As lawmakers look for a way forward on a Homeland Security spending measure, the emphasis has initially focused on how President Donald Trump’s aggressive immigration policies have impacted communities hundreds of miles from where two U.S. citizens were shot and killed by federal immigration officers.
Minneapolis, where Renee Good and Alex Pretti were shot by federal immigration officers last month, has effectively served as the epicenter of criticism of Trump’s aggressive enforcement policies, but in congressional roundtables and correspondence, lawmakers have made it clear that the impact of that policy has had wide-ranging consequences.
The concerns haven’t just come from Democrats.
Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, a Republican who is retiring at the end of his term this year, said Tuesday he sent a letter to the Department of Homeland Security seeking answers on enforcement operations in Operation Charlotte’s Web in his state.
“The operation resulted in the apprehension of several criminal illegal aliens with extensive criminal records, an outcome I applaud,” Tillis wrote. “At the same time, multiple public reports allege that U.S. citizens were detained, subject to force, and experienced damage to personal property.”
In his Feb. 2 letter, Tillis requested encounter-level data involving U.S. citizens, including stops, detentions, questioning, searches, releases, uses of force and property damage incidents. Tillis also seeks information on protocols for reporting this data, the total number of apprehensions in Operation Charlotte’s Web and the total number of encounters involving U.S. citizens.
Meanwhile, four Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee — Reps. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, Pramila Jayapal of Washington, Mary Gay Scanlon of Pennsylvania and Lucy McBath of Georgia — wrote a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on Monday asking her to rescind a memo allowing immigration agents to enter homes without a judicial warrant.
The letter cites incidents of immigration officers entering homes, including that of U.S. citizen ChongLy “Scott” Thao in St. Paul, a Hmong immigrant who was subjected to masked immigration agents forcing open his door and entering his home.
“They held him in his home at gunpoint, then hauled him from the house into subfreezing cold wrapped in a blanket, wearing nothing but sandals and underwear,” the letter says. “After realizing they had the wrong home and that Mr. Thao was a U.S. citizen with no criminal record, agents brought him back to his home, checked his ID, and left without apologizing for their humiliating, illegal, and unconstitutional conduct.”
Congressional Democrats led by Rep. Robert Garcia of California, top Democrat on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, and Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, top Democrat on the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, held a bicameral forum on Tuesday to highlight stories demonstrating the negative impact of aggressive immigration enforcement tactics. Among those testifying at that forum were Brent Ganger and Luke Ganger, brothers of Renee Good.
Garcia said since a Dec. 9 forum the “violence and the lawlessness has actually escalated,” saying Democrats have tracked more than 470 incidents on an immigration enforcement dashboard during the start of the second Trump administration, including 186 that include problematic use of force by agents.
“Now, these are not isolated mistakes,” Garcia said. “They are a clear pattern, and you know, that’s the tip of the iceberg. We’re seeing ICE, CBP, other parts of DHS all across our country terrorize communities.”
Blumenthal called for reforms, including body cameras, independent investigations and the right to sue federal officers.
“If a local cop can be sued, so should an ICE agent or a CBP official, and so should Greg Bovino and Kristi Noem and Todd Lyons and Stephen Miller, and yes, Donald Trump,” Blumenthal said, referring to former Border Control head Bovino, acting Immigration and Custom Enforcement director Lyons and homeland security adviser Miller.
Marimar Martinez, a U.S. citizen and resident of Chicago, testified on Tuesday how she was shot five times by Customs and Border Patrol agents, then later faced charges for assaulting the agents who shot her before they were dropped.
Garcia read from text messages he said were shared by immigration officials after the incident, which included remarks from one agent bragging about firing five shots and Martinez having seven holes, and said DHS allowed the agents to tamper with evidence and potentially destroy it.
“They are actively working to deny you justice to an American citizen, who was shot and almost murdered,” Garcia said.
But while some Republicans, like Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, agree that such incidents demonstrate overreach, others side with law enforcement.
Congress has until Feb. 13 to find a deal for a spending bill with $64.4 billion in discretionary funding for DHS along with other key public safety agencies, as well as $26.4 billion for disaster relief.
Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma, a member of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said Wednesday occasional incidents of U.S. citizens getting ensnared in immigration enforcement operations should not be unexpected.
“I would say [with] any law enforcement, there is occasionally a time that there is a questioning or an arrest that they then go back and look at and say this person was a suspect or a person of interest, and they find out later, no, they’re really not,” Lankford said. “I mean, we could highlight that in any law enforcement entity in the entire country.”
Lankford dismissed Democratic demands for restrictions on arrests without a judicial warrant, asserting the request fails to recognize administrative and judicial warrants work together in enforcement operations.
“That’s a problem that is literally making the entire country a sanctuary country,” Lankford said. “You’ve got to have administrative and judicial warrants to be able to do basic operations and judicial warrants.”
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