Official Congressional Record
Mr. President, roughly a year ago, President Trump made good on his ``MASS DEPORTATION NOW!'' promise--it was a campaign pledge--when he unleashed ICE into cities across the country to carry out his brutal immigration crackdown. In its wake, including in the city of Chicago, the so-called ``worst of the worst''--remember? The President said he was going after those who were rapists, murderers, terrorists, criminally insane, and predators. The ``worst of the worst''--that is who we are going after. He said it over and over and over again. Turns out that the ``worst of the worst'' didn't fit in that category at all. Who were they? Some were U.S. citizens, legal residents, and people with no prior criminal history whatsoever--none. The administration brutally carried out this political theater by deploying military-grade weapons and using overwhelming displays of force that left communities and our country on edge. I saw it firsthand in the city of Chicago: Operation Midway Blitz. In our Hispanic neighborhoods, people were afraid to come out to go to church, afraid to send their kids to school. Were these criminals who were harboring their children from going to school? Hardly. They are people who work in common jobs every single day, who stood next to you in the line in the grocery store, and who were with you in the pew at church on Sunday. ``Worst of the worst'' didn't hold up at all. At its peak, tensions boiled over with the killing of two American citizens at that time. We saw it in real time and on videotape: Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minnesota. After the public outcry, these ICE raids were quietly scaled back by the Trump administration and Stephen Miller. But now Stephen Miller, the President's domestic adviser, and Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Mullin are quietly resuming these efforts, with immigration arrests surging this month to the highest levels in this administration. I assume they felt that America just wouldn't notice that they were back in business, but we have. In the last 2 weeks, two fatal shootings by ICE agents in Texas and Maine have thrust this government's tactics back into the spotlight. Earlier this month, ICE shot and killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo during a traffic stop in Houston. Mr. Araujo had lived in the country for more than 30 years and was not the intended target of the operation. He is survived by his children, who are U.S. citizens. Instead of investigating, the ICE agents detained the witnesses that were around the scene. The Harris County district attorney has said these witnesses are critical to the investigation, but they have been detained by the ICE agents. Last week, Joan Sebastian Guerrero was also shot and killed while in his vehicle in Maine. He is survived by his wife and their 3-year-old daughter, who will now grow up without a father. The ICE agent who fatally shot Mr. Guerrero was hired by the Trump administration despite the fact that he has a long history of domestic violence, abuse, and mental health issues. Yes, a man with a long history of mental health issues, abuse, and domestic violence was hired as an ICE agent and given a gun and a mask. It is not clear whether ICE simply failed to vet him or identified these issues and ignored them. DHS quickly rushed to claim that both shootings were justified, without any body-worn camera footage or any serious investigation. You know, it is interesting. This Agency, which is actively trying to arrest, detain, and deport thousands of people, meeting quotas set by Stephen Miller each day, the agents involved in this are not like your hometown police. They are not like your State police either. We know that their background checks are obviously very weak, and the training is limited. We also know that when they are on the job, on the clock, they are wearing masks. When is the last time your local police wore a mask in your hometown? How about your State troopers when they pull you over on the highway? Are they wearing masks? Of course not. But this is insisted on because these ICE agents are so notorious. These fatalities that I have talked about could have been avoided. These people could be alive today. After the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, we tried time and again to get our Republican colleagues to sit down and agree just on some basics. Without a search warrant or an arrest warrant, a person posing to be a policeman should not be crashing down the door of your home. That is pretty basic, isn't it? If there is a warrant or extraordinary circumstances, that is one thing, but the ICE agents crashed down the door of people they suspect might be in the United States undocumented. Many times, they are just plain wrong. Sometimes, those homeowners turn out to be U.S. citizens. Yet when we sit down and say ``That should be basic in America, shouldn't it? If somebody is going to invade my home, with my wife and my kids or grandkids in there, for goodness' sake, they ought to have at least the color of law behind them, the support of the court behind them''--not ICE agents--every instance we have tried to make these changes--simple, commonsense law enforcement changes--the Republicans said no. Instead, the administration has lurched in the opposite direction, enabling these abuses to continue. On the heels of these back-to-back killings which I have described, ICE temporarily paused traffic stops, but President Trump quickly took to social media to personally reverse that decision. The President said: Despite the recent reports of killings-- Being pulled over and shot in your car has to be part of the strategy of ICE, according to the President. Traffic stops have been among the deadliest tactics during this President's mass raids, but apparently, he doesn't care. According to the New York Times just yesterday, the FBI has informed its agents around the country that the FBI would no longer investigate alleged assaults by immigration agents. Why is that important? I will tell you. This change will sharply limit law enforcement scrutiny of ICE agents. For years, the Department of Justice's involvement in officer- involved shootings has provided an independent set of eyes and often uncovered crucial facts, including misconduct by Federal officers-- misconduct that has been evident in recent cases. The Department of Homeland Security's Office of Inspector General has at least agreed to investigate the use of excessive force by ICE agents, but it is unacceptable that the government's top law enforcement Agency, the FBI, has reportedly chosen to ignore its mission to enforce the law and instead does the White House's bidding. At a time when the American people are demanding more transparency and answers, the administration gives us less. We mourn the loss of these beloved community members, and Senate Democrats will continue to call for an end to these fatal raids.
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