Secure America Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. TONKO. Mr. Speaker, I have spent my career fighting to improve mental health care in our schools and communities.

I believe that every single child should grow up in an environment built around love, learning, and safety, which is why I am so disgusted by the actions of this administration that are terrorizing an entire generation of children. These are children who are seeing their friends and teachers taken by ICE, children who are being held at gunpoint by masked agents, children who are living in fear that their parents will be picked up by ICE, children who are being detained for months on end, and children who are being used as bait so ICE can detain their family members.

Those experiences do not fade easily. Our government is inflicting trauma on our kids. We should all be ashamed of these actions, yet instead of stopping ICE's reign of terror, Republicans are pushing legislation that provides this out-of-control agency with tens of billions more in funding, billions of taxpayer dollars to terrorize our children and our neighbors instead of supporting our schools, our hospitals, or our communities.

My choice is clear. I urge my colleagues to join me and reject this cruel bill. Our children and their families demand it.

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