Richard Durbin

Mr. DURBIN

Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Minnesota (Ms. Smith) is necessarily absent.

Mr. DURBIN

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, Friday marks the deadline to fund the Department of Homeland Security. Last week, Congress--House and Senate--passed the five outstanding, bipartisan government appropriations bills that funded 96 percent of the Federal Government. Senate Democrats drew the line when it came to funding this Department, the Department of Homeland Security, after what we had seen in Minneapolis, in Chicago, and so many other places. We successfully removed that bill from the government funding package to allow for negotiations with respect to Federal immigration enforcement agents and their operations. Republicans have had a week to work with Democrats to reform ICE and the border patrol and rein in the campaign of terror we witnessed in Chicago, Minneapolis, and across the country. I am sorry to say we have made little progress in reaching an agreement. The administration's campaign of terror has led to the detention of innocent people, serious injuries, and deaths, including those of Alex Pretti and Renee Good in Minneapolis--both American citizens who were exercising their constitutional rights to observe and protest ICE enforcement. Americans are seeing this chaos play out in countless videos, and they are demanding change. President Trump has justified these militarized immigration enforcement operations as targeting the ``worst of the worst'' and ``murderers, rapists,'' terrorists, the criminally insane. But the statistics of the Department of Homeland Security tell a much different story--the real story. New reporting from CBS News shows that less than 14 percent of the nearly 400,000 immigrants arrested by ICE in 2025 had charges or convictions for violent criminal offenses. The President was railing at his rallies: We are going after the murderers, the terrorists, the rapists, the child abusers--and then take a look at the numbers. Less than 14 percent of the 400,000 immigrants arrested by ICE in 2025 had charges or convictions for violent crimes or offenses. And this data from DHS indicates that only 2 percent--2 percent--of those arrested by ICE over the past year have any alleged gang affiliations--2 percent. Nearly 40 percent of all those arrested by ICE in 2025 did not have any criminal record at all-- none. And that is the truth of the matter. These militarized immigration enforcement operations are not really designed to lock up the ``worst of the worst.'' They are designed to sow fear in a community. I saw it Saturday. St. Pius V church in a little village in the city of Chicago, a Hispanic community--the people all wore masks, very careful where they walked and where they went shopping, when they went to a restaurant, when they went to church. That is the climate of fear that has been created by this operation. Removing dangerous criminals? Two percent--2 percent of those arrested and detained and separated from their families had any criminal background. While Operation Metro Surge in Minnesota has been in the national spotlight recently, the city of Chicago, as I mentioned, is no stranger to Trump's campaign of terror. Last week, I also attended a Democratic forum examining the Department of Homeland Security's use of violence in immigration enforcement operations. There, I learned what happened to a 30-year-old Montessori schoolteacher, Marimar Martinez. Listen to this story and tell me that ICE is focusing on terrorists. Marimar Martinez, on a Saturday morning, decided to take some spare clothing in her closet to her local church to give to people who might need it. She got in her car, drove over to her church. Marimar Martinez is a U.S. citizen. She was born and raised in Chicago. What happened to her? ICE confronted her on a major street in Chicago on that Saturday morning. And when she drove away, they fired and hit her five times. Five times they shot her, a CBP agent during the Trump administration's Operation Midway Blitz. Five times--she is lucky to be alive. Ms. Martinez described that moment in her opening statement. She said: I struggle with the memories of the day . . . the shots ringing out and the burning sensation as the bullets ripped through my skin and body. What crime is she guilty of? Taking spare clothing to her church on a Saturday morning. Good enough for ICE to fire away. The fact that Ms. Martinez is alive today after being shot five times is a miracle. I told her as much. But immediately after the shooting of Ms. Martinez, the agent--I won't say his name; we know what it is--the agent of CBP, a 23-year- veteran, went on his cell phone and bragged about his shooting abilities in private text to fellow agents. He wrote: I fired 5 rounds and she had 7 holes [in her body]. Put that in your book boys. He was so proud of himself. He shot this woman, this 30-year-old Montessori teacher, five times. What happened to the van that they alleged she rammed into causing this shooting incident? Mysteriously, it disappeared from the scene. The ICE van was taken away. Well, where would they take the ICE van? They took it to Maine, a thousand miles away from Chicago. Why Maine? That happened to be where the agent lived, but it also was an effort to cover up the actual evidence of what happened that day. You see, there was no indication on the van, the body of the van, that she rammed into it, and she did not. There was no evidence whatsoever, but they removed the evidence. So what happened when they brought the charges in court against Marimar Martinez for ramming into the ICE van and for defying the agents? What happened to those charges? They were all dropped. Five times that woman was shot on the streets of Chicago, and when it came to pressing charges, the government dropped all charges against her. Ms. Martinez, a teaching assistant to little kids, spoke of the trauma she continues to carry with her: The physical scars will always be there in the mornings and evenings, when I get dressed and I stare at my body [I am] now permanently disfigured by the five . . . bullet [holes]. She continued: They will be there this summer when I head to the beach with my dogs and family. They will be there when I get down on the floor with the students. That shooting will be with her the rest of her life. They dropped all charges. They removed the van that was involved in this incident a thousand miles away and repainted it. Does Ms. Martinez sound like the ``worst of the worst''? Does she sound like a murderer? A rapist? A terrorist? Criminally insane? Of course not. Why are we letting this happen in America? For goodness' sake, the Constitution is clear. There are guarantees people have of their own freedom and liberty. My friends on the other side of the aisle look past that. They don't want to talk about it. I am afraid I can't stop talking about it because what happened to her is totally unjust. So now, we are trying to change the scene. We are doing this because what happened to her must stop. That is why Senate Democrats are setting to rein in ICE and CBP. Last week, Leaders Schumer and Jeffries laid out our reforms to Federal immigration enforcement in writing. All we are asking is that ICE and other Federal immigration agents adhere to reasonable standards to maintain trust, safety, and accountability in our communities. So what specifically are we demanding? First, stop these roving patrols. The United States is a nation governed by the rule of law. Government agents cannot indiscriminately round up people without probable cause, and they can't break down the doors of someone's home and disappear them without a judicial warrant. Did you see the video in Minneapolis where they broke down the door of one of these families? The man was taking a shower. He wrapped a towel around himself in the freezing weather and was dragged out to the ICE vehicle. Turns out, they knocked down the wrong door. They identified the wrong person. They crashed his door, invaded his home, and had no basis for doing so whatsoever. Government agents cannot indiscriminately round up people without probable cause, and they can't be breaking down the door of your home. There is an amendment to the Constitution which was written specifically to protect us from this sort of government behavior. Second, there needs to be accountability, including new use-of-force standards that allow local law enforcement to participate in investigating complaints of excessive force by immigration agents. You think if there was an investigation into the shooting of Marimar Martinez that they would allow the vehicle that was involved, ICE vehicle involved, to be removed a thousand miles away from Chicago and repainted before any hearing? Of course not. And there should be no immigration enforcement operations at sensitive locations like hospitals, schools, churches, courts, and polling places. Finally, we are asking that body cameras be mandatory and masks come off: Masks off, cameras on. Virtually every professional law enforcement department in my State and the Nation has accepted that standard--all except for ICE. They want to be secret police, secret paramilitary, and they want to wear masks to hide their identity. What are we doing in this country? Democrats are united in our cause for these commonsense reforms, and the American people back us up on every single one of them. This week, we need the Republicans to work in good faith to get the deal done. In the meantime, I want to note something. Secretary Noem, she has been on television a lot, hasn't she--paid ads as well as her own appearances. She has not appeared once before the Senate Judiciary Committee in the last year. When I have asked repeatedly of the chairman of that committee to bring her in for an accountability session, he has tried, with no luck. She says she is too busy--too busy to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee and explain the lethal mismanagement of her Agency and the damage that is being done. She says now she may come in a few weeks, if she is not too busy--I might add, and if she still happens to be the Secretary of that department. The administration must end this aggressive immigration enforcement surge and mass deportation campaign. ICE and Federal agents need to play by the same rules as professional police forces across America. That is the bottom line. If the police force in your town and your State can do its job without wearing a mask on the job, can do the job with a video camera recording what actually happened, why in the world are these Federal agents treated any differently? Why are they given special privileges so they can arrest 2 percent of the people that they are looking for? That is not a very enviable record. I yield the floor. Recognition of the Majority Leader

