During a House Judiciary Committee hearing, Rep. Becca Balint (D-VT) ripped into House Republicans for enabling President Trump's deportations, and their efforts to further ICE authority via the reconciliation package.
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00:00Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have a short video I'd like to show.
00:30Thank you, Mr. Chair.
01:01News 4, Spencer Humphrey is here with their frightening ordeal.
01:04Spencer, what's going on here?
01:06Yeah, well, get this. That family just moved here about two weeks ago from out of state.
01:11And this is how their life in Oklahoma got started.
01:14They say they told federal immigration agents they had the wrong people,
01:18but those agents kept treating them like criminals, even though they're all U.S. citizens.
01:25Fear.
01:25Because I did feel a time that I was going to die.
01:28So much fear.
01:29I kept praying. I said, God, please let me live through this moment.
01:33Humiliation.
01:34I meant I was a zero. I was nothing.
01:36Pure disbelief.
01:38I just couldn't understand how is this happening to us.
01:41All just for wanting a fresh start.
01:44Mr. Chair, on the morning of Thursday, April 24th, about 20 armed federal agents broke into a home occupied by a family of U.S. citizens in Oklahoma City who had just moved there two weeks prior from Maryland.
02:07ICE agents, ICE agents mistaking the current occupants for the former, broke down the door, terrorized the family, and they repeatedly said, we are citizens.
02:21You have the wrong people.
02:24We are citizens.
02:25It happened in the middle of the night.
02:27But three children at gunpoint were forced outside to stand in the rain in their underwear while their mother pleaded with these agents to tell them what was going on.
02:41They ignored the pleas.
02:43They ripped apart the entire house.
02:45They seized cash, documents, electronics, their computers as evidence.
02:50When the family asked when they would get their stuff back, the agents responded, well, it could be days or it could be months.
02:57This was all a colossal mistake.
03:01The names on the warrant did not match the people who lived in the house.
03:08This is what we have created here.
03:10This is Trump's America.
03:11These were citizens who were treated like this.
03:14This is what we want you to open your eyes to.
03:18If it can happen, as we've said time and time again, if it can happen to folks with green cards, it can happen to citizens.
03:26And in Oklahoma City, we see a perfect example of that.
03:29This is what we're talking about.
03:31It's not other people.
03:34It's us.
03:35It's our neighbors.
03:36It's our friends.
03:38It's people who just moved from Maryland to Oklahoma for a better life and have their house destroyed.
03:44And they can't get answers.
03:45If we watch the rest of the news clip there, they're asking ICE, who's responsible for this?
03:50And then they're sending them to another agency.
03:52And they're sending them to another agency.
03:54And nobody is accountable for what happened to them.
03:58This is what my colleagues are trying to fund with this bill.
04:05Armed federal agents breaking into homes, even of U.S. citizens.
04:12Traumatizing them, taking their possessions.
04:16This is Trump's America.
04:18That's why we continue to talk about due process.
04:24It's not some pie-in-the-sky idea.
04:28It's what literally holds our country together.
04:31Without due process.
04:33Without the belief in the Constitution.
04:36We are not Americans.
04:37That's what gives us the ability to say we are an exceptional country in the world.
04:45That everyone who lives here gets due process.
04:49And we're going to keep saying this over and over and over again.
04:56For everyone who lives here.
04:59What happened to that family, once again, of American citizens in Oklahoma City should scare the hell out of all of us.
05:09And we should not be using this committee to find more money to pump into ice so that these things can happen.
05:20This family is all of us.
05:23That's what we're trying to say today.
05:25This family is all of us.
05:27And I can't believe that in our name, on our watch, this is happening to people who live in this country.
05:39Open your eyes.
05:40Wake the hell up.
05:42I yield back.