During a House Oversight Committee hearing last week, Rep. Wesley Bell (D-MO) spoke about Republican 'hypocrisy' in the enforcement of federal gun laws with immigration laws.
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NewsTranscript
00:00The chair recognizes Congressman Bell for five minutes for questioning.
00:05Good morning and thank you, Mr. Chair. As many of you know or are learning now,
00:12I represent the 1st Congressional District of Missouri, the Show-Me State, and today I'm asking
00:17my Republican colleagues to show me where their principle stands when it comes to law enforcement,
00:23public safety, and respect for law. Local and federal enforcement coordinate all across the
00:31country, specifically in my state and my district. We see that all the time and as a member of
00:43Congress but also as a former judge and as a former prosecutor. These are things that happen
00:48all over the country and in every county, if you will. And so quickly, because my time is short,
00:58Judge Doyle, did you have any comments on the detainer with respect to detainers? Because I
01:04heard some information that did not seem right to me that was spoken. Thank you for that question,
01:10Representative Bell. Exactly. Detainers, immigration detainers, and the sheriff had
01:15explained this actually in his opening statement as well, are voluntary requests for cooperation.
01:21The way detainers, immigration ICE detainers, work at the moment is that they are voluntary.
01:27It is up to the receiving entity to determine whether they will honor the detainer or not.
01:34And additionally, some states like Massachusetts have laws or rulings by the courts that prevent
01:42prisons and jails from holding an individual past the time that they wrap their sentence.
01:47Thank you. And so what I also want to get to is in 2021, Missouri, my home state,
01:56and I didn't support this, but they enacted the Second Amendment Preservation Act,
02:01also known as SAPA. Sheriff, are you familiar with that? Sorry, I'm not. No problem, no problem.
02:07It was struck down as unconstitutional. But before we get to that, this law declared certain
02:14federal firearm regulations as essentially illegal in the state. So under SAPA,
02:20if a local police department cooperated with agencies like the ATF in enforcing gun safety laws,
02:27it could face fines of up to $50,000. As a result, law enforcement officers across the state were
02:34forced to withdraw from federal task forces, stop sharing critical crime data, and limit their
02:40ability to crack down on gun trafficking and violent crime. This reckless policy was not
02:46just bad law, it was unconstitutional, and it was finally found unconstitutional by the courts.
02:56Unlike so-called sanctuary laws, Missouri's SAPA law was ultimately struck down, but
03:02because it expressly countermanded federal law and violated the supremacy clause of the U.S.
03:08Constitution, which ensures that federal law is the law of the land and cannot simply be
03:13ignored or negated by individual states. So now here's where the hypocrisy becomes impossible to
03:20ignore. So just last week in this very committee, I listened to my Republican colleagues argue at
03:26length that state and local law enforcement should step into the shoes of federal immigration
03:32enforcement and do the federal government's job for them. They insisted that cities undermine
03:40the rule of law by exercising their sovereign right to put public safety over immigration
03:46enforcement and decline ICE's voluntary civil requests, because that's what they are, to detain
03:52someone longer than the law permits. They even went so far as to argue that cities and states
03:57that fail to meet Donald Trump's immigration policy demands should lose all federal funding.
04:04The reality is that unlike the SAPA law, none of these laws can conflict with federal law,
04:10none of them prevents ICE from doing its job or carrying out federal immigration policy, and none
04:15of them prevent cities from cooperating closely with federal law enforcement across a range of
04:20areas as cities have been doing every day. But when it comes to gun laws, suddenly those same
04:26Republican lawmakers are nowhere to be found. They actively supported the SAPA law, a law that
04:33actually did prevent the federal government from executing its policies by prohibiting local law
04:38enforcement from enforcing federal gun laws, and incredibly threatening police officers with
04:44penalties for simply working to keep illegal firearms out of the hands of violent offenders.
04:49It seems like Republicans are trying to have it both ways. I'm asking, where do Republicans stand?
05:00Deprioritizing public safety and burning the relationships that they've built with their
05:04communities? Where is the consistency? I didn't hear anyone say, oh, this is a problem with that
05:13law, with the coordination of local law enforcement and federal law enforcement,
05:19but now all of a sudden we're seeing this requirement that local law enforcement do
05:26the job. Not the coordination and working together, but the requirement to do the job.
05:31I yield back.
05:40The gentleman yields, point of order.
05:44The time has expired, Mr. Chairman. I hope I get that same extra 30 seconds.
05:48Yes, sir. Absolutely. The chair had acknowledged earlier the generous use of time.
05:55You are generous.
05:56I'm honored to extend that generous use of time to my colleague.