Mr. DURBIN

Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Hawaii (Ms. Hirono) is necessarily absent.

Mr. DURBIN

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, today, the Senate will vote to confirm Brian Lea to the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Tennessee. Over the course of his legal career, Mr. Lea has demonstrated his clear partisanship. In his current role with the Justice Department, he has defended the Trump administration against several lawsuits challenging the administration's grant funding policies. Federal courts have repeatedly found those policies to be arbitrary and capricious. In private practice, Mr. Lea represented the Republican National Committee and defended tobacco companies. In addition, Mr. Lea lacks legal experience in Tennessee. He was not licensed to practice in the State until shortly before his nomination, and he has never appeared in Tennessee State or Federal court. This nominee's record reflects how the Trump administration selects nominees based on their perceived political loyalty--and how the administration expects judicial nominees to continue to support its actions if they are confirmed to the Federal bench. I oppose Mr. Lea's nomination and ask my colleagues to join me.

Mr. DURBIN

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, today the Senate will vote to confirm Justin Olson to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana. Mr. Olson currently serves as associate counsel in multiple matters involving challenges to trans individuals participating in college sports. This is obviously an issue of national concern, as we saw at the Supreme Court recently. However, I was disturbed by Mr. Olson's refusal to condemn the hateful, inflammatory rhetoric used by one of the plaintiffs in his cases. I asked him about his client's statement claiming that a transgender woman wearing women's clothing is ``akin to blackface.'' I also asked him about his client's statement that the trans rights movement is ``an attempt to normalize pedophilia.'' And I asked him about his client's statement regarding the University of Pennsylvania, which included a slur I will not repeat. In each instance, Mr. Olson stated that he lacked the ``full context'' for this language. I am unaware of any context that could possibly make such rhetoric acceptable. He refused to condemn this language and would not even go so far as to say that these hateful statements include language he personally would not use. Further, he expressed no concern or regret upon being informed that his client's rhetoric has led to death threats against high school students. A nominee representing a polarizing client is not disqualifying. But the lack of concern Mr. Olson showed for hateful, inflammatory language--involving an issue that often impacts young students--is incredibly disappointing. For these reasons, I strongly oppose Mr. Olson's nomination.

Mr. DURBIN

Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Connecticut (Mr. Murphy) is necessarily absent.

