Senator Warren – ICE Threat

SENATOR WARREN – ICE Threat

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The people ICE grabbed up, the people they shot, are not threats to you and me. They are not violent criminals that Trump promised to go after. They are not, as Trump said, the worst of the worst. No, these are our neighbors. They are our friends. They are our colleagues. They are people who treat us when we are sick. The risk [clears throat] is not from them.

The risk increasingly comes from out of control ICE agents who can’t follow the basic training manual that our local police, our state police, and our national guard are all trained to follow. This invasion by ICE is not making anyone in America safe. And if we don’t put a stop to it, these masked agents are going to kill more people.

We are at a turning point in our country. Get the truth out about our son. He was a good man. Those are the words of Michael and Susan Pretti, the parents of Alex Pretti, who over the weekend was killed by masked federal agents in Minneapolis. I’m here to be part of getting the truth out. Masked federal agents shot and killed Alex Pretti, an American citizen in broad daylight.

Alex was an ICU nurse at the Minneapolis VA hospital, a nurse for veterans. He was a son, a brother, a friend, a caretaker, and he was killed while he was trying to help a woman who had been pushed to the ground by a federal agent. The last words that Alex spoke on this earth were, “Are you all right?” Those are the words of a good man trying to help someone who had been knocked down by an out of control ICE agent. Do not let anyone tell you otherwise.

And Mr. Pretti was not the first. 17 days earlier, ICE agent shot and killed Renée Good, a 37year-old American citizen and mom, dropping off her kid at school. She had stuffed animals in her glove compartment. And while ICE agents cursed at her, her last words on this earth were, “I’m not mad at you.”

There have been more incidents. ICE agents detain Liam, a 5-year-old boy who was literally ripped off the streets by the strap of his Spider-Man backpack.

A preschooler in Massachusetts. Marcelo Gomez D Silva, a high schooler, was arrested by ICE on his way to volleyball practice.

And Rumisa Ouric, a student at Tus University, was cornered by six masked agents, shoved into an unmarked van, and taken to a detention facility in Louisiana. And it goes on and on and on, story after story after story.

The people ICE grabbed up, the people they shot, are not threats to you and me. They are not violent criminals that Trump promised to go after. They are not, as Trump said, the worst of the worst. No, these are our neighbors. They are our friends. They are our colleagues. They are people who treat us when we are sick.

The risk is not from them. The risk increasingly comes from out of control ICE agents who can’t follow the basic training manual that our local police, our state police, and our national guard are all trained to follow.

This invasion by ICE is not making anyone in America safer. And if we don’t put a stop to it, these masked agents are going to kill more people.

We are at a turning point in our country. And what we do next now is in front of the United States Senate, in front of my colleagues here today.

This week, we are tasked with funding the government. And one part stands out. Last summer, Trump and the Republicans lavished ICE with $75 billion. That is more than their annual budget for seven years. And maybe that is why ICE is handing out $50,000 recruiting bonuses.

Now, in this budget, Trump and the Republicans want to reward ICE with an additional $10 billion in funding. That’s right. Donald Trump wants us to write another check, hand it over to ICE, and let him keep rolling in the dough.

But here is my view. I am a no. I am a hell no. We cannot give one more penny to Trump’s ICE while its masked, poorly trained agents terrorize people all across this country. It is time for the United States Senate to step up and stop this violence.

We must stand united and we must fight back and we must do it now. I want to be clear. If it were up to me, Congress would completely overhaul ICE, strip the agency down to the studs, repeal billions in Trump’s bloated spending, and end these abuses entirely. and I’m going to keep fighting for that. But there are also some immediate common sense steps that we can take right now. And here is some of what I am fighting for.

One, end ICE violence. No more roving patrols and profiling people on the street. No more treating people like they’re guilty just because of their skin color or because they speak with an accent. No more threatening people with guns just because they are recording what is going on.

Two, follow the law. ICE must follow the same rules as everyone else in law enforcement. Get a warrant from an independent judge before barging into people’s homes and snatching people from their families. And make no mistake, there should be real consequences for anyone who knocks down someone’s door without a real warrant. This is the United States of America. And the last I checked, the Constitution still matters. We must enforce it.

