Murphy On Fox News: The Country Is Less Safe Because Of ICE

WASHINGTON-U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), Ranking Member of the U.S. Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security, on Sunday appeared on Fox News Sunday with Shannon Bream. As Americans decisively turn against the Trump administration's lawless immigration enforcement operations, Murphy made the case for why Republicans and Democrats must come together to hold an out-of-control Department of Homeland Security accountable to our laws and Constitution. Offering firsthand evidence from his recent oversight trip to detention facilities and an immigration court in Texas, Murphy also debunked the Trump administration's lies about DHS's enforcement practices, effect on public safety, and compliance with the law.

Emphasizing the urgent stakes of the DHS funding fight, Murphy detailed the chaos ICE has sowed in our cities: "What is happening in Minnesota right now is a dystopia. ICE is tear gassing elementary schools. It is disappearing legal residents into cars. It is murdering American citizens. ICE is making this country less safe, not more safe. Today, that is an emergency."

Murphy argued Congress has a clear mandate from the American people to rein in Trump's DHS: "Today, 60% of the American people vehemently disagree with what ICE is doing, and we have to address that emergency right now… The American people have turned against what he is doing. What we want in these next two weeks is to just make ICE follow the law, right? No more of these roving patrols through the cities in which they're demanding that American citizens show their papers. That's what happened in Stalin's Russia. That's what happened in Maduro's Venezuela. That's not America. What we want is for ICE to be able to identify themselves - no more secret police - and then we want accountability for these crimes."

Murphy set the record straight on who ICE is targeting: "I mean, come on, we're still pretending that ICE is going after dangerous people? They aren't. Right now, 70% of the people that they are detaining have absolutely no criminal record."

Murphy appealed to conservatives who value their rights and the Constitution: "If you're a conservative in this country, you should care about the fact that your government is intentionally hurting kids. You should care about the fact that this government is violating the Fourth Amendment, the Second Amendment and the First Amendment every single day on the streets of this country. This is a lawless administration that is also traumatizing our kids, and it just shouldn't matter if you're a progressive, you're a Trump voter, if you're a Biden voter, if you're a liberal - the Constitution is the Constitution, and [it] is being violated every single minute on the streets of this country today."

Murphy stressed ICE's violent abuses and lawlessness is a national problem that extends much further than Minnesota: "I was in Texas two weeks ago, and it is true that while the nation's attention is on Minnesota, where you have American citizens being murdered in cold blood on the street by ICE, the law is being violated very quietly in other places. In Texas, they're violating people's rights every single day. They're locking up hundreds and hundreds of children. They are traumatizing two-year-olds and five-year-olds for no reason. I sat inside an immigration court and watched legal residents coming in, applying for asylum, playing by the rules, and then getting disappeared out of the courtroom by ICE with absolutely no explanation… Just because our eyes aren't trained on a place like Texas doesn't mean that the violation of the law throughout the country is something that we should just excuse."

Murphy slammed Trump for killing comprehensive, bipartisan immigration reform, , arguing the President would rather weaponize a chaotic immigration system to stoke division: "I sat in a room with conservative Republican James Lankford for five months rewriting America's immigration laws so that we would never have this situation, so that we could resolve these cases at the border when somebody is applying for asylum, and Donald Trump killed that bipartisan immigration reform proposal. He's not convening any process to bring Republicans together to try to reform our laws."

He continued: "Donald Trump wants to use the issue of immigration to divide us from each other, to try to make us believe that our neighbors, our lawful resident neighbors, are something that we have to fear. So if Donald Trump wants to try to engage in a comprehensive effort to reform our immigration law - great. But he's not doing that. He's just using our immigration laws to terrorize Americans."

Sharing the story of a family he met in Texas, Murphy exposed ICE's deliberate, systemic efforts to traumatize children: "I sat across from a father detained with his two little children. Even though their mother was at home. They literally got ripped out of the car. Their mother was sitting there with their backpacks, and they were detained. Their mother was at home. The kids were begging to leave every single day. Listen, let's talk about the facts. They are intentionally traumatizing kids."

