Scotus' Immigration Raids Action

Floor Speech

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Ms. BARRAGAN. Madam Speaker, I rise today to dissent.

This week, six members of the U.S. Supreme Court decided to allow ICE raids in Los Angeles that are rooted in racial profiling. This is a direct assault on our Constitution and on the very idea of equal justice under law.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor said it best when she wrote: ``We should not have to live in a country where the government can seize anyone who looks Latino, speaks Spanish, and appears to work a low-wage job. Rather than stand idly by while our constitutional freedoms are lost, I dissent.''

I agree and join that dissent. These raids are not about law and order. They are about targeting immigrants because of the color of their skin, the language they speak, the neighborhoods they live in, and the jobs they hold. I dissent.

ICE is not chasing criminals. It is chasing families. I dissent.

Nationwide, 71 percent of those in ICE custody at the end of July had no criminal convictions. Let's think about that. Tens of thousands of lives upended, children left without parents, families torn apart not because of what people did but because of who they are. That does not make us safer. It makes us weaker.

It destabilizes our schools, our neighborhoods, and our workplaces. It harms industries that keep our economy running--construction, agriculture, hospitality--all while wasting taxpayer dollars on cruelty instead of real public safety. I dissent.

Families across this country now live in fear because their very existence has been criminalized. This is not justice. This is persecution. I dissent.

Six members of the Supreme Court may have turned their backs on equal justice, but Congress cannot. We must defend the Constitution, protect immigrant families, and ensure that no American community is left to live under the shadow of racial profiling in immigration enforcement.

For those reasons, I join Justice Sonia Sotomayor, and I say: I dissent.

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