00:00Let me start by offering my deepest condolences to you, Mrs. Gorman, and to you, Mr. Abraham, for the loss
00:06of your children.
00:07As a parent myself, I can think of no greater loss, and I appreciate you being here to share their
00:14stories and their lives with us.
00:18Unfortunately, this hearing is the fourth time in this committee that we've had a hearing on sanctuary cities.
00:26The fourth time.
00:27And there's many other things that we could be doing other than this.
00:32I would have loved to have had some hearings on the unconstitutionality of the president's executive order on eliminating birthright
00:39citizenship.
00:40This is something that the Supreme Court just ruled today in a 6-3 majority was unconstitutional.
00:47And yet this was an executive order that caused so much fear and trauma across the country.
00:52We could have been discussing that, but we haven't.
00:55Instead, we have had this series of hearings that are designed to attack the very trust policies that research has
01:05shown over and over again have actually saved lives and kept communities safer.
01:11By maintaining the necessary and important division between the enforcement of federal civil immigration laws and the enforcement of local
01:21criminal laws.
01:22This division ensures that people don't fear law enforcement who try to enforce immigration law and that community members will
01:30actually come forward and be witnesses in these prosecutions to report crimes when they happen.
01:37The Trump administration, however, has ignored decades of research and has done the exact opposite.
01:43They've blurred the lines between immigration enforcement and law enforcement so much that they essentially no longer exist.
01:52They've destroyed trust in communities and created fear and even deported witnesses to important crimes so that then those crimes
02:01cannot be effectively prosecuted.
02:03On top of that, the Trump administration has diverted over 28,000 officers from their critical law enforcement activities to
02:13work on immigration enforcement instead.
02:16This has led to non-immigration criminal prosecutions falling to their lowest point in decades.
02:24Gun prosecutions have fallen more than 10 percent.
02:27Investigators worked 33 fewer, 33 percent fewer hours on child exploitation cases.
02:35Nearly one in every five FBI agents has been reassigned to arrest immigrants instead of conducting complex criminal investigations of
02:46corruption, espionage, terrorism, cyber attacks, and transnational gangs.
02:51All things that are necessary to keep Americans safe.
02:54Similarly, around one in every two drug enforcement agency agents, two in three Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives
03:03agents, and one in five U.S. Marshals have all been reassigned to immigration enforcement.
03:09From within ICE, thousands of Homeland Security Investigations, HSI agents, are focused on immigration enforcement instead of their stated mission
03:20of combating transnational crimes such as drug and weapons smuggling, child exploitation, and human trafficking.
03:27During the immigration enforcement surge in Minnesota, federal prosecutions of gun and drug offenses dropped by nearly 90 percent.
03:3790 percent.
03:3890 percent.
03:39DHS's former chief of staff says that as a result of all of this, our government is, quote, asleep at
03:46the wheel and less prepared to stop terrorist attacks than at any point since 9-11.
03:52For what?
03:54For what?
03:55What are the results of that?
03:56Arrests of immigrants without a single criminal conviction surged by 770 percent.
04:03And these immigrants of all immigration statuses get locked up or deported or disappeared at tremendous cost to you, the
04:11taxpayers, and to the traumatized communities that are left behind.
04:15That's not a public safety agenda.
04:18That's a public safety disaster.
04:20So let's just remind people about what this immigration enforcement strategy of this administration has led to.
04:27Under Donald Trump, ICE doubled in size.
04:31Instead of funding Americans' health care or housing or child care, Republicans poured over $210 billion, $210 billion into ICE
04:43and CBP.
04:44DHS officers killed two U.S. citizens in cold blood in Minnesota.
04:49Have we had a hearing on that?
04:51No, we haven't.
04:52They beat and detained countless U.S. citizens for exercising First Amendment rights and broke down doors without a warrant
04:59in violation of the Fourth Amendment.
05:01ICE has imprisoned 400,000 people just in the interior of this country since Trump came in.
05:07Parents, children, military veterans, U.S. citizens, people on valid visas, and people who have never committed a single crime.
05:16The private prison companies who incarcerate these people get massive profits.
05:22They turn around and then contribute to Republicans and Trump's campaigns while maintaining the most horrific conditions inside the prisons
05:30that have led to a record 51 deaths in ICE detention just since President Trump took office.
05:37So what does all this do for Americans?
05:39It hurts them.
05:40Their communities get torn apart, their kids lose friends, their businesses suffer from lack of workers, and guess what?
05:46Americans actually lose jobs due to harsh immigration enforcement.
05:51The Brookings Institution looked at increased ICE enforcement in 86 metro areas in red and blue states
05:58and found that up to 297,000 American-born workers have lost their jobs as a result of ICE's increased
06:06enforcement.
06:07That all needs to stop.
06:08Our hearings should be on how public safety has been hurt thanks to this administration's policies,
06:16or on holding people who killed and detained American citizens accountable,
06:20or on the numerous times that this administration denies due process in violation of our Constitution.
06:28That is what the American people want, not more of what we're doing today.
06:31More than 60% of Americans now disapprove of Donald Trump's immigration policies.
06:37Americans want Trump and Republicans to focus on lowering grocery prices,
06:43stop giving tax breaks to billionaires,
06:44while stripping health care from tens of millions of Americans.
