Subcommittee Ranking Member Jayapal’s Opening Statement at Hearing on Trump’s Assault on Legal Immigration
Washington, D.C. (June 25, 2025)—Today, Rep. Pramila Jayapal, Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on Immigration Integrity, Security, and Enforcement, delivered opening remarksat a hearing on how President Donald Trump and Congressional Republicans are restricting legal immigration.
Below are Ranking Member Jayapal’s remarks, as prepared for delivery, at today’s hearing.
WATCH Subcommittee Ranking Member Jayapal’s opening statement.
Ranking Member Pramila Jayapal
Subcommittee on Immigration Integrity, Security, and Enforcement
Hearing on “Restoring Integrity and Security to the Visa Process”
June 25, 2025
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. In my two-and-a-half years as Ranking Member of the Immigration subcommittee, I believe this is the first hearing the majority has held that has not focused on undocumented immigrants.
I am glad the majority realizes there is an entire legal immigration system to discuss—a system has not been updated in 35 years. We need a modernized system that meets our 21st century needs while also protecting American workers.
Many of our colleagues on the other side of the aisle love to say they support legal immigration and people coming the “right way,” well, this is their chance.
Unfortunately, just over 150 days into the second Trump Administration, the Trump Administration has been making it exceedingly clear that it opposes all immigration, including legal immigration.
Across the country, we have seen students picked up by masked immigration agents in unmarked cars, taken to detention facilities with no warning and given limited information as to why they are being deported. The administration has revoked thousands of student visas, as a weapon to stifle political dissent, restrict due process, and enforce an exclusionary and nativist vision of America that runs counter to everything our institutions of higher learning stand for. And just last weekend, video of masked ICE agents violently beating the father of three U.S. Marines has absolutely shocked the conscience of Americans across the political spectrum.
The Administration’s actions to close off legal pathways will actually hurt America’s ability to innovate and attract the talent we need. And make no mistake, they are not about national security. We know this because just last month Secretary of State Rubio announced plans to “aggressively revoke” student visas of Chinese students, all in the name of national security. Yet, just two weeks later, President Trump, in announcing a so-called trade deal with China said Chinese students would still be able to attend universities in the United States even noting it “has always been good with me!”
After a pause, the United States has resumed interviews for F, J, and M visas, but added new screening of the applicants’ social media. These visas cover more than just students. They apply to physicians, university researchers, and au pairs, many of whom come to work for military families and others.
And then earlier this month, President Trump issued a proclamation restricting or limiting the entry of nationals from 19 countries. In total, the 19 countries subject to these bans have a combined population of over 475 million people.
According to State Department data, the proclamation has the potential to block at least 34,000 green cards from being issued and over 125,000 non-immigrant visas from being issued each year.
Recent reporting also tells us that the Trump Administration is considering adding an additional 36 countries to the list, 25 of which are from Africa. These countries “may” be subjected to partial or even full travel bans if they do not meet certain benchmarks over the next two months. Alarmingly, it appears the Trump Administration is attempting to coerce some of these countries into signing Third Country Removal agreements to keep themselves off the ban list.
The Trump Administration has also stripped hundreds of thousands of individuals of their lawful parole or Temporary Protected Status. Many of these people came lawfully from Nicaragua, Haiti, Cuba, and Venezuela or fled these cruel regimes. Now the Trump administration is making them undocumented and trying to send them back to their home countries, where they may be abused or tortured.
And it not just African, Asian or Latin American countries being targeted by the Trump Administration. Every day, it seems we hear a new horror story of Customs and Border Protection stopping and detaining someone at an air or land port who is from Canada or Europe. Often, they then wrongly send those people to ICE detention for weeks.
This includes a German national on a fiancé visa who spent over two weeks in an ICE detention center because he and his U.S. citizen spouse simply took a day trip to Mexico.
Or at the Canadian border, a backpacker from Wales spent nearly three weeks at a detention center over confusion related to her visa before being allowed to fly home at her own expense. A Canadian woman on a work visa detained at the Tijuana border, who spent 12 days in detention before finally being allowed to return home.
And here’s the kicker: a prime motivation of these detentions appears to be to overfill detention beds at private detention facilities run by for-profit corporations that are bankrolling Republican campaigns. These for-profit facilities are rife with abuse because they are incentivized to cut corners so they can reap enormous profits—all paid for by the American taxpayer.
The path forward for America is a legal immigration system that is modernized, fair and adequate to meet the needs of our families and economy. Attacking legal immigration, student visas and workers with valid visas, even sweeping up US citizens—that’s not just morally wrong, it makes absolutely no sense.
Making America less welcoming as a nation is already having a real impact. The World Travel and Tourism Council estimates that the United States will lose out $12.5 billion in tourism dollars this year alone. Students and top scientists and researchers don’t want to come to a country that suppresses their free speech rights or discriminates against them for what their home repressive governments do. That should not be what America is.
I look forward to hearing from the witnesses today, and I yield back.