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Floor Speech

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Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, thank you so much, and what an honor it is to be together with our colleagues from Minnesota to appreciate their leadership and how they stood in the gap for Minnesotans who have really suffered in these last weeks, to be together with so many colleagues on the floor to talk about this most existential moment.

You don't have to be a spiritual or religious person to--when you see a mother murdered and her last name is ``Good'', the murder of good--it should make all of us step back and look in the mirror and ask what it means. You do not have to be a spiritually attuned person to watch a VA employee ICU nurse get 10 bullets in his back and step back and ask: Who are we?

These images are going around the world, and people are not looking at these images as who a particular person or administration is. They are looking at this as: Is this who America is? And that is what this debate is about.

I take this very personally. From birth to age 2, I was a Minnesotan. I was born at St. Joseph's Hospital in St. Paul, MN. I still have family connections in Minnesota.

I, then, was a Kansan until I was 26, and my more persuasive Virginian wife convinced me to become a Virginian. And now, 42 years later, I still have these strong feelings and ties about the State where I was born.

And as I watch the events and I hear the pain and I get the dispatches from friends and family who are in the midst of this sharing with me the stories, much as my colleagues have shared them today, I realize this isn't just about Minnesota. It could be anywhere in our country.

Although, I will express this question: Could it be anywhere? Because it does seem as if the administration is targeting this kind of rogue violence in certain communities, not others. And when the Attorney General of the United States, our Nation's chief law enforcement officer, by letter suggests that the rogue activities in Minnesota could stop if Minnesota would only turn over its voting rolls, it does make you wonder, as my colleague Senator Smith asked: Is this really about law enforcement?

But the fear that immigrant communities and others who want to peacefully assemble and present grievances about government--a right guaranteed in the First Amendment--that fear is something that isn't just in Minnesota; it is in my community too. I live in Richmond, VA. The Commonwealth has a population that is about 12 percent immigrant. The church I go to is heavily a Congolese parish. It is a Catholic parish. Many folks in the Congo are Catholics, and we have seen a refugee population grow in my parish.

We have immigrant communities all over. The meeting I had right before I came to the floor was with a Cub Scout group from McLean, VA, and they talked to me about the rights of immigrants because so many of them or their parents are immigrants.

And the fear in our immigrant communities is palpable even when there haven't been roving patrols. Will they start tomorrow? You see reduced attendance at childcare centers. You see reduced attendance at church events because people hear rumors that, if they go, they might be targeted. The fear is palpable.

What I want to just say, Mr. President, that I hope we will kind of bear in mind, and this is: We all come to this place with different life experiences, and a life experience that I have had that is, you know, different than some is I have been a mayor and Governor and know what it is to have a police force.

When I was the mayor of Richmond, we had a police force. When I was the Governor of Virginia, we had the Virginia State Police.

Let me tell you something police forces don't like: They don't like roving bands of people with masks and without IDs roving through their communities without coordinating.

In Virginia, this kind of started a couple of months back in a couple of our courthouses who are patrolled by deputy sheriffs. The court function and jails are run by sheriffs in Virginia, and they are there to provide security.

And in courthouses in Chesterfield and Albemarle Counties in Virginia, they started to see masked, unidentified folks show up to grab people. Now, these are courthouses that are guarded by deputy sheriffs with weapons who are there to provide stability and security. And when there are masked people coming into the courts to grab others who don't identify themselves or coordinate with local law enforcement, you raise the risk of a horrible--horrible--injury or accident or tragedy occurring.

Now we see this happening in Minnesota and elsewhere.

At a minimum, the mayor and Governor in me says we should not be allowing these roving patrols to run roughshod in local communities without fully getting the approval and coordination with State and local law enforcement authorities. Anything short of that treats State and local law enforcement as if they are the enemies instead of partners in trying to promote public safety.

The other thing that I would point out before handing it off to my next colleague is something that is just so common. It is so common in law enforcement at the State and local level. If there is an officer- involved shooting in virtually every law enforcement agency in this country, the officer involved in the shooting is immediately put on administrative leave. That is not a judgment that they were wrong; it is just a judgment that shooting is so serious that there should be an investigation before that officer is allowed to return to duty. This is standard operating procedure in tiny town police offices that have a handful of officials in Virginia and elsewhere. Yet that is not what is being done at the Federal level.

In fact, the Washington Post ran a wonderful story yesterday that analyzed many instances of DHS officials shooting folks, and before an investigation was even done, the administration was out vindicating them, not putting them on administrative leave, and, finally, even blaming victims, calling them domestic terrorists and assassins.

That is the last thing I want to say. The scale of the lie goes up depending upon the depth of the shame and guilt feeling. So when someone is killed and a key Cabinet Secretary jumps out--or a key White House official--to label them as a domestic terrorist or an assassin, clearly contradicting all the available evidence that every American and every person in the world can see, you know that the lie is being magnified to cover up the depth of shame and guilt that individual is feeling.

It is time for us to do right by reforms, but it is also time to stop lying. Stop lying about these people who are standing up and trying to be good neighbors and protect their fellow man. Stop calling them domestic terrorists. Stop calling them would-be assassins. Stop trying to trash their memories, pour salt in the wounds of their parents and their loved ones and their children to cover up your own lack of responsibility and your lack of accountability.

We are going to hold you accountable. We are going to make sure that you are accountable--not based on a promise of future action by this administration.

We need to get the five bills done. We can get them done and then turn to a DHS reform that is put in law, that is signed by the President, so that when the President or his cronies decide later to break it, we can go to court and enforce it.

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