Casaño Nava litigation shows that over 1,500 people arrested by ICE during these operations in Chicago over the last three months. | ||
| But it leads to incredibly dangerous situations as these people impersonating the agents and leading to just enhancing the risk and insecurity of people across the board. | ||
| So let me follow up on that. | ||
| I think you started talking about it. | ||
| Did the arrest, many like this, but hundreds of arrests, did they violate any laws? | ||
| And if so, what have the courts said about such arrests? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, again, the Casino Nava settlement agreement is an important piece, important measure that is still underway. | |
| In that case, the judge has ordered ICE to release people in that case, potentially hundreds of people. | ||
| They're reviewing upwards of 600 people now and cross-referencing lists to order the release of people. | ||
| 13 people have been released, but these are people detained without warrants, without probable cause, without justification, who should never be in, who should never have been arrested in the first place. | ||
| May I ask one last question because I know my time's up. | ||
| Ms. Shah, it feels like every day we're seeing a new story where a federal agent is assaulting a U.S. citizen. | ||
| We're sitting here with Pastor Black, who was shot with a pepper ball on the head, and I have had to do more congressional inquiries to get U.S. citizens out after they've been arrested for protesting. | ||
| So let me ask you, what would you say to Christy Noam, who has said that no American citizens have been arrested or detained? | ||
| I would say, Madam Secretary, the lies need to stop. | ||
| The lies about who's being harmed and who is being helped, because American communities are being harmed by this administration's policies, and it is on her. | ||
| It's her responsibility as Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security to be helping our communities, not terrorizing them, and not putting that footage on the DHS website and social media threads to broadcast terror to our communities. | ||
| It is appalling. | ||
| Thank you, Ms. Shaw. | ||
| Here's my question to my colleagues as I wrap up. | ||
| If DHS cannot be held accountable, if we're obstructed from conducting oversight at these centers that some of us have been trying to get into since June, if they are systematically undermining our civil rights, pepper-spraying one-year-old children, perpetrating violence in our communities, what is Congress's responsibility? | ||
| I think the answer is clear. | ||
| We have to start stripping away every tool they're using to terrorize us. | ||
| And that starts with the taxpayer dollars that they're using to harm Americans every day. | ||
| I know it may not be the most popular thing to say, but I do think we need to start having a real conversation about defunding ICE. | ||
| With that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back. | ||
| Young lady yields back. | ||
| We now recognize the gentleman from New York, Buffalo specifically, Mr. Kennedy. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| I want to sincerely thank Ranking Member Benny Thompson for holding today's hearing. | ||
| It's so important. | ||
| I want to thank all of the witnesses for being here, all of you for offering your very unique perspectives into this administration's immigration raids. | ||
| Mr. Brown, I want to thank you for your service to our country. | ||
| All of your stories, many of them deeply personal, must be elevated to call this administration out for its egregious violations of due process and to remind all of us of our common humanity. | ||
| To be clear, this administration promised to go after criminals. | ||
| President Trump repeatedly vowed to go after the worst of the worst. | ||
| Yet, as we're hearing today, as citizens of a democracy founded on the principles of a government by and for the people, of equal protection under the law, and the promise of due process, we are being lied to and deceived, and our values are being betrayed. | ||
| This administration is focusing on people who are reporting dutifully to their jobs every morning, who are attending school, who are in many cases arriving at courthouses to address their immigration status the lawful way. | ||
| These are folks who, just like their American citizen neighbors, want to work hard, want to contribute to their communities, want to raise their children to be more successful than themselves. | ||
| In short, they want the same American dream that we all want. | ||
| But the consequences reach far beyond this. | ||
| Homeland Security's parallel missions to combat human trafficking, child abuse, terrorism, and transnational crime are being left by the wayside because this administration has diverted critical personnel to carry out its deeply politicized mass deportation agenda. | ||
