Weaponization of Ice

Floor Speech

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Mr. IVEY. Mr. Speaker, I rise today with deep concern over the weaponization of ICE by the Trump administration.

Just this weekend, I had a chance to see Trump Border Czar Tom Homan talking about how the administration is conducting the sweeps on the streets and that they are doing it to prioritize public safety and national security. Yet, the facts tell a different story.

According to CBS, only 8 percent of those detained have been convicted of violent crimes. The conservative Cato Institute found that only 7 percent of detainees were violent criminals.

In fact, most detainees aren't even criminals at all. Of the people in detention, about half of them have criminal records. That is 300,000 people who are detained and who do not have criminal records at all.

This administration is not actually prioritizing the most dangerous people, even though President Trump promised on the campaign trail that that is exactly what he would do.

Mr. Homan also said that this administration always follows the law. However, last week, a Federal judge ordered ICE to stop conducting roving patrols, stop the sweeping arrests without reasonable suspicion, and stop denying access to lawyers.

Mr. Speaker, the findings in this case are shocking. This is some of the worst examples of racial profiling I have seen even during my 12 years as a prosecutor.

For example, some people were waiting at bus stops and having coffee when they were then surrounded by ICE agents in unmarked vehicles that sped up in their direction. They leapt out with masks on and their guns drawn and ran immediately toward these individuals. They then handcuffed these individuals and forced them into vehicles and drove them away. All of this was done before they had even asked them for identification.

The men thought they were being kidnapped. Some of them had their feet, hands, and wrists shackled, and another man even had a gun pointed at him.

The court who was reviewing these cases questioned what it was about the bus stop that caused these ICE agents to believe they had reasonable suspicion to detain these men. Reasonable suspicion means that there is evidence at the time that each of these men had committed a crime or were in the process of committing a crime.

What was the basis of the ICE agents' reasonable suspicion? The court reviewed it and found that the government said: It was based on their past experiences that have demonstrated that illegal aliens utilize and seek to work at certain places, like getting their car washed or waiting for the bus.

Nothing about these men suggested that they were in the country illegally or about to commit a crime at the time that they were stopped.

They didn't even ask for ID before they were gun-faced and then handcuffed and taken away. The bottom line is that these men were taken into custody simply because they were Latino.

Clearly, these tactics are unconstitutional. The use of race as the basis for grabbing people on the street the courts have long ago ruled are across the line and illegal.

These tactics threaten some of the most basic and important principles that serve as the backbone for our Nation: the rule of law. Like the unlawful deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia and the willful defiance of a unanimous Supreme Court decision to bring him back, the Trump administration is unapologetic in its efforts to target immigrants, the Constitution, and the law be damned.

Now, in addition to being unconstitutional, this wastes a great deal of tax dollars because they are detaining masses of people in these large sweeps, only to have to release them when proof of their legal status is shown. It also horrifies the citizens who have to go through this experience.

We now have Latino citizens who are afraid to leave their house to go to work or even to go to court. Remember the so-called Venezuelan violent gang members deported to the gulag in El Salvador. As it turns out, according to the Cato Institute, 50 of those men were not criminals. Their paperwork was in order. They were in the United States legally, and they hadn't committed any kind of crimes in El Salvador or Venezuela.

Instead of focusing on criminals, they are grabbing people like the 64-year-old mother who was gardening in New Orleans, the father of three marines who had been working in the United States for decades, or yesterday when ICE raided a baseball summer camp. This is not the best use of our Federal law enforcement agents.

I am a former Federal and State prosecutor. I deeply respect the rule of law and understand the responsibility elected officials have to protect it. We have got to do better than this. Let's focus on getting violent criminals off the street. There are more than 100,000 open warrants in the United States on any given day. Let's focus on those, and let's move forward in a way that respects the Constitution.

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