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Floor Speech

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Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, last month, I came to the floor after the tragic killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti and talked about what had happened in my State.

Renee Good left behind three kids, including a 6-year-old. When she was shot and killed by an ICE agent, her final words to the officer who shot her were, ``I am not mad at you.''

Alex Pretti was a VA intensive care nurse and guardian angel who did one of the most selfless jobs one could think of, caring for our veterans, often in their final hours.

Last Saturday, I met with the workers who were on the shift that, only 2 weeks before, was that same shift of workers that were on when they found out that their coworker Alex had been killed.

His last words were to a woman who had been pushed down by Border Patrol, and his last words were, ``Are you OK?''

His fellow workers at the VA recounted to me what a kindhearted person he was, how every patient felt like they were the only patient. Other family members of patients had remarked about that too.

The coworkers told me how he was the kind of guy who would fill in on the shifts when someone had a family emergency or just needed time off, and he would fill in for them on their shift, including that Saturday morning shift.

Both Renee and Alex should be alive today, and as we honor their memories, I am on the floor again today following the administration's announcement of its plan to finally end Operation Metro Surge and drawn down the thousands of federalized agents that aren't just in Minneapolis or St. Paul--that, actually, I don't think people quite understand. They are all over our State. They are in the suburbs. They are in small towns.

The number of calls that we get--my office is handling hundreds and hundreds of cases right now, but the cases of just someone who is in the store and gets stopped because they are someone of color or the videos of two White friends with one Latino friend, and it is the Latino they would go up to and say, ``Are you legal?'' And the Latino says, ``Yes, I am,'' and they still throw them in the car, maybe because they could get a bounty. The number of people that were stopped multiple times, the Somali police officers who are off duty that were taken out of their car.

The stories go on and on. You can't have 3,000 ICE agents in a metro area. And, again, they also went rural in a big, big way, but in a metro area, where they outnumber the number of sworn police officers in our 10 biggest police departments, which includes Minneapolis and St. Paul, they were triple the number of sworn police officers in Minneapolis and St. Paul.

But for more than 2 months, Minnesotans stood together. They stared down ICE, and they never blinked. They marched--and I was there, 50,000 strong in 10 below zero weather--peacefully. And what I will never forget is 50,000 people marching peacefully, filling up the entire streets of Minneapolis peacefully, and then less than 12 hours, 24 hours later, 6 Border Patrol guys shot a guy with a cell phone in his hand in the back. They couldn't handle that.

So ICE is withdrawing from Minnesota. It is good. We are glad they are leaving our State, let me be clear. And when I talked to Director Homan about 10 days ago, he said this was the timetable, and they must follow through. He said they would first push out the Border Patrol agents and send them home. And they did that in the number of a couple hundred. And now they are bringing home the remaining Metro Surge ICE agents to get to the original footprint.

But ICE withdrawing from Minnesota is just the beginning. We need accountability for the lives lost and the extraordinary abuse of power in the hands of these agents.

And we, of course, must see a complete overhaul of the Agency. And I do not know how anyone can justify $75 billion extra dollars for this Agency, making them bigger than the FBI, when that money could still--the remaining money--go to local law enforcement. It could go to help people pay for their healthcare premiums.

For months, ICE has made my State less safe. It is not just a horrific shooting; we have also seen repeated violations of the constitutional rights of the people of Minnesota. I do say to our colleagues, if you believe in the First Amendment, in the right to assemble, then show it. If you believe in the Second Amendment and that Alex Pretti had a right to be a lawful gun owner--and it was the Border Patrol agents that took his gun out of his holster, all he was holding was a cell phone--then show it.

If you believe in the Fourth Amendment and the right against search and seizure and that you can't have armed agents ramming through an elder Hmong man's door, pulling him out in his underwear and throwing him in a car, only to find out, after they drove him around for an hour, that they had the wrong guy and that, in fact, the guy they were going after had been in prison for years and that this Hmong man had done nothing wrong and was the son of a beloved nurse that treated American soldiers in Vietnam.

Those are the stories that people are never going to forget in my State: a fourth grader from Columbia Heights and her mom detained by ICE on the way to school; the little 5-year-old, little Liam, standing there scared in his blue hat with floppy ears and his Spider-Man backpack.

Those two kids, the fourth grader and Liam sent to Texas, and the judge--they sent him to Texas without even waiting to see what the court said. And then the court said: No, can't do that. And then they had to bring him back from Texas in his little blue hat with the little floppy ears.

This administration also sent a 2-year-old to Texas. My staff and many other local lawmakers worked through the night on that case--came back from Texas.

It should never have come to this. A court case was pending, and they put a 2-year-old on a plane when her mom was waiting for her in Minnesota.

These are just a few of the stories. As our local police have repeatedly made clear in the cities and in the suburbs and in the rural areas, ICE's actions have not made us safer. They have made us so much less safe. They have taken taxpayer money--at some estimates, $18 million a week--and spent it on hotel rooms that should have been used for families visiting from Wisconsin and Iowa and Canada that like to go to the Mall of America in the middle of the winter.

Those hotel rooms should have been used by people in Greater Minnesota that want to come in and go ice fishing or enjoy skiing in our State. But instead we had 3,000 ICE agents in Bloomington, MN, alone, our biggest suburb--1,000 ICE agents in their hotel rooms. Think of how much money that is and all the overtime for the police officers that could have been following up on child cases and could have been helping on burglary cases and could have been helping citizens with the trust that they have built over the years.

