Fighting Dhs Immigration Raids

Floor Speech

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Mr. GOMEZ. Mr. Speaker, Trump's unhinged immigration raids started in downtown Los Angeles, in my congressional district, not targeting the ``criminal'' immigrants that he promised he would go after, but targeting anybody that looked like me, looked like my colleagues, looked like my family members, looked like the people who live in Los Angeles.

I don't know any MS-13 members, gang members, who work at a car wash or as day laborers. That is where he was targeting, not focused on people he said he was going to go after.

We warned everybody in this country that this would continue, that they would go on to other cities, using immigration as a pretext to try to intimidate blue cities in blue States and blue cities in red States, and that a violation of the rights of immigrants and the rights of people across the country is not going to be contained in L.A. It is going to spread. They went on to D.C., Chicago, Portland, Charlotte, and New Orleans, just as of today. That is what they are going after.

They want to intimidate people. They want to intimidate people who don't agree with them, and that was before Donald Trump and the Republicans passed the one big, beautiful bill. That included a $175 billion slush fund that would turn ICE and CBP into its own personal national police force, where he could send it wherever he wants, whenever he wants, without any accountability.

That is dangerous. That is a threat to our Republic. That is a threat to our States. That is a threat to our communities.

We need to stand up and put an end to it. The way we do that is by taking that money away and reinvesting it into something that the American people need.

I introduced a bill called the Make Housing Affordable and Defend Democracy Act. It takes that $175 billion to tackle the housing affordability crisis in our country by investing that money to help start a 21st century housing boom that will build 1 million units of housing per year for the next 6 years, help renters with assistance to get by, and, at the same time, give first-time home buyers money for a downpayment.

If we want to tackle the affordability crisis that is at the top of the agenda for the American people that is not a con job, then we need to pass the Make Housing Affordable and Defend Democracy Act. It is about affordability, not authoritarianism. It is about American values, not Donald Trump's wins.

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