No Bailout for Sanctuary Cities Act

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Ms. JAYAPAL. Mr. Chair, here we are, wasting time again on the floor on a bill that has no chance of becoming law, when, meanwhile, Republicans have failed to pass a continuing resolution that would keep our government funded. Some in your party are even calling for a government shutdown, which would have detrimental effects on Americans across the country.

Are we dealing with that issue? No. Republicans couldn't pass their own bill, a partisan bill, to continue to fund the government, and we are not trying to do anything on that. Instead, we are here talking not about a bill that actually works for real solutions for our outdated immigration system, but we are once again talking about a bill that demonizes immigrants.

This is something that Republicans have refused to put forward, real solutions to our broken immigration system, because, in their own words, they want to keep immigration broken so that they can continue to demonize immigrants and continue to try to make this an election issue.

Here we are today, once again, debating a bill inspired by Trump's Project 2025 that would strip billions of dollars in vital Federal funds from States and localities across the country, including in my home State of Washington.

Under this bill, jurisdictions that want to keep the proper division between Federal enforcement and local law enforcement are penalized for doing just that, taking away any Federal funds that might ``benefit'' undocumented immigrants. That makes absolutely no sense on multiple levels.

First of all, community trust policies in these jurisdictions foster cooperation and trust between immigrant communities and local authorities. That is crucial for effective policing and public safety.

When immigrants feel safe reporting crimes and working with law enforcement, it actually strengthens public safety for everyone. That is why members of the Law Enforcement Immigration Task Force, which is made up of law enforcement officials from across the country, have expressed concern with this bill, stating that when local police are viewed as colluding with immigration authorities, ``undocumented residents may fear that they, or people they know or depend upon, risk deportation by working with law enforcement,'' and that ``this fear undermines trust between law enforcement and the communities we serve,'' which actually can facilitate an increase in violent crime.

That is law enforcement talking about what this bill would actually do. It would hurt our ability to protect public safety.

On top of that, local jurisdictions have neither the money, the training, nor the time to enforce Federal immigration laws, particularly when it undermines their own ability to build community trust and do their necessary work.

H.R. 5717 is just bad policy. It implements Trump's extreme Project 2025 agenda by stripping localities and States across the country of billions of dollars in Federal funding for education, transportation, infrastructure, law enforcement, and healthcare just because those funds might benefit undocumented immigrants, forgetting that they actually benefit everybody in the community.

Let's remember that undocumented immigrants are interwoven into our communities. Approximately 1.1 million U.S. citizens are married to undocumented immigrants, and over 600,000 U.S. citizen children live in mixed-status households where at least one person is undocumented, not to mention the DACA recipients who work in public schools, hospitals, and small businesses.

Attempts to punish cities and States for using funding in a way that benefits undocumented people take away the very necessary funding that communities across the country have been asking for, and it will inevitably also harm U.S. citizens and American communities in those same localities.

Welcome to Donald Trump and Stephen Miller's America, where the Federal Government tries to coerce State and local governments to adopt the most anti-immigrant policies. If they refuse to do so, well, then that entire community is going to be stripped of Federal funding for the most essential services.

We have recently seen how dangerous this rhetoric and this policy can be. For the past few weeks, Republicans have relentlessly pushed debunked myths about how Haitian immigrants have supposedly invaded Springfield, Ohio, and are eating people's pets.

Sadly, that led to the city having to evacuate city hall and lock down multiple hospitals due to bomb threats. Parents are afraid to send their kids to school as Springfield elementary schools were evacuated 2 days in a row because of the bomb threats.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Ms. JAYAPAL. Mr. Chair, my Republican colleagues love to talk about so-called immigrant crime and chaos at the border, but the reality is that their callous disregard for the truth, for conspiracy theories and lies and demonization of immigrants, has brought crime and chaos to the residents of Springfield, Ohio, putting their well-being and security at risk.

Mr. Chairman, we are better than this. America is better than this. We can fix the immigration system without ripping communities apart and stripping away billions of dollars in vital Federal funding. We can solve the problems at the border without fear-mongering and scapegoating immigrants who are helping to build our communities across the country.

Unfortunately, that would require bipartisanship, compromise, and a commitment to actually solving the problem, all of which my Republican colleagues have made clear they have zero interest in doing.

Mr. Chair, I urge my colleagues to oppose this dangerous bill.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source