Ranking Member Raskin’s Opening Statement at Hearing on How Trump Is Undermining Public Safety By Redirecting Law Enforcement to Immigration Crackdown

Washington, D.C. (June 30, 2026)—Today, Rep. Jamie Raskin, Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee, delivered opening remarks at a Subcommittee on Immigration Integrity, Security, and Enforcement hearing on Trump’s attempt to coerce states into carrying out a federal mass-deportation agenda, diverting essential local resources and making our communities less safe. 

Below are Ranking Member Raskin’s remarks at today’s hearing.

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 WATCH Ranking Member Raskin’s opening statement.

Ranking Member Jamie Raskin

Subcommittee on Immigration Integrity, Security, and Enforcement

Hearing on “Sanctuary Policies: Victims’ Perspectives” 

June 30, 2026

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thanks to all of our witnesses for being with us today. I especially want to thank Mr. Abraham and Mrs. Gorman for coming to speak about their beloved daughters, who were criminally and savagely stolen away from their families. As a father, I too know the pain and devastation of losing a child, and my heart goes out to you and to your families. 

Anyone who commits a crime must be held accountable swiftly and completely. And immigrants, whether lawful or undocumented, who commit violent crimes must be deported at the end of their criminal sentences. 

Moreover, we must end the polarization and dysfunction in Congress so we can pass comprehensive and commonsense immigration reform. We need to make it a whole lot harder for people to enter the United States unlawfully and a whole lot easier to enter the United States lawfully. Can we agree to that agenda?

Yet instead of working with us on basic, commonsense reforms to make Dreamers lawful residents, to fortify the border, to expand the categories for admission of lawful immigrants, and to make sure DHS and ICE are properly focused on their basic self-proclaimed mission of keeping us safe from the “worst of the worst,” our colleagues are conducting an endless series of hearings on “sanctuary cities.”

This is our fourth such hearing on “sanctuary cities,” yet I’m not sure Republicans have even come to any agreement on what they mean when they invoke that apparently spooky term. Last year, Trump’s Department of Homeland Security published a list of nearly 400 counties it classified as sanctuary jurisdictions. This caused an uproar with dozens of conservative sheriffs across the country whose jurisdictions were named because of their strong policies on upholding states’ rights and rejecting unfunded federal mandates, conscription of state and local officers to execute federal duties. Stunned by the response, DHS removed the list days after it was published because a list of “sanctuary jurisdictions” defying the feds couldn’t possibly include so many conservative sheriffs from red counties who drew a strict line around on how much of their local resources they would spend carrying out the federal government’s immigration enforcement agenda and other constitutional responsibilities when the federal government has a budget far larger than they do.

This was a telling collision between Republicans and Republicans. For decades the right-wing argued that the federal government could not impose unfunded federal mandates on localities or boss around state and local officials to force them to do the work of federal officers charged with enforcing federal laws. 

They even succeeded in the Prinz case (1977) to convince a conservative Supreme Court majority to hold that the Tenth Amendment invalidated a provision in the Brady Handgun Control Act which purported to compel sheriffs and police chiefs to conduct background searches on prospective gun buyers. Justice Antonin Scalia found for the 5-4 Majority that this provision violated the Tenth Amendment, which prevents the federal government from “commandeering” state and local officers to use their official time and resources to implement unfunded federal mandates under the direction of federal officers. Justice Scalia asserted that this Constitutional prohibition was categorical. He was unmoved by the heartfelt claims that the failure to integrate local sheriffs and chiefs in the federal machinery would result in more gun violence, death, and injury. The Feds must enforce their own laws, Justice Scalia said. 

This is precisely the same mistake which Republicans are doing here. We’ve heard from some of the jurisdictions dragooned into Congress on their official time and salaries to participate in this endless sequence of repetitive hearings that they would notify federal authorities of when noncitizen prisoners are set to be released from local jails, if asked, so they can be picked up and handed over right away to immigration authorities. What they all say they cannot do is to hold such prisoners beyond the length of their judicial sentences for the convenience of federal officials, both because this practice turns state and local officials into de facto federal workers—as Justice Scalia said you can’t do— reporting to ICE or the Department of Homeland Security instead of the court and because they have no constitutional authority under Due Process or habeas corpus to hold prisoners without arrest, prosecution and conviction. 

