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Floor Speech
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Mr. SCHIFF. Mr. President, in just 1 year and 1 week--that is, 373 days--Donald Trump and his administration have changed what it means to walk down the street in America.
Three hundred and seventy-four days ago, an American citizen did not need to worry about carrying a passport or worry that they would be pinned to the ground for being unable to prove that their hometown was, in fact, the only home they have ever known.
Three hundred and seventy-four days ago, immigrant families didn't need to call on their neighbors or rely on the help of Good Samaritans to grocery shop for them, to take their kids to school, to have access to what we value in life--all because they are afraid to open their door.
Three hundred and seventy-four days ago, standing up for your First Amendment rights, your Fourth Amendment rights, even your Second Amendment rights was not in itself a provocation in the eyes of the Federal Government.
But in so little time, so much has changed. In this America, we see masked agents hiding their faces from the world and even hiding their identification, terrorizing communities across the Nation, smashing car windows and dragging mothers and fathers from their vehicles in front of their kids--in front of their kids--often taking those kids and separating them from their parents, breaking down doors, and detaining citizens and noncitizens alike.
As for warrants? No. Apparently, DHS lawyers now claim you don't need a judicial warrant to break through the door of a U.S. citizen and haul them out in their underwear in the dead of winter, only to later release them without charge, without apology, only with newfound terror courtesy of the U.S. Federal Government.
Agents with just 47 days of training are sweeping through American cities; agents with barely over a month of training--just 47 days. And why 47? Because it is a nod to the vanity of the 47th President rather than allocated to the need to be instructed on how to, say, use, or avoid using deadly force.
Agents with less training than a teenager getting their driver's license are now badgering, beating, and even killing Americans on our streets in the name of the President while his chosen enforcers smugly walk through American cities cosplaying their favorite uniforms from the 1930s and 1940s.
DHS is now building databases of Americans, detaining and even disappearing people off of corners in Minneapolis, Chicago, Portland, Nashville, Los Angeles, and far too many communities across the Nation.
The Trump administration demanded that Republicans deliver a $170 billion taxpayer-funded slush fund for these misbegotten efforts, taking that money away from your healthcare and taking that money away from food for hungry families to spend on weapons for enforcement agents and billions on detention centers to imprison people who are undocumented but who have committed no crimes and have no criminal records at all.
This is the America that Donald Trump has created, but it is not the America that we will accept. We will not accept the labeling of Renee Good--a mother of three, a loving and caring member of her community, caught on camera showing compassion to Federal agents even as she protested them--we will not accept that she was killed and then later falsely designated a ``domestic terrorist.''
We will not accept that Alex Pretti--a 37-year-old Veterans' Administration ICU nurse--exercising his constitutional rights and stooping to help a woman who had been pushed to the ground, can be labeled as an ``assassin'' merely hours after being shot in the back in cold blood nearly a dozen times.
These were not labels given by some arrogant agent in the field. This was not some bad apple using this terminology amongst otherwise upstanding immigration officials. No. These labels were applied by the highest ranking officials of this operation in President Trump's White House--the Cabinet Secretary overseeing these raids, Kristi Noem; the architect of this campaign of fear and mass arrest and detention, the ``racist in chief'' Stephen Miller.
This impunity that we see on our streets, this violence--it comes from the top; gaslighting amplified by the Vice President and the President himself.
This brazen denial of rights and facts is in the water at DHS headquarters, and it is increasingly clear that this has become the culture of ICE and Customs and Border Protection.
That is why I am standing here this week to say clearly: not another dime for this kind of lawless immigration regime. We will not add to the slush fund that Republicans gave Kristi Noem and Border Patrol Chief Greg Bovino last year to fulfill Stephen Miller's dystopian vision of America. We require real reforms, in statute--not promises of change, not Executive actions worth less than the paper they are printed on.
Look out on the streets of Minneapolis, where two American citizens have been gunned down in as many weeks, where tear gas flies through the air and doors fly off their hinges under the banner of this administration. In those streets stand Agencies backed by billions of dollars still to be spent--billions that can arm them, billions that can detain and oppress.
This is an America in regression, where the color of your skin could be the only pretext for getting pulled over, detained, or worse--a reality that has persisted for Blacks, Latinos, Asians, and others notwithstanding the progress made in my lifetime.
As a child of the generation that shone a light on and helped pass laws to end such racist tactics, for most of my life, we have made strides to ensure that we moved past that America. But now we are returning to an America that I do not recognize, nor is this an America that I can accept.
We have the power in this body to do something about it, and until we do, my vote will reflect my complete and utter rejection of this lawless and cruel regime. This cannot become the status quo. This cannot become the new normal for America, for Alex Pretti and Renee Good, for the Californians detained without cause and without convictions, like those suffering in detentions facilities like California City whom I met, along with Alex Padilla, last week.
For all of them--for their dignity, for their children, for their families, for their friends, for their safety--and for this country, we must act.
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