Laken Riley Act

Floor Speech

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Ms. OCASIO-CORTEZ. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, I want the American people to know, with eyes wide open, what is inside this bill. We stand here just 2 days after President Trump gave unconditional pardons to violent criminals who attacked our Nation's Capitol on January 6, and these are the people who want us to believe that they are trying to keep criminals off the streets, when they are opening the floodgates.

I want the American people to know what is in this bill because, in the guise and in the wake of tragedy, we are seeing a fundamental erosion of our civil rights in this bill. If a person is so much as accused of a crime or if someone wants to point a finger and accuse someone of shoplifting, they will be rounded up and put into a private detention camp and sent out for deportation without a day in court, without a moment to assert their rights, and without a moment to assert the privilege of innocence until proven guilty.

Without being found guilty of a crime, they will be rounded up. What is inside this bill is a fundamental suspension of a core American value, and that is why I rise to oppose it.

If you are a Dreamer, all someone has to do is point a finger, and you will be rounded up. We have seen moments like these happen before in the USA PATRIOT Act, in the wake of the travesty of 9/11, a fundamental suspension of America's civil liberties, that is what we are seeing here today.

Mr. Speaker, my colleagues may wonder why so many of our friends across the aisle, who care so deeply about the rule of law, happen to be so desperate to pass this bill after they are unleashing people who attacked police officers here in this Capitol and who are now free to roam our streets, who are publicly saying now that they want to get a gun. Suddenly, these folks care about public safety? I don't think so.

Look no further than the $83 billion price tag of this bill. They know that it can't be paid for. They know that the capacity is not there.

Do you know what will be there? Private prison companies are going to get flooded with money, who give this money, no doubt. I want folks at home to look at which Members of Congress are invested in private prison companies, who receive this kind of money, and look at the votes on this bill.

It is atrocious that people are lining their pockets with private prison profits in the name of a horrific tragedy on the victim of a crime. It is shameful. It is absolutely shameful.

Mr. Speaker, I will conclude with this: In a few months, there are Members of Congress who voted for this bill who are going to pretend that they didn't know about all the bad things that are going to happen because of it.

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Ms. OCASIO-CORTEZ. Mr. Speaker, when a private prison camp opens in your town and they say they didn't know this was going to happen, know that they did and that they voted for it.

When a Dreamer has disappeared from your classroom and when the President of the United States destroys what is left of the Constitution as he has announced in his attack on birthright citizenship, they will all say: We didn't know this was coming.

I want the American people to know that they did. This vote represents it.

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