Grassley Opens Judiciary Hearing on Trump Administration’s Historic Efforts to Reduce Violent Crime

They did not.

Instead, they spun an Orwellian tale defaming their political opponents as "authoritarians" engaged in "abuses of government and military power to target and punish dissent."

This self-serving narrative doesn't make America safer. It harms the victims who plead for secure communities and the law enforcement officers targeted by the radicals.

Need I remind these self-declared "defenders of the rule of law" of the very laws they abandoned for open borders years ago.

Those foolish policies paroled over 6,000 people either on the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Terrorist Screening Center Watch list or with criminal records into the United States, and lost track of over two million known got-aways in just four years.

The act of "upholding the rule of law" is not a political exercise for an election season.

Yet, in Governor Pritzker's Chicago, the duty to protect and serve extends only to his political allies.

Just this month, the Department of Homeland Security reported that police under Governor Pritzker's sanctuary jurisdiction refused to answer multiple calls for assistance when violent rioters physically assaulted federal immigration officers.

Those unlawfully present in the U.S. may potentially be subject to both criminal prosecution and immigration removal proceedings.

Operation Midway Blitz in Chicago resulted in the arrest of illegal migrants convicted of assault, domestic violence and murder.

And those are just the criminal records the United States can access.

I'd like to remind my colleagues that foreign criminal records often are not accessible, particularly in countries like Venezuela.

We titled this hearing "Blue City Chaos and Tragedy" because 18 of the top 20 most crime-ridden cities are controlled by Democrats preaching and implementing soft-on-crime policies.

In fact, in 2022, the Heritage Foundation released a report finding a supermajority of high-crime cities in red states are "deep blue and r[u]n by left wing ideologues."

Those ideologues abused federal grant money to push anti-victim policies in local prosecutors' offices and thwart immigration laws.

In June, I released a report outlining how the Soros-backed Vera Institute of Justice used federal funds to embed in progressive prosecutor offices.

Those prosecutors declined to charge a repeat sexual predator, released violent criminals back into the community to reoffend and investigated their political opponents.

In Congress, good faith efforts by some Republicans to work collaboratively on gun solutions through the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act quickly turned to political opportunism.

Democrats abandoned their promises to adhere strictly to the legislative text and authorized warrantless searches of any lawful gunowner who dared to transact a single gun sale from their home.

Many suffered under the Biden administration's tortured reading of the law and executive overreach, but none more so than victims who lost their loved ones to violent crime.

Many of those individuals welcome President Trump's efforts to make their communities safer.

To the National Guard and law enforcement officers working to make America safer, I think all my colleagues would join me in saying, "Thank you for your service."

The left-leaning media has alleged the National Guard is bored. If anything, I think that's a sign their presence is deterring violence.

Before I turn it over to Ranking Member Durbin, I'd like to play a one-minute video that shows the human cost of soft-on-crime policies.

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