Blasting the Trump administration's shameful rhetoric following the murder of Alex Pretti, Murphy highlighted why Congress must enforce independent investigations: "The fix is in. Within hours of Alex Pretti's murder, the people in charge of the Department of Homeland Security and the immigration policy in the White House were calling him a domestic terrorist. Were calling him an assassin. How can you believe that there's going to be an independent investigation? And why are they blocking a state investigation? … There has to be a state investigation as well."

A full transcript of the interview is available below.

Bream: Joining us is the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security, Chris Murphy. Senator, good to have you this morning.

Murphy: Great to be with you.

Bream: Okay, so we're going to talk to Senator Graham in a few minutes. And I do think there are places that you guys have some agreement, body cams and those kinds of things. Seems to be some bipartisan buy in. Now, Tom Homan went to Minneapolis this week, said he's trying to turn down the temperature there. He says, 'Yes, states don't have to cooperate, but where they do it can be helpful.'

Here's what he said, 'the more agents we have in the jails - to arrest these people in the safety and security of a jail - it's safer for the officer, it's safer for the aliens, safer for the community. So one agent can arrest a bad guy in a jail, rather than sending a whole team to the community. And with all the hate and radical intent, then we got to send another team for security. So what one agent can do in a jail, we got to send 15 or 16 guys to do.'

Does that sound like a reasonable step to you? People who are in jail going to be released by a state or locality? ICE has said we got a detainer on this person. We think they're removable. Let one agent go in to the jail, versus what we're seeing on the streets of Minneapolis.

Murphy: I mean, come on, we're still pretending that ICE is going after dangerous people? They aren't right? Right now, 70% of the people that they are detaining have absolutely no criminal record. What is happening -

Bream: DHS says 70% of those they're arresting, and that's their number, do have some kind of criminal record.

Murphy: What is happening in Minnesota right now is a dystopia. ICE is tear gassing elementary schools. It is disappearing legal residents into cars. It is murdering American citizens. ICE is making this country less safe, not more safe, today. That is an emergency. That's why, today, 60% of the American people vehemently disagree with what ICE is doing, and we have to address that emergency right now. The constitution is being abandoned by this administration, right now as we speak. And so our focus over the next two weeks has to be reining in a lawless and immoral immigration agency in this nation. That's work that we have to do in the next two weeks. Hopefully it's work that Republicans and Democrats will be able to agree on.

Bream: Okay, there are a number of cities where there are major enforcements going on, but we aren't seeing these same things. Charlotte, Miami, New Orleans, Phoenix, some places that have local leaders who are Democrats, that they're working together. There's just been a major operation: ICE teams from Philadelphia operating in West Virginia, they rounded up about 650 people. Don't see the protest there.

ICE Director Todd Lyons says this, 'When state and local law enforcement work with ICE, immigration enforcement is seamless. It all takes place behind closed doors, between law enforcement professionals, and that's why the public never hears about it.'

So again, would you be for allowing ICE to go in? And our new Fox News polling shows people are 50-50 on this, they think that the locals should work with ICE to cooperate where they can.

Murphy: Well, I was in Texas two weeks ago, and it is true that, well, the nation's attention is on Minnesota - where you have American citizens being murdered in cold blood on the street by ICE - the law is being violated very quietly in other places. In Texas, they're violating people's rights every single day. They're locking up hundreds and hundreds of children. They are traumatizing two-year-olds and five- year-olds for no reason. I sat inside an immigration court and watched legal residents coming in, applying for asylum, playing by the rules, and then getting disappeared out of the courtroom by ICE with absolutely no explanation.

So it is true that we're watching the worst of the worst in Minneapolis, but it should concern every American citizen that there are legal immigrants in this country, tens of thousands of legal immigrants who are doing it the right way - who are applying for asylum - who are being disappeared into horrific prisons all across the country. And just because our eyes aren't trained on a place like Texas doesn't mean that the violation of the law throughout the country is something that we should just excuse.

