[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 212 (Tuesday, December 16, 2025)]
[House]
[Page H5909]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           LEGACY IMMIGRATION

  (Ms. Ocasio-Cortez of New York was recognized to address the House 
for 5 minutes.)
  Ms. OCASIO-CORTEZ. Mr. Speaker, President Trump ran on a promise to 
the American people that ICE would go after the worst of the worst.
  Well, we are now coming up on a year of this Presidency, and I want 
to talk to the folks at home who feel disillusioned by what ICE is 
doing in our country.
  What we have seen is that ICE is not overwhelmingly going after 
criminals. In fact, over 70 percent of people currently detained in 
detention facilities do not have a criminal record.
  Who are they going after? They are going after 6-year-olds in my 
district. They are going after students and permanent residents for 
their political views. They are going after Americans born and raised 
in the United States. Time and time again, Trump has floated taking 
away citizenship from U.S. citizens based on their ethnicity.
  At every point, this administration has lied to us about ICE in 
America while some of the wealthiest actors in our country have tried 
to sell us a myth to defend it, including private prison contractors. 
That myth, that ideology, is that our immigrant neighbors are our 
enemies and more dangerous than us. They sustain that myth because if 
everybody believes it, they can get away with robbing all of us.
  I want to remind you where the real crime is. It is in the oligarchs 
taking $170 billion of our money from healthcare and food assistance 
and public programs and taking that and funneling it into a secret 
police program.
  It is the authoritarians trying to create a black box, because once 
it is established they can put political dissidents inside of it.
  But their hatred is a story, a myth, and we can choose to reject it. 
Donald Trump and Stephen Miller want you to believe that this is who we 
are as a country. We are here to say that it is not.
  We are a country that has fought and defeated the Confederacy, that 
has defeated a history of civil rights violations, of secret police, 
and of fascism. We are a country guided by a monument to freedom on the 
waters of New York City who shines brightly and welcomes the ``huddled 
masses yearning to breathe free'' to our shores.
  Right now, I ask everyone in our country to fight for that ideal, to 
fight for this legacy.

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