'A Cancer On The Soul Of Our Nation': Cory Booker Rips Into Trump Admin's Mass Deportations

2 days ago

During a town hall on Saturday, Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) spoke about the Trump Administration's deportations of migrants to El Salvador.

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Transcript

00:00Yes, sir.

00:02Senator Booker, first and foremost, thank you for restoring my hope with what you did.

00:14I think we've been all feeling hopeless, and your standing out the other day just recharged us.

00:31My name is Renata, and I'm from Hesburgh Heights.

00:34Now more than ever, we're seeing immigrants being treated the way they have been, and it is criminal.

00:48What part of the world did your parents or your grandparents come from?

00:52Italy? Ireland? Somewhere in Europe or South America?

01:00At the end of the day, we're all humans.

01:11We all belong to the human race.

01:13We need to protect legal immigrants, and illegal too, within the law, and regulate immigration in a more humanely and lawful way.

01:23What can we do, Senator Booker? Thank you.

01:34We are a nation that is fueled, not just by immigrants, we all know that story, and a lot of people say to me,

01:39but legal immigration, I'm going to tell you right now, undocumented people in our country,

01:45from the people picking fruit in our field to other industries, are contributing right now hundreds of billions of dollars to our economy.

01:53And I'm the first person to say, I want to secure the border.

01:59We've got a bipartisan bill that has come together that Donald Trump has scratched to stop us from doing.

02:04We should be securing our border, especially not creating an environment where people are literally dying trying to cross this border through horrible places.

02:12But where people get it wrong, and this is why in the 25 hours I stood, my staff, who are incredible,

02:20they prepared over a thousand pages for me to read, because we didn't want to read Green Eggs and Ham, we didn't want to read phone books,

02:27we wanted to go detailed to the crisis.

02:31And so the Immigration Binder, like a lot of them with the speech, they try to pull from Republican voices, pull from Republican think tanks.

02:40And I love the Republican voices within the Immigration Binder, and I want to rely on them right now on this issue.

02:46So the first is, this idea that our immigration system is broken is true.

02:51But one of the ways it's broken is that there are people in our country that are considered now undocumented,

02:57who have been waiting for so long, trying to go through a system that has been deliberately broken by Republicans.

03:05Don't believe me. Believe the far-right Cato Institute, who points to this system and says it would be easier to win the lottery

03:14to be able to come into this country when you have even an American spouse, American children.

03:20We've so broken the system that's made it so hard, so much hardship on American families.

03:26The second thing I want to point out is what, again, Republican voices are saying.

03:30They're saying that vital to our nation's economy is creating a system that is fair.

03:35Let me give you another Republican voice.

03:37Samuel Alita says that if you are in this country, citizen or not, you have fundamental due process protections

03:45that are not being honored right now by this president.

03:49Some people might say, oh, they disappeared that person, but they're not an American citizen.

03:59Well, if there's no due process, how do you know they're not an American citizen?

04:03If they have the right to take somebody off of our streets, throw them on the plane because they don't like their tattoo,

04:10and end them up in one of the worst jails on the planet Earth without any due process,

04:15where they've already admitted that they've made mistakes, that's not our country.

04:20This is a cancer on the soul of our nation, and we have got to say no.

04:26There's a way to do this in a bipartisan manner to create more strength and safety and security,

04:33but to create an immigration system that serves our economy and upholds our values.

04:38That's what I stand for. That's what I fight for.

'A Cancer On The Soul Of Our Nation': Cory Booker Rips Into Trump Admin's Mass Deportations

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