| According to the New York Times, the Department of Homeland Security has cut the number of hours spent working to find and arrest child abusers by a third. | ||
| Think about that. | ||
| Thousands of DHS workers, from Coast Guard members on essential missions to anti-terrorism agents protecting the homeland, have been pulled away from their responsibilities to facilitate immigration raids. | ||
| And for what? | ||
| So Trump can stand up a department of deportation with the sole mission of terrorizing our communities, like some of the horrendous sites that we saw here today. | ||
| Trump and Secretary Noam's raids have touched every single community in every state, impacting countless families who are here legally without a criminal record, simply trying to navigate a broken immigration system. | ||
|
Families Under Threat
00:15:26
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| My constituents are feeling the impact back home in the Buffalo, Niagara region. | ||
| We are a welcoming community that experienced decades of economic decline and population loss. | ||
| Now, with the thousands of new Americans settling in our community with refugee status, we've seen our population not just stabilize, but grow. | ||
| That sense of a welcoming community is deeply at risk. | ||
| My office has received hundreds of calls since January from community members and families who are terrified and many who are facing separation, sounding the alarm on the ICE raids that have descended on Western New York. | ||
| President Trump and Secretary Nome have completely lost sight of the human impact of these policies, and people in my community are suffering as a result. | ||
| In September, after a Venezuelan woman finished her double shift cleaning the Buffalo Bills Stadium, ICE arrested and detained her. | ||
| She has no criminal record. | ||
| This summer, ICE detained dozens of roofers in Buffalo, many of whom were in the process of gaining citizenship, deporting some within 48 hours. | ||
| Local business owners with roots in Buffalo for years have been detained despite having committed no crimes, leaving their families unable to afford rent or utilities. | ||
| University of Buffalo students with legal status have had their student visas revoked. | ||
| And just last week, a popular restaurant on Elmwood Avenue in the heart of the city of Buffalo, Aguacates, had to temporarily close its doors following a raid. | ||
| That means no sales tax collections, no payroll taxes, just an empty kitchen. | ||
| From Buffalo to Amherst to Tonawanda to Niagara Falls and all across this country, concerned people are reporting ICE's presence throughout our communities. | ||
| Back in Buffalo at Oshai Children's Hospital, menacing the hallways outside the room of sick children, of raids at schools that leave children without parents at the end of a school day, of raids targeting those who are literally putting roofs over our heads, seeing their futures ripped from them, of hardworking taxpaying immigrants and green card holders who are hunted down by unidentified masked agents, | ||
| shackled, detained, and ripped away from their families. | ||
| This is not to mention the dozens of U.S. citizens who have been caught up in this administration's sweeping immigration efforts, blindly arrested and detained simply because of the color of their skin. | ||
| Reports suggest at least 170 U.S. citizens have been detained by ICE since January, and I fear that this number is a gross undercount. | ||
| As we've heard today from our witnesses, families are suffering, children are suffering. | ||
| Let me be clear. | ||
| This administration hasn't just crossed the line, it's sped far past it. | ||
| It's an assault on our Constitution and our democracy, an affront on the integrity of our entire nation, of immigrants, and a tragic indignity by an administration with absolutely no respect for the rule of law. | ||
| Today, alongside my colleagues on the Homeland Security Committee, we're seeking to unmask the truth, to hold this administration accountable for intentionally creating a humanitarian crisis in communities all across the nation. | ||
| I have written a letter requesting specific information from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Buffalo Field Office regarding the number of detentions and deportations in my district in New York's 26th, including those of U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents. | ||
| The House majority has to do its job. | ||
| Use the oversight forces and powers entrusted to Congress in the Constitution to uncover the truth and expose the abuses of power we are currently seeing in Western New York and all across this nation. | ||
| I implore this administration to change course and to abandon its deeply unpopular, inhumane, and offensive ICE raids against people here lawfully. | ||
| We as a country are better than this. | ||
| The people of this nation deserve better than this. | ||
