Senator Patty Murray’s Speech on Due Process and Deportations to El Salvador: Addressing Lawlessness and Human Rights Violations

Outside contact is impossible for those people. And how do we learn their status and condition? Are they alive or are they healthy?

You know what else we don’t know? We still don’t know the names of everyone. Think about that. We don’t even have their names. That information should be released immediately today. Because there are families who still have no confirmation where their loved ones are, and the only list we have right now was not even released by the administration, it was reported by the press.

Some families only learn their son was gone, their husband was gone, their father was gone. Through photos of them being marched into a torture prison.

This is the first, last and only update we have have on just about all of those people. We do not know if they’re alive. We don’t know if they’re being treated decently. We don’t even know if they’ve been moved or. You know, even their lawyers can’t reach them.

Here’s what we do know, though. There are many names on the El Salvador list of people who were here legally. Who had no criminal record. That seems to be getting lost in the debate for some of my Republican colleagues. This is not not about any one case or any one person. It is about a lawless system for the president.

Well, to deny due process, and when you cut out due process, you put innocent people in harm’s way. I heard from one of my Republican colleagues say last week, and I quote, “I don’t see any pattern here”. Well, I ask him now, and I ask everyone now, to pay attention to the full picture, because of course you won’t see a pattern if you just look at one case and you ignore the many, many others.

There’s the case of Andre Hernando Romero. He’s a Barber who came here legally. He has no criminal record.

There is the case of Arturos. He’s a musician. He came here legally. He has no criminal record.

There’s the case of Merrill Gutierrez, who, you guessed it. Came here legally. Legally, no criminal record. In fact, he was apparently grabbed by mistake, one officer reportedly said “No, he’s not the one” and another said “take him away anyway”.

Trump sent them all to a maximum security prison in El Salvador with no trial. Disappeared. They have no contact with their lawyer, no contact with family. We do not know if they are alive. And they don’t know if anyone is even advocating for them. How hopeless that must feel. How dark?

So is that enough of a pattern for my Republican colleagues? Do you still need more?

There’s also Hersey Reyes perios. He’s a soccer player. He came here legally. Again, no criminal record.

There’s Gustavo Galera, a food delivery driver. Legally here, no criminal record or Anulo Sarajeva here legally with no criminal record.

I mean, how many more before my colleagues can actually admit this is a pattern? How many people have to be disappeared? With no due process before it becomes a problem. Because for me one is too many.

And the pattern isn’t even over yet. Trump was reportedly ready to disappear even more people to El Salvador before the Supreme Court put its foot down. In this latest round, the Trump administration was preparing to disappear men who came here legally had no record except traffic violation. Another was a young man accused of being a gang member because of a photo with a toy water gun. That is the level of so-called evidence that gets you locked away in a foreign torture prison under President Trump.

And I will keep saying it, Mr. President, most of the people they disappeared have no criminal records and many were even here legally. They came here for a better life and Trump disappeared than based on nothing more than tattoos that say mom and dad. Or that they celebrate soccer teams. Or a daughter’s birth. Or autism awareness.

And, Mr. President, I realized that I keep hammering home that many of these people are not criminals. And many of these people came here legally. But I do want to remind my colleagues this question is not whether someone who’s vanished to El Salvador without a trace is good or bad. The question is whether everyone in this country, including American citizens, have the rights they were promised in our constitution.

At the end of the day. Is not about who these people are. It is about who we are. Whether we are of a country of due process or not. A country of laws. Or not.

Trump has said for he stands; he literally said; we don’t have time to give them due process. If the Trump administration thinks that someone is a criminal, if they are really bad and dangerous. Prove it. In court prove it. Just simply prove it. It shouldn’t be hard. That is how this works. Everyone in this country understands that.

You can’t just say criminals don’t get due process when due process is how you determine who is a criminal in the first place.

I mean, in the case of one person, they sent El Salvador not only did the governments file against him show no criminal record, it also got his name wrong several times. And he has two Identification numbers on his reports. Those are pretty major errors to make when you are locking someone away. The kind of errors that due process helps to avoid. That’s not some theory. We are seeing that happen in case after case.

Right now. There’s a couple that Trump is saying are part of a gang. But instead of just disappearing them with no trial to speak of, the administration was forced to prove it to prove it in court. And you know what happened. The government failed. The judge found the government’s claims completely and wholly unsubstantiated, and ordered the couple to be released.

