An immigrant rights group compared the tenor of a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing held Tuesday to the widely-derided campaign speeches of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.
Pablo Alvaro, the director of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, said the panel was adding to a “dangerous surge of racist rhetoric” led by Trump.
“After making comments that Mexicans are rapists and murders, Donald Trump recently joined Joe Arpaio for a rally with xenophobes in Arizona,” Alvaro wrote, referring to the hardline anti-immigration sheriff of Maricopa County, Ariz. “Today, Mr. Trump was joined by the US Senate in what amounted to a pep-rally for the criminalization, dehumanization, and subjugation of immigrants.”
In opening the discussion, Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), suggested that “real lives are at stake” because of local officials’ lack of enthusiasm for deportations.
The hearing, which featured relatives of US citizens killed by undocumented immigrants, took broader aim at “sanctuary cities”– municipalities whose authorities don’t cooperate with federal immigration officials because they fear that it will do more harm than good.
“No more people should die at the hands of those who break our laws just by being here,” he said.
“Public safety is needlessly and recklessly put at risk when state and local officials provide sanctuary just to make a political point,” he later added.
Grassley noted that he has introduced legislation that would withhold federal funds from “sanctuary cities” and impose a minimum five year sentence on any deported convicted felon found guilty of re-entering the country.
The Department of Homeland Security came under fire from local officials, the NDLON and other immigrants rights groups last year for mandated federal-local cooperation in its Secure Communities enforcement regime–a program it has since abandoned. In opposing the collaboration, they repeatedly cited their concerns about civil liberties, added burdens on the prison system, and the undermining of public trust in immigrant communities.
Grassley lamented on Tuesday that the President was not confronting these “sanctuary cities,” and instead has taken aim at states that have adopted “a more aggressive approach to enforcing immigration laws.”
Those initiatives were deemed largely unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 2012, when it ruled against Arizona after its state legislature sought to grant law enforcement officials broad powers to demand immigration documents.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who was sitting in for the Judiciary Committee’s absent ranking member, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), said that she hoped cooperation between federal immigration officials and local authorities would improve through Secure Communities’ successor—the Priority Enforcement Program.
She pointed to the recent murder of a woman in San Francisco—one that Trump has brought up in railing against immigrants–saying that she hoped the killing of Kate Steinle at the hands of a recently-released undocumented immigrant with a felony record would spur local officials into eschewing their mistrust of their federal counterparts.
“We all know that most undocumented immigrants are otherwise law abiding, hard working and just want to provide for their families,” Feinstein said. “I believe that deeply. But that’s not the element of the undocumented population we’re talking about today.”
The wider effort to link immigration to crime, however, offended Alvarado, who described it as “criminalizing immigration.”
“Moving forward, we must understand that the need for physical safety is a value shared by all people, not just white people who are scared of changing demographics,” he said. “The simple fact is that the use of deportation as punishment does not advance any public safety interest.”
Last month, Trump drew widespread condemnation when he said that Mexico is “sending people that have lots of problems, and they are bringing those problems to us. They are bringing drugs, and bringing crime, and their rapists.”
On Tuesday, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada) said that “when it comes to immigration policy, there is no meaningful difference between the Republican Party and Donald Trump,” citing many Republicans’ reluctance to criticize the businessman for his remarks on immigrants.
Two Republicans competing with Trump for the GOP nomination did hit out at him for the statements. Ex-Florida Gov. Jeb Bush called them “wrong” and said they “personally offended him” while Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) said they were “offensive.”