| It's not who we are as a nation, and it cannot be who we become. | ||
| I am so grateful for the leadership of this committee, and with that, I will yield back. | ||
| Gentleman yields back. | ||
| Chair recognizes the gentlelady from New Jersey, Ms. McGahn, for five minutes. | ||
| Thank you so much to our amazing ranking member, and thank you to our witnesses for joining us today under such sad circumstances. | ||
| Honestly, I want to thank each and every one of you for your courage, for your resilience, and for your humility for being here testifying before us. | ||
| As our witnesses can attest, this administration has made every attempt to create a culture of fear and intimidation in communities across this country. | ||
| I have seen firsthand in Trump's first week in office, ICE conducted a raid in my hometown in the city of Newark. | ||
| Mass agents stormed the seafood market. | ||
| They took people away. | ||
| They were going after people who were just there making a living, scaring the hell out of residents in this small community, in this small neighborhood with rifles, bulletproof vests on, tactic gear, literally just terrorizing them. | ||
| And just hours ago, we received reports that mass ICE agents have returned again to this same market to conduct another raid and terrorize our communities. | ||
| Just a couple of hours ago. | ||
| Donald Trump brought this issue to New Jersey's front doorsteps and continues to do so and quite frankly has brought it across this nation. | ||
| 30% of the people in my district I represent are immigrants. | ||
| And in my community, I felt something shift after that first raid. | ||
| I started to see and hear the fear coming from people in the 10th congressional district. | ||
| It is now a fear that is spreading like wildfire in this country. | ||
| Families who've been here for years are looking over their shoulders. | ||
| Parents are scared to drop their kids off to school. | ||
| Folks are afraid to go to the doctor, to the office, to the supermarket. | ||
| Not because they've done anything wrong, but because they don't know what, they don't know if today is the day a raid will sweep through the neighborhood. | ||
| That is why my colleagues on the Homeland Committee and the colleagues here who are not a part of the committee but doing the work with us, this is why we have chosen to stand up to this administration. | ||
| This is why we have chosen to protect the people who have elected us to do so, to stand up for accountability against this administration that is using fear as a political tool. | ||
| That meant demanding the oversight that the Constitution gives members of Congress. | ||
| As some of you know, I went to an ICE facility in my district, not the first one I went to, actually the second. | ||
| And I was there for an oversight visit. | ||
| And because of such, I am now facing 17 years in prison for doing so, just for showing up to do the job that I was not appointed to do, but elected to do. | ||
| The administration is keeping up their clear efforts to intimidate me and many others, stopping me from doing oversight and keeping me from doing my job. | ||
| I will tell you, it won't work for me and it surely won't work for the members of this committee. | ||
| But this isn't about me. | ||
| Trust. | ||
| It's not about a little black girl from the city of Newark. | ||
| It is about Trump and this administration's cruel and unconstitutional practices. | ||
| After my oversight visit, the administration tried to change the rules, tell members they can't come to detention centers, make us give them notice. | ||
| This year is already the most deadliest in decades for people in ICE detention centers. | ||
| And now they are trying to operate in the dark. | ||
| Furthermore, this isn't just about members of Congress. | ||
| It is about all of us here, all of us who are watching, all of the folks who are here in the gallery. | ||
| It is about every last one of us. | ||
| More than 170 U.S. citizens have been detained by immigration officials. | ||
| ICE has dismissed documentation showing legal status. | ||
| I mean, under this regime, no one is safe. | ||
| No one. | ||
| We need to be able to stand up and demand accountability. | ||
| We need more folks to be outraged about what is happening. | ||
| We need to be able to live free and free from fear. | ||
| The Supreme Court and Republicans in Congress have endorsed these tactics. | ||
| They refuse to speak about what is happening. | ||
| They refuse to do the work. | ||
| Our colleagues on Homeland Security Committee aren't hosting these hearings, Republicans. | ||
| They're not here. | ||
| Not one showed up out of 200 plus to be a part of this because they do not care. | ||
| And so we have to continue to tell these stories. | ||
| We have to continue to be outraged about what is happening and making sure that people know what is going on. | ||
