Directing the Removal of United States Armed Forces From Hostilities Within or Against the Islamic Republic of Iran That Have Not Been

Floor Speech

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Mr. PADILLA. Mr. President, if you look anywhere across the country right now, what you will see more than anything else is working families, countless Americans struggling just to get by; struggling with skyrocketing prices at the pump; struggling with rising costs of healthcare premiums; struggling to afford groceries, their prescriptions, to pay their rent or their mortgage. Many struggling just to keep the lights on at home.

You would think that the Republican majority would recognize that and dedicate time on this floor of the Senate to prioritize a discussion and proposals to bring down costs for working families; but, no, instead we are focusing once again on immigration and, specifically, whether or not to give even more money to ICE and CBP.

So I think it is important for us to lay out to the American people why we are in this position. Republicans created this mess last year when they passed their ``One Big Anything But Beautiful'' bill.

But rather than fix that mess through commonsense reforms, as we have suggested, their solution is to throw even more money at these Agencies that have been acting for a year now with little regard to the rule of law, to dump $140 billion in the same out-of-control immigration Agencies that have created chaos in American communities for the past year, the very same ICE and CBP that Republicans already gave $140 billion to last year.

That is over seven times ICE's typical annual funding and more than four times the typical annual appropriations for CBP. That was last year.

And what did they do with that money? Before we entertain should we give them even more, let's see what they did. They went on a so-called Defend the Homeland hiring spree. They brought on unqualified recruits who were deployed into communities across the country with clearly insufficient training. Let me lay it out. Let me break it down for us.

In just 6 months, ICE doubled its number of agents from 10,000 to over 22,000--more than doubled. And the only way to reach those numbers is to cut a bunch of corners and to lower standards. And so that is what they did.

They dropped the minimum age for ICE officers to just 18 years old, and they reduced the required training to 47 days--47 days. Let me put that figure into context.

To be a DC Metropolitan Police officer here in the streets of our Nation's Capital, it takes 28 weeks of training. Basic training at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center is 12 weeks. The Los Angeles Police Department, where I am from, that takes 6 months of training before you are on the job. But to be an ICE officer, just 47 days, and then you are given a gun and a badge and deployed into the field.

We have seen the records that DHS has rushed applicants through a very sloppy vetting process. It has led to the hiring of numerous officers with questionable backgrounds, clearly unfit to do these jobs.

We have also seen reports that about a third of the recruits at the ICE training academy failed what is considered a relatively easy physical test. And a number of others were sent home because they failed a written exam which, by the way, a written exam on which they could use textbooks and notes, but they still failed.

Here is a quote from an article by the Associated Press that really shines a light on what is happening with this hiring spree:

Two bankruptcies and six law enforcement jobs in three years.

This is a description of one officer.

Here is another:

An allegation of lying in a police report to justify a felony charge against an innocent woman--an incident that led to a $75,000 settlement and criticism of his integrity.

How is that for a description of an ICE officer?

A third job candidate once failed to graduate from a police academy, then lasted only three weeks in his only job as a police officer.

Their common bond: All were hired recently by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement during an unprecedented hiring spree . . . after the agency received a $75 billion windfall from Congress.

Don't take my word for it, colleagues--actual reporting.

So let's, again, assess where we are. Republicans gave ICE and CBP $140 billion. And the Trump administration used it to hire people with questionable qualifications, questionable histories, questionable temperaments, and questionable ability to do the job.

And you are going to tell me you are surprised by the chaos and the violence that we have witnessed unfolding in the streets across America this last year? If you are hiring all these unqualified people, encouraging them to act with impunity, you throw out the rule books and the training manual and ensure that there is little or no oversight and accountability, it is entirely predictable that chaos will ensue and especially when they are led from the top by people who regularly dehumanize others, whose goal is to inflict pain and cruelty on immigrants and refugees as deterrents. It is exactly what we are seeing.

We are seeing agents knocking down doors to homes without a judicial warrant in violation of the law. We are seeing cars being driven off the road, their windows smashed in, their occupants literally dragged out through broken windows, and some, like Marimar Martinez, shot multiple times.

We are seeing indiscriminate raids sweeping up hard-working people who are just trying to provide a better life for their family, including legal immigrants with work authorizations.

We are seeing American citizens hurt simply for exercising their First Amendment rights, like 21-year-old Kaden Rummler, who permanently lost his vision in one eye after being shot by agents at close range.

And, of course, we saw--we all saw, the whole country saw, the whole world saw--two U.S. citizens, Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti--killed by Federal agents on camera in broad daylight.

So, yes, Democrats are demanding commonsense reforms to address this outrageous behavior. You should be too. And the commonsense reforms we are talking about are nothing other than policies that State and local law enforcement officers across the country already have to abide by.

Instead, Republicans continue to refuse, and that is why we are here today, because as Democrats, we refuse to give a single dollar more to an out-of-control, unaccountable Agency.

We are demanding oversight. We are demanding these commonsense reforms, not just to protect people's rights but to protect people's lives.

Instead, what do our Republican colleagues want to do? They want to hand over another--another--$140 billion of taxpayer money, even though, by the way, for the fiscally responsible ones of you, the Congressional Budget Office says that ICE and CBP still have $103 billion in unspent funds from last year's bill. That is right. ICE is sitting on $63.2 billion of its funding from last year's bill. That is 84 percent of the funding from last year. And CBP is still sitting on $40 billion--62 percent of its funding--from last year's bill.

So what are we even doing here? They have a ton of money left over from last year's bill they haven't even spent--they can't spend it fast enough--and you want to give them more. You would rather give them more when they don't need it than negotiate necessary changes to these Agencies.

That is outrageous, and it comes at a time when President Trump says: Oh, we don't have enough money to help people with daycare. We don't have enough money for Medicare and Medicaid. We have to cut those programs.

But, clearly, he and you all believe we have enough money to give another $140 billion to these ICE Agencies. By the way, that is on top of the $1 billion a day that we are spending in this unauthorized war in Iran.

If we are going to use this budget reconciliation process for anything right now, we would rather be using it to help working families afford the basics. Let's use it to help bring down healthcare costs. Let's help bring down gas prices. Let's bring down the cost of food and housing and utilities. That would be worthy of our time, not this sham--not this sham.

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