Debbie Dingell Slams Trump Admin's Push To Deport Foreign Student: ‘We Are Losing The Freedom Of Speech’

Forbes Breaking News

During her town hall on Saturday, Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-MI) spoke about criticisms of the Trump Administration and their push to deport some international students.

Transcript

00:00important here. When Congresswoman Dingell says we need, it's just four, that means we must elect

00:07at least four more Democrats in the next election. I mean, this is really serious. When you talk

00:14about what can I do, we need more Democratic Congress people in the next election, and we

00:21all need to help. Even if it's not the one that's on your ballot, we all need to help some of the

00:26ones that are on other people's ballots. Pick a couple that you can support wherever they live

00:32and help drive that election forward, because that's critical for us taking back Congress.

00:38The reason that Trump has been able to do what he's doing and just taking over is because the

00:42Republicans in Congress are letting him do it. We need more of these, so that bullshit stops.

00:50And while she's doing that, I'm trying to get them now. I'm going to get some of these Republicans

00:56to vote with us in committee. We're all working together on all of it.

01:04I really appreciate the energy and all the work that you do. I love what I'm doing today.

01:12It sounds absolutely wonderful. But the truth of the matter is that I still have asked the

01:18majority of Democrats in the Constitution who still don't believe that the better half of putting

01:23up enough of a strategic, cohesive, umbrella strategy to fight fascism, to fight this dictator,

01:30and he is a dictator, in the White House. We are, in many respects, already letting the

01:37political war on this hundred.

01:38And the country can give us a lot of information, and it gives us, in my opinion, in my history,

01:50what I've done. It looks like there's a two-phase broad strategy to help. One is the people. We're

01:57the people. We're out there. We're going to rally. We're going to say, what else can we do? We're

02:01not going to rally the next hundred days. Because research tells us, historical research tells us,

02:07we need 3.5% of the population to be out voicing their people to get the kind of change that they want.

02:16I mean, ultimately, that's 12 million Americans, but if you break it down piecemeal, we can do it.

02:21We have to keep bringing our friends with us to do the work. But the second piece of that strategy

02:27involves you, we have elected officials to bring together organizations that inherently distrust

02:37each other. Organizations that agree on absolutely nothing, on no issues, say one shared value, that

02:46America must be a democracy. And so, there are many examples of this throughout time. You go back

02:56to the 1850s. This kind of a strategy, putting unfamiliar or unlikely partners together. That

03:04gave us a Republican party in the life that they weren't going in. In the 1930s, we crushed

03:09fascism in this country that led up to the World War II that allowed the U.S. to participate.

03:15And we have a good example from the last election. We had Kamala Harris and this change on stage

03:22together, an unlikely partnership. What I'm asking is, can you take that strategy and approach

03:29and amp it up, scale it? I mean, I'm thinking right now of trade unions and CEOs and Black

03:38Rights Matter and law enforcement and you have deep roots in this community. You know everybody.

03:47You know, you have meetings with the U.A.W. and Lynch, with the Detroit Economic Health, and

03:52can you bring these district groups together? An unlikely partnership to help fight fascism.

04:00So, first I want to say to you, what you are saying is, Rosemary has been at Moretown

04:10Health and what you're saying is being expressed everywhere. And it is the collective we. Yes,

04:18I'm a leader. I've got to speak up and I must tell you what I feel. But we can't do it by

04:25ourselves. We have, the first part of this is that we have to be the collective we. We have

04:31to speak up and speak out. And the one thing I do know about President Trump is he wants to

04:37be popular. So, making clear that people don't like his policies is a very important part.

04:43Last Saturday, the Saturday before Easter, down the river, which voted for Donald Trump

04:50every single time, including the year Joe Biden won, 500 people came out on the Saturday before

04:59Easter to make their voices heard. And that's a statement right there.

05:06We are bringing people together. I want to say this. I want to first say that I'm worried.

05:12I'm fighting on two different. One, we are losing freedom of speech. When you go on a college camp,

05:23I say, I mean, the problem is right now, too many businesses are afraid to speak up because

05:28they're afraid of what the repercussions are going to be. If you're on a college campus,

05:33like the University of Michigan, when I was young, not going to say how long ago that was,

05:39the campus was where you could have an exchange of ideas, totally disagree, argue until 4 a.m.

05:48in the morning, listen to different perspectives, learn and get seasoned, and not have to measure

05:54every single word, afraid you could be deported, you could be expelled, or not get a job in the future.

06:01We are losing freedom of speech, and we must speak up and speak out for freedom of speech.

06:08And you're seeing it, you know, when we were in school, we learned about the fundamental principles

06:18of our Constitution were freedom of speech, freedom of press. I went, my very good close

06:24friend, Ruth Marcus, quit the Washington Post because they tried to tell her what she could

06:30and could not say in her column. She's been a columnist at the Post forever. And you saw

06:35the producer of 60 Minutes quit this week. We are losing freedom of press, and we cannot accept

06:42that as a community. Freedom of religion. But most importantly, we are losing due process.

06:50Everybody is entitled to due process. Whether you are an undocumented, if you are a student,

06:57if you, when you get at the courthouse, an American citizen was thrown on the ground and handcuffed,

07:06another undocumented was paying a speeding ticket, probably set up, and arrested by ICE.

07:13We, and you know, people are yelling at me, well, actually they really haven't, Rosemary's

07:18heard. Some people bring it up. I am not voting for message bills that Republicans put on the

07:24floor of the House that sound good, but already are in law, like the Linden Lake Bill, and say,

07:32why are you voting to keep violent, undocumented here? It's already illegal. It's the same on the

07:40Save Act. It's illegal if you're not an American citizen to vote. But you are entitled to due

07:48process. And when somebody gets picked up, they might have had an encounter with law enforcement

07:55because, I mean, the prosecutor in Washtenaw County called and told me that a lot of times

08:01law enforcement will, that each make charges and the victim has had, the person that attacked

08:12or the attacker makes an accusation that's not true. That should never be grounds without due

08:19process for someone being deported. Every person is entitled to due process in this country. It's

08:27one of the most fundamental principles. We are speaking up. We are speaking out. I am bringing

08:33groups together. We are talking about it. I want you, some people have, you know, people,

08:42we really need to understand what's happening in this country. And like one of the biggest challenges

08:48that I have right now is how to fight for an organization to fight to make sure that they're

08:55getting dollars without a target being put on their back and dollars being lost. Like at the University

09:03of Michigan, am I, they have lost their ability to freedom of speech. But those researchers, those

09:10scientists need those dollars for groundbreaking research that's curing diseases, that's making

09:17a difference. When you go to the food banks, those food banks have been cut and people aren't getting

09:22food and they're hungry. And I've got to make sure that people have the food. We got to fight for

09:27snacks so that kids, we got to fight for our schools. So we got to fight to deliver what's got to be

09:33there without putting a target on their back, but making our voices heard and saying, America will

09:40not let our democracy fail. We will stand up for democracy.

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