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Floor Speech

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Mr. PADILLA. Mr. President, colleagues, time and time again, we have seen one of the most frequently called plays out of the Trump playbook. When everything else is going wrong, shift the narrative, scapegoat immigrants, blame immigrants for whatever your failure is at the moment.

Well, today, between his failing trade wars that are raising the cost of living on working families across the country to his losses in Federal court and delays in the Congress on the efforts to give billionaires even bigger tax breaks, and even the embarrassing breakup recently with his former BBFF--billionaire best friend forever--Elon Musk, it is safe to say that Donald Trump is grasping for anything he can do to change the narrative, to distract us from the damage that his political agenda has going on.

The smart thing would be to actually change course, rectify things, do things in the interest of our Nation and our economy. But what has he chosen to do instead? To double down. In order to distract the country from his failures and his efforts to ``flood the zone,'' Donald Trump is expanding his deportation agenda far beyond the focus and targeting of violent and dangerous criminals that he claimed would be the strategy.

He is so desperate to show quick results that he is even throwing due process rights out the window for so many; the due process rights, by the way, that I know most of you, if not all of you, should agree are paramount, foundational to our democracy.

As you continue to see this week, Trump is launching indiscriminate ICE raids in the Los Angeles region followed by a chaotic escalation federalizing California's National Guard and even mobilizing the Marines.

It is personal for me, not just because Los Angeles is home--I was born and raised in Los Angeles--but as a proud son of immigrants. I know the true story of the vast majority of immigrants and immigrant families in Los Angeles, throughout California, and throughout the country.

But instead of honoring those contributions--there is no disagreement with the prioritization and targeting of violent criminals--but the vast majority of folks, their contributions deserve to be honored. Instead, Donald Trump is manufacturing a crisis to, once again, not just distract us but divide us. Just as he has always done, he is using immigrants to do it.

I can't help but speak up and remind us, immigrants are not political pawns for his agenda, just as servicemembers--women and men--are not political pawns for his agenda.

So, yes, as we should be celebrating the 13th anniversary of DACA this week, hundreds of thousands of DACA recipients and Dreamers are actually now worried that they are at risk--at further risk--that they could be next as President Trump struggles to find enough violent criminals to detain and deport to meet a campaign promise. Since he can't get his numbers there, he will look elsewhere.

I want to take this moment to make very clear: Dreamers are our neighbors. Dreamers are our loved ones. These are young people who are Americans in every sense of the word except for one important piece of paperwork, including over 160,000 DACA recipients in the State of California, alone.

Yet because of Congressional Republicans' refusal to act, Dreamers live, at a minimum, in a constant state of uncertainty but oftentimes in a constant state of fear. They deserve better.

They deserve permanent protections. This isn't just a moral issue, as righteous and compelling as those moral arguments should be. Colleagues, if that doesn't get you, you should be moved by the economic issues that this represents because if, through the President or through Republicans' actions in Congress, you were to take away work authorization for hundreds of thousands of DACA recipients, that is reducing our workforce at a time when we are trying to grow the workforce and grow the economy. If DACA were to come to an end, it could strip our workforce of over 400,000 workers and cost our country nearly $650 billion.

Yes, they, too, are productive. I am talking about Dreamers who work as teachers, as caregivers, as nurses and doctors, as construction workers, as food service workers, and so many other key industries for our economy. And they are hard-working community members who pay taxes just like the rest of us and just want a chance to work hard and raise a family in the country that they love.

They deserve peace of mind, the peace of mind to know that they are safe here at home. And that is why I am proud to support the Dream Act, a bill to provide permanent protections for Dreamers who contribute so much to our country. It is the least that we can do for Dreamers who have spent decades contributing to the Nation.

And for my Republican colleagues who may be caught up in the heat of the moment and trapped in this anti-immigrant rhetoric in our current political climate on the right, I will say this: Dreamers make our communities better; Dreamers make our economy stronger; and Dreamers make our Nation stronger.

The Dream Act is a commonsense bill that has enjoyed bipartisan support. So I urge you to join me in supporting the Dream Act now and in giving these young people the certainty and the protections that they deserve and strengthen our Nation in the process.

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