Rep. Ansari Condemns ICE Murders, Calls for Passage of Drain ICE Act

WASHINGTON - Today, Representative Yassamin Ansari (AZ-03) delivered a speech on the House Floor condemning ICE under the direction of the Trump Administration for its continued terrorization of communities across America, including the murder of innocent people.

"ICE, the President's paramilitary secret police force, continues to roam American streets and murder people in broad daylight and in cold blood. We are a nation of laws - not a nation of secret police, cold-blooded murders by federal agents on city streets, and blacksite detention centers," said Rep. Ansari. "We must urgently work to stop these horrific abuses, hold Donald Trump and his cronies to account, abolish ICE, and reform our immigration system. We need to pass my Drain ICE Act so that this horrific agency has not one more cent to terrorize American families and communities."

Ansari's remarks come after her eleventh congressional oversight visit. Last week, Ansari visited the Eloy Detention Center, where detained individuals reported lacking access to basic necessities. Detainees told her that melting ice was often their only source of clean drinking water unless they purchased bottled water from the commissary, and that air conditioning had not worked properly for three months during Arizona's extreme heat.

Due to a measles outbreak, Ansari was barred from entering the Florence Correctional Center but spoke by phone with Marcos, a Brazilian asylum seeker detained there. Marcos described spending seven days at the Mesa Gateway ICE facility sleeping on hard floors, going without showers, and eating the same meals every day. After being transferred to the Florence Correctional Center, he told Ansari that detainees must purchase clean drinking water while in custody.

WATCH

Below is a transcript of Rep. Ansari's full remarks as delivered on the House Floor:

Madam Speaker - ICE, the President's paramilitary secret police force, continues to roam American streets and murder people in broad daylight in cold blood.

First it was Ruben Ray Martinez in March of 2025, but ICE covered it up and kept it from the public. Then it was Alex Pretti and Renee Good.

ICE shot and killed these two innocent people in Minnesota who had done nothing more than exercise their constitutional right to protest and free speech.

And then the administration's right-wing propaganda machine got to work, smearing these two heroes as quote "domestic terrorists" with not an ounce of evidence.

This was coordinated and directed by leadership in the Department of Homeland Security, by then Homeland Secretary Kristi Noem, and by the White House itself through heinous, racist voices like Stephen Miller.

It's not a mistake - ICE agents are completely out of control and that is on purpose. That is their mission.

This is what the Trump Administration wanted to happen from the start - to funnel hundreds of billions of dollars to their paramilitary force and then use masked agents and a nationwide effort to spread fear and terrorize immigrant communities.

The mass deportation agenda is part of their fascist far-right scheme to amass power by using immigrants as scapegoats and deploying federal troops to American cities, like my home town of Phoenix.

All across this country, people are shocked, outraged, and appalled by ICE's conduct and the sheer cruelty of Trump's mass deportation agenda.

And yet it continues to happen in service of arbitrary, brutal quotas for bodies.

Quotas for bodies of real people to fill beds so that for-profit prison companies like GEO Group and CoreCivic can rake in billions of dollars. So families can be torn apart and deported to third countries they've never known.

We're talking about 10,000 arrests in a five-day period this past week.

And as part of all these horrors, ICE has conducted two sickening murders just in the last week. One in Houston and one in Maine.

ICE is using pathetic excuses and spreading more misleading information with the federal government's bully pulpit to cover up their crimes.

This is Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a 52-year-old father who was driving to work and was shot and murdered while doing so.

He was not a domestic terrorist; he wasn't going to ram his vehicle into anybody. He had no criminal record whatsoever.\

He was a hardworking beloved father of American citizens who was working hard to build the American dream. And if you haven't watched his son Ronaldo speak about his dad, I recommend you do so. It is heart-wrenching.

It's outrageous and insane that ICE is claiming Lorenzo "weaponized" his vehicle "in an attempt to run over an ICE law enforcement officer."

Multiple witnesses testified that, "there were never any ICE agents in front of the van. They came in and started shooting from the sides."

As with Alex Pretti and Renee Good, ICE is LYING and lying badly. I honestly cannot believe how terrible their lies are. And then that wasn't enough. ICE murdered another person in Maine, 26-year-old Joan Sebastian Guerrero, somebody who had a work permit, somebody who had a US social security number. And then DHS put out a statement just yesterday, just last night, that said that this man was trying to drive away and they shot him for these vague quotes of public safety.

ICE murdered a Maine resident, a law-abiding resident in front of his wife and his three-year-old daughter for no reason whatsoever. This is just pure evil. Democrats in Congress have been demanding accountability for well over a year.

We are a nation of laws, not a nation of secret police, of cold-blooded murders by federal agents on city streets, and of black sight detention centers.

We must urgently work to stop these horrific abuses, it is a moral stain on our country. We must abolish ICE and we are going to prosecute every single person responsible for directing or enabling or carrying out these crimes.

Lives are at stake. How many more families and communities need to be torn apart for republicans in congress to do something.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and I yield back.

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