Mr. DURBIN

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. DURBIN

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, we had a hearing yesterday. It was an impromptu spotlight hearing, not in the ordinary course of Senate business. And we invited witnesses in to testify about what is happening in major cities across our country. Today, I am going to address one of those witnesses and her experience in the city of Chicago. Her name is Marimar Martinez. She is 30 years old. She is a teacher in a Montessori school. In October, she decided that she was going to take some extra clothing that she had in her apartment to her church and leave it so that other people might be able to benefit from it. Driving over there, she encountered a truck that was clearly being driven by ICE officials, Border Patrol officials. She beeped her horn because of their presence. They stopped the car, and the agents got out of the car with their guns. They started shooting her automobile. They ended up shooting her five times--five times. The agent who shot her, a 20-plus-year veteran of the Border Patrol, bragged on the text that he sent shortly thereafter that he caused seven holes in her body with five bullets. What happened to her afterward is a grim story. She was able to drive about a mile to 35th and California in Chicago and got out of the car and passed out. And a fellow came to her aid and called an ambulance. They took her to the local hospital, where she was bleeding profusely. They were trying to save her life. Again, she was in and out of consciousness and asked to go to a second hospital when the bleeding wouldn't stop. The FBI was then present, monitoring her every step of the way. This went on for hours and hours afterward: A victim with gunshot wounds. She was trying to survive, and they were trying to arrest her. The charges, as I mentioned, were that she was ramming a Federal vehicle. She denied it. And this is an interesting part of the story. ICE and the Federal officials decided to move the vehicle from Chicago, IL, to the State of Maine--1,000 miles. Why would they take the vehicle, after this incident, 1,000 miles? Well, it turned out, they had some work to do on it so it wouldn't show that her damage was on the side of the car--on the side of their car and wasn't the result of any ramming whatsoever. Of course, the Agencies involved described her as a domestic terrorist--this 30-year-old Montessori schoolteacher with no criminal record, born and raised in the United States. It took several months of hearings for the decision to be finally made by the government to drop all charges against Marimar Martinez. Think of that experience for a minute: in America, driving your car, being shot five times by the Federal agents. That, unfortunately, is becoming commonplace. We saw the terrible executions that took place in Minnesota--innocent people who were protesting within their constitutional rights are dead today, Alex Pretti and Renee Good. What is going on in the streets of America does not reflect who we are and what our goals and values must be. I think about that repeatedly. That young lady bears the scars of those wounds for the rest of her life and experience. She was asked: What does she want from this experience? What would she like to have, now that all the charges have been dropped? She said: I want the government to clear my name. They branded me a domestic terrorist, and I am not one. Is that too much to ask, for the government to say they were wrong, that they shot her five times in a car as she was leaving, and they were wrong in the charges they were bringing against her? I don't think it is too much to ask. What is too much to ask is that this continues. There is a conversation underway between the leaderships of the House and the Senate and the White House about changing the rules when it comes to these ICE agents. The fact that they would wear masks is being argued as one of the points. I have yet to meet a Senator or a Congressman arguing that they should be able to wear a mask, who tell me their State police wear masks on a regular basis. They don't. There may be a peculiar circumstance where it is required, but it is unusual. This Agency, ICE, wants to make this routine, that you could wear a mask and conceal your identity. We believe that the masks should come off and video cameras come on. The video cameras will tell us what happened, good or bad, for the officers involved. They are being used in police departments across America. Why wouldn't they apply to this situation? When it comes to the right of individuals to be safe in their homes, that is one of the basics of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution. The home is, in fact, a critical symbol of that constitutional right. I think back to my courses that I took in law school on the Bill of Rights and the circumstances involving the British and the monarchy that led to the Bill of Rights. One of the things was that people wanted to be safe in their homes. Now, it is being argued by these Federal Agencies that they don't need any warrant to batter down your front door and enter your home, and look and see if someone who is suspicious is inside. That is just unacceptable and unconstitutional. A year ago, the U.S. Senate voted to confirm Pam Bondi as Attorney General. As I said during her confirmation hearing, last year, the Attorney General must be committed, first and foremost, to the Constitution and the American people, not to the President and his political agenda. I was unconvinced then that Ms. Bondi shared that view. Over the course of the last year, my concerns sadly have been borne out. Even before Attorney General Bondi was installed atop the Justice Department, Donald Trump had moved swiftly to purge DOJ and the FBI of senior career law enforcement officials. In their place came partisan hacks, including a January 6 rioter who encouraged his fellow insurrectionists to murder law enforcement officers protecting the Capitol. He was shouting the words ``kill em'' when he came to the police who were defending this Capitol Building. That person ended up being pardoned and then becoming part of the Department of Justice staff. Can you believe it? Under the direction of Attorney General Bondi, these MAGA loyalists pounced on President Trump's perceived enemies. In addition to the now- dismissed indictments against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, Federal prosecutors have opened criminal investigations into Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, Governor Lisa Cook, and others. The list goes on and on of the enemies of the President who are being prosecuted by the Department of Justice. Why? Not because they broke the law but because the President believes they are his political enemies. And it begs the question: If the President can turn the Department of Justice and the FBI into his own personal police force to target his personal and political enemies, what is stopping him from targeting ordinary Americans? Tragically, we are already seeing the answer to that question in the Department of Justice's partisan response to the Homeland Security Department's abuses in Chicago and Minneapolis. The Department of Justice has sought to press charges against Americans who peacefully protest, like Marimar Martinez in Chicago. In addition to state-sponsored violence against its own citizens, the country is less safe as the DOJ has redirected thousands of law enforcement agents to immigration-related initiatives and away from gun violence, drug trafficking, and child exploitation. When this President, through his Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security, announced that they were going after the ``worst of the worst''--rapists, murderers, terrorists, the criminally insane, criminal children's predators, and the like--the ``worst of the worst,'' remember that? We didn't think it was Marimar Martinez, a 30-year-old Montessori teacher with no criminal record, born and raised in the city of Chicago, an American citizen. That was one of the victims they shot five times, trying to kill her when leaving the scene of a confrontation. On day one in office, Attorney General Bondi created the so-called Weaponization Working Group, a task force to investigate the investigators and prosecute the prosecutors. Recent reports suggest the group will soon meet daily with the goal of producing results in the next 2 months that reenergize the partisan criminal probes that only exist for the sake of one sad man's ego and to revitalize his dangerous conspiracy theories. But in the quest to pursue the President's political enemies and rewrite history, Attorney General Pam Bondi has tripped over her own feet repeatedly, the most recent example being her mismanagement of the Epstein files. Let's take a trip down memory lane. Last February, the Attorney General claimed she had Epstein's client list ``sitting on [her] desk right now to review.'' Several days later, in a media event the White House staged, she released a number of binders of files to conservative influencers and commentators that were already largely publicly available. Then, as a whistleblower disclosure to my office revealed, in the wake of public criticism, she pressured 1,000 FBI agents to comb through thousands of pages of documents in the Epstein files and to flag any mention of President Trump. This effort resulted in an unsigned memo released by DOJ and the FBI that walked back Attorney General Bondi's claims and concluded there was no ``incriminating `client list' '' despite the statement to the contrary. Then, in December, the Attorney General broke the law when her Department failed to release the entirety of the Epstein files by the date mandated by Congress and signed into law. DOJ continues to slowly walk the release, and what they have released has harmed survivors by not appropriately redacting their names, images, and other personal information. The American people deserve answers about the conduct of the Nation's leading law enforcement officers. No public servant who respects constitutional checks and balances would behave the way she did. According to an academic analysis of 400 cases involving the Trump administration, as of October 2025, at least 35 times courts have found the Department of Justice under President Trump has provided false or highly misleading information, including false sworn declarations. It makes you wonder: What is the Attorney General concealing? What kind of precedent is the Department creating for itself under this leadership? We cannot allow the Trump administration to stonewall and lie to its coequal branches of government, Congress and the judiciary. The announcement today that 700 Federal agents are going to be removed from Minnesota is a minor relief to the beleaguered State. There are 3,000 agents already in place. So to take 700 away, this is still a massive force, larger than the local police force in Minnesota. And my question for the State of Illinois is, How many of these agents are headed to my State? Who will be the next beneficiary of this outrageous conduct? Leaders in Congress, Democrats and Republicans, have a responsibility: Hold ICE and the Border Patrol to the same standards as every other police force in America. Don't give them special privileges. Give them only their rights under the law, and make them hold to them. That is one of the cruelties and realities that we face today--that the standards are being changed so that these people can harass innocent individuals like Marimar Martinez. That is unacceptable. I yield the floor.

Mr. DURBIN

Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from New York (Mrs. Gillibrand) is necessarily absent.

Mr. DURBIN

Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from New Jersey (Mr. Kim) and the Senator from New Mexico (Mr. Lujan) are necessarily absent.

Mr. DURBIN

Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Illinois (Ms. Duckworth), the Senator from New Jersey (Mr. Kim), and the Senator from New Mexico (Mr. Lujan) are necessarily absent.

Mr. DURBIN

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, today, the Senate will vote to confirm Nicholas Jon Ganjei to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas. I will vote in opposition to Mr. Ganjei's confirmation to a lifetime appointment on the Federal bench. As the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Texas, Mr. Ganjei has not been shy about his support for the Trump administration's aggressive immigration enforcement agenda. In a speech to the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association earlier this year, Mr. Ganjei rebuffed those who view these policies as ``rooted in a lack of compassion.'' But look at what happened in Chicago last year and more recently in Minnesota just this last month. American citizens, legal residents of the United States, and immigrants who have built their lives and raised their families here and pose no threat to public safety have been targeted. Rafael Veraza and his 1-year-old daughter Arianna, both citizens of the United States, were enjoying a shopping day at Sam's Club. What was supposed to be a normal father-daughter outing ended in a trip to the hospital after they were pepper sprayed by Federal agents. Masked, armed agents have aggressively arrested U.S. citizens; pushed them into unmarked vehicles; tazed, punched, and fired pepper balls at them; and, in some cases, wrongly detained them in immigration detention facilities for weeks. This was not an isolated incident. In the last month, two American citizens, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, were both needlessly and unjustifiably killed in immigration officer-involved shootings. There is no doubt that this administration's immigration policies are rooted in a lack of compassion. Mr. Ganjei cheering them on is disqualifying. Earlier this year, he reposted a DHS tweet comparing the strategy of capturing undocumented immigrants to the Pokemon slogan ``gotta catch `em all''--as if all of this were a game. Mr. Ganjei's record makes clear where he stands on immigration enforcement, and I have serious doubts about his ability to fairly and impartially render decisions in the immigration cases that make up a substantial part of the docket in the Southern District of Texas. For these reasons, I will be opposing Mr. Ganjei's nomination.

