Ice and Dhs Lost Credibility

Floor Speech

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Mr. GARCIA of Illinois. Mr. Speaker, as we begin Hispanic Heritage Month, I want to honor the millions of Latinos and Latinas who make this country strong. We celebrate our culture and sacrifices.

This year, it comes with urgency because we are under attack. Last week, the Department of Homeland Security attacked me on X, insisting they deport only criminals. If you walk the streets of my district, Mr. Speaker, you see the truth, and it looks nothing like their tweets.

Last Friday, in Franklin Park, a suburb in my district, Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez left his home like any other day. He was a restaurant worker, and he enjoyed cooking. He was a devoted father. He never came home. ICE agents stopped him, and within minutes of dropping his kids off at school, he was shot and killed in broad daylight that morning.

First, they said that he drove at officers. Videos show otherwise. Then, they said that he dragged an officer. We have yet to see the evidence. They said that the officer feared for his life, but neighbors' videos capture gunshots and then a car coasting. Silverio was already incapacitated before crashing into a semitrailer.

Those same videos show officers, including the one supposedly seriously injured, smashing the window, dragging Silverio's lifeless body out, slamming him onto the pavement, and handcuffing him as he bled out.

Silverio didn't make it. DHS' story doesn't add up.

A man is dead. A family is shattered, and the agency responsible keeps hiding behind masked thugs and unmarked cars. I use that term because that is how so many agents are acting, either voluntarily or not.

ICE and DHS have no credibility, and neither do their stories. They have lost it.

Reports indicate that officers involved were not wearing body cameras. This is not law enforcement. This is becoming an American gestapo.

Silverio's tragedy is not alone. It affects families every day now. That same day, in Little Village, ICE arrested William Gimenez, a day laborer, as he walked into a barber shop with his wife. William was a lead plaintiff in a lawsuit against Home Depot and local police for abuse. ICE retaliated.

We all saw the Cicero case: children were left crying on the side of an industrial road after the parents were taken away by ICE. That is state-sanctioned cruelty against children, the President's specialty.

DHS insists they target criminal immigrants, yet in Elgin, in the dead of night, ICE staged a reckless raid with helicopters and armored trucks parading detainees for cameras. Secretary Noem showed up for 5 seconds of fame and rushed to declare: Mission accomplished.

The reality is two U.S. citizens were detained. They were not criminals; not even immigrants.

To quote the President: They don't know what they are doing.

What we see are workers punished, children traumatized, U.S. citizens abducted in their sleep, and a father, Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez, shot dead. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of cases like this.

We celebrate Hispanic heritage, but we also issue a warning. Today it is Latinos and other immigrants under attack. Tomorrow it will be others. Once institutions are built to target and control, they don't surrender power, they expand it.

Like the military-industrial complex, they find new enemies and new missions, new excuses to keep the money flowing and the machinery of fear alive.

That is why we will not look away. This is bigger than one community and bigger than one city. It is about the kind of country we are becoming.

Chicago will not be intimidated, and I will not stop demanding truth and dignity for Silverio, William, or the children in Cicero, and for every family who deserves to live free from state terror.

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