Scapegoating Immigrants Won’t Make Us Safer: RM Jayapal Condemns Attacks Against Immigrants

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good morning. I thank all of our witnesses and the families for being here today, and I express my condolences for the tremendous losses that you have suffered. Every one of my colleagues on the Democratic side agrees with Republicans that we as a committee should do everything possible to prevent these deaths. The question on the table is how to do so. Congress is tasked with the awesome responsibility of crafting immigration policy that is sensible, humane, orderly, and effective. That means we have to consider every aspect of that policy. We should be holding hearings on real solutions that fix an immigration system that has not been modernized to meet the needs of our country in over 30 years. That means hearing from families like yours, yes. It also means hearing from families of the six people, including three U.S. citizens who DHS agents shot in cold blood on our streets. It means hearing from the families of the 56 people who have died in for-profit immigration detention centers. This is a record number of deaths under this administration because the administration has decided not to enforce any of the basic detention standards Congress put into place. It means hearing from the multiple U.S. citizens who were illegally detained and deported by ICE and the countless people who were illegally deported to countries to which immigration judges ruled that they should never be forced to go. It means hearing from the CEOs of the private for-profit detention centers that are using your U.S. taxpayer dollars to incarcerate over 65,000 people every single night. It means hearing from businesses who are seeing their long-term workers with zero criminal records being deported, and from the families of seniors and children whose care workers have been deported and now have no one to care for their precious family. We should hear from the U.S. Forest Service officials who just terrorized five families at the Red Bridge campground in the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest in my home state of Washington. Two rangers approached the campsite during the day and took photographs of several of the adults' IDs, and then just before midnight, armed ICE officers arrived with Forest Service rangers, shook the families' tents, terrorized the children who were inside, and arrested five men—fathers, uncles, godfathers—who are now detained at the Northwest Detention Center. What a waste of Forest Service resources when they should be fighting fires and ensuring that our public lands are available to everyone. I have demanded answers to this, but surprise, surprise, I have not received any. This committee has zero interest in ensuring accountability or actually moving forward sensible immigration policy that this country desperately needs. Republicans say they have a solution to all of this pain that you all have suffered. It is H.R. 7640. Let me be very clear, Republicans have already passed that bill through this committee months and months ago, despite our side's complete disagreement with their approach. But guess what? They have the majority in this committee. They have the majority on the floor, and they can bring it to the floor for a vote. But they have not. Why have they not brought this bill to the floor for a vote? You have to ask yourselves that. I'll tell you, it's because despite having full control of the House, the Senate, and the White House, they won't be able to get the votes to pass that bill because it does not work. And the American people do not want their solution of mass deportations. Republicans gave $240 billion—billion with a B—dollars of taxpayer money to DHS for immigration enforcement, but none of that has made our communities safer. For the first time this summer, the majority of people that DHS arrested were people who pose absolutely no threat to public safety. And the number of people with criminal convictions who were arrested by ICE actually decreased—decreased, not increased. That's because when DHS expends all of its energy to go after parents, longtime friends, neighbors, when HSI agents who are supposed to investigate serious crime and human trafficking are instead being moved to street sweeps and riding along with local police for random traffic stops, we are less safe, not more safe. The Trump administration has cut thousands of staff members from federal agencies like the FBI, the DEA, ATF, dropped tens of thousands of criminal investigations, including terrorism cases, to prioritize immigration enforcement. Federal law enforcement agents have been reassigned from standard criminal investigations to hit immigration arrest quotas. And that has also led to deadly mistakes like the murder of Yohan Sebastian Duran-Guerrero, a 25-year-old father and husband with a valid work permit who was shot and killed by ICE agents who were actually targeting someone else. Or when ICE killed 52-year-old father and husband Lorenzo Salgado Araujo because they were looking for someone else, and they said that Mr. Araujo, quote, resembled the target. Shifting entire systems toward mass deportation actually leaves communities vulnerable to transnational crime, drug trafficking, and other non-immigration threats. And guess what? The majority of Americans across party lines know that. That is exactly why public polling shows that Trump's numbers on how he is handling immigration enforcement have plummeted. You see, whatever you hear today, the majority of Americans across party lines do not want to see this cruelty that makes us even less safe. These are the last four days of legislative work before the midterms. Fox News and our Republican colleagues will use clips of this hearing and the horrific pain that you have suffered to try and convince the American people that we don't care about you. They'll show darkened photos of my face, which they do regularly. They'll encourage more death threats against all of us and blast terrible headlines about how Democrats refuse to stand up for the American people, all so that they can desperately try to convince Americans before the midterm elections that they are not somehow responsible for driving up gas prices and grocery prices to an all-time high with their illegal war in Iran, so that Americans have to choose between feeding their families and paying their rent. They want you to forget that they slashed healthcare for tens of millions of Americans just so they could give trillions of dollars of tax breaks to billionaires and giant corporations. In fact, just this week, it was reported that their Big Bad Betrayal bill that they passed last summer allowed giant AI companies that operate these data centers and are developing out-of-control technology that could eliminate the human race. Those companies now pay 25% less in corporate taxes because of what our Republican colleagues did. They really hope that you forget all of this and instead that you blame immigrants, your neighbors, your co-workers, your friends, your family. I think the American people are smarter than that. I am truly sorry for what you suffered, regardless of what they say today. Just ask yourselves why Republicans won't just pass the bill that they say is the solution to all of this, even though they have the majority, and consider that maybe, just maybe, that bill and their solution of mass deportations doesn't fix anything. And it certainly doesn't fix the pain that you legitimately feel. I look forward to hearing from our witnesses, and I yield back.