“We have to fundamentally overhaul the lawlessness of these organizations.”
Earlier today, Hickenlooper voted NO on the DHS funding bill
WASHINGTON – Today, U.S. Senator John Hickenlooper took to the Senate floor to denounce the horrifying killings of Alex Pretti and Renee Good and to demand a comprehensive overhaul of U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement (ICE). Hickenlooper also condemned the threatening and racist “death cards” reports say were left in cars of Coloradans detained by ICE last week.
Earlier in the day, Hickenlooper voted against the DHS funding bill because it failed to reform ICE. Watch his speech HERE.
“The overhaul of ICE that we’re demanding is common sense,”Hickenlooper said. “ICE needs to take their masks off. They need to turn on body cameras. They need to be clearly identified. There can be no accountability without transparency.”
Hickenlooper has consistently pushed for more oversight and transparency for federal immigration enforcement efforts, and has worked to help families desperately searching for loved ones arrested by ICE. He’s shown up at ICE facilities to conduct congressional oversight visits and raise concerns about ICE disregarding due process. He helped launch an investigation into ICE’s unlawful obstruction of congressional oversight and introduced bills to ban ICE from wearing masks, prevent immigration enforcement from targeting schools, hospitals and places of worship, and cut back the excessive funding that MAGA Republicans gave them.For a full video of Hickenlooper’s remarks, click HERE. A full transcript of his remarks is available below:
“Mr. President,
“We like to believe that when democracy erodes, that it’s unpredictable, and in some ways out of our control.
“But history tells us a different story.
“Authoritarianism rises through a time-tested playbook.
“These leaders have learned which moves weaken opponents, which tactics will rally a crowd, and which moments of fear or crisis work best to their advantage.
“They don’t need to invent new strategies. They can run familiar plays.
“There’s one target we’re watching this administration go after the hardest – and that is the truth.
“They began by attacking every source of independent information. They start with universities and colleges.
“They moved on to our largest research institutions.
“They’ve discredited, or tried to discredit, every journalist whose reporting differs from their own, narrow point of view.
“And in doing so, they’ve tried to make the administration and the President the sole source of ‘truth.’
“We’ve seen this play out in Minneapolis during the past few weeks. So let’s get a few facts straight:
“On January 7th, ICE officers shot and killed Renee Good while she was in her own car. She was a mother of three originally from Colorado Springs.
“Then, again, this past weekend, Americans watched the video tape of federal immigration agents shooting and killing Alex Pretti.
“They fired ten times in five seconds. It’s sickening.
“No family should have to witness their loved one being killed in such a fashion. And yet, obviously, Alex’s parents did.
“His parents live in Colorado. I connected with them earlier this week. Among other things, they wanted to make sure that we do everything we can to make sure that Alex’s name is out front, that we keep their son’s story alive to make sure that his life wasn’t lost in vain.
“They’ve asked for truth and accountability. What they’re getting – what all of us are getting – are excuses and lies. Lies about their son.
“The reality of who Alex Pretti was doesn’t fit the administration’s playbook. So, they’re filling the airwaves with lies, repeating them over and over and over to try and somehow get them to stick.
“DHS Secretary Noem, within hours of Pretti’s death, said ‘it looks like a situation where an individual arrived on the scene to inflict maximum violence… and to kill law enforcement.’
“Next, it was Greg Bovino, Trump’s now-fired Border Patrol commander saying Pretti intended to ‘massacre law enforcement’ and that he ‘violently resisted.’
“Stephen Miller called Alex Pretti a ‘domestic terrorist,’ with Vice President Vance and President Trump promoting that sentiment and that blatant lie from their pulpits.
“By this point, we’ve all seen that video – from multiple angles. We’ve seen it with our own eyes. Alex was NOT a terrorist. He was in no way an assassin. He was a U.S. citizen exercising his first amendment right to protest ICE’s lawlessness.
“This week, families in Eagle County, Colorado experienced another type of cruelty that fits into this administration’s playbook.
“They found ‘death cards’ [left in] the cars of their family members who were taken away by ICE agents.
“These cards – I hold one up here – have a history of being used by white supremacist groups to intimidate people of color. ‘Death cards’ is what they call them.
“These cards found in Colorado had the address and the phone number of the Aurora ICE detention facility printed on them. Aurora is a neighboring city to Denver.
“Now, imagine – just for a second – that you haven’t heard from your brother, your sister, and when you finally find their empty, abandoned car, it has one of these ‘death cards’ sitting in the driver’s seat.
“I mean this is cruelty for the sake of cruelty.
“And it fits into the troubling pattern that we’re seeing come from some of the top officials in the White House.
“Now this morning, I voted against government funding that would have handed billions of dollars to DHS. Continuing to fund ICE while federal officers terrorize our cities and kill people is unconscionable.
“We need to stop ICE officers beating Americans, killing Americans, arresting Americans without due process, [and] taking away the civil rights of Americans.
“The overhaul of ICE that we’re demanding is common sense.
“The fact is that these are all basic standards of local law enforcement – who go after violent criminals, gangsters, in many cases the worst of the worst. These are standards that those local police officers already follow.
“ICE needs to take their masks off. They need to turn on body cameras. They need to be clearly identified.
“There can be no accountability without transparency.
“No more unmarked vans and masked agents pulling people over, and pulling people away, and arresting them to wherever. No more roving patrols.
“ICE needs to have judicial warrants signed by a judge. They need to stop arresting children on the side of the road and end these cruel family separation policies.
“Secretary Noem – what she said I think is untenable and unacceptable, and I think she needs to resign. But let’s be clear, ICE is carrying out the policies of our president.
“So just changing the leadership at ICE or DHS is not going to be sufficient. We have to fundamentally overhaul the lawlessness of these organizations.
“This administration is asking us to ignore what we can SEE with our own eyes. They’ve got us to a point where we mistrust so many sources of information and they force us to rely on believing what we see.
“They’re asking us to believe lies about Alex and about Renee, and about what’s happening in Minneapolis.
“But we watched the videos. We saw those videos.
“Those words matter: we watched, we saw.
“Because they acknowledge a larger truth that binds us all together.
“We saw what happened. We saw the cruelty. And we saw and understand that it needs to end.
“Asking us to make peace with that cruelty is asking us to ignore the values that make us Americans. It’s telling us to believe somehow we owe nothing to each other – not to our neighbors, not to our communities, not to our country.
“We will not. We know the truth. And we’re not going to look away.
“Thank you, Mr. President. I yield the floor.”
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