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Floor Speech

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Mr. DURBIN. First, I want to thank my colleague from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Senator Warren.

That was a powerful, moving, absolutely necessary speech, and I am glad I was here to hear you deliver it. Thank you.

Mr. President, earlier this month, the Nation watched in horror as social media was flooded with images and videos of a Federal immigration officer shooting and killing an American citizen, Renee Good, as part of the Trump administration's military enforcement operation in Minneapolis.

Now, fresh on the heels of that tragedy, another one has struck. This weekend, Federal agents gunned down yet another American in Minneapolis, Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse in a VA hospital in Minneapolis.

I am going to show a photo of that scene, which is graphic, but I am afraid it is necessary to appreciate the horror of the moment.

This photo shows the last second when the ICE agent killed Alex Pretti on the streets of Minneapolis. In his right hand is his camera, and his left hand is holding the ground--no gun obvious, no effort to resist obvious. This was a moment when this man lost his life. He was characterized afterward as an assassin, as a domestic terrorist. The photo tells the story.

The killing of Alex Pretti has further intensified tensions in a city already reeling from the President's aggressive campaign of terror. What was the Trump administration's immediate response when they heard of this second killing in Minneapolis? It was not to bring down the temperature but, instead, to rush to the American people with one message: Don't believe your eyes. Don't believe what you are seeing. It is the same playbook they used after the killing of Renee Good and after other Federal immigration officer-involved shootings and incidents.

Following the fatal shooting of Ms. Good, President of the United States Donald Trump falsely claimed she ``violently, willfully and viciously ran over [an] ICE Officer.''

In response to the killings of both Ms. Good and Mr. Pretti, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem labeled their actions as ``domestic terrorism.''

Attorney General Pam Bondi, in a letter sent to Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, effectively tried to blackmail the State, demanding that the Governor of Minnesota turn over the voter rolls of that State in exchange for Bondi's efforts to pull back Federal immigration enforcement officers. In a court hearing earlier this week, an attorney representing the State described Bondi's request as a ``ransom note.''

Why has this President targeted this city and other democratically led cities?

Trump claims he is targeting these cities because local elected officials have released ``violent criminal illegal aliens'' from State custody. The claim does not hold up. Governor Walz eloquently refuted it in a recent column in the Wall Street Journal.

26, 2026] Tim Walz: The Un-American Assault on Minnesota (By Tim Walz)

The Trump administration's assault on Minnesota long ago stopped being a matter of immigration enforcement. It is a campaign of organized brutality against the people of our state. It isn't just. It isn't legal. And, critically, it isn't making anyone any safer.

Quite the opposite: Immigration agents have now shot and killed two of our neighbors: Renee Good and Alex Pretti. And there are countless other stories of protesters and bystanders being physically attacked by federal agents, to say nothing of the chaos and violence being unleashed against the targets of these raids, many of whom have done nothing wrong except exist as a person of color.

The pretext for all this is the Trump administration's insistence that our immigration laws would otherwise go unenforced. This federal occupation of Minnesota is, administration officials insist, about our predilection for releasing ``violent criminal illegal aliens'' from state custody.

I can't stress this enough: The Trump administration has its facts wrong about Minnesota.

The administration claims that Minnesota jails release ``the worst of the worst.'' In reality, the Minnesota Department of Corrections honors all federal and local detainers by notifying Immigration and Customs Enforcement when a person committed to its custody isn't a U.S. citizen. There is not a single documented case of the department's releasing someone from state prison without offering to ensure a smooth transfer of custody.

Yet the lies persist. This week, ICE tweeted that rural Cottonwood County had refused to honor a detainer for an alleged child sex predator. That's not true. The county sheriff followed procedure and contacted ICE when the subject posted bail, but ICE agents were too busy wreaking havoc in the Twin Cities to do their actual job and pick the prisoner up.

Some of the administration's claims are ridiculous on their face. For example: it claims that 1,360 non-U.S. citizens are in Minnesota prisons. The truth: Our total state prison population is roughly 8,000, and only 207 of them are noncitizens.

