Trump Immigration Policies

Floor Speech

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Ms. ANSARI. Mr. Speaker, last week, I traveled to El Salvador, along with three of my colleagues, to see firsthand the chaos unleashed by the Trump administration through its unconstitutional and illegal deportations of U.S. residents to third-party countries.

I represent a beautifully diverse district in which 64 languages are spoken and where families of immigrants like mine thrive. I have heard more about this issue from my constituents than any other during my time in Congress.

In El Salvador, we met with the U.S. Ambassador and demanded that the Trump administration facilitate the release of Kilmar Abrego Garcia in compliance with the 9-0, unanimous Supreme Court decision of the United States and the lower Federal court judges.

Mr. Abrego Garcia and many other wrongfully deported individuals were sent to El Salvador with no due process and no legal recourse just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

It is outrageous and indefensible that the Trump administration continues to defy a Supreme Court ruling to return this man to his family. In fact, it is a full-blown constitutional crisis.

There are other people--including Andry Jose Hernandez Romero, a makeup artist and legal asylum seeker, and Merwil Gutierrez, a teenager who was mistakenly picked up by immigration enforcement--languishing in El Salvador.

Now, the Trump administration is admitting to deporting a 2-year-old U.S. citizen with cancer. It is cruel, it is despicable, and it is totally illegal, no matter what Stephen Miller or Tom Homan may say.

These cases are not just about these specific people or children sent on planes to foreign prisons by the U.S. Government. Our entire system of justice hinges on the rights afforded to us by the Constitution, the rights of due process, access to legal representation, and the ability to be heard in a court of law.

It is a dark day for our democracy when the Federal Government snatches people off of the streets, flies them out of the country secretly in the dead of night, and sends them to a foreign prison to be detained indefinitely with no legal recourse or chance to prove their case.

Who is to say that it couldn't be you or me next? I will continue to speak out for due process and our constitutional rights.

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