At a shadow hearing led by Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., on Thursday, witnesses gave powerful testimonies about the impact of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.
Shadow hearings, unofficial congressional hearings typically held by the minority party when the majority party refuses to hold an official one, have been utilized by Democrats more frequently in the Trump administration. Thursday’s hearing was Jayapal’s third time holding one.
Rep. Jayapal began the day’s hearing, titled “Kidnapped and Disappeared: Trump’s Assault Destroys U.S. Families and Communities,” by saying, “Donald Trump lied to the American people. He lied when he said he would bring grocery prices down. He lied when he said he would release the Epstein files. And he sure as hell lied when it came to immigration enforcement.”
Jayapal said that even though Trump said he would focus on “deporting the worst of the worst” and “serious national security threats,” immigration officials are “targeting everyone that they think they might be able to deport, including veterans, farmworkers, green-card holders, students and U.S. citizens.” She said, “The American people see right through this deception and lies.”
Chelsea White, a witness from Nashville, tearfully recounted the events leading up to the deportation of her husband, Hilario Martinez Garzia, whom she described as a “devoted husband and father.”
“For 25 years, Tennessee was his home, where he built a life and contributed to his community,” White said. White said she and her husband were pulled over in what she thought was a normal DUI stop when they were quickly surrounded by officers and separated, with no information about where he was being taken.
“Driving home alone, four months pregnant and in shock, was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. I kept thinking, ‘How am I going to explain this to our kids?’ Hilario had never spent a single night away from us. How do you prepare yourself to do it all alone?” White asked, adding that no one told her where her husband, who suffers from high blood pressure, was being detained for a week. And she didn’t know if he had his medication. After he was eventually deported to Mexico, White said she sold everything she could and took their three children, all of whom are U.S. citizens, with her to join him “in an unfamiliar country.”
“Families belong together without being forced to choose between love and survival,” White said.
Mimi Lettunich and her husband are currently caring for the four young children of her friend, a Canadian national, who was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents at a picnic in June. Despite the fact that the children all have American citizenship, Lettunich testified at the hearing that Customs and Border Patrol officials “expedited passports to send children out of the United States, their country of birth,” interrogated them without their parents, threatened them with foster care and separated them from each other.
Janessa Goldbeck, a former U.S. Marine and CEO of a military family nonprofit, criticized the administration for “turning the National Guard and active duty military into an immigration police force,” which she said “dishonors their oath and corrupts their mission. The Guard exists to protect Americans in times of crisis, flood, fires and war — not to police families on our streets. Misusing them this way erodes readiness, wastes taxpayer dollars, and endangers the freedoms every service member swore to defend.”
Trump, along with his border czar Tom Homan, vowed to carry out “the biggest deportation this country has ever seen” upon taking office.
When questioned about policies in the previous Trump administration that led to family separation, Homan has said, “Families can be deported together.”
This article was originally published on MSNBC.com