| Everyone's not watching these videos. | ||
| They're living their day-to-day lives not knowing it. | ||
| So I thank you all for standing up, continuing to tell the stories, for doing the work, for being in the fields of this. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| And with that, I don't want to continue to go over my time because I see the chair, my ranking member looking at me. | ||
| So with that, I yield back. | ||
| Joe Lady yields back. | ||
| Chair recognized the gentleman from Texas, Mr. Green. | ||
| Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | ||
| And I thank the witnesses for appearing. | ||
| Some things can make you angry. | ||
| And then there are things that can break your heart. | ||
| Seeing the constabulary abuse women and children to the extent that we've witnessed it breaks your heart. | ||
| This is being done under the color of law. | ||
| These are not hoodlums. | ||
| These are people that we have given the authority to, the authority to serve and protect. | ||
| And under the color of law, they're abusing citizens. | ||
| But the truth is, even if you're not a citizen, you should not be abused by the constabulary. | ||
| You shouldn't. | ||
| And I must tell you, Reverend Black, Mr. Brown, Mr. Shapiro, you talked about how children and others have suffered, and how You can see the suffering as you talk to them. | ||
| The three of you have suffered too. | ||
| And when you were talking, I had tears to well in my eyes because I could see the pain that you're enduring now. | ||
| You've been traumatized. | ||
| You really have. | ||
| This is having an impact on all of us. | ||
| At some point, we have to make a decision. | ||
| We are the we and we the people. | ||
| This government belongs to us. | ||
| It doesn't belong to one man. | ||
| We have the power. | ||
| We should legislate. | ||
| I'm going to do everything that I can, and we have a great leader. | ||
| I have such great respect for him. | ||
| Great leader. | ||
| We have to legislate. | ||
| But we also, aside from legislation, there is protestation. | ||
| Reverend Black, you employed peaceful, lawful protestation. | ||
| I believe in that. | ||
| So we have to do protestation, legislation, litigation. | ||
| But in the final analysis, after we finish all these things, there will be a day in November, in November of next year, and a chance for you to redeem yourself, Mr. Brown. | ||
| Redemption is available in November for me too, for all of us. | ||
| What happened to your wife, the mother of a United States Marine, is unconscionable. | ||
| I would say unforgivable, but my religion won't let me. | ||
| It's unconscionable. | ||
| It's unthinkable. | ||
| We have to realize that in a participatory democracy, our participation is required. | ||
| And when we fail to participate, we lose democracy. | ||
| We must participate. | ||
| Not only should we legislate, but you ought to be out there demanding on the steps of the Capitol that we do something. | ||
| And the we includes my colleagues across the aisle. | ||
| They have neglected their duties of office. | ||
| It's shameful how they have allowed one person to dominate the House of Representatives. | ||
|
Ending Qualified Immunity Act
00:02:42
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| One person to dominate the Senate. | ||
| One person to disregard the separation of powers. | ||
| Disregard the notion that there's something called due process. | ||
| One person. | ||
| It's not enough for us to complain. | ||
| We've got to do more. | ||
| I'm going to do as best as I can. | ||
| I beg that you would. | ||
| But just know this. | ||
| There's going to be a day in November of next year when redemption can be had. | ||
| Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | ||
| Gentleman yields back. | ||
| Chair recognizes the gentleman from Michigan, Mr. Thanador. | ||
| Thank you, Chairman Thompson. | ||
| Thank you for organizing this conversation. | ||
| I also thank all of the members of The witnesses here with your stories, your courage, and your participation in this fight. | ||
| You know, the Trump administration, through the use of ICE agents, has repeatedly violated the rights of Americans afforded to them through the Constitution. | ||
| This gross abuse of power is eroding the public trust within the government and causing unnecessary trauma and harm to our communities. | ||
| His policies have also allowed for federal agents to unfairly detain legal residents within this country who have built their lives here and contributed to the American dream. | ||
| ICE agents feel emboldened by this administration and are blatantly harassing Americans without fear of repercussion. | ||
| This is why I introduced the Ending Qualified Immunity for ICE Agents Act to hold ICE agents accountable for their actions. | ||
| We must end the Trump administration's deport now, ask questions later policy to restore the rule of law and to protect the dignity of our immigrant community. | ||
