Protecting Our Immigrant Communities

Floor Speech

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Ms. PRESSLEY. Mr. Speaker, I rise today on behalf of our neighbors and community members, our immigrant brothers and sisters who are being targeted and abducted, taken from their homes, torn away from their babies, and disappeared on their way to church, work, and school.

There are children crying in their teachers' arms, families separated, and communities traumatized that if they have not already been kidnapped, they are fearful that they will be.

Children crying in their teachers' arms are afraid that they are going to come home and their parents will be gone. There are elders carrying all of their medications with them in their comings and goings for fear of being abducted and sent somewhere without access to necessary healthcare.

We see a spike in no-shows and cancelations at health clinics as patients would rather miss critical care than risk detainment. We see young parents and grandparents alike attending their immigration court hearings, eager to officially call this country their home, only to be met with handcuffs and shoved into cars by masked ICE individuals.

This is Donald Trump's America, but these are real people. These are hardworking people whose labor and contributions make our communities a better place. These are young people who show up every day in our schools as part of our learning communities. These are mothers and fathers working overtime to provide for their children.

In my district, Massachusetts-07, my Chelsea constituent Kenia and her three children were driving to a Mother's Day church service with her husband, Daniel, when ICE agents in unmarked vehicles ambushed them, broke the passenger side window, forcefully extracted Daniel from the car, and slammed his face on the hot sidewalk while their three children watched on in horror.

In East Boston, my constituent Mercedes and her son are struggling after her husband, Jose, was arrested at work and detained for 2 days at an ICE facility in Burlington. Jose was living here legally with temporary protected status but was told by the ICE agents who detained him that only people born here have rights.

These are real people--real people--children and adults alike traumatized, whose lives have been disturbed, upended, and irreparably harmed.

Donald Trump and ICE claim that they are committing this assault on our communities in the name of safety. Terror makes no one safe. It does the opposite. It sows chaos. It breeds fear and fosters unrest.

From my home in Massachusetts-07, where mothers have wept on my shoulder, pleading for their husbands to come home and for their families to be reunited, to Los Angeles, where Donald Trump sent the National Guard and the Marines to descend on justice-seeking, peaceful protesters, the hurt and harm of this hostile White House is felt by us all.

This has nothing to do with law and order. That is laughable coming from the most godless, lawless Oval Office occupant in our history.

This has everything to do with power and control: deploying the National Guard without a Governor's approval and taking unwarranted and unprecedented action against peaceful justice seekers and freedom fighters.

We must see our neighbors' humanity in this moment. Yet, across the country, occupant Trump is working overtime to be a fascist dictator, to weaponize our government against its own people, to sow fear and chaos, and to silence dissenting voices in our communities, at our colleges, in the courts, and, in fact, even in Congress.

These actions are lawless, a complete violation of our constitutional rights to due process, and void of common sense and compassion.

Know this, for those of you watching at home who might be tempted to think that this is not your problem: An extremist march toward fascism is everyone's problem. Trust me, if you are not already suffering, you will be.

We need solidarity, resistance, and a rejection in this moment of these attacks on our immigrant communities. An attack on our immigrant communities is an attack on all of us.

As a woman of faith, my God tells me to welcome the stranger. Do not be indifferent to the suffering of your neighbors. Immigrants make our country a better place. Immigrants make America great, and our immigrant brothers and sisters deserve to call this country home.

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