During a joint House and Senate Judiciary Committee hearing last week, Sen. Alex Padilla (D-CA) spoke about Republican plans to strip federal funds from states that do not cooperate with their agenda on immigration.
00:00Thanks, Senator Brumenthal. Next is the former chairman of the Immigration Subcommittee of Senate Judiciary and now the ranking member, Senator from California, Senator Padilla.
00:12Thank you, Senator Durbin, Congresswoman Rask, and thank you for your leadership and your voice and your friendship as well.
00:22And thank you to all the witnesses for making the time to be here and for your courage to speak up and to speak out.
00:30Now, over the years, I've seen my Republican colleagues express serious concerns about states' rights, states' authority, right?
00:40Just a fundamental construct in our Constitution.
00:46They speak about the need to stop the federal government from overreach on a whole host of issues.
00:51They've talked about guns. They've talked about education.
00:55They've talked about a woman's autonomy and choices over her own body.
00:59They've talked about vaccinations, you name it.
01:02But as we sit here today, we witness a Trump administration and a Donald Trump that is running roughshod over states that he disagrees with.
01:15And it's been curiously quiet on the other side of the aisle right now.
01:23I wonder to myself, where's the outrage over Donald Trump's threat to withhold funds from states on, just based on any particular item of his agenda that a state disagrees with?
01:38Where's the outrage when the Trump administration ignores the law about spending levels at Congress on a bipartisan basis authorized and acted upon?
01:52Where's the outrage when the president seeks to make it harder for eligible citizens to register and to vote?
01:58Where's the outrage when the president sends armed forces into a state, into communities domestically over the objections of the governor of that state, let alone local mayors and local law enforcement?
02:19All in order to stoke tensions that have already been heightened after a series of increasingly aggressive, performative, cruel immigration raids in places like restaurants, agricultural fields, construction sites.
02:40Shouldn't have to wait for this to happen in your state, colleagues, before we speak up, because you know very well that it's happening in mine.
02:55But this is what we're seeing.
02:57And again, silence on the other side.
03:01Just to speak to California for a second, the state that I'm proud to represent.
03:05California contributes about $83 billion more in funding to the federal treasury than it receives.
03:13We are a donor state more than any other state in the nation.
03:17Yet the Trump administration threatens to strip funds from my state, along with all the states represented by the people around this table.
03:30That's as outrageous as it is un-American.
03:33And so I want to hear more about just what that would mean for the country if he follows through with that.
03:42Attorney General Campbell.
03:44Now, Massachusetts has joined California in arguing that the Trump administration cannot strip federal funding based on a state's immigration-related policies.
03:54Now, we know it's the job of the federal government to enforce immigration law, not the job of states or local governments.
04:02But Massachusetts, California, and others have adopted immigrant-friendly policies at times in the interest of our communities, in the interest of our economy, in the interest of public health and more.
04:15Now, late last week, you secured a victory in one of those lawsuits.
04:18Can you just explain that particular case?
04:23Can you explain the kinds of funds that the Trump administration is trying to withhold and what that withholding of funds would mean for community?
04:31Thank you, Senator.
04:33And, of course, we would all want to acknowledge A.G. Bonta, who is a part of this coalition.
04:38We work closely with him on a regular basis.
04:40And I went to UCLA law school, so I also have to give them a shout-out at UcLaw.
04:47So A.G. Rowe mentioned this earlier.
04:49So it's almost twofold.
04:52You have the administration intentionally seeking to cut funding unlawfully, whether in the context of public health, our libraries, cultural institutions, public safety grants, you name it.
05:03Just unlawfully cut them.
05:04Then you have this other category where they are conditioning the monies on something that we are doing or not doing.
05:11In this case, it was them wanting us to advance certain type of immigration policy within our states and attempting to bully us, frankly,
05:19to implement the cruel and fear-mongering immigration policies that we're seeing from this administration,
05:25including in the ways in which ICE is showing up in our communities, in our respective states,
05:30or to attach other conditions to the grants.
05:33DEI, for example, we've been reminding folks that DEIA policies are lawful,
05:38and they are attempting to tell folks, no, we're going to take your money away if you're doing those policies or implementing DEIA policies,
05:46or we're going to take your transportation funding away or your FEMA funding away if you're not doing our immigration enforcement for us
05:53or some other unlawful policy based on some ideology that they hold as an administration.
06:00So in this most recent case, we won.
06:03A judge essentially said, you cannot do that.
06:07And we, I think this was a preliminary injunction, they all, we have preliminary injunction CROs,
06:12but this was a preliminary injunction where they could not condition funding for FEMA
06:16or certain transportation funding on bullying the states to advance certain type of immigration policy,
06:22which we've seen in other contexts too, and we've also won there as well.
06:27Great.
06:28Let the victories continue.
06:29And it shouldn't be a question, but it has become one.
06:35I mean, up until this administration and this president, you would never conceive of the notion of a president,
06:42of an executive branch of the federal government, not complying with court orders.