That just goes to show if we ignore our laws. If we tear down the guardrails that saved that couple, it’s not criminals who pay the price. It is innocent people. Because due process protects them too. Due process allows us to confirm whether people are lawfully present. Due process lets us confirm whether Trump is about to send them to a foreign prison. Due process lets us confirm whether people are guilty instead of going off how they look or what tattoo they may have. And at the end of the day, due process means they get an actual determination of guilt or innocence instead of getting disappeared. With a question mark.

That no one here was told they are facing X years in a foreign prison. There is no end date in El Salvador because there was no sentence because there was no trial. It was just Trump ignoring our laws, ignoring our courts and sending people to gulags, to rot and die, and never be heard from again. How can anyone ignore that outrageous breach of our laws of our values?

And, Mr. President, as a coequal branch of this government, I want to impress upon my colleagues. It is not just due process. It is getting trampled here. It is basic checks and balance. Trump is imprisoning these people under the Alien Enemies Act. He is using a war power. We are not at war. Everyone here should know that, after all, Congress, we have to vote to declare war. I remember every war vote we’ve taken in my time here in Congress, and I can tell you there’s never been a vote on this so-called war, Trump declared all on his own.

As if that weren’t enough, earlier this month, the National Intelligence Council, the National Intelligence Council, determined that Venezuela is not directing an invasion by gangs. That directly undercuts what Trump claimed when he announced his illegal end-run around Congress.

Here’s a simple question for for everyone, there’s no invasion, there’s no war. So why is Trump invoking? A wartime authority?

But add on top of that the Trump has reached some secret. Multimillion dollar deal. To pay El Salvador. To imprison these people without a trial. I’m vice chair of the Appropriations Committee. I can tell you. We did not include a single cent, not one penny for running tortured prisons in El Salvador. Congress has the power of the purse. But Trump is picking our pockets to fund his own personal gulag.

And by the way, while we talk about checks and balances, let’s not forget how the Trump administration. Is arresting judges. His allies and advisors are attacking judges publicly and calling to impeach those who disagree with him. And of course, Trump is blatantly ignoring the courts and worse than that, the White House is in open defiance of the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court wrote “The administration must facilitate Mr. Garcia’s release”. That night, the White House wrote that he is never coming back. The Supreme Court wrote people being targeted under the Alien Enemies Act must have a reasonable opportunity to file for habeas corpus.

The Trump administration said. No, we will give them 12 hours.

Foreign policy is not an end run around the courts. Or the constitution. The President cannot just be given unilateral authority to cut completely unethical deals with foreign nations.

What happens when a president negotiates in secret to have his political rivals detained abroad. Is that allowed?

Kenny argue the courts can’t require him to call such a deal off. Or maybe he just denies it and says any agreements or state secrets. Does that work?

If President Trump said he would pay El Salvador $6 million to assassinate his rivals, I think we would all agree that that is blatantly unconstitutional. And if the court said he had to facilitate a reversal of that deal and he said, well, it’s a sovereign nation, I can’t stop them from assassinating anyone. I think we would all have a huge problem with that. So do we want to say that is wrong now or are we going to have to wait till he tries it? What are we waiting for?

We cannot just all stand by silent. As the President pries open a Pandora’s box that is all together, unprecedented, and that poses a direct threat to our Republic.

And let’s cut through this BS where Trump and El Salvador are both trying to pretend there is no way to facilitate the return of people, since they’re wrong and lying. Because here’s the thing, I’ll Salvador has already sent back people that Trump tried to disappear.

El Salvador immediately sent back a Nicaraguan individual, and they sent back women. Yeah, Trump tried to disappear women to their all male torture prison in El Salvador. If anyone wants to try and pretend this was some careful vetting process, please explain that to me. So it’s not like El Salvador can’t send people back, they’ve already done that.

The administration should be making clear one these people were wrongly sent. And two, that is with others wrongly said. They need to be returned. Though I want to keep in mind, of course that wrongly sent is still an enormous understatement.

The reality is these people were completely denied due process. The reality is President Trump is not just disappearing these people to El Salvador, he is disappearing our most basic constitutional rights, and he’s doing it in plain sight.

