Speech #CREC-2017-01-11-pt1-PgH304-2_t1

Mr. Speaker, as I have said before, we hope for the best from the new President, but we must prepare for the worst. Everyone who has looked at the record of the key advisers to President-elect Trump on the issue of immigration has reason for very deep concern that the new President is going to follow the advice of some of the most extreme voices in the immigration debate. As for the new President himself, he is a bit of an unknown because he changes his mind on key issues just as quickly as his Twitter feed refreshes. He says he has a plan for this and a plan for that, but they are secret plans, and, as far as we know, they are even secrets to him. He knows more about computers and the Internet, ISIS and terrorists, Russia and NATO than all of the policy experts put together, and he thinks of himself as kind of the ultimate Presidential adviser to the new President. But it is Trump's lieutenants who worry most of us. They are the most clearly ideological and dangerous set of leaders ever assembled in American Government on immigration and any number of issues we care about. They are vindictive when it comes to our immigrant community. The truth is that among the new President key advisers are some of the staunchest opponents of legal immigration. They are against legal immigration. That is right. While we all oppose illegal immigration, and some of us have been working for years to upgrade the American system so that immigrants come with visas instead of smugglers, the people with access to the Presidency disagree, and they don't want immigrants to come here at all from anywhere. Look, we have made legal immigration extremely difficult for everyone and simply impossible for most people. And then we have been relying on deportation, walls, enforcement, and curtailing due process rights for immigrants, and that constitutes their immigration control strategy for the past 25 years. And it hasn't worked for 25 years. But the American people want a humane, sustainable, secure, and effective legal immigration system and a way for people who already live and work here peacefully in America to be able to do so within the law. So, Mr. Speaker, this is why I will join a few thousand allies here in Washington this Saturday at the historic Metropolitan AME Church on M Street to send a clear message that immigrants and their allies are standing up for immigrant communities. And check out the Web site. The D.C. rally will be one of more than 50 public actions and marches across America on or about this Saturday the 14th, where leaders of the immigrant rights' movement will stand alongside elected officials, faith, labor, education, and LGBTQ leaders to say: we will not allow mass deportation or immigrant roundups on our watch. That we do not want endless delays that keep families waiting 10, 15, 20 years for a visa. That we don't want people to have to choose between 10 years in exile or the green card for which they qualify under U.S. law because our laws have been crafted to punish people by keeping them in an undocumented status even when they can apply to be here legally. That we are committed to defending immigrant communities if and when the new President and his henchmen develop Muslim registries or neighborhood sweeps or mass roundups disguised as ``fugitive sweeps.'' We will fight attempts to criminalize immigrants and fight attempts to take away documents from people who are now in the system and working on the books, like the 750,000 young people who signed up for DACA. With the BRIDGE Act, we will fight so that DREAMers are protected from deportation and can lead the fight for millions and millions of other immigrants who have no options under our current law. Let's just be clear, 76 percent of Latinos in this country are citizens of the United States. So three-quarters of us can vote or will soon be able to vote. And for Latinos under 18, the percentage of Latinos who are U.S. citizens is 93 percent. So don't think you can deport us into silence. Don't think that deporting everyone and eliminating legal immigration, as some in the new President's circle may fantasize, will suddenly make Brown people disappear from America. We are here and we are joined by allies of every color, shape, national origin and segment of society. We are men, we are women, we are children, we are straight, we are gay and trans, rich and poor, old and young, and everything in between; and we are locking arms with all of our allies to say that when you come for any of us, we will force you to come for all of us.