|
Long-Term Impacts of Trauma
00:02:46
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| You know, I am an immigrant myself. | ||
| I was 24 years old when I came to this country pursuing my American dream. | ||
| And during this process, every time I travel in and out of the country, and I have personally experienced such horror, but now seeing that happening to our children, to have seeing that happening to American citizen children, is horrifying. | ||
| And I see there's a couple doctors here on the panel. | ||
| My concern really is: what does this do to the young minds, this impact of this tear gas in their eyes, a one-year-old American citizen, all this intimidation that they see? | ||
| What does that do psychologically? | ||
| What kind of damage does that create now and maybe long term in their lives? | ||
| If Dr. Geary or Dr. Shapiro may want to comment on that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So we know that this type of trauma can have long-term impacts on a child's health and development. | |
| Aside from the obvious anxiety, depression, mental health concerns that happen in younger children, we see loss of developmental milestones, particularly with separation from a caregiver. | ||
| We see regression, loss of speech, toileting, disrupted speech, sleep, difficulty eating, loss of weight. | ||
| So in the long term, even for older kids, we see disrupted learning, difficulty concentrating, who can concentrate when they're terrified. | ||
| And in the very long term, there can be consequences on their chronic medical conditions. | ||
| So we see hypertension, we see all kinds of impacts from chronic stress, which is what a lot of these children are dealing with. | ||
| Thank you, Dr. Gitty. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You know, I'll just add that what Dr. Geary explained was a concept called toxic stress. | |
| And the issue with toxic stress is that when children, especially very young children, are under chronic stress and do not have a loving caregiver to mitigate, to buffer that stress, that is what puts them at the most risk. | ||
|
Exposing Vulnerabilities
00:07:26
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|
unidentified
|
And so what we're doing is we're removing, we're exposing them to enormous stress and we're taking away their caregiver. | |
| So it's a double whammy. | ||
| And that is actually what is leading to all of the things that Dr. Gary just explained. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| And I see and hear and agree with my colleagues here and especially Congressman Green and his call for us to continue to fight. | ||
| We've got to continue to fight on this. | ||
| And with that spirit, I was able to take a members of my community to the ICE office and have an intense conversation and present our demands to them. | ||
| And we need to continue fighting this. | ||
| This is un-American. | ||
| This is cruel. | ||
| And we cannot just sit here and be a silent observers for that. | ||
| Thank you all for being here and your participation. | ||
| Thank you, Chairman. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Gentleman yields back. | ||
| Chair recognizes gentlelady from Oregon, Ms. Salinas. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you, Chair Thompson, and thank you to the Homeland Security Democrats for allowing those of us who do not serve on the committee to be with you all today. | |
| And thank you so much to our witnesses. | ||
| You have been incredible. | ||
| And I'm so grateful to ProPublica for publishing their investigation detailing the 170 citizens who have been detained. | ||
| I would argue that it's at least 172. | ||
| And I have two stories directly from Oregon. | ||
| Earlier this month, Sandra, a U.S. citizen and her husband, were driving just east of Portland when they were stopped by ICE. | ||
| Despite claiming they were only targeting Sandra's husband, ICE dragged Sandra from her car, pointed a gun in her face, handcuffed her wrists to her ankles, and detained her for hours in the Portland field office. | ||
| It's not a detention facility. | ||
| It was only then, hours later, that ICE realized their mistake. | ||
| Sandra is an American citizen. | ||
| No one deserves to be treated that way. | ||
| Nobody. | ||
| Not even non-citizens, and certainly not American citizens. | ||
| Upon her release, the ICE officer who had detained her even apologized for how he treated her, saying he was just really pissed off. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Just south of Portland in Milwaukee, Frank, another U.S. citizen, was abducted from his job by masked plainclothes ICE agents. | ||
| So he could not identify who they were. | ||
| These unidentified agents forced him onto the floor of a van and took him straight to the Portland field office for, again, detainment. | ||
