On Friday’s “CNN News Central,” House Democratic Caucus Chair Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-CA) said Democrats aren’t willing to shut the government down over ICE and “the Republicans are the ones that want to shut the government down, and they continue to talk about this.”
Co-host John Berman asked, “How do you hold ICE accountable with funding? Is this something you’d be willing to shut the government down over?”
Aguilar answered, “No. And clearly, the Republicans are the ones that want to shut the government down, and they continue to talk about this. What we want to do is we want to fund Homeland Security to do the right things. But it’s very clear, in the one big, ugly law that Donald Trump signed, ICE received even more resources to carry out these activities. His own Homeland Security director won’t come to Congress, like, these are just general accountability measures that we want. But they need body cameras. They need to actually turn them on. How about ICE has actual training? Right now, new recruits are going through an expedited training process, so we have no idea if they’re actually trained to use these firearms. Those are the types of things that, number one, put our community at risk, but also, what Democrats are concerned about, put local law enforcement at risk as well.”
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