SAN LUIS – Today, Senator Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) fielded questions in both English and Spanish at a town hall in San Luis, Arizona focused on immigration and workforce issues impacting border communities.
“I don’t have to tell you what we’ve seen in the streets. It is chaos that’s being done by ICE. […] A lot of people, [when] I talk to a lot of my Republican friends, they thought they were voting for enforcement and deportation of criminals only. And what we got is not that,” Senator Gallego said in his opening remarks. “Right now, ICE has more money than the United States Marine Corps, a fighting force that I served with. These are the jets, tanks, or anything else of that nature – ICE has more than that.”
Speaking on the ongoing DHS funding fight, Gallego emphasized the need for serious reforms to how the agency operates before he votes to give it additional resources.
“In two and a half weeks, we saw two Americans killed on our streets by federal law enforcement. I had to have a lot of training in the Marines. I unfortunately had to use a lot of my training in Iraq, and never have I ever seen that type of use of force. I never imagined you’d use that type of use of force on fellow Americans. It’s scary to think what is happening in areas that we don’t see. That’s [just] what we caught on camera,” Senator Gallego continued. “One of the things that I’m also very keen on is making sure that these people are held accountable, that there are standards, that there’s body cameras. And until we see that, I can’t – and this is very difficult to say an area like this, because I’m sure we all have friends that are employed by ICE or employed by Border Patrol – I can’t fund DHS until I know that there’s going to actually be proper safeguards, that American citizens and immigrant communities are being treated with respect, and that they actually are going after who we want them to go after, not the randomness we see right now.”
During the town hall, a constituent stood up and thanked the Senator in Spanish for coming to speak with the community and spoke in favor of immigration reform.
“Este país es el país más fuerte del mundo por el trabajo de los inmigrantes y sus hijos. También lo que nosotros tenemos que reconocer, especialmente los líderes del partido demócrata, que cuando tenemos poder, tenemos que pasar la reforma migratoria,” the Senator said in response. “Yo le digo, yo le doy mi promesa: si tenemos el control de los tres niveles de poder de nuestro gobierno y podemos pasar la reforma, la vamos a pasar o no va a pasar nada.”
“You can have professional law enforcement without militarization. This is why when you have people running through the streets of our country wearing masks and in military fatigues, and having weapons that I used in war and pointing them at US citizens – this should not be going on. […] You’re not doing that to go after criminals. You’re doing that to really suppress the population, and it is dangerous. It is scary,”Senator Gallego said in response to a question from a San Luis high schooler on the rapid militarization of American cities.
“I hope we get to a situation where we have immigration reform, where Dreamers can become citizens, where families can stay together, where we have visas so that we can meet the workforce demand, so we also can bring in some of the smartest people from all over the world to come and work here and be here and study here,”Senator Gallego concluded.