Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and congressional Democrats have introduced a sweeping investigation into potential misconduct within the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration crackdown that has ensnared residents, made use of racial profiling and terrified communities for months.
Bass and the highest Democrat on the Home Oversight and Authorities Reform Committee, Robert Garcia (D-Lengthy Seaside), introduced that Congress will open up “a broad investigation” into arrests of U.S. residents by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, in addition to one other investigation into immigration raids total. The announcement was made Monday at a information convention at L.A. Metropolis Corridor.
“Donald Trump and [Department of Homeland Security Secretary] Kristi Noem are terrorizing immigrants, working folks, the folks of Los Angeles and of our state each single day,” Garcia mentioned. “They violate the regulation they usually violate the structure.”
Garcia mentioned that his Home committee would examine “each single brutal misconduct” that immigration authorities have dedicated in Los Angeles in addition to throughout the nation.
Concurrently, the Senate’s Everlasting Subcommittee on Investigations will conduct an investigation into experiences of the detention of a minimum of 170 U.S. residents by immigration authorities, which was reported by ProPublica final week.
“Troublingly, the sample of U.S. Citizen arrests coincides with an alarming improve in racial profiling — notably of Latinos — which has been properly documented in Los Angeles,” Garcia and Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) wrote in a letter to Noem. “In a sample symptomatic of a disregard for civil rights by DHS, U.S. residents have confronted prolonged intervals of detention.”
For months, brokers have roamed the streets of Los Angeles toting weapons and chasing down immigrants. The scenes which have performed out on the streets — protesters being arrested, immigrants dragged out of their vehicles — have been repeated in Chicago and different cities with largely Democratic management.
Mayor Bass mentioned the arrests of Americans implies that nobody within the nation is protected.
“This will occur to anybody, to all of us, at any time frame,” she mentioned.
Garcia mentioned that the primary listening to of the Home committee will probably be held in Los Angeles and that Angelenos ought to attend and be heard on immigration enforcement points.
The congressman didn’t give a date for the listening to, however mentioned he hoped it could be quickly.
Within the letter that Garcia and Blumenthal despatched to Noem on Monday, the legislators known as on the Division of Homeland Safety to report the full variety of U.S. residents who’ve been detained by immigration authorities, in addition to how lengthy every particular person was detained. Additionally they requested for info concerning the coaching that CE and Customs and Border Safety brokers obtain on use of pressure, amongst different issues.
The White Home and the Division of Homeland Safety didn’t instantly reply to requests for remark.
