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Floor Speech

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Mr. RICKETTS. Mr. President, in the last several weeks, we have witnessed some terrible tragedies in Minnesota that involved law enforcement operations and the loss of life. We should all continue to pray for the families of Renee Good and Alex Pretti.

As a former Governor, I know that when there is an officer-involved shooting, there is always an investigation to determine whether the shooting was justified, and there will, indeed, be multiple investigations into these shootings.

I also know that as a former Governor and having had the State patrol of Nebraska report to me, that our law enforcement officers are dedicated professionals, women and men who put their lives on the line to keep us safe, and they will do a great job for us in investigating what could be done better.

The Department of Homeland Security should take this opportunity to review its policies and procedures because of this investigation to determine if there are areas to improve upon.

One of the areas I think they will define is that there could be better cooperation with the local law enforcement. However, this is not the fault of ICE or Customs and Border Protection; this is the fault of the mayor who is not allowing his administration to work with ICE, for example, to apprehend criminal illegal aliens who are in their jails and forcing them to go out on the streets to apprehend these folks. And they are not providing the sort of crowd control that would allow protestors to exercise their rights and keep them safe and stop them from interfering with law enforcement operations.

So the Democrats are holding up the Department of Homeland Security bill. Ironically, because of the continuing resolution that we passed, we are funding ICE with more money than we would have otherwise if we just passed the regular Homeland Security bill because Republicans are working on fiscal restraint.

Also ironically, they actually can't get at the Agency they are mad at. ICE is fully funded for the next 3 years because of the reconciliation bill we passed last year. So Democrats really can't impact the funding of the Agency that they are unhappy with.

Now, they have various demands that they have with regard to this, and again, some of these demands are already addressed in the Homeland Security bill. For example, they want body cameras. There is actually funding for body cameras in the Homeland Security bill if the Democrats would join us in passing it.

There is also funding for deescalation procedures. Presumably, Democrats would want that. There is also funding for an inspector general. Presumably, Democrats would think that was a good idea. All of these things that are in the Homeland Security bill, the Democrats would just work with Republicans to pass it, but they are not doing so.

They have some demands, like better cooperation with local law enforcement. Well, that is something that we would like too. We would like to see it in sanctuary cities that are blocking our Federal law enforcement officers from apprehending illegal immigrant criminals who are in their jails.

Work with us to be able to allow us to do that. That would be great-- I am sure the ICE members are saying to themselves. So that cooperation would be wonderful. In fact, that is the key. I see it in my home State, that our local law enforcement, our county sheriffs, they don't do ICE's job for them, but they do cooperate to be able to get criminal illegal aliens into the custody of ICE and also provide security to make sure that law enforcement is not interfered with and that protesters can have their ability to exercise their rights in a safe way.

One of the other demands that they have is for no masks. And again, talking to local law enforcement in Nebraska and my own experience with Nebraska State Patrol, I know that typically our law enforcement officers wear a badge, a name, but in special operations, that is not always the case, that we see that masks are necessary to protect the identities of our law enforcement officers.

Far-left radical people are using face recognition software or use that to identify law enforcement officials and then dox them. That is a risk. In fact, we have seen it in Nebraska. I was talking to one of my county sheriffs about one of his deputies who was doxed; his name and address, his children's names were published on the internet and even going so far as to publish his parents' names and addresses in different city. This is just pure intimidation.

I know that when we have drug interdiction programs, we want our officers to wear masks because, again, the cartels want to intimidate our law enforcement officers into not doing their jobs. This is something we have to be worried about.

If the left continues to villainize our law enforcement officers who are there to keep us safe, it will make the job less attractive. It will be hard for us to track the right kind of people we want to be able to fill those positions in law enforcement. It is absolutely appropriate in certain circumstances to wear a mask.

In fact, in some operations, it is a safety issue. If we are having our law enforcement officers, for example, go into a residence where they know there is a criminal and they are using, say, an ordinance to do that, the mask actually helps protect them. So there are times and circumstances where that is appropriate.

Certainly, protecting our law enforcement officers from malicious actors who want to intimidate them is important. It is a time to make sure we are keeping our law enforcement officers safe and making sure we continue to have people--brave women and men--who want to step up and do that job.

One of the other things that our Democrat colleagues want is to end administrative warrants. A little history: Administrative warrants were originally passed in the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1952, so they have been around for nearly 75 years. Getting away from that would bring our law enforcement operations with regard to illegal immigrants in this country to a halt. This is an important way that we actually get to deport the people who are here illegally.

So that is a nonstarter. We can't slow down the system. Yet we just saw under the Biden administration an open border policy and 10.5 million illegal entry attempts into the United States.

The President has now brought those down 95 percent and, since April 2025, has stopped releasing illegal immigrants into our country. That is progress. But I believe the President was hired to address the issue Joe Biden created. So we need to give the right tools to our law enforcement officers to be successful.

I encourage my colleagues on the other side of the aisle to work with the White House and Senate Republicans to come up with a reasonable compromise based on common ground and to make sure that we are funding Homeland Security.

That funding runs out Friday at midnight, and if Democrats allow this to happen, it won't impact ICE operations, but what it will do is interrupt FEMA. We just had a major winter storm on the east coast and parts of the South. FEMA will be interrupted if Department of Homeland Security is not getting funded.

Our TSA agents who help make sure we get around the country safely through our airports, they will stop getting paid. That could potentially lead to slowdowns at airports. The Coast Guard will stop getting paid. Our heroes who keep us safe on our oceans and rescue us when we need it, these are all the things Democrats will be putting at risk if they don't fund Homeland Security. And, of course, any continuing resolution will just mean that the Democrats are funding ICE to a greater degree than they would otherwise.

So, again, I encourage my Senate Democratic colleagues to work with the White House and Senate Republicans on a reasonable compromise. And one more thing, if we cannot fund Homeland Security, I urge my Senate Democrats to not go on all the codels they are supposed to be going on starting on Friday.

We need to stay here and get it fixed. We need to get Homeland Security funded.

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