06:48But just like Trump has insulted Americans by refusing to sign the most consequential bipartisan housing bill in a generation,
06:57calling it unimportant and a quote yawn.
07:01He's insulting Americans by continuing these harsh immigration policies that hurt safety and hurt opportunity for all Americans.
07:09Republicans instead want to coerce states and localities into doing the federal government's job despite numerous court orders that have
07:16declared immigration detainers unlawful violations of the Fourth Amendment.
07:21They want to force local police departments to prioritize their limited resources on immigration enforcement instead of encouraging all community
07:29members to come forward and report crimes without worrying about theirs or a loved one's immigration status.
07:36I hope that this committee does hold hearings on the unconstitutionality of this administration's policies.
07:42But certainly when Republicans are no longer in office after November, we will do just that in the majority.
07:49I look forward to hearing from all of our witnesses today and I yield back.
07:52You know, I think I want to go to a statement that you ended with, Sheriff Redman, that I agree
07:57with.
07:58And I believe this is how you said it as well.
08:00It's in your written testimony.
08:01Public policy should prioritize accountability for criminal offenders, protection for victims and the safety of law abiding citizens.
08:09I agree with that.
08:10And I think everybody on the side agrees with that.
08:12I think the question really is what creates that environment most effectively.
08:19And I spent some time in my opening statement, and I know you did as well, Miss Pierce, talking about
08:24how resources are getting taken from different parts of Department of Homeland Security, other law enforcement, federal law enforcement agencies,
08:34in order to do immigration enforcement, that has really focused largely on people who don't have any convictions.
08:44But more importantly, in this context of sanctuary jurisdictions, has actually hurt law enforcement's ability to do its job at
08:54the local level.
08:55And so I wanted to go to this question about, the central question here is not about whether there should
09:02be justice for Mrs. Gorman and Mr. Abraham's daughter's murderers.
09:07There absolutely should be.
09:09I don't think there's any disagreement about that anywhere on this bench, Democrat or Republican.
09:14The central question is what gets us that accountability across the board for everybody.
09:20And so the Trump administration's approach has been to force every state, city, and locality to use their resources, precious
09:30resources, quite small in many jurisdictions, to enforce federal immigration law.
09:37In Mr. Abraham's case, it sounds like actually that was a Chicago, that sounds like a state of Illinois issue.
09:43But the whole question of where local law enforcement prioritizes resources and what keeps us safer.
09:50My question for you is, does the Trump administration's approach to immigration enforcement, which is forcing local jurisdictions to enforce
09:59immigration law,
10:00is that what keeps us most safe and prevents the kinds of things we're hearing about today?
10:09No, it does not.
10:10And I agree.
10:11The central question here is not only just about accountability, right?
10:13It's about public safety.
10:14What can keep us all the safest?
10:16And so there's a few different problems with what the Trump administration is doing and how they're approaching that.
10:23And I'll touch on two of them.
10:24The first is the redirection of federal resources to immigration enforcement above violent crimes.
10:30This administration has moved tens of thousands of federal law enforcement officers away from their primary duties of going after
10:38human trafficking,
10:41of going after child sexual exploitation, of going after cyber crimes, terrorism, violent crime,
10:47and instead focus them on immigration enforcement.
10:50And that immigration enforcement work, unfortunately, is not focused on the worst of the worst.
10:55Rather, it's focused on rounding up as many individuals as possible.
10:59So we're neglecting terrorists and we're instead focusing on individuals who have violated civil immigration law.
11:07The second issue is that this administration is bullying jurisdictions to fully cooperate with immigration enforcement
11:14despite those jurisdictions' considerations about their own resources.
11:19Police departments have limited resources, and they use those to decide how much and what level of cooperation
11:25they're going to give to the Trump administration.
11:28Not only that, they need to look at their relationships with their communities.
11:33Is a certain level of cooperation with ICE going to harm the trust that they have established with their local
11:38communities?
11:39Is it going to redirect the priorities that they've decided are best to keep safety in their communities?
11:46Those are the things that these local jurisdictions need to decide
11:49before they decide what level of cooperation they'll give ICE.
11:52And unfortunately, this administration doesn't seem to want to acknowledge that.
11:55They would rather bully these jurisdictions into that full cooperation.
11:58As well as concerns about how much they would have to pay in lawsuits
12:01if what they do is actually unconstitutional.
12:03Why is it dangerous to have policies in place?
12:06This gets at the community trust piece.
12:09Why is it dangerous to have policies in place
12:11that prevent huge swaths of the community, both undocumented folks
12:15as well as family members or friends of undocumented people
12:18who may live in the same household, from feeling secure and calling 9-11?
12:23What happens in that situation to the safety of all community members?
12:28So police can't be everywhere, right?
12:30They rely on community members to be their eyes and ears,
12:34to report crimes, to be witnesses, to provide testimony.
12:38And when those individuals are no longer willing to cooperate with the police,
12:43when they think that a call to 9-1-1 is going to make their lives worse,
12:46that means that those police, their reach into that network,
12:51into the community, is then limited.
12:54Thank you. My time has expired. I yield back.
12:59Subscribe to One India and never miss an update.
13:04Download the One India app now.
13:08And I'll see you soon for more.
13:09Bye!
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