Mr. DURBIN

Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from New Jersey (Mr. Kim) and the Senator from New Mexico (Mr. Lujan) are necessarily absent.

Mr. DURBIN

Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Connecticut (Mr. Blumenthal), the Senator from New Jersey (Mr. Kim), the Senator from Minnesota (Ms. Klobuchar), and the Senator from New Mexico (Mr. Lujan) are necessarily absent.

Mr. DURBIN

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, last month, America watched in horror as Federal immigration officers shot and killed, in two separate incidents, U.S. citizens as part of the Trump administration's immigration enforcement operations in Minneapolis. Renee Good and Alex Pretti should still be with us today. Remember why we went there? The stated purpose, according to the Trump administration, was very clear and understandable. We were going after the rapists, murderers, terrorists, child predators, and criminally insane who had come across the border illegally during the Biden administration. They were to be found and removed and held accountable for their conduct. No matter where you are on the political spectrum, that mission sounded sensible. Why would we ever allow those dangerous people in the country either by accident or intention, and why wouldn't we do everything we could to remove them? The President promised he was going after ``the worst of the worst''--``the worst of the worst.'' So two people in Minneapolis lost their lives. Were they ``the worst of the worst''? Renee Good, mother of three, and Alex Pretti, a nurse at the VA hospital in Minneapolis, an extraordinary person, as we have come to know--American citizens, both--neither one of them fit the categories that the President railed against during his rallies and campaign. Instead, these two innocent people were taken from their families and their communities, far too soon, in instances of senseless violence at the hands of the U.S. Government. Donald Trump's immigration enforcement operations have not restored the so-called law and order that he promised and have not targeted ``the worst of the worst.'' They have done exactly the opposite. In every place the Department of Homeland Security's roving squads have descended--whether Chicago, Minneapolis, or any other city--they have brought chaos, disorder, and fear. These operations have created a public safety crisis, with families terrified to leave their homes. I have seen it firsthand in Chicago. I go into the Hispanic areas of that great city, and the people are living in fear. They are afraid to leave their homes. Parents and school administrators are struggling to explain ICE attacks to children, and Americans are desperately trying to protect their neighbors. The American people support orderly immigration enforcement that removes violent criminals from our streets, but how we do it matters. Indiscriminate violent roundup of American citizens, legal residents, and people with no criminal record erodes civil liberties and threatens the rule of law. The American people have seen this play out with their own eyes, and they have had enough. This is the time to rein in this lawlessness now. Congress has 2 weeks to act. With the support of the American people, Senate Democrats stood firm and made clear we would not provide the votes to increase funding for the administration's illegal terror campaign. I am pleased to say that last Friday night, the Senate passed five remaining bipartisan appropriations bills, and all the bills together that we have passed fund 96 percent of the Federal Government. Over the course of the next 2 weeks, we will continue to negotiate with the White House and Republicans to deliver much needed reforms to the DHS appropriations bill and to rein in the illegal excesses of ICE. As part of those negotiations, Democrats stand strong for the following commonsense measures. First, Federal immigration agents need to remove their masks, turn on their body cameras, and wear visible, clear identification. I have met with law enforcement officials--people who have given their lives to it, career people--and asked them: Why do you need to be masked? Why do you need to have secret police in the United States of America? They said: You don't. Unfortunately, it undermines public confidence in law enforcement across the board. To allow these masks and to not require carrying video cameras is to invite the problems which we have already witnessed. ICE is not a secret police force. It wasn't meant to be, despite what President Trump may wish. Second, we need to end the roving patrols. ICE does not have free will to do as they please. This is a nation of laws, guided by the Constitution that everyone, including ICE, must abide by. This means Federal immigration officials must stop racial profiling and random arrests. You have seen the videotapes, and I have as well. In a Home Depot parking lot, a Latina--Hispanic woman--gets out of the car and starts to walk into the store and is stopped by ICE agents who want her to show proof of her citizenship. That kind of thing is not what we expect in America but, rather, in authoritarian regimes, which have no respect for individuals. They cannot detain Americans for hours or use excessive force against them just because they peacefully protested in support of neighbors and friends. ICE squads descending on homes, bursting through doors to conduct arrests, isn't just violent and frightening, but it is unconstitutional. Agents must obtain a judicial warrant signed by a neutral judge, not an administrative warrant in-house, to enter private property. You have seen the videos--we have all seen them--where they are trying to crash down doors by hitting them with axes. Those individuals don't have the authority to do that. What I am quoting--the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution--is black-letter constitutional law. Third, we need accountability. ICE and Border Patrol squads can't indiscriminately smash in car windows, use tear gas on protesters, and shoot at people without accountability. This is America. This is unacceptable. A uniformed code of conduct will rein in aggressive and excessive immigration enforcement to bring about accountability and, hopefully, begin the long process of restoring trust. When the immigration agents fail to follow the code of conduct, the Department of Homeland Security must coordinate with State and local officials to conduct a fair and independent investigation. In conclusion, as these negotiations continue to play out, I will continue to do my part to hold the administration accountable. After I asked Secretary Noem of the Department of Homeland Security to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee all of last year, she refused. Now she says she just might be available in 4 weeks and find some time in her schedule to finally appear before a congressional committee in a public hearing and answer questions, under oath, about her mismanagement--tragic mismanagement--of this Agency. She has a lot of explaining to do. We should hold her to account, both Democrats and Republicans. My office will continue to document and report any and all instances of excessive force and abuse at the hands of immigration agents in Chicago and elsewhere. As Federal District Court Judge Biery said in his order, this weekend, requiring the release of Liam Ramos from ICE detention, ``Observing human behavior confirms that for some among us, the perfidious lust for unbridled power and the imposition of cruelty in its quest know no bounds and are bereft of human decency. And the rule of law be damned.'' What a condemnation of what is going on in Minneapolis and Chicago and other States. It might be hard to imagine, but, one day, the Trump Presidency will end. The statute of limitations for these crimes, however, will extend beyond that date. When the day comes that Donald Trump leaves the White House and his successor moves in to finally bring some order to this chaos, there will be accountability. The Department of Justice, free from its weaponized quest of retribution against Trump's perceived enemies, will have all the information it needs--video proof--to pursue criminal charges against government officials who actually are violating people's rights. In the meantime, my colleagues and I will continue to shine a light on these abuses, uphold the tenets of basic human decency, and defend the rule of law. I urge my Republican colleagues to swiftly agree to these Democratic reforms in DHS funding so that we may actually put a check on the excesses of this administration and this national terror campaign. I yield the floor.

Mr. DURBIN

Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Pennsylvania (Mr. Fetterman) and the Senator from New Mexico (Mr. Lujan) are necessarily absent.

