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Floor Speech

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Ms. SMITH. Mr. President, I thank my colleague Senator Klobuchar and all of our colleagues who are joining us on the floor this afternoon.

We are here today because we have a full-blown, dangerous emergency unfolding in Minnesota.

It is happening right now as I speak, and we need your help to end it. America needs your help. The Nation has been appalled by what we have seen happening in our State of Minnesota, the stories that have captured everyone's attention.

Two innocent U.S. citizens, Alex Pretti and Renee Good, shot and killed on the street in broad daylight by Federal agents just as they were trying to help their neighbors and document with their telephones what was going on, the brutality of it.

A 5-year-old in a Spider-Man backpack, Liam Conejo Ramos. So Liam is coming home with his dad and the agents are there and Liam is trying to get inside. The agents try to use Liam as bait to lure the mother outside.

Liam is still in detention. He is still in Texas--a 5-year-old, 1,000 miles away from home.

Colleagues, my head is so full of stories, so full of stories that might not have gotten all the attention but tell the tale of the brutality and illegality of Operation Metro Surge in Minnesota.

This is about a U.S. citizen, a young man, who is walking out of his place of work to get lunch, and he sees an ICE agent. He is concerned. He is afraid that he might get targeted so he turns around and walks the other way. The ICE agent runs after him and tackles the guy. He is a U.S. citizen, throws him to the ground, injures him, and detains him for hours, all the while this young man has documents to prove who he is.

It is about a teenager in Willmar, MN. Willmar is a smaller regional center in Minnesota. It is place where the Jennie-O turkey processing plant is. It is an incredible community.

Here is a teenager in Willmar who is stopped by ICE. She is beaten. She gets a concussion, and she is detained for 2 days, and she is a U.S. citizen.

So imagine--it is hard to imagine this. But imagine you are in your neighborhood, and there are those roving vans of Federal agents. They have no identification. They drive around in black Suburbans. They have masks over their faces, and at the drop of a hat, they just leap out, and they go after people. They are restraining them. They are hitting them. They are spraying them with chemical agents, and then people are just shoved into Suburbans and driven off.

And nobody really knows what happens to them. This is happening in Minnesota, if it isn't happening in your neighborhood. I want people to understand this is not just Minneapolis-St. Paul where so many of the TV cameras have been.

It is Rochester, MN, where the schools are reporting a huge falloff of kids going to school because they are so afraid. Their families are so afraid to send them to school.

It is in Mankato, MN, which is in the southern part of the State. It is another regional center, a farming community. I heard today on the public radio station that the local immigrant rights organization is getting 400 calls a day from people who are trying to figure out what their rights are, what to do: A family member of mine is detained. I don't know where they are.

This is happening in dozens of cities.

So what we have here, colleagues, is a campaign. It is a campaign not about public safety; it is a campaign about fear and intimidation. This is about secret police roaming in our cities with no identification and no name tags.

What they do is they overtly target individuals because of the accent that they have, the skin color that they have. I am not just imagining this is their motivation because these agents are telling people this is what is going on.

I mean, this is the story of a Hmong woman that I met in Hmong Village just last week who, in tears, is telling me that her son has been detained. He has been gone for days and days and days, and she doesn't know when she is going to get him back.

Where is he?

This is about ICE agents going to a suburban restaurant in the Twin Cities, having lunch, and then after lunch, they go into the kitchen to detain the folks that are working in the kitchen.

We are seeing this happen every single day; battering down doors, breaking car windows. There literally--there is no pretext. There is no warrant. They are targeting people, not because they know that they have committed some crime, but because of what they look like.

There is this thing that we have in the Twin Cities now. They are called ghost cars. What is this? This is a car that is left in the street, the middle of the street sometimes, the door open, the engine running, the keys still in the car, and nobody is there. People know what happened. ICE came and got whoever was driving the car and took them away.