Bream: Well, when you say disappear, there is a way to track people when they're detained. And if you're in this country illegally, even if you're applying for asylum, if you've overstayed parole or something else, the law allows for your detainment. When it comes to kids, DHS will say, "Listen, the policy - and it's been this way back to Obama and before - that if you have a child, and you are being detained, you have the option of allowing that child to stay with another relative or someone else safe, but if the parent opts that they want the child with them in detention, that's the parents decision.'

Murphy: That is not what is happening today. I mean, I sat across from a father who was detained with his two little children. Even though their mother was at home. They literally got ripped out of the car. Their mother was sitting there with their backpacks, and they were detained with their father -

Bream: But that's the father's choice.

Murphy: No, that's not their father's choice - their mother was at home! The kids were begging to leave every single day. Listen, let's talk about the facts. They are intentionally traumatizing kids. And listen, if you're a conservative in this country, you should care about the fact that your government is intentionally hurting kids. You should care about the fact that this government is violating the Fourth Amendment, the Second Amendment and the First Amendment every single day on the streets of this country. This is a lawless administration that is also traumatizing our kids. And it just shouldn't matter, if you're a progressive, you're a Trump voter, if you're a Biden voter, if you're a liberal - the constitution is the constitution, and [it] is being violated every single minute on the streets of this country today.

Bream: Okay, so we had a federal judge rule a couple of days ago - this is a Biden appointee - saying that the ICE operations can continue in Minneapolis, in Minnesota. That's a Biden appointee judge saying, 'Listen, this is the law.' And you know, you've heard a lot of people from Tom Homan, back to President Obama, saying, 'If you don't like the law, you got to change it.' With these kinds of raids, this kind of ICE enforcement happened under the Obama administration as well. Why not change the law? If you don't like what ICE is doing?

Murphy: Well, as you know, I sat in a room with a conservative Republican, James Lankford, for five months rewriting America's immigration laws so that we would never have this situation, so that we could resolve these cases at the border when somebody is applying for asylum. And Donald Trump killed that bipartisan immigration reform proposal. He's not convening any process to bring Republicans together to try to reform our laws. Donald Trump wants to use the issue of immigration to divide us from each other, to try to make us believe that our neighbors, our lawful resident neighbors, are something that we have to fear. So if Donald Trump wants to try to engage in a comprehensive effort to reform our immigration laws, great. But he's not doing that. He's just using our immigration laws to terrorize Americans.

Bream: But what he's done right now is give blessing to this deal between Senate Democrats, the White House, they negotiated this thing which gives you this two weeks to talk about changes to ICE . So he at least is open to that conversation.

Murphy: Listen, I hope he understands that the American people have turned against what he is doing. What we want in these next two weeks is to just make ICE follow the law, right?

No more of these roving patrols through the cities in which they're demanding that American citizens show their papers. That's what happened in Stalin's Russia. That's what happened in Maduro's Venezuela. That's not America. What we want is for ICE to be able to identify themselves, no more secret police. And then we want accountability for these crimes. We want there to be a real investigation, a state investigation. All we are demanding is that ICE behave legally, lawfully, and morally. And yes, I hope that we can come together, Republicans and Democrats, on that project in the next few weeks.

Bream: Well, Tom Homan talked about that as well this week. Again, saying he's enforced these laws over numerous administrations, over decades. He said, 'agents, yes, will be held accountable.' Because he wants them to be. The good agents never want a bad agent to get away with anything, because they need to have the transparency and the accountability for everyone. So he says that's happening. DOJ says they are investigating Alex Pretti's death as well. Do you find comfort in that?

Murphy: No, no, the fix is in. Within hours of Alex Pretti's murder, the people in charge of the Department of Homeland Security and the immigration policy in the White House were calling him a domestic terrorist. Were calling him an assassin. How can you believe that there's going to be an independent investigation? And why are they blocking a state investigation? Any time that there is this kind of abuse, a murder, an assault by a federal official, there has always been a state investigation. There's always been cooperation between the federal and state government. So that's part of what has to happen here. They want to do a federal investigation? They can. There has to be a state investigation as well.

Bream: It sounds like there are going to be some parallel tracks there. Meantime, we're going to talk about how we handle the situation with the shutdown with your colleagues and see if you can move forward on that. Senator, it's always good to see you.

Murphy: Good to see you.