Jeremy and Angel Seay and Sergeant Brandon Mendoza Protect Our Communities From Duis Act of 2025

Floor Speech

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Ms. JAYAPAL. Madam Speaker, I rise in strong opposition to H.R. 875.

I, too, take DUIs extremely seriously. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, approximately 37 people die in drunk driving incidents every day in the United States. As the ranking member has just been noting, there are many things that we can and should do to prevent driving under the influence.

Also, as the ranking member has pointed out, all of these truly horrifying and tragic stories that we are hearing about from the other side are stories that already render an immigrant deportable right now. If you kill somebody right now, you serve your time and then are deported.

We just had a hearing this morning on how the Trump administration is literally dismissing cases for people who are in a legal process for immigration just so they can deport them. They can certainly also do that for somebody who has been convicted of drunk driving and is serving out their sentence. They could take that case and deport that person immediately if they wanted to.

Scapegoating immigrants is what this bill does. It scapegoats immigrants by making a single misdemeanor DUI subject to the extremely serious punishment of deportation. It is simply not an appropriate response.

The bill also applies to all immigrants, including lawful permanent residents, people who Republican colleagues across the aisle have claimed to like, the ones that they said came here the right way. It gives no recognition whatsoever to the patchwork of differences and overbroad statutes of what actually constitutes a DUI across the country in different States.

It is important to recognize first that serious public safety threats are already deportable offenses. We have been talking about this, but it is important to say it again. Again, the cases that are being brought up are cases where those people are already deportable under current immigration law.

Many serious DUI crimes are considered what is called a crime involving moral turpitude and, therefore, already make someone removable or inadmissible. This bill does not recognize how widely DUI laws differ across the country and the extremely low bar that is set to receive a DUI conviction in some States.

For example, in Arizona, the DUI statute allows people to be charged with a DUI if they are intoxicated and have ``physical control'' of their vehicle. This issue came to a head in the Ninth Circuit, which, in reviewing an appeal of a removal case for a noncitizen who was charged under this law, found that the physical control language meant that under this statute: ``One may be convicted under it for sitting in one's own car in one's own driveway with the key in the ignition and a bottle of beer in one's hand.''

While the person in this case had been ordered deported because his conviction under Arizona law constituted a crime involving moral turpitude, the Ninth Circuit overturned that ruling because the actions covered by the law could not all reasonably be seen as crimes involving moral turpitude.

As the court put it: ``Drunken driving is despicable. Having physical control of a car while drinking is not.''

Madam Speaker, if this bill had been law at the time, the case would have never reached the Ninth Circuit because no judge would have had the discretion to rule whether this so-called crime merited deportation. This bill would prevent judges from being able to decide if the punishment fits the crime.

In my home State of Washington, we have a similar law where someone can be convicted of a misdemeanor DUI without actually driving a vehicle. While Republicans might wave away our concerns by saying that prosecutors have the discretion to not bring charges under these circumstances, we know about this case precisely because prosecutors chose to file charges and it went to court.

This bill does not recognize under these overbroad DUI statutes the individuals who have made a conscious choice not to drive. They have gone to a party. They have had a couple of beers. They realize they should not drive. They go and sit in their car to sleep it off.

Under this bill, those people who have made that conscious choice not to drive impaired may be charged with DUIs simply for sleeping in their car.

I ask my Republican colleagues: How many of them have constituents or friends or neighbors who have sat in their cars after leaving the bar to stay warm? We know how cold Midwest winters get. Should we really criminalize people for staying warm in their cars and sleeping off a hangover? Under this bill, people would now be subjected to deportation.

During markup and at the Committee on Rules, I submitted an amendment.

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Ms. JAYAPAL. During markup and at the Committee on Rules, I submitted an amendment to ensure that immigration judges have the discretion to decide if a DUI conviction actually merits deportation for green card holders and others here lawfully.

It would have allowed judges to merely consider mitigating factors, such as if anyone was harmed or the length of time since they were convicted of a DUI. This is a commonsense amendment that would have made the bill substantially fairer. Unfortunately, the amendment was rejected.

There are Members and former Members of this body right here in Congress who have been arrested and convicted of a DUI, and I would just ask that the charity and the grace that we extend for second chances to those people would extend also to those green card holders, including those who have been here for decades. Let's just give a judge the chance to determine whether their conviction merited deportation, let alone that second chance.

Madam Speaker, this bill does nothing but scapegoat immigrants for so-called DUIs, and I urge my colleagues to reject the bill.

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