Earlier this month, the administration published what it claimed was a list of people who have been arrested as part of this ICE sweep, asserting that this list represents ``the worst of the worst'' criminals, and implying that we have been protecting them from capture.

Minnesota Public Radio investigated this claim and found it to be completely false: ``Most of the people on the list had been immediately transferred to ICE custody at the end of time served in Minnesota prisons. All of those transfers happened before ICE began its surge of operations in Minnesota on Dec. 1, 2025, with some even happening years before.''

In other words, ICE is taking credit for arrests that state and local law enforcement made, activity that took place before this assault on our state even began.

Everyone wants to see our immigration laws enforced. That isn't what is happening in Minnesota. In recent weeks, masked agents have abducted children. They have separated children from their parents. They have racially profiled off-duty police officers. They have aggressively pulled people over and demanded to see their papers. They have broken into the homes of elderly citizens without warrants to drag them outside in freezing temperatures.

That isn't effective law enforcement. It isn't following the rule of law. It's chaos. It's illegal. And it's un- American.

I have repeatedly appealed to President Trump to lower the temperature. But he refuses. I fear that his hope is for the tension between ICE agents and the communities they're ransacking to boil over--that he wants you to see more chaos on your TV screens, protests turn into riots, more people get hurt.

Minnesotans aren't taking the bait. They are protesting-- loudly and urgently, but also peacefully. They are helping their neighbors cope with this violent, lawless assault on people of color throughout the state--walking children to school safely, preparing mutual-aid packages, and organizing to make sure these atrocities are well-documented so that those responsible can face justice.

Minnesota is a state that believes in the rule of law and in the dignity of all people. We know that true public safety comes from trust, respect and shared purpose, not from intimidation or political theater.

This assault on our communities is not necessary to enforce our immigration laws. We don't have to choose between open borders and whatever the hell this is. Mr. Trump can and must end this unlawful, violent and chaotic campaign, and we can and must rebuild an immigration enforcement system that is secure, accountable and humane.

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Mr. DURBIN. Governor Walz noted that, in Minnesota, the State's department of corrections honors all Federal and local detainers by notifying ICE when a person in custody is not a citizen.

Governor Walz wrote:

There is not a single documented case of the department's releasing someone from state prison without offering to ensure a smooth transfer of custody.

If the President wants to work together in reducing crime, count me and Governor Walz in, but these lawless immigration operations are establishing a reign of terror--first in Chicago, now in Minneapolis- St. Paul--eroding constitutionally protected civil liberties while indiscriminately rounding up people for the crime of just happening to be Black or Brown. Even the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal--no liberal publication--agrees. In an editorial yesterday, they noted that, since October, 73 percent of the individuals taken into ICE custody had no criminal conviction. Only 5 percent had a violent criminal conviction.

Do you remember the rants at all the rallies? We are talking about rapists and murderers and terrorists, the criminally insane and child predators coming into the United States, and now we are going to expel them. That was the promise--the ``worst of the worst'' over and over again. But when you listen to the statistics that show how few of the people who have been detained or tortured are actually in that category, you realize that it is not the worst of the worst. They are innocent people who are being victimized by ICE and this administration. Donald Trump is hell-bent on punishing his political opponents in the blue States of America and those who didn't vote for him in the last election. We see the cost.

I have come to the floor before to share the stories of U.S. citizens who were arrested in Chicago by immigration agents during Operation Midway Blitz.

Take Elianne Bahena and Jax Lopez--two U.S. citizens who worked for a local alderman in the city of Chicago, my friend Michael Rodriguez of the 22nd Ward. They were arrested by Border Patrol agents in Chicago and were held for hours without any explanation after they exercised their constitutional rights to monitor immigration enforcement in the area.

According to a recent report from the Chicago Sun-Times, the U.S. Attorney's Office in Chicago has brought 32 nonimmigration criminal cases to court that are related to ICE Operation Midway Blitz. Do you know how many convictions there have been in those 32 cases? None, not one. This represents precious time and resources that have been wasted on baseless efforts by this Agency to punish peaceful protesters that could and should be focused instead on keeping the streets safe, on child exploitation, on human trafficking, and on public corruption.

