On Friday’s broadcast of MS NOW’s “Chris Jansing Reports,” California gubernatorial candidate Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) said that President Donald Trump “won’t pay the people who are keeping us safe because he wants to fund his own domestic terror unit,” and that the Senate DHS funding bill allows lawmakers “to strip out ICE from the root to the branch.”
Swalwell said that people in California “want to strip out ICE from the root to the branch. That’s the consensus. We can do that with what was passed in the Senate.”
He added that “we’re not giving ICE or CBP a penny, and Senate Democrats have said that if ICE is going to make reforms, take off the masks, put out identification, mark the vehicles that you’re in, go to a judge before you bang down someone’s door and terrorize their family, if you’re going to make those reforms, then they would come to the table. ICE is unwilling to do that. And so, I have been in the camp — I can’t speak for the Senate Democrats — that I don’t want to fund ICE, I want to abolish them. I want them out of our communities. We were told they’d go after the most violent, instead, 94% of the people who’ve been arrested and deported…were non-violent criminals.”
Later, guest host Alex Witt asked, “If the House passes this and if the President signs it, how soon could TSA agents be paid, and how long before airports get back to normal?”
Swalwell answered, “Well, the President, he claims that he’s already paying them with his executive order. The priority has to be for the TSA agents and people at the Department of Homeland Security who are keeping us safe. And by the way, Alex, this President, by putting this war into motion, and then you have an FBI that is not serious, that’s focused on going after the President’s political enemies, has fired the counterintelligence counterterrorism agents who were working on Iran, and won’t pay the people who are keeping us safe because he wants to fund his own domestic terror unit, his priorities are making us less safe. He can do a lot here by just telling Republicans to pass, right now. We can do it on a voice vote, as they did in the Senate. But, again, this guy has more plans for his ballroom at the White House than he does for protecting the homeland, fighting a war in Iran, and bringing down the costs, as he promised he’d do on day one.”
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