Jasmine Crockett Brings Up Unnerving Report Of U.S. Citizen Swept Up By ICE Agents

Forbes Breaking News

At a House Judiciary Committee hearing on Wednesday, Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) promoted an amendment to force ICE agents to identify themselves and not wear masks.

Transcript

00:00recognize to explain the amendment. Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman. This is a very simple

00:06amendment that is actually about public safety, public safety of everyone involved, ICE agents,

00:11as well as the community at large, as well as those that potentially are going to be apprehended

00:16by ICE. And simply, it would require that ICE identify themselves and ensure that they do not

00:23wear masks, except if medically necessary or if necessary to preserve the integrity of undercover

00:29operations in order to use funds for civil ICE enforcement actions. With every day that passes

00:35in this administration, we are seeing more and more ICE officers rounding up people off the streets

00:41into vehicles. And honestly, some of them look like they are supposed to be my criminal defendants in

00:46court. It looks like people are getting robbed. It looks like people are about to endure carjacking.

00:53And in fact, I have a video to describe what I'm talking about.

00:59Shocking video showing the moment ICE agents smashed a car window and forcibly removed a man

01:04in New Bedford. 29-year-old Juan Francisco Mendez has no criminal record and was...

01:09...went viral earlier this week after police say Johnson impersonated an ICE officer.

01:14You got caught, Juan. Where you from, Mexico? You from Mexico?

01:18Now, this is what we have going on in our country. The sad part is that, honestly, both of them look

01:26like they could be part of the same team. And unfortunately, you have people in both of those

01:32situations. The first situation, when the officers were busting out their windows, to be clear,

01:39there was no record. There was no reason to go after the people that were in that car.

01:44And then, in the second situation, you had someone that literally took their car keys and you're

01:50talking about people sitting there in fear because they literally don't know if this is somebody who

01:56was authorized to do this. So this is about safety. And let me tell you about safety. Now, I know Lance

02:02Gooden is running around here somewhere. Now, Lance Gooden is from Texas like I am. Chip Roy is from Texas

02:08like I am. Any of us can tell y'all about how we do it in Texas. We carry. And when I say we, all of us.

02:17I'm licensed to carry, as well as I'm sure a number of my colleagues on that side of the aisle are

02:22licensed to carry. And essentially, we have a stand your ground law in the state of Texas. We have seen

02:29officers, police officers that have gone in under no-knock raids. This is legislation that I carried

02:35when I was on the state level, trying to make sure that I could keep law enforcement safe. Because

02:42when you go into a home and you haven't identified yourself, it is the most dangerous time for law

02:47enforcement agents. And I know that we have some former law enforcement on this side of the aisle as

02:52well. In fact, I had a number of law enforcement agencies that were backing my no-knock bill because

02:59they understood how dangerous it was. So one of the things that we always do typically in criminal law

03:06before we can charge anybody with evading arrest or failing to ID is we have to make sure that people

03:13even know that it was law enforcement. When you have somebody that, say, does something like this,

03:19like busting my window out, you try that in Texas. It may not turn out too well. It needs to be that we

03:26are all on the same page and we say, you need to be properly identified as an ICE agent if we are

03:35going to fund what you are doing. As we are looking around, there are so many people that believe that

03:41their communities are now plagued with crime because they see ICE agents that are not clearly

03:47identified and they are disappearing students on campus, on the sides of streets. They don't know

03:52what's going on. And honestly, if we're not even just talking about stand your ground, in a lot of

03:57states, if you see someone that is committing what you believe to be a heinous crime against somebody

04:03else, you're allowed to take action. We are talking about putting not only the people, which half of

04:10them are innocent in the first place, because we love to grab up some citizens wrongfully. We know it

04:15happened down in Florida. Y'all may not care because it was Florida, but it happened down in Florida

04:19where we had a U.S. citizen that was sitting in jail for 48 hours because of yet another mistake

04:25of ICE. In Milwaukee, we had three citizens, a toddler and his mother and the grandmother that

04:30were detained and sent to an immigration detention center after they reportedly were overheard

04:37speaking Spanish. In short, what we don't want is to create even more issues, and that's what we're

04:44doing. I would never imagine, and I'm going to be honest, I have never seen law enforcement. Now,

04:52I haven't had to deal with cases that involved ICE. I'm going to be honest about that, but I have never

04:57seen a police officer, whether he was city or whether he was a county sheriff's deputy, do the kind of

05:03things that I've been seeing, busting out windows, kicking down doors. And to be perfectly honest,

05:09if that's the operations of ICE, we probably need to work on that as well. But at the end of the day,

05:16if this is what they are going to do and how they are going to conduct themselves, I can tell you,

05:21I'm sorry, I just, this is about safety. Sorry. I will yield. General Lee yields back.

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