The time for accountability is now. I have been calling for DHS Secretary Noem to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee for almost 1 year. She couldn't find the time. She is just way too busy. In the last calendar year, she didn't show up at all. Now she tells us that it is possible her schedule may loosen up and that she might be able to come before the Senate Judiciary Committee in 5 weeks, on March 3, if she happens to still be the DHS Secretary then. With all the violence and death surrounding DHS, the Secretary is in no hurry to account for her mismanagement of this national crisis. She expects us, in the meantime, in the days ahead, to rubberstamp her recordbreaking budget.

Over the weekend, I announced my opposition to DHS funding. I will not vote to fund the illegal DHS and ICE operations that terrorize the city of Chicago, Minneapolis, and so many other communities. The deaths of innocent Americans and the detaining of thousands of innocent people are a national disgrace. We need to work on a bipartisan basis to pass the five appropriations bills that have been sent to us by the House and then work to rewrite the DHS bill to address well-documented abuses witnessed by the American people. Anything less than this approach is a nonstarter with me.

If the government shuts down yet again, it will be because congressional Republicans have refused to place guardrails on this reckless President and the ICE Agency. In the meantime, I urge my colleagues to join us in the endeavor before Kristi Noem and her squad take another innocent life.

Tim Walz may be stepping back from the political brink after a phone call Monday that both called constructive. The best result would be for Minnesota and the Twin Cities to cooperate with immigration enforcement, and the feds to reduce their footprint.

Meanwhile, let's look at how the Trump Administration's deportation policy is being implemented by the numbers. Mr. Trump campaigned on a promise to deport criminal migrants, ``the worst of the worst'' as the Department of Homeland Security put it. The policy has public support, but the migrant roundup has become far broader.

Last week Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem posted on social media, ``We have arrested over 10,000 criminal illegal aliens who were killing Americans, hurting children and reigning terror in Minneapolis.'' Overall, Ms. Noem says Immigration and Customs Enforcement has removed ``murderers, pedophiles, rapists, gang members, and terrorists.'' She told CBS that ``70% of them have committed or have charges against them on violent crimes.''

It started out that way. At the beginning of 2025, 87% of ICE arrests were immigrants with either a prior conviction or a criminal charge pending, according to ICE data obtained by the Deportation Data Project. Only 13% of those arrested at the beginning of 2025 didn't have either a conviction or a pending charge.

But the criminal share of apprehensions has declined as the months have gone on. By October 2025, the percentage of arrested immigrants with a prior conviction or criminal charge had fallen to 55%. Since October, 73% taken into ICE custody had no criminal conviction and only 5% had a violent criminal conviction, according to a Cato Institute review of ICE data.

Many of the criminal immigrants the Administration counts among those in detention are convicted criminals culled from prisons. White House border czar Tom Homan objected to Minneapolis's sanctuary city policy because he said it wasn't letting the Administration take prisoners into federal custody. ``If they'd let us in their damn jail,'' he said, ``we could arrest the bad guy in the safety and security of the jail.''

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz disputes that in his nearby op-ed, but there's no doubt Minneapolis and St. Paul have ordinances that bar using resources to help ICE apprehend people based on immigration status. That complicates ICE's job and makes confrontations more likely.

Syracuse professor Austin Kocher, who tracks official ICE data, finds that between Sept. 21, 2025, and Jan. 7, 2026, single-day ICE detentions increased 11,296. But only 902 of those were convicted criminals, 2,273 had pending criminal charges and 8,121 were other immigrant violators. ICE arrests have been trending upward since January 2025, but criminal arrests have plateaued.

All of which means that the Trump Administrations rhetoric about deporting criminals doesn't match its current much broader policy of mass deportation. As ICE agents target businesses, schools and homes, scenes of arrest involving mothers, children and long-time U.S. residents become more common. This explains why immigration enforcement is becoming a political liability for Republicans.

Ending migrant chaos at the border was necessary after the Biden Administration. But White House aide Stephen Miller's undisciplined mass deportation and zero immigration policy is building distrust, and the White House pitch that public safety justifies its enforcement is losing credibility.
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