Mr. DURBIN

Mr. DURBIN. First, I want to thank my colleague from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Senator Warren. That was a powerful, moving, absolutely necessary speech, and I am glad I was here to hear you deliver it. Thank you. Mr. President, earlier this month, the Nation watched in horror as social media was flooded with images and videos of a Federal immigration officer shooting and killing an American citizen, Renee Good, as part of the Trump administration's military enforcement operation in Minneapolis. Now, fresh on the heels of that tragedy, another one has struck. This weekend, Federal agents gunned down yet another American in Minneapolis, Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse in a VA hospital in Minneapolis. I am going to show a photo of that scene, which is graphic, but I am afraid it is necessary to appreciate the horror of the moment. This photo shows the last second when the ICE agent killed Alex Pretti on the streets of Minneapolis. In his right hand is his camera, and his left hand is holding the ground--no gun obvious, no effort to resist obvious. This was a moment when this man lost his life. He was characterized afterward as an assassin, as a domestic terrorist. The photo tells the story. The killing of Alex Pretti has further intensified tensions in a city already reeling from the President's aggressive campaign of terror. What was the Trump administration's immediate response when they heard of this second killing in Minneapolis? It was not to bring down the temperature but, instead, to rush to the American people with one message: Don't believe your eyes. Don't believe what you are seeing. It is the same playbook they used after the killing of Renee Good and after other Federal immigration officer-involved shootings and incidents. Following the fatal shooting of Ms. Good, President of the United States Donald Trump falsely claimed she ``violently, willfully and viciously ran over [an] ICE Officer.'' In response to the killings of both Ms. Good and Mr. Pretti, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem labeled their actions as ``domestic terrorism.'' Attorney General Pam Bondi, in a letter sent to Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, effectively tried to blackmail the State, demanding that the Governor of Minnesota turn over the voter rolls of that State in exchange for Bondi's efforts to pull back Federal immigration enforcement officers. In a court hearing earlier this week, an attorney representing the State described Bondi's request as a ``ransom note.'' Why has this President targeted this city and other democratically led cities? Trump claims he is targeting these cities because local elected officials have released ``violent criminal illegal aliens'' from State custody. The claim does not hold up. Governor Walz eloquently refuted it in a recent column in the Wall Street Journal. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Wall Street Journal editorial ``Tim Walz: The Un-American Assault on Minnesota'' be printed in the Record.

Mr. DURBIN. Governor Walz noted that, in Minnesota, the State's department of corrections honors all Federal and local detainers by notifying ICE when a person in custody is not a citizen. Governor Walz wrote: There is not a single documented case of the department's releasing someone from state prison without offering to ensure a smooth transfer of custody. If the President wants to work together in reducing crime, count me and Governor Walz in, but these lawless immigration operations are establishing a reign of terror--first in Chicago, now in Minneapolis- St. Paul--eroding constitutionally protected civil liberties while indiscriminately rounding up people for the crime of just happening to be Black or Brown. Even the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal--no liberal publication--agrees. In an editorial yesterday, they noted that, since October, 73 percent of the individuals taken into ICE custody had no criminal conviction. Only 5 percent had a violent criminal conviction. Do you remember the rants at all the rallies? We are talking about rapists and murderers and terrorists, the criminally insane and child predators coming into the United States, and now we are going to expel them. That was the promise--the ``worst of the worst'' over and over again. But when you listen to the statistics that show how few of the people who have been detained or tortured are actually in that category, you realize that it is not the worst of the worst. They are innocent people who are being victimized by ICE and this administration. Donald Trump is hell-bent on punishing his political opponents in the blue States of America and those who didn't vote for him in the last election. We see the cost. I have come to the floor before to share the stories of U.S. citizens who were arrested in Chicago by immigration agents during Operation Midway Blitz. Take Elianne Bahena and Jax Lopez--two U.S. citizens who worked for a local alderman in the city of Chicago, my friend Michael Rodriguez of the 22nd Ward. They were arrested by Border Patrol agents in Chicago and were held for hours without any explanation after they exercised their constitutional rights to monitor immigration enforcement in the area. According to a recent report from the Chicago Sun-Times, the U.S. Attorney's Office in Chicago has brought 32 nonimmigration criminal cases to court that are related to ICE Operation Midway Blitz. Do you know how many convictions there have been in those 32 cases? None, not one. This represents precious time and resources that have been wasted on baseless efforts by this Agency to punish peaceful protesters that could and should be focused instead on keeping the streets safe, on child exploitation, on human trafficking, and on public corruption. The time for accountability is now. I have been calling for DHS Secretary Noem to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee for almost 1 year. She couldn't find the time. She is just way too busy. In the last calendar year, she didn't show up at all. Now she tells us that it is possible her schedule may loosen up and that she might be able to come before the Senate Judiciary Committee in 5 weeks, on March 3, if she happens to still be the DHS Secretary then. With all the violence and death surrounding DHS, the Secretary is in no hurry to account for her mismanagement of this national crisis. She expects us, in the meantime, in the days ahead, to rubberstamp her recordbreaking budget. Over the weekend, I announced my opposition to DHS funding. I will not vote to fund the illegal DHS and ICE operations that terrorize the city of Chicago, Minneapolis, and so many other communities. The deaths of innocent Americans and the detaining of thousands of innocent people are a national disgrace. We need to work on a bipartisan basis to pass the five appropriations bills that have been sent to us by the House and then work to rewrite the DHS bill to address well-documented abuses witnessed by the American people. Anything less than this approach is a nonstarter with me. If the government shuts down yet again, it will be because congressional Republicans have refused to place guardrails on this reckless President and the ICE Agency. In the meantime, I urge my colleagues to join us in the endeavor before Kristi Noem and her squad take another innocent life. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that The Wall Street Journal editorial ``Mass Deportation by the Numbers'' be printed in the Record.

Mr. DURBIN. I yield the floor.