You know, if you are going through a legal immigration process in this country, you go through a process, and it is your obligation--your legal obligation--to check in with the Federal authorities.

What is happening now is that you are getting--folks are getting-- legal residence getting a letter to appear. They have a choice. They know that if they don't comply, they are breaking the law, so of course they comply. But when they go to the courthouse, what happens is an agent is waiting outside the courthouse. An agent is there waiting to detain that person who is following the law, who has done nothing wrong. In fact, they are doing everything they possibly can do to comply with the law, and yet they are being detained.

These are not, my colleagues--these are not what you hear from this administration about the so-called worst of the worst. These are people that are active, contributing members of our community. These are legal residents who hold green cards who are being flown to Texas with no legal representation, no access to counsel.

And you know what happens sometimes? They get down there; they go through another screening; and the Federal agents say: OK. Sorry about that. We made a mistake. And they just dump them on the streets of Houston or wherever they may be.

No documents, no identification--how are they going to even get home? That is happening in this country right now. And if they are not released, because not everyone is released--if they are not released, people have died in custody. People with no criminal record have been deported to countries that they have never even known.

So this is happening in Minnesota, but this is not just Minnesota. I think, because Minnesota has resisted so strongly and because the tactics of Operation Metro Surge have been so brutal, we have gotten so much of the attention, but this is not just a Minnesota problem.

I ask you, colleagues, to consider how these dangerous and poorly trained and unaccountable ICE agents have been treating Americans who have been exercising their constitutional right to peacefully speak and to demonstrate. These Americans have been intimidated. They have been taunted. They have been beaten. They have even been killed.

We have seen the images of people being maced at point-blank range. You can see this in the final pictures of Alex Pretti before he is killed.

We know that they are tracking demonstrators with facial ID technology, following them home to intimidate them. And, in fact, I have heard stories from demonstrators who have been led home by ICE agents--so that those agents are communicating: We know where you live. We know who you are. We want you to be quiet--pepper balls, tear gas.

And this is not just happening, colleagues, in situations of civil unrest. I am not talking about riots here. I am talking about a family that is trying to get home. They have six kids in the car. They have been at basketball practice, and they end up with a can of tear gas thrown under their car. It explodes. It lifts the car up off the ground, and that family ends up in the emergency room. They need to be decontaminated from the poison.

Now, I am telling you these stories because I want you to understand a very important thing: What is going on in Minnesota is not about public safety. It has nothing to do with public safety. In fact, what is going on in Minnesota is hurting public safety. As Senator Klobuchar said, police chiefs of suburban communities have come forward and said: This is not sustainable. This is dangerous.

A police chief told the story about how one of his own officers, who was off duty, was stopped for no reason by ICE agents, and they threatened to get her out of the car and take her away before she finally tells them. She decides: I have to tell them that I am a police officer. And they leave her alone.

This is about people dialing 911 because an ICE agent is at their home, and they are so scared about what to do.

So I want to be clear: We are pro-public safety in Minnesota. We have worked often with Federal authorities to catch bad guys and lock them up. But we need ICE out of Minnesota. What is really going on here is a systemic and organized campaign of fear and intimidation.

This is government police, sanctioned at the highest levels of our government, completely unbound, beating and attacking and detaining and arresting and killing American citizens. This is what America looks like with an authoritarian government, with no laws.

But here is what is happening not only in Minnesota but around the country. Our constituents, the Presiding Officer's constituents are watching these videos, and they are hearing these stories, and they are reading these reports. And what is happening is a sense of moral outrage is rising up, that feeling that you have in your gut when you-- that feeling of anguish and anger and disgust, when you know that you are seeing something that is just wrong. You know that it is wrong and that you can't look away from it.