And that trust, so much on the line now, but kept intact because of how those local police officers throughout our State and local sheriff deputies have handled this travesty. This goes way beyond welcoming help for violent offenders, which we would, or a fraud investigation-- way beyond all of that.

In fact, the opposite has happened because some highly experienced prosecutors in the U.S. Attorney's Office in Minnesota, who have been there through Republican-appointed U.S. attorneys and Democratic- appointed U.S. attorneys, who lead and have led the cases on fraud, the important cases to go after the stealing of taxpayer money, and brought 80-some cases already and won major convictions in court, those prosecutors who are so well-respected in our State were asked to investigate Renee Good's wife after she was gunned down. And they said: No, we will not do that, and they stepped down.

It reminded me of the decorated war veteran in New York in their U.S. Attorney's Office when asked to dismiss a case that had been rightfully brought against then-Mayor Eric Adams. That prosecutor, who had clerked for conservative Justices, a member of the Federalist Society, he said in a letter to the Justice Department:

You may find a fool or a coward to file your motion, but it will never be me.

That is what those assistant U.S. attorneys, including the former acting head of the U.S. Attorney's Office that had been installed by the Trump administration on my recommendation who did an incredible job through the horrific assassination of former Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband and also was there at the side for the families when those little children were gunned down through stained glass windows at Annunciation Church--those are the people that they messed with and asked them to do something they felt were unethical, and as a result, all of the prosecutors that were heading up the righteous fraud investigations and prosecutions are no longer in that office.

So you tell me how these actions have made our State more safe. It is the opposite: School attendance down; families living in fear; people staying home; restaurants and businesses feeling the impact; Operation Metro Surge costing our Minnesota economy an estimated $80 million per week, all for the shock and awe, where such a small percentage of the people that they apprehended were involved in violent crime.

At its peak, one study showed that the surge cost Federal, State, and local governments at least $18 million every single week. The fact is, Operation Metro Surge put our State at the center of America's heartbreak, but it also put us at the center of America's courage and America's hope.

Every day across our State, people did extraordinary things. Ordinary people did extraordinary things. They drove other kids to school. They brought food to their neighbors. They showed up for small businesses. Teachers and other school leaders stood up and protected their students, organized food drives and computer drives.

Attorneys across our State at private law firms took ICE to court to enforce people's constitutional rights. And judges appointed by Presidents of both parties, including our conservative chief judge of the Federal District Court of Minnesota issued opinions, and strongly worded opinions, demanding that people come into court unless their orders were followed.

Today, the administration's top border official Tom Homan announced the end of Operation Surge and the drawdown of the 3,000 ICE agents-- again, triple the amount of sworn police officers in the combined cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul--leaving only what he has called ``a small footprint.''

He has been straightforward with me since he arrived on the ground in Minnesota, straightforward with our chiefs, and we appreciate that. But we must be vigilant in making sure there is a real and thorough drawdown. We need transparent, objective investigations and justice for Renee Good and Alex Pretti and the many others who had their rights violated by this administration.

There must--must--be new leadership at the Department of Homeland Security, and Kristi Noem must resign. That is what you do with $75 billion? You put bounties on legal citizens? You break out windows of people with disabilities who are born in this country and drag them to a detention center? That is what you do with $75 billion of taxpayer money?

You take Hmong elders and throw them out of their house in their underwear with their Crocs on their feet in below-zero weather and throw them into a car? You stop off-duty police officers just because they are not White? That is what you do with $75 billion? So that is why she must step down.

And there must be major reforms to immigration enforcement, including a complete overhaul of this Agency. Americans want Federal agents to abide by the same code of conduct as local law enforcement and be held accountable when they don't. Americans want transparency. Federal agents shouldn't be masked. They should be required to use body cameras. But that is just the tip of the iceberg.

We must end roving patrols. Federal agents should not enter private property without a judicial warrant. We must end the bounty system that incentivizes arrest without cause and has taken down numerous people, multiple people, hundreds of people in our State that were legal, born in our State, have passports. They wouldn't even listen to them when they told them as they threw them into a car. We must protect sensitive locations, and the racial profiling must end.

Today, a number of our colleagues, including myself, voted against continuing to fund ICE. Budget shows our values. That extra $75 billion, as I explained, triples the Agency's funding, giving it more money than the FBI. That was wrong.

That money could have gone to local enforcement, Affordable Care Act tax credits for 3 years, and $75 billion would have paid for everyone in the country to get their tax credit extended to help them pay for their premiums under the Affordable Care Act.

An occupying force was in our State. They tried to sow chaos and fear, but Minnesota didn't take the bait. As Bruce Springsteen sings in his new song ``The Streets of Minneapolis'':

Against smoke and rubber bullets

In the dawn's early light

Citizens stood for justice

Their voices ringin' through the night.

We have shown the world how to protect democracy and take care of our neighbors, and we are going to continue to stand up for accountability, for justice, for change.

And when people ask me: What can we do? Well, you do that. You continue to stand up.

When people outside our State say: What can we do to help Minnesota? Well, now, with ICE agents leaving--maybe you want to wait until the weather warms up just a little--you can come and visit our great State. You can fill up those hotel rooms that were taken over by ICE agents and go visit incredible places in our State, where Prince got his start.

You can go to First Avenue. You can go to the Mall of America. You can go up north or down south in Minnesota and see the incredible bike trails and beautiful places and Lake Superior, the most superior lake of them all.

So that is what we want you to do. We want you to come to our State and visit. We want you to invest in our State. We want you to start businesses in our State. We want you to send your kids to school in our State. We want people to come and work in our State because we have shown the country and the world what we are all about.

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