At her town hall event in Queens, New York, on Friday, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) decried the treatment of Mahmoud Kalil.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00here after reconciliation um which is some of the things that we're seeing on immigration
00:06of course immigration this is an issue that is very near and dear to our community
00:10our community is overwhelmingly immigrant immigrant families first second generation
00:16and we want to make sure and one of our highest priorities
00:19is keeping families together while keeping our community safe point blank period
00:30and i want everyone here to know and to understand that my office is a safe place for casework
00:40if you need or have any questions about your status or your family status we are able to process things
00:48we will not share any information if we need to do an inquiry on your case we will ask for that
00:53permission to do so and we have been able to clear up a lot of casework and a lot of issues in people's
01:01status through my office so if you know someone that you think or they feel like they're hiding
01:07in the shadows that they're afraid that they don't know who to reach out to that they they either
01:12maybe have lost their status through some sort of missed deadline or something like that please
01:17encourage them to reach out to our office we have a great track record and we are very very often
01:23able to help people get on the right track regularize their status or figure out what their options
01:29are that being said we the trump administration they like to say and this is what trump ran on
01:34right he said we're only going to go go after the quote-unquote criminals
01:39yeah exactly we're only going to go after the quote-unquote criminals however their position is that
01:46everyone undocumented is a criminal that's what they think they think that the docker recipient
01:52that the baby that was here from two years old whose only country they have ever known is the united
01:58states that maybe have served in this country or now as a doctor is a quote-unquote criminal they think
02:04every they think that folks who are undocumented are that but on top of that they're not even just going
02:11after undocumented people they are making people undocumented by revoking legal status and they are starting that
02:20with tps something known as temporary protective status and parole programs that is an area in
02:28which people that have huge where there's huge amounts of political or other kinds of instability
02:34at home the united states agreed to officially create almost like a legal status by which people
02:41from that from those areas fleeing some of the harshest conditions in the world can come to the united
02:46states and offer for status in fact we fought for tps for venezuelan refugees not too long ago and um and
02:54they are canceling tps programs so people who are here lawfully they are canceling these tps programs to
03:01make them undocumented in order to go after them so this is not about anti quote-unquote illegal immigration
03:09this is anti-immigration and it is very important that we understand that and cut through the rhetoric
03:15and cut through the nonsense because they do not have a leg to stand on when it comes to this argument
03:22they've also ramped up deportations including deportations to guantanamo and also to el salvador
03:28which is completely illegal and i don't even want to call them deportations they are sanctioned kidnappings
03:33in many circumstances you know they want to talk about why america is great or making america great
03:48our civil liberties and our civil protections are part of what makes america great it is our democracy
03:55and when you want to shred up our constitution and eliminate due process that that is it it is one
04:05of the most it's attacking what it means to be an american and it it is direct it is a uh eroding and
04:12degrading what it means to be an american when we rip up our constitution and due process and that's
04:17exactly what they're doing here um we have of course attacks on free speech we have our own mahmoud
04:23khalil in columbia for a columbia student who was uh detained and is detained and we've been in close
04:30contact with his family in advocacy for his case um in order to release him from the louisiana detention
04:36center that he is in but he was if we there is there the only grounds in which he was detained with him
04:44exercising his free speech in order to advocate for palestinian human rights and to end the war in gaza
04:51and we have to make sure that that we are advocating for him and agitating for his release we recently
04:56had another student in vermont that we were able to successfully advocate for his release he is out
05:01on bail that happened this week and we are hoping to be able to do the same thing for mahmoud khalil um
05:07uh and uh and i want you all to know that my office is personally tasked and assigned with that case
05:20mahmoud uh was a columbia student but our office has been able to take the lead on that case for
05:25the new york city delegation and we have been doing that um now additionally uh what we've also seen
05:36is that the trump administration has done has done absolutely they have broken it's not even enough to say
05:44that they have broken norms historically if you were undocumented you could still pay taxes in the united states
05:51and millions of people undocumented people pay taxes in this country in the hope that they can
05:57one day regularize their status and be on a path to citizenship the trump administration has decided to
06:04end that firewall between the irs and ice as well as uh with the with hud the housing and urban development
06:12and so there's now unprecedented data sharing that is happening that is very dangerous and i think it
06:17should be dangerous for all of us this is not just about immigrants this is about all of our privacy
06:22and all of our civil rights um but what we've also been doing is i've been hosting know your rights
06:28seminars through my office uh so that communities across the across our district understand what their
06:35rights are if ice knocks on your door they do not have carte blanche to enter point blank period
06:41and if they do if they do want to knock on your door or knock on anyone's door including your workplace
06:51you can tell them show me a warrant show me a judicial warrant and uh and if they don't show you a
07:00warrant you can say you can come back with a warrant you have the right to turn them away unless they
07:05have the proper paperwork or coming in the proper way and when we first did one of these seminars uh tom
07:12holman then acting director of ice said that he was going to threaten to refer me to doj um because i'm
07:20using my free speech rights in order to advise people of their constitutionally guaranteed protections
07:26and he may want to do it again today and to that i say come for me you're gonna have to come for me
07:35do i look like i care because we the way that we guarantee in this moment when people say
07:46how do we protect against everything that's going on how do we make sure that we can what can we do to
07:53prevent this erosion all this stuff that's happening we do it by exercising and using our constitutional
08:00rights our rights are use it or lose it so we need to use it and we need to challenge them so don't
08:10let them intimidate you into thinking that you're doing something wrong by telling people what their
08:15actual legal constitutional rights are there's nothing wrong about it and there's nothing illegal
08:21about it and if they want to make it illegal they can come take me that's how i feel about it