And three, accountability. It’s about time that Border Patrol and ICE wear a damn badge. No more masked secret police. And let me say it again. No more masked secret police.

And real accountability means accountability for Renée Good. It means accountability for Alex Pretti. It means accountability for every other victim of these federal agents. DHS must cooperate with state and local officials for real independent investigations of these shootings.

In these cover-ups, we need transparency and accountability for victims of ICE violence.

Part of the reason that ICE officers can act like they have no oversight is that Donald Trump and the Republicans in Congress prefunded ICE for years in their big beautiful bill. As things stand right now, ICE can skate by for years without getting a budget and without any oversight from Congress.

And you know those health care cuts that are closing hospitals and causing people’s health insurance premiums to spike, that is the money that is now being used by ICE to terrorize our communities. That is wrong.

Congress has the power to claw back those funds. Congress needs to use that power and take back that money so that Congress has meaningful oversight over an out of control ICE. And that should just be the start.

I am urging every single senator, Democrat and Republican, to vote no on this budget bill and stop bankrolling ICE abuses. And I want to put a finer point on this.

Republicans control the White House. Republicans control the Senate. Republicans control the House of Representatives. Democrats are ready to rein in this rogue agency. But we need Republicans in Congress to stop this violence as well. And I know that there are Republicans right now who are seeing what we’re seeing in Minnesota and they know it is wrong.

It is time to speak out. Silence is complicity. Grow a spine. Show some backbone. Being disturbed doesn’t change anything. And the ICE agents who are waving around loaded guns know that Republicans in the Senate have the power to do something and to start righting these wrongs. Help the Democrats put meaningful constraints on ICE. Help our people be safe.

To everyone who is angry, I’m angry, too. I’m furious. And I’m here in the Senate to fight back for you. But it’s in moments like this that we must resist the urge for that anger and fear to take over. It is time to turn our anger into action.

So, I want to end with this. I saw a post by Alex Pretti’s student that I wanted to read excerpts from into the record. This is all a direct quote.

I was Alex Pretti’s final nursing student. For the past four months, I stood shoulder-to-shoulder with him during my capstone preceptorship at Minneapolis VA Hospital. There, he trained me to care for the sickest of the sick as an ICU nurse. He taught me how to care for arterial and central lines, the intricacies of managing multiple IVs filled with life-saving solutions, and how to watch over every heartbeat, every breath, and every flicker of life, ready to act the moment they wavered.

Alex carried patience, compassion, and calm as a steady light within him. Even at the very end, that light was there. I recognized his familiar stillness and signature calm composure shining through during those unbearable final moments captured on camera. It does not surprise me that his final words were, “Are you okay?”

Caring for people was at the core of who he was. He was incapable of causing harm. He spoke out for justice and peace whenever he could, not only out of obligation, but out of a belief that we are more connected than divided and that communication would bring us together. Please honor my friend by standing up for peace, preferably with a cup of black coffee in hand and a couple of pieces of candy in your pocket, just as he would. Step outside with your dog. Breathe in the world. Hike or bike as he loved to do. And let yourself find peace in the quiet moments within nature. Stand up for justice and speak with those whose views differ from your own. Hold your beliefs with strength, but always extend love outward, even in the face of adversity. Take one step, no matter how small, to help heal our world. Through these acts, carry his light forward in his name. Let his legacy continue to heal.

Like many of you, I see the video of his death and I am gutted. I see him lying on the ground as two ICE agents pump a total of 10 bullets into him. I see his lifeless body on that cold Minneapolis street. And I feel sadness and anger and horror down to my bones. But here’s what gives me slivers of hope. It’s every single person who is speaking out and who is refusing to stay silent in the face of these injustices.

It is the post from his last student. It is the hundreds of thousands who haven’t been baited into violence but instead who continue to show up and peacefully protest. They are a reminder that now is the time to dig deep, stand up and say clearly what ICE is doing is wrong and we can stop it. We must stop it. It is time to get ICE out because if we don’t speak up, we are complicit in this violence.

If we don’t speak up, we are giving our okay to a federal agency that is openly and aggressively violating the Constitution. If we don’t speak up, we are giving up on our democracy and our country. It is time to speak up. It is time to make meaningful change. And that change starts right here, right now in the United States Senate.

Thank you, Mr. President. I yield the floor.