And we are uplifted by this moral outrage and the incredible courage of Minnesotans, but we know what we are seeing here. And people are responding everywhere. I have talked to hundreds of people, over the past few weeks, about what is going on in Minnesota--people who are organizing mutual aid to get groceries and diapers to families; but smalltown folks that hate to see this happen to their neighbors; and local mayors and farmers and small businesses; Democrats, Republicans, people who aren't political at all; law enforcement officers, faith leaders, Second Amendment supporters, and civil libertarians.

And there is the man in the truck that I saw when I was in Minneapolis, taking groceries to people on Monday. He is in the truck, and I drive up. He is, at first, kind of concerned that I might be ICE. Then he is worried that I am going to think that he is ICE. And we start to talk, and he said of the President: I voted for him. I told my kids. I talked my kids into voting for him. And I am so upset. I am so embarrassed. I never thought that this would happen. This is so messed up.

This, colleagues, is the coalition of the horrified, the people who see this and feel a sense of moral outrage, people who are bound together not by politics or faction or identity but by that feeling in your gut that what you are seeing is wrong and that we have to do something about it, that this can't be how we operate.

So that brings us to here, today, in this august Chamber of the U.S. Senate, and we ask ourselves: OK, what do we do? What is our place here?

We have all worked really hard to get here, and we all are here, I believe, because we love this country. And I suspect that almost all of us who serve in this Chamber understand. They see the threat. We see the threat that this poses to the very underpinnings of our country.

And I am so grateful to my colleagues on both sides of the aisle, Republicans and Democrats, who have spoken out, who have called for a fair and impartial investigation, who have called for changes of leadership. I agree with that. That is all really important.

But, colleagues, that is not going to be enough to stop this. This is a crucial moment in our country, not just for Minnesota but for our entire country, and our answer to the question of what we do in the face of this illegality, this brutality--our answer to all those people, all those constituents who feel that sense of moral outrage, who are begging us to stand up for them--our answer can't be that we are not going to do anything. It can't be the status quo. It can't be: Well, the procedures of the Senate and the House make it really impossible for us to get something done. So there is really not that much we can do right now.

That is not acceptable.

But, colleagues, I can see a path forward. And, look, I want to be really clear. In my view, we need to start over with the Department of Homeland Security. I think it should be ripped down to the studs and that we should start over. But that is not the question for today. That is not the question for right now. Right now, we need to take immediate, commonsense steps to stop the worst of the violence and the violations that Americans are suffering.

So, to be clear, I will not vote for any funding for DHS, if we do not take action to stop this emergency unfolding in my State.

And I truly believe that we can find agreement on both sides of the aisle for a path forward. It will not solve all of these problems, but we can address the worst of the assault.

We need to end these roving patrols of Federal agents that are detaining and arresting people that have done nothing wrong. You can't break down someone's door and arrest them without a warrant.

We need accountability. ICE agents should be required to abide by the same set of laws, the same use-of-force standards that your local police department abides by. We need a fair and unbiased investigation, and we need no more of this secret police--no more masks and agents without proper identification, and body cameras.

I mean, to me, this seems like pretty simple and commonsense and reasonable reforms that can only be achieved through the force of law. We are long past the moment where any letter or Executive order or promise can secure our trust. This is our path forward.

I am thinking about, as I wrap up this speech--I am thinking about all of my colleagues who are here to speak with such intention about what is happening. I want to just take a pause to acknowledge my beloved Minnesota.

I am so proud to be your Senator, and, you know, so many people around the country are looking to you--to us--for hope, and you are showing the world how to respond to violence and how to stand up to bullies with strength and with dignity and with peace. You are putting your own safety and your own bodies on the line to protect your neighborhoods and your democracy. You are risking your own safety to document the emergency and the inhumanity unfolding on our streets. And you are even--you are even--sometimes doing it by singing.

In Minnesota, we show up for our neighbors. We help people out. We don't give in to bullies. We stand strong. We stand in the park with a candle in our hands to mourn but also to kindle hope. And I know that Minnesotans are going to stay strong because, as Dr. King preached, we know how to put our faith into action.

As Dr. King said, ``Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

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