| For hours, Frank pleaded with the agents, telling them that they had the wrong guy. | ||
| Eventually, ICE realized their mistake and took Frank back to work, all without any information or any type of justification for his arrest. | ||
| And these are just two of several stories that we have been hearing in Oregon and all across Oregon, but obviously the Portland area has had a lot of attention. | ||
| And we have been hearing these stories about people being traumatized and mishandled by ICE agents. | ||
| And it's important, I think, that we continue to share these stories. | ||
| Again, from people who are citizens and non-citizens. | ||
| And I represent the Willamette Valley, so we have a lot of farm workers, a lot of folks in hospitality, but we also have people who are business owners, who have lived in our communities for 30, 40 years and are there, you know, temporary And have their TPS holders, but people who are the fabric of our community and just want to continue living their lives. | ||
| But I want to start with Ms. Shaw, and thank you so much to the ACLU for just helping us navigate so much of this and helping us to get in touch with so many people who have been detained. | ||
| You've been amazing. | ||
| We're watching the Trump administration weaponize the government and military against its citizens right now. | ||
| This is plain and simple. | ||
| That is what they're doing. | ||
| We've witnessed mass federal agents armed with rifles roaming our streets, raiding apartment buildings in Chicago and abducting people from their neighborhoods in Oregon. | ||
| Can you discuss what you've seen in the militarization of immigrant immigration agents and the use of National Guard and how it threatens U.S. citizens and U.S. safety, really? | ||
| Because it's all of us. | ||
| It's all of our safety. | ||
| Congresswoman, I first want to thank you for introducing the National Guard Proper Use Act, a really important bill that is among the only bills in Congress right now that addresses pointedly the use by this government of our nation's military to go after our own communities, | ||
| our communities, including Americans and their mixed-status families, the misuse of government of military resources to do immigration work, the use of our military bases as detention camps, the use of military planes, the misuse of defense assets against our communities. | ||
| What is happening, what is playing out on the ground, is the build-out, I believe, of a national paramilitary policing force. | ||
| The masks are not an accident. | ||
| They're not an individual choice. | ||
| They appear to be part of a strategy to make it so that we don't know who it is who's wearing that camouflage uniform. | ||
| Is it ICE? | ||
| Is it Border Patrol? | ||
| Is it DEA? | ||
| Is it the FBI? | ||
| And we are heading towards, we are hurtling towards a situation where, unfortunately, Americans experience federal military deployments and have to wonder if that person who is violating their constitutional rights is in fact a member of federal law enforcement or state and local law enforcement or even someday the troops that they entrusted who they know swore an oath to defend their rights and defend the Constitution. | ||
| It's a danger to all of us when we cannot hold people accountable for the abuses they commit. | ||
| And when they disguise themselves, when they build out that paramilitary policing force that blurs the lines of accountability between law enforcement, the federal government, and our military, it is a threat to all of our ability to vindicate our constitutional rights in court. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Is there any private right of action or anything that citizens or non-citizens can take at this point? | |
| The reality is that our ability to hold federal officials accountable is stymied. | ||
| The Supreme Court in a number of decisions has limited the Bivens remedy that has been so important. | ||
| And it is really here that we need to have Congress step in to make clear that the American people need to be able to hold federal officials accountable. | ||
| And of course, in the past, we've always been able to rely in some form or fashion on the federal government to hold federal law enforcement accountable, the Department of Justice, which has been decimated. | ||
| And so now it becomes even more important for us to see bills introduced by Congress and build support among members who are concerned about accountability for a Bivens remedy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| My time has expired. | ||
| I yield back. | ||
| Young ladies, time has expired. | ||
| Chair recognizes a gentleman from California for five minutes, Mr. Vargas. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. | |
| I also want to thank you for allowing those of us that are not on this committee to sit. | ||
|
Why We Left The Movement
00:02:27
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unidentified