So why are our colleagues so desperate to keep pulling this bogeyman out of the closet?

Perhaps it has to do with the fact that they have voted to give DHS more than a quarter of a TRILLION DOLLARS to improve immigration enforcement and America has watched as DHS has used this staggering pile of money to waste on multiple luxurious private jets for the Secretary complete with bedrooms and bars, on overpriced and ultimately useless industrial warehouses to detain human beings that are now being sold off at a massive loss to the public, on a glitzy $220 million PR horseback photoshoot and ad campaign for a glamorous DHS Secretary who called the slain citizens Alex Pretti and Renée Good terrorists.  

MAGA Republicans have done nothing as ICE has abused hundreds of billions of dollars to arrest, beat, shoot, and even kill American citizens for exercising their First and Second Amendment rights.

They have allowed ICE to ignore its duty to keep us safe from the “worst of the worst” and instead gone after kids and parents coming home from kindergarten, rape survivors who just finished testifying in court, and volunteers at church soup kitchens.

ICE’s indiscriminate and chaotic immigration enforcement has also undermined the ability of state and local prosecutors and law enforcement to keep their own communities safe and to deliver justice to crime victims. They are deporting crime victims, as well as key witnesses and informants, without any notice to state or local police and prosecutors. As a result, criminal investigations are being thwarted, criminal trials are being thrown into disarray, and American communities are less safe.

House Judiciary Democrats put out a report, “Acquitted by Removal: How Trump’s Mass Deportation Agenda Abandons Crime Victims and Allows Perpetrators to Avoid Justice,” that details how communities around the country are being harmed by these egregious practices.

Not only is DHS not making our communities safer, it is making us worse off. A recent study found that the metro areas most targeted by ICE, in both Democratic and Republican-run states, had suffered losses of nearly 670,000 jobs. Up to 44 percent of those jobs were held by American citizens. The rampage and roundup are profoundly costly to our communities. The Administration’s attacks on so-called sanctuary jurisdictions are hurting Americans from all walks of life.

One can only regard with amazement the fact that, rather than own up to this disastrous record, my Republican colleagues are trying to change the subject and blame the failures of DHS not on Kristi Noem and her dysfunctional accomplices and successors but on the state and local jurisdictions which did not create the problem, have no real power to address it and are constitutionally protected from being “impressed into service” by an illegal “commandeering” policy passed by Congress. 

DHS has a quarter of a million employees and a budget larger than that of 150 countries. It has over 80,000 sworn law enforcement officers—more than the number of police officers in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Houston, Washington, D.C., Las Vegas, and Dallas, combined. But despite all that, our Republican colleagues think state and local jurisdictions should be using more of their own funds and resources doing DHS’s job.

If my colleagues are serious about public safety, they should join us in imposing guardrails on ICE to refocus their energy on going after the worst of the worst and to ensure that they respect the fundamental constitutional rights of U.S. citizens. They should reinvest in public safety programs that the Trump Administration cut that supported local law enforcement, assisted victims of crime, and went after organized crime drug traffickers. And they should push back on the President’s shocking abuse of the pardon power, which has allowed drug traffickers and criminal fraudsters to walk free, depriving victims and taxpayers of nearly $2 billion in unmet restitution.

Last Congress, Republicans and Democrats came together to craft a bipartisan border security bill. President Biden agreed to sign it. But then-candidate Donald Trump blew up the deal because he wanted a crisis to run on more than he wanted a solution for the American people. Sadly, since then, my Republican colleagues have been doing more of the same. Holding hearing after hearing on the same topic, failing to pass their signature border bill or even their bill to coerce and commandeer sanctuary cities to do their bidding. 

I look forward to hearing from our witnesses today and hope that one day soon we can return to the hard work of legislating together. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.

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