Not just in El Salvador, either, right here in America. His immigration crackdown is Upturning lives, and overturning some of our most basic values. Like freedom of speech.

We have people who are here legally. Who are being detained? And threatened with deportation. Not for any crime, not for any violence, but for speech. For protest for things as simple and fundamental as writing an op-ed the administration disagreed.

In America, the land of the free and the land. Of free speech. Is dissent the bar for deportation now? Is that what this country has come to? What next? How far does Trump’s new standard apply? Can you get deported for saying we shouldn’t invade Canada? Can you get detained for an op-ed saying Greenland is not going to be a state? Are you going to have legal status revoked for admitting Biden won the 2020 election? Because that seems outrageous, but it also seems perfectly in line with Trump’s new policy, which amounts to disagreeing with the president.

Your rights are gone. That is fundamentally unamerican. And beyond that, people who are being targeted for protest, there are thousands of students in this country that Trump is trying to push out over minor issues. Fishing citations? Jaywalking. Speeding. Even charges that were dismissed.

So far, some 1800 foreign students are having their visa revoked with little to no explanation, to say nothing of due process, and that includes students in Washington state, my home state at the UW at Gonzaga. At Shoreline Community College, where I once worked, my alma mater, WSU, and more. It’s not clear whether these students have done anything wrong, and it’s not clear in some cases what exactly they’re supposed to do next, because when the administration can’t revoke visas, it has been trying to remove students records, something courts have already ruled against.

One of the judges really put it best and I want to read this and quote it to you. This is the judge. “I’ve got 2 experienced immigration. Lawyers, on behalf of their client who is months away from graduation who has done nothing wrong? Who’s been terminated from a system that you all keep telling me has no effect on his immigration status, although that clearly is BS. And now his two very experienced slurs can’t even tell him whether or not he’s here legally because the court. Can’t tell him whether or not he’s here legally because the governments council can’t tell him if he is here legally”.

Mr. President, the point seems to be if we can’t deport you, we can scare and confuse you. And to add even more confusion, DOJ announced they were reversing course on some of this, only to then say they are still working on a plan to push out all these students.

And by the way, we’re only still scratching the surface of just how inhumane trump’s immigration crackdown has become. Trump is slashing funds to ensure 26,000 migrant kids have legal assistance. Meaning more 4 year olds are being marched in front of immigration judges expect expected to make their own legal case, with plushy toy.

Trump is also trying to mass cancel protected status for people who came here who were fleeing harsh conditions and dictators.

Trump is sending Christian refugees and women back to live under the Taliban, where they will face near certain persecution.

Trump is sending ice officials to elementary schools, where they’ve tried to gain access by lying about having permission from parents to speak with their kids.

ICE officials are arresting people with maximum violence and lawlessness, showing up without a judicial warrant, since the Trump administration says it is fine to go storming into someone’s house without one, showing up in masks, grabbing people off the streets without any badge or identification to distinguish them from a kidnapper. Whisking people away in unmarked cars and even smashing windshields.

Mr. President, back in my home state of Washington, I heard from folks who saw that first hand. Last month, ICE aggressively detained Lailo, a farm worker in my state, and it appears he may have even been targeted because of his advocacy for better working conditions for his fellow farm workers. They are still denying him bond despite no criminal charges. I spoke with his wife last week, who watched in horror as they arrested her husband shortly after he dropped her off at work. She told me through tears that the officers broke his window and pushed him against the car and how Lailo wants to be free so he can take care of his brothers and sisters, and work so they can live. He wants to continue doing his work with the community and with the Union, and they’re working right now to try and get him bond, something I strongly support.

This is not someone, Mr. President, with a dangerous record. It is someone with a record of hard work. They’re trying to make his community better. Skagit. County. Is known for its agricultural industry, and that industry does not survive without the immigrant farm workers who help power that local economy. Period.

More than that, we are talking about many families who’ve been here for decades. They are part of our community. They’re not just the people who feed this country. These are people who work hard. They follow the law. They should not be terrorized as if they were violent criminals.

Last week I met with farm workers there who told me there have been days that have they’ve been afraid to go to work because an unmarked vehicle was seen in their neighborhood. They are absolutely terrified of being grabbed off the street by ICE and locked up with no semblance of due process regardless of their legal status. And this situation is not unique to Skagit County, or even to my state. It is happening across the country.