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I sit on financial services, but I wanted to be here to hear the testimonies and also to give my, not necessarily testimony, but also, I feel like I have to be here. | |
| You know, you have to be part of this movement to change things. | ||
| I got elected in 2010 and I began serving in 2013 and I was very excited about meeting John Lewis. | ||
| He'd always been this icon and I'd always loved what he did. | ||
| And I have to say the first time I met him, he was talking about immigration. | ||
| He said it was the civil rights issue of our time and how committed he was to try to make change. | ||
| And we actually got close that year with the bill, a bill that came out of the Senate. | ||
| We couldn't pass it in the House. | ||
| And I always so regret that we weren't able to do that. | ||
| We tried very hard because I think a lot of the problems that we have today wouldn't be as big, to be frank. | ||
| But we didn't. | ||
| We failed. | ||
| And here we are. | ||
| And that's why I want to thank the chairman. | ||
| The chairman hasn't given up. | ||
| So many people haven't. | ||
| And I especially want to thank all of you for being here. | ||
| Last Thursday night, we had a prayer vigil in San Diego at the federal courthouse. | ||
| I've been trying to get in to the federal courthouse basement because they've been holding people for more than a week. | ||
| And we don't know how many because they don't won't allow us down there. | ||
| Monday, we finally are going to get the opportunity to go down there. | ||
| I've been going there with my colleagues. | ||
| So we held a prayer vigil that the Jesuits put on. | ||
| I'm a former Jesuit myself. | ||
| I studied about five years with the Jesuits. | ||
| And it was beautiful, to be frank, because everyone was there. | ||
| We had lots of priests, and we had the three bishops from San Diego. | ||
| The Protestant community was there. | ||
| The rabbis were there. | ||
| The Amons were, everyone was there. | ||
| In fact, even some friends of mine who were the free thinkers, they were atheists. | ||
| And I thought that was kind of funny. | ||
| And I went and talked to them. | ||
| They said, well, we just wanted to be part of this movement. | ||
| We saw what you guys were doing. | ||
| But Mr. Brown, one of the sad things is we had very few evangelicals there. | ||
| Very, very few evangelical pastors or people there. | ||
| And that was sad to me. | ||
| Very sad. | ||
|
Evangelical Obstacle
00:02:58
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unidentified
|
And listening to you today, I hear you're a pastor. | |
| I didn't know that. | ||
| I heard the very moving story about both, obviously, you and your wife and what a terrible situation is. | ||
| But I also can't help but think of, you know, what can we do to get the evangelical church to change its mind? | ||
| I think that they're the biggest obstacle, just to be honest with you. | ||
| I think they're the biggest obstacle. | ||
| And again, I'm a believer. | ||
| I believe in Jesus and saving. | ||
| I pray three times. | ||
| I do all my Jesuit stuff every day and believe deeply in our Lord. | ||
| And yet here are our evangelical brothers that seem to be the biggest block. | ||
| Yes, sir. | ||
| Jesus says, for what I'll do for you, I'll do for the least of these. | ||
| And that's where we need to go. | ||
| That's what the problem is, is there's been a movement in this country is it's been a lot of it has been a white nationalist movement, a white nationalist Christian movement, which is absolutely opposing of what true Christianity is. | ||
| Jesus was not even white. | ||
| So that's something that people don't understand is real true Christianity says, I will love everybody. | ||
| It says in Romans, it says, for the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God. | ||
| It didn't say the gift of God, but if you're a certain race or a certain country, you're not from there. | ||
| It says the gift of God is eternal life. | ||
| That means everybody should love each other. | ||
| Being in the military. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And I agree with you, but I guess, you know, not to turn this into theological discussion, but I have to say that it is interesting that those that seem to be fighting against immigration reform, those that seem to be fighting most against some humane policy towards, again, people who are brothers and sisters, seem to be evangelical pastors. | |
| Because it's been a brainwashing effect in the last 12 years for both Democrats and Republicans will go there. | ||
| They said, okay, we hate each other on this side. | ||
| We hate each other on this side. | ||
| Let's hate each other instead of love each other. | ||
| And that's the problem. | ||
| It's not really, it's not a partisan issue. | ||
| It's a moral issue. | ||
| We're not really loving each other. | ||
