Jeffries in Houston: The House Democratic Leader Brings His Immigration Fight to Segundo Barrio With Garcia and Menefee
House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries stood in Houston's Segundo Barrio on Monday with Reps. Sylvia Garcia and Christian Menefee and said the mass deportation machine 'has got to end' - tying the enforcement fight to Medicaid, food assistance and the cost of living.
House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries came to Houston's Segundo Barrio on Monday, joining Reps. Sylvia Garcia and Christian Menefee for a roundtable and press conference on immigration enforcement - and putting Houston's immigrant neighborhoods at the center of the Democrats' midterm argument. The Chicago Tribune reported that Jeffries spoke in front of a mural bearing the image of the late Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, and said President Donald Trump's immigration enforcement tactics must come to an end.
"It was a very informative roundtable where we heard about the brutality and the fear that Trump's violent mass deportation machine has been creating here in Houston, similar to what has gone on all across the country," Jeffries said, in remarks released by his office. "Taxpayer dollars should be used to make life more affordable for the people here in America, not to brutalize and kill American citizens or violently target and kill law-abiding immigrant communities." He said the administration had promised enforcement would target violent felons - "That's not what's happening" - and that enforcement should be "fair, just and humane."
Jeffries tied the enforcement argument to the year's big Republican law. "The One Big Ugly Bill ripped away Medicaid from the American people," he said. "The One Big Ugly Bill enacted the largest cut to nutritional assistance, $186 billion, in American history, and at the same period of time gave ICE a $75 billion slush fund." Those figures are his claims, stated as he stated them. He closed with the Democrats' commitments as he framed them: dramatic change on immigration enforcement, no further money for what he called the deportation machine, thanks to Garcia for pushing the Dream and Promise Act - and an acknowledgment that reached across the aisle on process if not on policy: "We know we have a broken immigration system. We know it needs to be fixed in a comprehensive and bipartisan way."