Let’s not forget Trump is trying to deport a cancer researcher to Russia. Where she fears retaliation for protesting the war in Ukraine. Sending her away would likely put her in danger and completely upend groundbreaking Cancer Research. Her colleagues say her role is irreplaceable.

But it’s not just cancer researchers.

He also deported a little girl. A U.S. citizen who’s on her way to get cancer treatment. She was with her mother, an undocumented immigrant who was forced to choose between being separated from her 10 year old daughter or being sent away together. What an unthinkable choice to force on her, a mother. What an unthinkable thing to do to a child. A citizen. A citizen who is fighting cancer.

And Trump has done that twice. That’s right. Twice he has deported a mother along with a kid who is fighting cancer. A kid, by the way, who is an American citizen and he’s doing that without giving these parents any meaningful time to talk to a lawyer. Or a spouse, or to figure out what is best for that child.

We know that because Trump deported another U.S. citizen last week, that’s right, another one Trump deported A 2 year old. An American citizen. They refused to tell this kid’s father where his wife and kid were being held. They’ve refused to let him talk to his wife for more than a minute. They even forced him to hang up the phone when he tried to give his wife their lawyers number. And then as the judge put it, “they seem to have deported a U.S. citizen with no meaningful process”.

And now we’re hearing about a family in Idaho. U.S. citizens who recently moved in, who had their home raided by ICE. A mom and her daughters forced out of their house in the rain in underwear. ICE agents seized their phones, their laptops, even their full life savings, and didn’t leave so much as a number they could call to get their stuff back. That happened to U.S. citizens who did nothing but move into a new house.

These horror stories under score something important. Trump’s cruel war on immigrants is hurting American citizens, too. U.S. citizens are having their spouses ripped away. Even service members are seeing their families targeted. They’re having their parents ripped away. They’re having their lives turned upside down. And let’s not forget U.S. citizens are even being detained by this administration.

We have several instances now where American citizens have been caught up in Trump’s immigration crackdown. American citizens have been detained and wrongly locked up even after someone showed them their birth certificate. Even for days. And let’s keep in mind, if you are a citizen who is mistakenly detained and you are being denied due process and you can’t reach someone to show your birth certificate, how are you supposed to get released? What if you’re put on the next plane to El Salvador before you get the chance to set the record straight?

And let’s not pretend that’s far fetched, not when citizens have already been mistakenly detained, not when the government has already admitted it sent some people to El Salvador by mistake. Now when Trump has already disappeared some people who were were here legally, and many people who had no criminal record. With no due process.

And not when Trump has already said he wants to send U.S. citizens to submit their prisons. He was caught on Mike. Telling the president of El Salvador he needs that he needs to build more jails, telling him the “Homegrown’s are next”.

What happens when you get sent there and you can’t contact a lawyer? These are serious questions. What happens? Because if there’s nothing we can do for the people there now, what precedent does that set for the people that are sent their next?

Mr. President, I’ve been speaking for a while now and I’ve posed a lot of questions and I hope my colleagues think about this carefully. So I’m going to wrap it up, but I want to end with just one more.

Where Will Republicans draw the line? Because we are well past the bounds of law and we are well past the bounds of basic humanity. I hope more of my colleagues will join me in saying enough is enough and then demanding transparency, accountability, and justice from the Trump administration.

That starts with some very basic things: 1) Accurate, up to date information on the names of people who are being detained in and deported from ice facilities across the country, including by the way the Northwest ICE Detention Center in Tacoma so that their loved ones and community members can at least know where they are. And we need a clear list of every person who was disappeared to El Salvador, along with what evidence, if any, the government has as well as the full terms of whatever agreement the Trump administration has negotiated with El Salvador’s dictator.

But it doesn’t stop there. We need to see a clear, good faith effort to abide by court orders and to bring back everyone wrongfully, unjustly sent to a foreign prison.

We need to have lines of communication so these people can talk to their lawyers or talk to their loved ones and let us know if they’re OK.

And we need due process with evidence. With judges. And a meaningful opportunity for people to present a defense.

Let’s be clear. We are not saying everyone is innocent. We are saying no more than what the Constitution says. No more than what the courts have said time and again.

Everyone in the United States of America gets due process.

Thank you, Mr. President, I yield the floor.