Ranking Member Jayapal: Trump's Coercion of States to Do Immigration Crackdown Makes Us Less Safe

Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman. Let me start by offering my deepest condolences to you, Mrs. Gorman, and to you, Mr. Abraham, for the loss of your children. As a parent myself, I can think of no greater loss, and I appreciate you being here to share their stories and their lives with us. Unfortunately, this hearing is the fourth time in this committee that we've had a hearing on sanctuary cities, the fourth time. There's many other things that we could be doing other than this. I would have loved to have had some hearings on the unconstitutionality of the president's executive order on eliminating birthright citizenship. This is something that the Supreme Court just ruled today in a 6-3 majority was unconstitutional, and yet this was an executive order that caused so much fear and trauma across the country. We could have been discussing that, but we haven't. Instead, we have had this series of hearings that are designed to attack the very trust policies that research has shown over and over again have actually saved lives and kept communities safer by maintaining the necessary and important division between the enforcement of federal civil immigration laws and the enforcement of local criminal laws. This division ensures that people don't fear law enforcement who try to enforce immigration law and that community members will actually come forward and be witnesses in these prosecutions to report crimes when they happen. The Trump administration, however, has ignored decades of research and has done the exact opposite. They've blurred the lines between immigration enforcement and law enforcement so much that they essentially no longer exist. They've destroyed trust in communities and created fear and even deported witnesses to important crimes so that then those crimes cannot be effectively prosecuted. On top of that, the Trump administration has diverted over 28,000 officers from their critical law enforcement activities to work on immigration enforcement instead. This has led to non-immigration criminal prosecutions falling to their lowest point in decades. Gun prosecutions have fallen more than 10%. Investigators worked 33% fewer hours on child exploitation cases. Nearly one in every five FBI agents has been reassigned to arrest immigrants instead of conducting complex criminal investigations of corruption, espionage, terrorism, cyber attacks and transnational gangs, all things that are necessary to keep Americans safe. Similarly, around one in every two drug enforcement agency agents, two in three Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agents, and one in five U.S. Marshals have all been reassigned to immigration enforcement. From within ICE, thousands of Homeland Security investigations, HSI agents, are focused on immigration enforcement instead of their stated mission of combating transnational crimes such as drug and weapon smuggling, child exploitation and human trafficking. During the immigration enforcement surge in Minnesota, federal prosecutions of gun and drug offenses dropped by nearly 90%. 90%. DHS's former chief of staff says that as a result of all of this, our government is quote asleep at the wheel and less prepared to stop terrorist attacks than at any point since 9-11. For what? What are the results of that? Arrests of immigrants without a single criminal conviction surged by 770%. And these immigrants of all immigration statuses get locked up or deported or disappeared at tremendous cost to you, the taxpayers, and to the traumatized communities that are left behind. That's not a public safety agenda. That's a public safety disaster. So let's just remind people about what this immigration enforcement strategy of this administration has led to. Under Donald Trump, ICE doubled in size. Instead of funding Americans health care or housing or child care, Republicans poured over $210 billion, $210 billion into ICE and CBP. DHS officers killed two U.S. citizens in cold blood in Minnesota. Have we had a hearing on that? No, we haven't. They beat and detained countless U.S. citizens for exercising First Amendment rights and broke down doors without a warrant in violation of the Fourth Amendment. ICE has imprisoned 400,000 people just in the interior of this country since Trump came in. Parents, children, military veterans, U.S. citizens, people on valid visas, and people who have never committed a single crime. The private prison companies who incarcerate these people get massive profits. They turn around and then contribute to Republicans and Trump's campaigns while maintaining the most horrific conditions inside the prisons that have led to a record 51 deaths in ICE detention just since President Trump took office. So what does all this do for Americans? It hurts them. Their communities get torn apart, their kids lose friends, their businesses suffer from lack of workers, and guess what? Americans actually lose jobs due to harsh immigration enforcement. The Brookings Institution looked at increased ICE enforcement in 86 metro areas, in red and blue states, and found that up to 297,000 American-born workers have lost their jobs as a result of ICE's increased enforcement. That all needs to stop. Our hearings should be on how public safety has been hurt thanks to this administration's policies, or on holding people who killed and detained American citizens accountable, or on the numerous times that this administration denies due process in violation of our Constitution. That is what the American people want, not more of what we're doing today. More than 60% of Americans now disapprove of Donald Trump's immigration policies. Americans want Trump and Republicans to focus on lowering grocery prices, stop giving tax breaks to billionaires, while stripping healthcare from tens of millions of Americans. But just like Trump has insulted Americans by refusing to sign the most consequential, bipartisan housing bill in a generation, calling it unimportant and a, quote, yawn, he's insulting Americans by continuing these harsh immigration policies that hurt safety and hurt opportunity for all Americans. Republicans instead want to coerce states and localities into doing the federal government's job despite numerous court orders that have declared immigration detainers unlawful violations of the Fourth Amendment. They want to force local police departments to prioritize their limited resources on immigration enforcement instead of encouraging all community members to come forward and report crimes without worrying about theirs or a loved one's immigration status. I hope that this committee does hold hearings on the unconstitutionality of this administration's policies. But certainly, when Republicans are no longer in office after November, we will do just that in the majority. I look forward to hearing from all of our witnesses today, and I yield back.