Jeffries:
Now, there’s a bipartisan bill sent over from the Senate. Every single Senate Democrat, every single Senate Republican supported that legislation. It would reopen the TSA, reopen FEMA, reopen the Coast Guard, reopen the ability for our cybersecurity professionals to do their job, while at the same time allowing for discussions—tough negotiations—to continue. On one side of that negotiations are my Republican colleagues who want to continue to spend taxpayer dollars to brutalize and kill American citizens, unleashing masked, untrained ICE agents, in some cases storming homes of everyday Americans, ripping them out of their beds in the middle of the night, ripping children away from their families, detaining people in inhumane conditions, refusing to allow state and local authorities to investigate ICE violence and brutality in ways that will be designed to bring about accountability.
This debate, at the end of the day, is really all about: Do you want to compel ICE to conduct themselves like every other cop, police officer or law enforcement agency in the country? Or do you want to continue to spend billions of taxpayer dollars to violently target American citizens and law abiding immigrant families? We choose the American way—fair, just and humane. Now, many of my Republican colleagues have come to the Floor to suggest that this legislation is about defunding ICE. That’s a stone cold lie. Because we know that in the Republican One Big Ugly Bill, which ripped away Medicaid from 14 million Americans, the largest cut—almost a trillion dollars—to Medicaid in American history, at the same period of time, extremist Republicans in their One Big Ugly Bill enacted a $186 billion cut to nutritional assistance—literally ripped food from the mouths of hungry children, seniors and veterans.
That is how