On Tuesday’s broadcast of “CNN News Central,” Senate Minority Leader Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) responded to a question on whether circumstances around the DHS shutdown has changes due to the strikes on Iran by stating that “We should watch that very carefully. We want to protect our troops first and foremost, but we also want to protect the American people when it comes to their basic constitutional rights.”
Co-host Kate Bolduan asked, “Senator, have circumstances changed here since this weekend, putting Democrats in a risky spot right now in holding out on fully funding DHS?”
Durbin responded, “Well, I’m not going to go into the history of this administration and its second term, which removed many people who were engaged in cybersecurity and terrorism and put them in this mass deportation plan of Stephen Miller. That is a fact. The second part of it is, we have been discussing, for weeks, the basic premise that the ICE forces and CBP forces should stand by the standards of basic police procedure that are dominant across the United States. They want to be treated specially. They want the masked secret police that don’t have to answer to anyone, court orders or the Constitution. That is unacceptable. We can resolve this issue in terms of the ICE forces and should have done it a long time ago.”
Bolduan then asked, “But have circumstances — that’s a position I’ve heard since this fight began — but have circumstances changed since bombs started dropping out of the sky on Iran?”
Durbin answered, “We should watch that very carefully. We want to protect our troops first and foremost, but we also want to protect the American people when it comes to their basic constitutional rights. To think that this masked paramilitary is going to run roughshod over people across America is unacceptable.”
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