[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 72 (Thursday, April 27, 2017)]
[House]
[Pages H2903-H2904]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        TRUMP ERA OF IMMIGRATION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Illinois (Mr. Gutierrez) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. GUTIERREZ. Mr. Speaker, ``This is a new era. This is the Trump 
era.'' Mr. Speaker, those were the words of the Attorney General, the 
former Senator from Alabama.
  The Attorney General has launched a campaign to paint immigrants as 
criminals, rapists, gang members, and ``cartel henchmen.'' In his 
prepared remarks at the border a couple of weeks ago, the Attorney 
General planned to say the following: ``It is here, on this sliver of 
land, where we first take our stand against this filth.''
  When he gave the speech he edited out the words ``this filth'' 
because, I guess, calling immigrants from Latin America ``filth'' was 
even too extreme for this Attorney General. But it remains on the DOJ 
website. In fact, as far as the Attorney General is concerned, any 
immigrant who is here illegally is a criminal.
  He has ordered the government to prosecute immigration violations, 
even minor ones, to the full extent of the law and to make prosecution 
of immigrants a top priority--on par with murder, drugs, 
counterfeiting, and kidnapping.
  He has ordered every one of the 94 U.S. Attorney Offices to appoint a 
special prosecuting attorney so that immigrants are considered public 
enemy number one, nationwide--not drug dealers, immigrants. According 
to the latest Federal data, 46 percent of all new Federal criminal 
prosecution is immigration related--not narcotics. The second highest 
crime prosecuted accounts only for 14 percent of new Federal cases. In 
the new Trump era, a felony prosecution against an immigrant who has 
been living and working here peacefully for decades is three times 
important than a felony prosecution of a drug dealer.
  And that imbalance is not enough for the Attorney General. He wants 
to prosecute immigrants beyond the full extent of the law by turning 
misdemeanors into felonies, and turning felonies into aggravated 
felonies. They think it will not look so ugly when the U.S. is 
deporting moms and dads who have raised successful families--or 
deporting children who grew up in the U.S. from the time they were 
toddlers--if the Attorney General and his team can look and tell the 
American people they were just thugs, gangbangers, and rapists.
  Jeff Sessions and Donald Trump want more immigrants criminalized, 
felonized, and deported. Yes, we are truly in the Trump era.

[[Page H2904]]

  But let's be frank. This is not a surprise when Donald Trump 
descended the gold escalator and announced his candidacy for President. 
Almost the first words out of his mouth were Mexicans are rapists, 
murderers, drug dealers, and immigration is turning America into a war 
zone.
  When he was a Senator from Alabama, the Attorney General made a 
career of associating immigrants with crime and doing his best to 
defeat reforms that would strengthen legal immigration and reduce 
illegal immigration. Deportation, criminalization, and restricting 
legal immigration were the bedrock of this Attorney General's approach 
when he was a U.S. Senator.
  Our legal immigration system already works fine according to both 
Senator and Attorney General Sessions, no matter that some people who 
are receiving their visas today applied for them when Bill Clinton was 
President and that those applying for visas today will probably get 
them when Chelsea Clinton is President of the United States.
  Mr. Speaker, when your constituents say, ``Hey, why don't those 
immigrants come here legally?'' or, ``Why don't they just go back and 
come back legally?'' the answer is clear: as a Senator, our Attorney 
General made sure that that was impossible.
  Next week, millions of Americans will take to the streets to 
demonstrate against mass deportation, the border wall, prison beds, and 
drive-by deportations. But it is not because we are soft on crime or 
love immigrants more than the people who were born here. No. We have a 
different vision of what the United States is and should always be.
  We are not an incarceration nation, a nation hostile to other 
countries and their people. We are a great nation, a nation that, in 
her greatness, is a beacon of hope to refugees, a land of opportunity 
for entrepreneurs, and a democracy with separate branches of government 
that act as effective checks and balances on unlimited power.
  The American people are sensible, fair, and pragmatic, and are 
correct when they reject the idea that a wall makes sense in the 21st 
century as the centerpiece of our immigration policy. We are not 
persuaded by the poetry of the Attorney General when he stands at the 
border and says: ``It is here, on this sliver of land, where we first 
take our stand against this filth.'' No, we think of another, better 
poem, the one at the Statue of Liberty, the lady with her torch in the 
harbor, who shares our deeply held values as Americans and says every 
day to the entire world at that harbor: ``Give me your tired, your 
poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.''

                          ____________________