06:50But here we are.
06:52Just as a follow-up to your response is a question for Attorney General Plotkin.
06:56You said in your testimony that freezing these funds is making your citizens less safe.
07:02And I understand there was a very passionate response to a question on this topic from Senator Klobuchar.
07:08Can you speak a little bit more of how the administration's actions have made it harder for state and local law enforcement to do its job?
07:17Yes.
07:17Well, first of all, Senator, thank you for your leadership and for your bravery.
07:23I would note just really quickly in response to your last question,
07:25there is one former state attorney general in Washington who once led a coalition of 26 states up to the Supreme Court
07:31advocating against federal government's ability to coerce states through spending, and her name is Pam Bondi.
07:38I think with respect to your question, going to what I said earlier, Senator,
07:43this is an administration that touts law and order.
07:46I would candidly put our states and the states and our coalitions' public safety records
07:51up against any of the states that are not part of our coalition.
07:54When you look at gun violence, rates of domestic violence, human trafficking, drug trafficking,
08:01our approach to law enforcement is working.
08:03Two years running with record low numbers of shootings in New Jersey.
08:06How do we do that?
08:07Well, we've had really close partnerships across federal, state, and local governments.
08:11We've funded things like license plate reader technology, which the Trump administration is cutting.
08:16We've put law enforcement on the street.
08:18We've empowered them to focus on the crimes that we want to prevent.
08:22This administration has done the opposite.
08:25They've cut funding for law enforcement.
08:26They've attacked law enforcement officers.
08:28They've made coordination across state, county, and local, and federal government law enforcement
08:35weaker than it's been at any point, I think, since 9-11.
08:37And the result of that is the people in our states are less safe.
08:42If we're not coordinating and sharing information effectively, people get hurt.
08:47And we've seen it in real cases.
08:49And I would implore the federal government to do, frankly, even what it did in the first Trump administration,
08:55which is separate politics from law enforcement in many respects.
09:01And that is not happening right now.
09:03And I think the upshot here is you're going to see crime potentially go up.
09:08And the blame should be on the parties that are not actively trying to work with law enforcement
09:13to keep our community safe.
09:16And just a couple comments in closing.
09:18I know my time is up, but I think two points that I believe are important for this record.
09:23Number one, to your last point, that's been the situation, the concern, frankly, in Los Angeles these last couple of weeks
09:32between the increasingly cruel and extreme ICE raids and detention, immigration enforcement actions, etc.
09:43But the way the administration has gone about it raises the tensions in Los Angeles or the objections of local leadership
09:51and local law enforcement, the federalization of National Guard troops and deployment into our communities.
09:58And as the protests, which have been by a large peaceful, but we know folks who exploit protests on sensitive issues,
10:07different crowd of folks that caused the vandalism and deluding, etc., even as that was dissipating,
10:14this administration further escalates by sending in the Marines.
10:18What I hear from local law enforcement is that it makes the job of local law enforcement harder
10:23because there's no communication, no coordination.
10:27So not only is it unnecessary, it's frankly counterproductive in putting general public and law enforcement officials in danger, number one.
10:39Number two, a moment just to clarify for the record what sanctuary policy is and what sanctuary policy isn't.
10:47And I apologize if this was covered in the hearing already, but I think there's a big either misunderstanding intentionally or unintentionally
10:54of what sanctuary policy represents, because that's what the administration is holding against the state of California and so many others.
11:01All sanctuary means is a state or a local jurisdiction would not commit their state or local resources
11:08for the enforcement of federal immigration laws.
11:13It is the job of the federal government to enforce federal laws, not state and locals to do that work.
11:19Does it mean that federal government can't come into a state or into a state?
11:23Of course not.
11:24But the job of local law enforcement is public safety.
11:28And it is, based on my experience and if any of you disagree, hurtful to public safety if somebody,
11:37depending on their immigration status, legal or documented or otherwise, chooses not to come forward and report a crime
11:47because of that concern, or if they've been witnesses or have information to a crime,
11:55they will not come forward with that information because of their fear.
12:01I see heads nodding in the affirmative, so I don't see any disagreement.
12:05But I think it's important for the purposes of this hearing, for the purposes of the deliberations of this Congress,
12:10to lay that out, and I will end with this because it just happens to be Los Angeles right now,
12:19just happens to be California right now, just happens to be a conversation about immigrant rights
12:24and due process and due process right now.
12:27But this administration, including the Secretary of Homeland Security, has not been shy about what they perceive is their, quote,
12:34mission to liberate Los Angeles from the governor and from the mayor.
12:41It is a dangerous notion when an administration believes it is their job or that of the military
12:51to determine which duly elected governors and mayors can lead their constituents.
13:01That's part of what we're speaking up against, but a reflection of the tone that this administration chooses to create.
13:09So, again, thank you all for being here. Thank you for your service, your leadership.
