Daca

Floor Speech

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Mr. PADILLA. Mr. President, my colleagues, it feels like every single day the Trump administration finds new ways to defy the rule of law.

They will tear families apart, decimate local businesses, and deceive the public in order to distract from their own failures and scandals. And nowhere has this been clearer than in their cruelty toward immigrants.

As I have said time and again, this administration is not really just focused on cracking down on dangerous, violent criminals. We hear that from them all the time. But in practice, it is far from that.

If it was just deportation operations focused on dangerous, violent criminals, there would be no discussion, there would be no debate, and there would be no disagreement. But that is not what this administration is doing. They are going after all immigrants.

The vast majority of those who have been arrested and detained, and many of those deported--many without due process before being deported--are not convicted criminals. Don't just take my word for it. These are statistics and data coming out of ICE themselves, the Department of Homeland Security.

But through their indiscriminate raids, this administration is arresting not just undocumented immigrants but lawful permanent residents as well. There are U.S. citizens who have been arrested and detained, even veterans. Think about that: individuals who have served our country, prepared to pay the ultimate sacrifice in defense of our Nation and our democracy, now being rounded up indiscriminately.

If you think I am exaggerating with this concern, let the comments coming out of the Department of Homeland Security just yesterday leave no doubts. A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson declared for the first time--now, I want to make sure I get this right, so I am going to quote:

Illegal aliens who claim to be recipients of DACA are not automatically protected from deportations.

She went on to say that DACA recipients should now self-deport from the United States. Think about what that means. The Trump administration is saying that these young adults who were brought to the United States as children and who have lived here, who have studied here, and who have worked here legally--let me emphasize that: worked here, studied here, lived here legally since the year 2012, thanks to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, this administration is saying now that they have no right to be here; that they could be deported or maybe should be deported at a moment's notice; or, worse, that they should choose to leave their families and their communities for countries that they have never known.

The whole point of DACA is protection from deportation. These are not criminals or some danger to society; these are young people who have lived in the United States for as long as they can remember. These are young adults who, as kids, were on your Little League team or in your Girl Scout troop. For God's sake, they are part of our communities, and they are young adults who have now grown up to be lawyers, to be doctors, to be teachers, and who have more love for everything that this country stands for than anyone threatening them in Trump's Department of Homeland Security. But this week the Trump administration is now telling them that they should be arrested and thrown out of the only home they have ever known in an attempt to satisfy Donald Trump's quest for political points or an arbitrary quota.

So, to the Trump administration, let me say this: You cannot claim to love our country at the same time you are trying to destroy our future.

Already, this administration has worked to cut healthcare for millions of Americans, including DACA recipients. They are cutting education benefits and opportunities for DACA recipients, but now they are threatening to arrest DACA participants as well. That is exactly what has been happening in my hometown of Los Angeles when, last month, masked immigration officials--unidentified and masked immigration officials--carrying weapons, raided a carwash in Temple City. It was there that they confronted and arrested Javier Diaz Santana. Let me tell you about Javier, and I really, really hope you are listening not just with your ears but with your hearts.

Javier Santana is 32 years old. He is a DACA recipient. He is deaf. And he has been working at a carwash 6 days a week for the last 5 years.

Immigration officials confiscated his identification. They confiscated his cell phone. They proceeded to handcuff him, put his hands behind his back in handcuffs, leaving him no way of communicating. You need to be able to use your hands to communicate with sign language. They deprived him of his ability to communicate.

This young man was a DACA recipient who has been in the United States since he was 5 years old. He has no criminal record. His immigration removal case has been closed, and he was issued a work permit by USCIS. He is a son. He is a brother. He is a friend. Colleagues, he is a human being--just one of many cases.

So don't tell me the Trump administration is following the law when we hear cases like this, and don't tell me that the administration is only targeting dangerous, violent criminals because the data proves otherwise.

As his family was scrambling to find details about where he was, where he had been taken, DHS quickly whisked Javier out of Los Angeles, all the way to El Paso, TX. His family feared that he could be deported or he had been deported, not only to a country he doesn't know but to a country whose language he doesn't speak.

But as tragic and as heartbreaking as Javier's story is, he is not alone. There have been more and more stories of DACA recipients being arrested and detained. And the fear is just growing across communities.

One thing is certain: This mass detention and deportation operation will go down in our history as a stain, a dark chapter in our Nation's history, an outrageous moral failure intentionally caused by this administration--because for all the tough talk, this is not just politics as usual.

In fact, when the DREAM Act was first introduced over 20 years ago, it was bipartisan, and it enjoyed bipartisan support for most of the last 20 years. And even today, polling shows an overwhelming majority of the American public supports DACA recipients--yes, both Republicans and Democrats across the country.

Now, Democrats and Republicans in Congress have supported the DREAM Act for most of the last 20 years. And I think, in our private conversations, I sense the bipartisan support is still there, and I can't wait for it to resurface. Let the public statements be on both sides of the aisle--the political will on both sides of the aisle-- reflect what we are saying behind closed doors because the only thing that we are seeing publicly is the Trump administration going out of their way to enact a policy of cruelty. But it is exactly what we have come to expect 6 months into this administration--using immigrants as scapegoats for the administration's failures, the administration creating a spectacle in their attempt to distract and deflect.

But make no mistake, Americans will not soon forget what this administration is doing to their neighbors--to their neighbors, to their coworkers, to their friends.

Now, this story doesn't end the way you think it might because we will continue fighting not just to stop these outrageous arrests, but we will not rest until we enact real and permanent protections for DACA recipients who contribute so much to our country.

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