Fighting Dhs Immigration Raids

Floor Speech

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Mr. ESPAILLAT. Mr. Speaker, I thank Congresswoman Ramirez for her leadership in this special hour, and I thank the Congressional Progressive Caucus, as well as the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, and all the other Members associated with this special hour.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to forcefully speak against the Trump administration's horrific ICE abuses, far beyond an overreach on the immigrant and Latino communities across the country.

Back in New York City, my community is being assaulted, and we are hearing of the fear every single day. Fear has a way of settling into communities and making sure they don't move forward. So we must break with the fear.

Just recently a video surfaced from 26 Federal Plaza in New York City that shows a distraught woman violently shoved to the ground, thrown to the ground, and slammed to the ground by an ICE officer as her young daughter tried to assist her. The woman was unarmed, nonviolent, and posed absolutely no threat to anyone.

According to a recent investigation, more than 170 U.S. citizens have been detained by immigration agents in recent months. These are U.S. citizens, people who often are telling these officers that they are a U.S. citizen, and they are disregarded and pushed aside, handcuffed and detained for hours. Many reportedly have been kicked, dragged, and detained for days.

As of November 2025, ICE has detained 65,135 people, and roughly 73.6 percent of them have no criminal conviction.

Many in immigrant and Latino communities, including U.S.-born individuals, now report fear, reluctance to go to court, to public services, or even to participate in regular civic life.

The violent incident at 26 Federal Plaza is not an isolated lapse. It reflects a much broader policy of aggressiveness and unaccountable enforcement with little transparency and no due process.

We must demand accountability, transparency, and protection of civil rights to ensure enforcement respects due process and human dignity. The American people are seeing the reality of this enforcement: fear, brutality and injustice. They will not stand for it.

Mr. Speaker, I will echo again what I said in Chicago during the hearing that we had there. Masked agents, without a first name and a last name, without a shield number, anonymous masked ICE agents, patrolling our streets, pushing people up against a wall, slamming to the ground a sitting U.S. Senator for the State of California, Senator Padilla, slamming a woman to the ground at 26 Federal Plaza in front of her young girl, not representing or respecting sensitive locations like places of worship, houses of worship--this is the State of America today.

This is the Trump dictatorship. It is not tomorrow. It is not next week, next month, or next year. It is happening right now. These are the characteristics of a dictatorship, and we must do everything we can to save our Nation.

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