Mr. DURBIN

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, if you were to follow I-94W for just an hour and a half north of the city of Chicago, you would find yourself rolling into the city of Milwaukee. Every day, tens of thousands of drivers make this commute, and every day, they are greeted by two colors: blue and gold--more specifically ``denim'' and ``wheat,'' the two colors used to paint every highway circling Milwaukee. Why these colors? Well, for one, because they are the colors of Milwaukee's own Marquette University. And for two, because of the hard work of a woman named Rana Altenburg. With more than 30 years serving as Marquette University associate vice president for public affairs, Rana Altenburg's legacy reaches far beyond choosing those two colors while she chaired the Marquette Interchange Color Committee. Her impact on the city of Milwaukee, the State of Wisconsin, and Washington, DC, was profound. While Rana retired at the end of 2025, her legacy will be felt for years to come. In fact, it is difficult to walk more than a few blocks in Milwaukee, or even Wisconsin, without encountering Rana's handiwork. Crossing Wisconsin Avenue on Marquette's campus? Rana worked alongside city officials to install the medians bisecting the busy street. Enjoying a ``blue moon'' popsicle from Pete's Pops on a summer day in Milwaukee? The local business was the inaugural winner of Rev-Up MKE, a small business pitch competition put on by the nonprofit that Rana helped found in 2015. Going to a dental check up in Eau Claire, WI? Your teeth are probably being cleaned by someone from Marquette's esteemed dental school, which Rana championed. A few blocks down from Marquette's campus sits Milwaukee's ``Near West Side,'' a group of seven neighborhoods that, in the 2010s, were in dire need of reinvestment. Rana brought together five anchor institutions in Milwaukee--Marquette, Advocate Aurora Health, Harley- Davidson, Molson Coors, and Potawatomi Ventures--to establish a nonprofit dedicated to revitalizing the city's Near West Side as a business and residential corridor. Ten years later, Near West Side Partners--NWSP--with Rana at the helm as the nonprofit's board president, is thriving. Thanks to the hard work of NWSP, more than 50 new small businesses have opened in the area, crime has decreased by double-digits, home ownership rates are up, and the opening of the mixed-use space, Concordia 27, has given Milwaukeeans a new community hub. Beyond Wisconsin, Rana is one of the strongest advocates for Marquette's Les Aspin Center for Government in Washington, DC. The program, which brings students out to the Nation's Capital to study American political systems and to intern across the city, has expanded its reach during Rana's tenure. She leveraged the university's tightly knit alumni network to place students at internships ranging from congressional offices to healthcare advocacy. As a direct result of Rana's support for the program, Marquette alumni populate Capitol Hill in extraordinary numbers. Rana is a familiar face to folks on Capitol Hill, even to those who didn't attend the Les Aspin Center. She worked alongside congressional staff to bring millions in funding to Marquette to support the university's dental school, the only one in the State of Wisconsin; to bolster Marquette's nursing program by securing funding for the school's clinical simulation lab; and to boost the redevelopment of Milwaukee's Near West Side. But she lent her talents to many other worthy causes, including to the James Wright Foley Foundation, a nonprofit named for the Marquette alumnus and journalist who was tragically captured and killed by ISIS while reporting in Syria. Through her efforts and the work of my colleague Senator Shaheen, the foundation will receive a $350,000 earmark this year to support their work promoting journalists' safety abroad and to preserve the James Wright Foley Archives at Marquette. In recognition of her outstanding work, the Milwaukee Business Journal has honored Rana, first as a ``Forty Under 40'' awardee and subsequently, as a ``Woman of Influence''. But what the well-deserved profiles in the Milwaukee Business Journal often forget to mention are the hours she invested in mentoring Marquette students. Affectionately referring to them as her ``superstar interns,'' Rana mentored hundreds of students through the Marquette Office of Public Affairs, carving out time in her intense schedule to foster her interns' interest in public policy. She welcomed her students into the legislative process and even brought them along to meetings and events, allowing her interns to take an active role in advancing the university's priorities. Years later, those same ``superstar interns'' are now serving as legislative aides, communications professionals, and legal counsel across Capitol Hill, including on my own staff and on the Senate Judiciary Committee. But Rana takes no job more seriously than her role as a Marquette basketball superfan. A long-time season ticket holder, Rana is a fixture at the Fiserv Forum in the sea of university students. If you keep your eye out during the Big East tournament, it is not uncommon to spot Rana, decked out in blue and gold, in the crowd during an away game. And as perhaps the greatest contribution a superfan can make, Rana worked tirelessly to ensure the Marquette Golden Eagles could play at the new Fiserv Forum, keeping Marquette in the very small club of college teams that play in an NBA arena. In everything she did, Rana imbued one of Marquette's guiding principles, cura personalis, which translates to ``care for the whole person.'' Because of her guidance, Milwaukee has grown thoughtfully and deliberately, Capitol Hill has been made more compassionate and decent, and even that dentist in Eau Claire provides more wholesome care. While Rana dedicated the last 30 years to improving both Milwaukee and Wisconsin, she will always be a daughter of Northbrook, IL. My staff, especially the Marquette graduates she mentored; my son, a Marquette alumnus; and I congratulate Rana on a long and storied career. We wish Rana, her husband Jeff, her two daughters Hannah and Sophia, her son-in-law Jack, and her new granddaughter Nora, all the best in the years to come.

Mr. DURBIN

Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Pennsylvania (Mr. Fetterman) and the Senator from Georgia (Mr. Warnock) are necessarily absent.

Mr. DURBIN

Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Michigan (Mr. Peters) is necessarily absent.

