Masuda Statement on ICE
The disregard and cruelty we have witnessed from ICE agents in Minnesota and across the United States is a threat to the safety and Constitutional rights of Americans everywhere.
Since President Trump took office, ICE agents have shot at least 16 people. Six are dead, including U.S. citizens like Renee Good, a mother of three and a wife who was shot and killed by an ICE agent on January 7th. In recent days, we have seen ICE agents forcibly remove an elderly man, a naturalized U.S. citizen, from his home while wearing a bathrobe in the freezing Minnesota winter, a 5-year old boy separated from his father after school and sent to Texas, a family with six children whose car was hit with a pepper grenade that required a 6-month old infant to be revived with CPR, and an off-duty Minneapolis police officer who was stopped at gunpoint by ICE agents. These are only a handful of stories from over a year of the Trump Administration’s brutal and chaotic immigration enforcement.
At a time when working families struggle to pay for groceries, gas, insurance, and healthcare, our tax dollars are funding ICE to terrorize our communities, paying bonuses for poorly trained immigration enforcement agents, and sending profits to private prison companies built on human suffering.
Congressman McClintock chairs the Immigration subcommittee and has the power to deliver actual solutions. Instead, he chooses to demonize immigrants, including his own constituents, divide our communities, and waste taxpayer money.
This Administration’s dangerous tactics must stop, and Congress has the power to do something now:
Demand full investigations: Congress must investigate immigration enforcement actions across the United States that violate the Constitution and U.S. law. This includes injuries, abuse, and deaths during enforcement actions and at detention facilities; abuses of power by federal immigration agents; and the misuse of data and AI tools to target and harass immigrants and U.S. citizens. Congress must also investigate any efforts to cover up Renee Good’s killing.
Cut ICE spending and force real reforms: Congress must use its power of the purse to withhold additional ICE funding and prevent money from being diverted to immigration enforcement action until meaningful reforms are in place. This includes passing legislation that bans masks and requires officers to have identification badges visible at all times. Congress must also oversee the companies profiting from mass deportations; this deportation-for-profit system makes billions while destroying families.
Hold Secretary Noem accountable: I join the 70+ members of Congress calling for the removal of the Homeland Security Secretary. She has overseen deportations of immigrants to foreign prisons without due process, blocked congressional inspections of ICE facilities, allowed agents to arrest people without warrants, repeatedly lied to the American people about incidents with clear video evidence and credible witnesses, ignored abuses of power and unconstitutional actions from agencies she oversees, and gave a $220 million contract to a firm linked to her associates. She must be removed from office.
These are merely band-aids to immediately stop the horrific actions of this Administration. We must implement real solutions to ensure our immigration system works, our law enforcement targets actual criminals, and law-abiding immigrants can follow the legal immigration process. We need common-sense reforms focused on community safety, protecting American jobs while growing our economy, and reducing the cost burden on taxpayers. This means enforcement that targets dangerous criminals instead of working families, legal pathways that people will actually use, support for CA5 businesses and farmers who need legal workers, and an end to wasting billions on enforcement that makes no one safer.
I will use every tool in Congress to fight for solutions that work.