| Let's love each other because you're a human being. | ||
| It doesn't matter what color you are. | ||
| It doesn't matter what race you're. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You have a great story to tell, and I hope you do tell it to your evangelical pastors and friends. | |
| Oh, I have. | ||
| It's so important. | ||
| I've lost 200 friends over this. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Trust me. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And again, to everybody else, my times, I thank you so much. | |
|
Why We Left Google
00:04:17
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unidentified
|
I mean, the medical community in San Diego has been fabulous, just to be honest with you. | |
| Just such humanitarian people. | ||
| The legal community finally has something they really, really believe in and can fight against. | ||
| And it's been great to see them come forward. | ||
| It really has. | ||
| It's been, the ACLU, you know, has been magnificent, just absolutely magnificent. | ||
| All the groups have. | ||
| And again, I apologize that you got hit. | ||
| And I watched that. | ||
| We all did. | ||
| And I think all of us prayed for you. | ||
| That's why you guys healed and you look pretty good today. | ||
| Probably, you know, the whole world was praying for you again because of your courage, and we appreciate it. | ||
| And again, I thank you, Mr. Chairman, for allowing me to be here, not on this committee, but thank you. | ||
| Well, let me thank both of our non-committee members for their participation. | ||
| And let me thank our witnesses. | ||
| You've been spot on in terms of your testimony. | ||
| We're trying, as Democrats on the Homeland Security Committee, to start getting more engagement from the public. | ||
| We're unable to hold hearings. | ||
| We would have loved to have had Republicans here. | ||
| They could provide their witnesses. | ||
| Democrats could provide theirs, but we've been unable to do it. | ||
| So this shadow hearing is what we ended up with. | ||
| And it was by default. | ||
| But we couldn't have found a better group of witnesses to start it off. | ||
| We'll do some more hearings until our Republican colleagues get the message. | ||
| Normally, when the federal government shows up, they're kind of in a disaster situation. | ||
| It's when all else has failed. | ||
| It's your federal government to the rescue. | ||
| And what we have in the immigration environment is just the opposite. | ||
| It's when our fellow immigration officials show up, you run, close your door, don't go to school, don't go to work. | ||
| And that's not the design of our system. | ||
| And so we have to highlight it until people get it. | ||
| And we'll continue to do it. | ||
| Your testimony becomes part of the record of the committee. | ||
| At some point, we'll start doing oversight, as what Congressman Green talked about. | ||
| The beauty of this democracy is we have a chance every so often to pick our representatives. | ||
| And I think from what we are able to, in testimony and see in video, help enlighten the public on who our real leaders are. | ||
| And so we look forward to that. | ||
| Apart from that, I thank the staff for putting this together. | ||
| This was our first foray into a shadow hearing. | ||
| If I had told you the bubblegum and bail and wire that went into putting this hearing together, believe me. | ||
| We thank C-SPAN and others for covering it, this hearing. | ||
| But it's important. | ||
| Our children, they are our future. | ||
| We should not traumatize our children because the adults can't get along. | ||
| And so with that, I thank the witnesses again for your valuable testimony and the members for their questions. | ||
| And hearing no further business, the hearing stands adjoin. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | |
| Thank you for letting me sit here. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
|
Dry Thanksgiving Turkey
00:00:45
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unidentified
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Watch America's Book Club, C-SPAN's bold original series. | |
| Sunday with our guest famed chef and global relief entrepreneur, Jose Andres. | ||
| His books on reimagining food include Feeding Dangerously, Change the Recipe, and We Fed an Island. | ||
| He joins our host, renowned author and civic leader, David Rubinstein. | ||
| Are people afraid of inviting you over to their house for dinner because they'd be afraid that the food wouldn't be good enough for you? | ||
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unidentified
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When people cook with love for you, it's great, but you know, you know, the dry turkey in Thanksgiving is unnegotiable. | |
| It's always dry. | ||
| But yeah, turkeys are so dry. | ||
| That's why gravy exists. | ||