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I am trying to remember what year it was. It could have been 15 years ago in the Senate when I walked into a hearing chaired by Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania. It was the Senate Judiciary Committee. I didn't know what the topic of the hearing was, but as a member of the committee, I was curious, so I sat down and listened, and I learned about something I really wasn't aware of. Testifying were retailers across the United States, talking about something called a swipe fee, interchange fee. I didn't know what that was. Turns out it is the fee that is paid to the banks that issue credit cards when you engage in a transaction. It is not identified to the ordinary consumer, but the retailer who is using the credit card certainly knows quite a bit about it. It is the fee that he is charged, he the retailer is charged, for the use of banks' credit cards. They were complaining--the retailers were--that the terms in the agreement, the interchange fee between Visa and MasterCard, which, of course, dominate the credit card world, were so opaque that they couldn't even get a copy of the actual contract between Visa, MasterCard, and this retailer sitting at the table. They had a stack of papers in front of them which was part of the contract and agreement for the interchange fee but not the complete agreement. They were frustrated because they had no control whatsoever in terms of what Visa and MasterCard were going to charge. I took an interest in it and asked Chairman Specter at the time: Is the Senate Judiciary Committee going to do something? He said: Of course. The honest answer was no. We had a hearing, and that was the end of it. But I took an interest in the issue and decided to author a study to see what the impact was on small businesses and retailers of these interchange fees and swipe fees charged by the banks that issue Visa and MasterCard. The industry had no interest in any study on any aspect of it. They made it clear to me they were going to oppose every effort I had to try to get to understand this issue better by a credible study. I was frustrated by this and decided to make an offer of a change in the law when it came to debit cards. Debit cards are different than credit cards because they are virtually a checking account. You can only charge as much as you have on balance to pay. And the question of credit is not as paramount as it is with the credit cards. So I came to the floor and offered with Dodd-Frank, the banking reform, an amendment on debit card swipe fees and interchange fees. Just to show you what a different time it was in the U.S. Senate, this was a bill that was being offered by Senator Dodd in the Senate and a Republican Senator as well on a bipartisan basis. I offered this amendment on the floor and got into the queue. I was about the 25th amendment that was considered. And it wasn't approved by the Banking Committee; I was just offering this on the floor. What I was trying to establish was the actual fee that was being charged for debit cards. As I said, I was about the 25th amendment to be offered. It turned out that there were so many controversial amendments in Dodd-Frank that I didn't rise to the top as the most controversial. And so the issue was called and, at the last minute, the chairman of the committee, Senator Dodd said: Of course, that would require 60 votes. His belief was, if he required 60 votes, the Durbin amendment would go away, would be defeated. It turned out he was wrong. The retailers of America came together in a way they had never come together before to raise questions about debit cards and the fees that are being charged to them. The amendment passed with more than 60 votes, to the surprise of this sponsor, as well as the other Members of the Senate. As luck would have it, the House of Representatives decided--Barney Frank, in particular--that this issue showed enough support in the Senate not to be part of any meaningful negotiations in conference, and the so-called Durbin amendment went through. Since then, there have been several efforts on the floor of the Senate, over the years, to remove the Durbin amendment on debit cards, where the fee was established with the cooperation of the Federal Reserve, and they have failed. So we have debit card world semiregulated or somewhat regulated, not so much on the credit card side. Roger Marshall is a colleague of mine--a Republican colleague--in the Senate today, from Kansas. He and I and Peter Welch of Vermont have cosponsored legislation to extend the coverage of this issue to credit cards. Senator Marshall and I agreed, whichever of us had the majority party at the time would be the lead sponsor. So it is the Marshall- Durbin-Welch bill, today, that is considered when we discuss credit cards. I give this lengthy introduction to show you there is a deep history on this issue, and it continues to this day, and it has particular relevance at this moment for several reasons. Let me explain. Data released this week by the Bureau of Labor Statistics confirms what many in the Chamber already know from our daily lives: Americans feel, every day, prices are just too high. Consumer prices--from rent to groceries, to utilities and more--are up nearly 3 percent compared to last year. Affordability is real. It is a concern that supercedes virtually every other political concern with basic American families. While costs continue to go up and everyday Americans are struggling, big banks are rolling in cash, with profit margins around 30 percent. That is right. Big banks have profit margins in this economy of over 30 percent. Why are banks making so much money? It is because they profit off of something called a swipe fee, or an interchange fee. Every time you use your credit card, Visa or Mastercard charge the merchant what is essentially a service fee. The merchant pays a fee of 2 percent to 3 percent on each transaction, meaning, if you spend $100, the merchant gets $97 or $98. While Visa and Mastercard keep some of the $2 or $3 themselves, most is pocketed by the big banks that issue the cards. A few bucks here, a few bucks there, and you have yourself a pretty good haul if you are a big bank. How good? In 2024, the year before last, Visa and Mastercard and their big bank partners raked in $111 billion in credit card swipe fees. These swipe fees are crushing small businesses and their customers through higher prices. If you don't believe me, listen to what a constituent of mine in Chicago wrote. Rick is his name. He owns a gas station. He pays $50,000 to $60,000 a year in swipe fees. He says: These fees have [an] impact on pricing in the store. Small business owners like Rick have little recourse. Visa and Mastercard have a near-virtual grasp on the credit card network market, controlling 85 percent of it. That is right. Visa and Mastercard control 85 percent of the credit card market. I will give you an example of some other businesses that wrote to me in relation to this issue. Credit processing fees are crushing businesses, taking up to 4 percent for credit card sales. ``Currently,'' this individual wrote to me and said, ``88% of my sales are credit card.'' It has become, literally, the coin of the realm. This individual, Laura, says she owns a coffee shop: My per ticket amounts are low, roughly $5, yet each transaction can take up to 25 cents in swipe a fee [to the credit cards]. We need competition in the credit card marketplace and options to choose from. Just like small businesses have to compete for customers, credit card companies should have to compete for our business. Laura has a coffee business in Elmhurst, IL. Why are banks making so much money? The swipe fees are virtually unregulated. We would like to change that. Another source of information is from Sesser, IL, which is in Downstate Southern Illinois. Greg Kelly writes me: When combined with basic merchant processing fees and set monthly access fees, credit card fees can add up to nearly 5 percent of total transactions. Greg writes: This is insane. This prevents hiring and hinders business growth, as well as being able to compete. Credit card reform is needed now. Small business owners like Rick have no recourse. Visa and Mastercard have a near-virtual death grasp on the credit card network market, controlling 85 percent of it. Because of this, Visa and Mastercard are free to set fee rates on credit cards wherever they like. For their retailers, take it or leave it. This allows them to tell small business owners like Rick that they are going to set the standard. He has no negotiating power. There is no competition unless the Marshall-Durbin-Welch bill passes. This is not how our system and our economy are supposed to work. It is time we bring back real competition to the credit card industry, the kind that encourages growth and brings about lower prices. This bipartisan bill that I described to you, the Credit Card Competition Act, was endorsed by President Trump this week. It was kind of a pleasant surprise. I didn't know it was coming. He was unequivocal in supporting it. It would address the outrageous swipe fees being charged to retailers. Talk about a hidden cost of business. Every time you use your credit card, if it is for a transaction, for a meal at a restaurant, for a contribution to a charity, the swipe fee is being taken out of it, 5 percent or more. My bill would require the largest 30 or so banks--only the largest banks--to enable at least two credit card networks to be used on the credit cards they issue, with at least one being outside the Visa-Mastercard duopoly. That would create real competition. The banking industry hates the Marshall-Durbin-Welch amendment like the devil hates holy water. To them, any kind of regulation is unacceptable. By injecting competition into the credit card market, this bill would help bring down swipe fees that small businesses pay and that ultimately get passed on to working families in the form of higher prices. Opponents of our bill have falsely claimed such provisions would squeeze Visa and Mastercard and the big banks, and force them to scale back reward programs. I learned something recently in lobbying on this bill. The major airlines all oppose this bill that would limit the swipe fees and interchange fees. I was curious why the airlines would be so interested in it. It turns out, for most of the major airlines, they make more money off their credit cards that they issue than they do off air operations. That is right--more money off the little square plastic than they do on the actual airplane passengers. So when I go into Reagan National Airport, I am not surprised that they have banners flashing: Stop the Durbin amendment. Stop anything that might affect your frequent flier plan. I often wonder in an airplane--I pay attention to this; most people don't--when they give the announcements from the flight attendants about their credit cards, as soon as you reach a point where they completed all their safety announcements and told you to buckle up and shut up because we are about to take off, then they announce their credit card program and want you to sign up for it. That is the reality of it. Watch next time you get on an airplane when they do this. These poor flight attendants have to bring applications up and down the aisles, trying to get people to sign up for credit cards. Visa and Mastercard and card-issuing banks have plenty of room for reform. In 2024, banks netted about $378 billion in revenue from debit and credit cards, but they pay only $47 billion in rewards. I value frequent flier miles like everyone else, but the program will not even be touched. I am no mathematician, but banks have plenty of revenue to continue offering rewards without hurting their bottom line. Those worried about airline miles and cash back, an analysis by payments consulting firm CMSPI found rewards would be reduced by less than one-tenth of 1 percent, at most, because of the Credit Card Competition Act. They are crying wolf. This bill has the support of a conservative Republican Senator from Kansas, Senator Marshall, and a liberal Democrat, Peter Welch from Vermont, and myself, of course. I urge my Senate colleagues: Let's come together and get this done on behalf of consumers and small businesses. You want to do something that really makes a difference to the bottom line and debt of families? Address the outrageous interest rates being charged on credit cards and address the swipe fees being charged to retailers that are fed into the inflationary aspects of this economy. This is the time to do it, if we are going to meaningfully address the real expenses that families face. I urge my colleagues to take a look at this measure--this bipartisan measure, this commonsense measure--that will make a difference in the families that we represent. I yield the floor.

Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Michigan (Mr. Peters) is necessarily absent.

