At a House Judiciary Committee hearing prior to the Congressional recess, Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) questioned a witness about ICE's actions and decried the immigration policies of the Trump Administration.
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00:00All right. Mr. Hauser, it's back to us. I like games every once in a while, and so I have some
00:07questions. The questions are going to be, is it political theater or progress? You ready?
00:15The first question is going to be, doing an executive order revoking birthright citizenship,
00:21political theater or progress? Political theater. It doesn't help the mission of ICE.
00:26Okay. How about revoking student visas? It takes up the time of ICE officers and is political
00:33theater, and it takes away from the national security and public safety mission. How about
00:38bashing car windows of people with no criminal record? That's driven from quotas of arrests being
00:45driven by the White House, and that is politicization of ICE immigration enforcement, so it's political
00:50theater. How about deporting people who are even citizens? That's not even deportation,
00:58but you know what I'm saying. It's political theater, and I believe that this White House
01:02is getting the outcome, you know, the reaction that they want and they desire. How about
01:08arresting political opponents? That would be political theater. Yeah, so here's the deal. I
01:15know that you've been cut off a number of times as you have tried to give answers to various questions.
01:20Thank you so much for explaining that even this committee hearing is actually a bunch of political
01:26theater because there's a lot of things that we could be talking about. We could be talking about
01:30the fact that we are currently in reconciliation, and while everyone else has been told to do things
01:35such as make sure that you take food out of people's mouths, make sure that you get rid of
01:39people's health care, make sure that you are harming our federal workers even more by making
01:46sure that the resources that they need to be able to do their job just kind of disappear, but at the
01:51same time, I think the way that Mr. Moskowitz figured it, it would be approximately $44,000
01:58as relates to a bonus for each ICE agent. Is that correct? It's incorrect. It was $42,000.
02:05Okay. My bad. But the reality is that we do have real problems, and I don't know how we're going
02:12to get to real solutions if we continue to just make everything about politics as it was properly
02:18outlined by the gentleman from Florida. That was a Republican bill, and I'll be perfectly honest with
02:24you. I wasn't really a big fan of the bill myself on my side, so I know that there was a lot of
02:30conservative stuff in that bill that was going to be harmful, and with that, I am going to yield back
02:35to the gentleman from Florida. Yeah, and I'm going to yield time to the recommended register in a
02:41second. Mr. Murillo, on that topic of bonuses, just real quick, do you support ICE agents getting
02:46$42,000 worth of bonuses? There's $800 billion for bonuses. Okay. I say billion, I'm sorry, million.
02:57I apologize. $800 million in there for bonuses. Do you support that? Yeah, what kind of bonuses
03:02are we talking about? Are we talking retention bonuses? This is a great question. Mr. Marino,
03:06great question. They didn't say at all in the backup. There was no documentation at all what
03:13the bonuses were for or whatever. It was just $800 million for bonuses. It sounded like a lot of money
03:18for federal employees for bonuses. Not that we don't want to treat our federal employees great. Of course
03:22we do. But I had suggested $500 million for bonuses, and they said, no, $500 million sounds a little
03:28better, right? Well, look. Or zero. Are you at zero for bonuses, maybe? I never received a $42,000
03:36bonus. Good, perfect. We agree. However, times are different. Recruiting is tougher. Retention is a
03:44challenge. And if that's something that it's needed for, I would support it. So do you support those
03:50bonuses for NOAA, FEMA, the Pentagon, all of the departments, or just ICE? I would support strategic
03:56use of retention bonuses where they were needed. Okay. I'd like to yield the remainder of my time
04:01to Mr. Raskin. Thank you, Mr. Moskowitz. Mr. Hauser introduced the important idea of political
04:08theater. You've introduced the idea of bureaucratic bloat. And our ranking member on the subcommittee
04:14has talked about the assault on the living standards of millions and millions of people in the country and
04:21their health care. I just want to add one final piece of this, which is that Donald Trump and his
04:27family have been making more than a billion dollars a month since they got into office on the crypto
04:34scam. And now he's collecting a $400 million airplane from the dictator of Qatar. There is an absolute
04:41ripoff of the taxpayers taking place in a prostitution of the presidency. And I think that completes the
04:47picture for what's taking place in our country today. I yield back to the gentleman and thank you.
04:51And I yield back. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.