Trump Immigration Policies

Floor Speech

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Ms. RANDALL. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from California for leading us in this Special Order hour today.

Mr. Speaker, fear, anger, terror, sadness, these are the emotions that just scratch the surface of what my community and our immigrant neighbors are feeling. Why should we expect anything less? This is exactly what this administration wants: to force immigrants into the shadows, to break their spirit, and to disrupt our communities.

When you come for immigrants, you come for small businesses. When you come for immigrants, you come for our farmworkers and for our fish processors. When you come for immigrants, you come for nurses, doctors, and caregivers. When you come for immigrants, you come for the very identity of what makes this country America.

Last week, I met with immigrants' rights advocates and toured the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma. The detainee population has doubled in the last few months. The average time detained has extended. Discretionary releases are now uncommon, even for detainees without violent criminal records. Folks are being detained and disappeared for nothing more than political speech.

Mr. Speaker, what this visit reaffirmed for me is that any immigration policy rooted in hate and fueled by chaos doesn't make our immigration system more efficient or safe; it overwhelms the system. We don't fix a broken system by breaking people.

Most of our origin stories, even as Members of the House in this body, begin as immigration stories. It is past time that all of us remember that.

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