Mr. DURBIN

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, my friend and colleague from Wyoming mentioned many things about the Republican tax bill, but he failed to mention the most important part of it: It ended up giving tax breaks to the wealthiest people in America. It ended up cutting $1 trillion from the Medicaid Program. Wait until that cut works its way through the economy to your local hospital and clinic, and watch what happens. They have already warned us: Unless something is done, there is going to be a lot of closures and a lot of reductions of services in these hospitals in rural areas, in small towns, and the inner city. That is a fact. If you want to give tax breaks to the wealthiest people and you don't care about the impact on the regular families of America, that is exactly what happened with the Republican tax bill, and that is the reason why Democrats did not support it. We believe that tax cuts should be geared toward working families who are struggling with affordability. President Trump gave a speech yesterday in Michigan and choked on the word ``affordability.'' He hates it. It is a Democratic word. It is a hoax. It is a fake. It is reality. It is reality. I don't know how often the President of the United States--and I am sure he never has a chance--gets to go shopping at the local grocery store. I do so almost every weekend I am home. I see what has happened to prices. My wife reminds me; other families remind me. The cost of living has gone up, and you give tax breaks here and there and the other place and primarily to wealthy people. It is not going to provide the kind of relief that working families desperately need. That is one of the issues that will be decided by the voters in the next election. Immigration Mr. President, the year was 1939, and there was a ship that sailed from Germany destined for Cuba. It was bringing Jewish refugees from Europe, which was falling into Nazi control, to a free place to live in Cuba. Unfortunately, as that ship, the St. Louis, approached Havana, Cuba, it was turned away. They wouldn't allow those Jewish passengers to find freedom in Cuba at the time. They then appealed to the United States, to President Roosevelt and his administration, and they too turned them away. The ship got so close, according to press reports, that they could actually hear the bands playing in the nightclubs in Miami. But they couldn't land the ship. And so they took the St. Louis back to Europe with a thousand Jewish refugees. Many of them became victims of the Holocaust. It was a bitter lesson learned, particularly in time of war and strife, that there is a need for countries, where there is peaceful situation, to step up and do their part to try to help refugees, those seeking asylum. After World War II, the United States decided that the St. Louis was a valuable lesson. We started leading the nations of the world in accepting refugees. It was an act of mercy, a humanitarian response to the reality that these people were facing. And we were proudly leading that effort for decades, until very recently. Under this President, the whole situation and policy have changed. This administration, unfortunately, is highlighting a policy that turns away refugees. The Trump administration has diverted resources from law enforcement and national security efforts to focus on arresting immigrants who pose no threat to public safety. We have seen it in Chicago. We have seen it in Minneapolis and in other cities. This administration is targeting legal immigrants who followed every rule and regulation. Over the past few months, the Trump administration has issued a flurry of new policies effectively ending lawful--lawful--immigration for individuals from 39 countries. It harkens back to the bitter experience of the St. Louis. In November last year, President Trump used the tragic shooting of two National Guard members to justify a freeze on all new visas of Afghan nationals. Many of these visa applicants fought against the Taliban, alongside American forces, and now must flee Afghanistan to avoid punishment or death for the crime of working for us. President Trump has abandoned them--so much for loyalty. These men and women in Afghanistan decided they would risk their lives to stand by our soldiers during that conflict. They survived, and now they are asking us to protect them from the Taliban's excesses. The President has decided: No, thanks. He slammed the door on Afghan nationals who risked their lives to save the lives of American soldiers, and he didn't stop there. In addition to suspending these applications for Afghan nationals, the Trump administration paused all asylum refugee decisions. The Trump administration has extended broad immigration bans to anyone from 39 different countries, including individuals from those countries who are already in the United States. Going through an asylee claim, a refugee claim, playing by the book, takes months and sometimes years in refugee camps. People go through extensive background checks before they are even considered to come to the United States. In this situation, those who have successfully made that journey are once again in jeopardy with the new Trump policy. The administration is reviewing again all legal immigration cases already approved for individuals from the banned nations. To be clear, this expansion is not limited to nationals of countries on the list. It also includes anyone who has been born in any one of those countries, even if they lived the majority of their life somewhere else. My office has received reports that Canadians--Canadians--born in Iran have been impacted by this new Trump ban. There have even been reports of the ban to stop parents who have completed every step of the adoption process from bringing their new babies to the United States. The administration has claimed this is about vetting immigrants to protect public safety. But tell me: Does it make sense to deny entry for a baby for vetting reasons? What the President has done to bring down the hammer on those who are legally immigrating from what he calls ``s-hole countries''--remember that phrase, when the President, in his first term, referred to those from Africa and Haiti in profane and racist terms in the Oval Office? At the time, the White House denied having said that. But I was there, physically present, when the President made those statements, not once but twice. I was in that meeting, and I confirm that he used those vulgar terms referring to people from other countries. Two Republican Senators publicly accused me of lying. Well, in a rally in Pennsylvania, last month, President Trump bragged that he had indeed used that slur that I referred to earlier. And at a Cabinet meeting, last month, he publicly called Somali immigrants ``garbage.'' The President of the United States referred to people from Somalia as ``garbage.'' Just yesterday, the administration announced the termination of Somalis' designation for temporary protected status. TPS allows immigrants from a country that is unsafe to temporarily remain in the United States. Does the President really think Somalia is a safe or stable place for these individuals to return? I think not. He just doesn't care. These racist comments and policies have confirmed what we have known all along. The President has deep-seated animus for immigrants who are not White. Throughout this past year, he has harnessed tragedies to justify his anti-immigrant crusade, first with the National Guard shootings and now with many of his fraud allegations we heard here on the floor of the Senate day after day. Last Friday, in the midst of Federal immigration agents' assault on Minneapolis, Department of Homeland Security began arresting recently arrived refugees in Minnesota. These refugees have already gone through intense vetting, sometimes for years, before they have been allowed to come to the United States. They followed our laws, came here in the ``right way.'' Now their lives will be turned upside down again to serve the President's political agenda. The fraud in Minnesota is serious and warrants continued investigation, but punishing thousands of refugees because of crimes they had nothing to do with is just plain wrong and inhumane. The Trump administration has tried to politicize this fraud investigation, but the first prosecutions for this fraud began in 2022 during the previous Biden administration. The administration says their immigration policies are intended to protect America. I am calling their bluff. What they have done instead is to effectively halt legal immigration for a long list of countries, all of which have majority non-White populations. This was their real intention all along. Already, the lives of people in our immigration system, particularly people of color, have been unfairly upended. Immigrants are seeing their long-scheduled green card interview canceled. Naturalization candidates have been pulled from their scheduled citizenship ceremonies. I know this to be true because it happened to my constituents who reached out to our office. They are rightfully upset that the administration has stopped them, these individuals, after already approving them for citizenship. They can't take the oath of allegiance to our country, and they don't know where this process is going to end. My mother was a naturalized citizen to the United States. I keep her certificate framed in my office in the U.S. Capitol. Those who are willing to take the oath of allegiance to our country become some of our most loyal citizens. My mom was one of them. We cannot abandon them. We must not allow America to turn its back on immigrants who followed every rule and make America stronger. It would be an affront to the Constitution and a retreat from our values and heritage as a nation of immigrants. This is an awful situation where helpless people are being exploited for political reasons. It is time for both political parties to step aside from the campaign for a moment and speak to the values that make America a better country than most. I am proud to be part of this country, but we are a nation of immigrants and should never forget it. I yield the floor.