At her town hall event in Queens, New York, on Friday, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) warned about what the deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia could mean for others.
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00:00From Astoria, if you can please stand up.
00:14Hi, this is my first town hall meeting, so I'm a little nervous, but I'm really concerned about Trump's defiance of court orders, bringing back Kilmer and Garcia,
00:26essentially eliminating due process for all U.S. persons in the country, regardless of citizenship status.
00:34My question is, like, what can Congress do about this?
00:37What does it say about a post-Trump presidency that this sets a precedent for any future president to do this in the future, defying the court orders, especially SCOTUS, the highest court in the land?
00:48Absolutely. Thank you.
00:52And this is one of those incredibly important questions, because what is happening to Kilmer Abrago Garcia could happen to any one of us, because that is what eliminating due process means.
01:05It means that, you know, you could point to anyone and accuse them of being undocumented, including U.S. citizens,
01:14and just immediately ship off U.S. citizens to some prison camp in El Salvador that is not subject to U.S. jurisdiction.
01:27And this sets the ground, not just for undocumented people, but for political dissidents as well, U.S. political dissidents.
01:36And so this is a tremendously important issue.
01:39Senator Van Hollen has been an incredible leader.
01:43For folks who may not know, Kilmer is a constituent in Maryland, and so his congressman is Representative Glenn Ivey.
01:49And Senator Van Hollen, who is also the chair on Foreign Affairs or one of the leaders on Foreign Affairs in the Senate, has been able to draw a great degree of attention to this issue.
02:00I think we need to continue to have a drumbeat of legislators that are going to El Salvador and not just making sure that we're keeping eyes on him,
02:10but that we are continuing to draw attention to this issue.
02:13And I do believe that that is what will be happening.
02:18I think that there are certain, there are arrangements being made to ensure that, and I know that there's a steady stream.
02:26So it also, you know, Senator Van Hollen did that, but I do know that Representative Maxwell Frost, Representative Robert Garcia on the Oversight Committee also headed down over there.
02:36And there, we are in a place where there have to be political consequences for these things.
02:43Things will not change unless there are political consequences.
02:46And one of the good things that we're seeing is that there are starting to be political consequences.
02:51We don't just have to wait until next year for something to happen.
02:55There have been these special elections that have been going on.
02:58There were two special elections in Florida where Matt Gaetz's seat was and where Michael Waltz's seat was.
03:07Those vacancies, those vacancies, and those are supposed to be solid red districts.
03:13And even though a Republican won in those seats, they were supposed to win by 40 points.
03:20And they won by much less than that.
03:24And that is why Elise Stefanik got pulled from the U.N. ambassador nomination, which is good.
03:32It's a good development because we need to show that these actions have consequences.
03:39And it sure seemed like Representative Stefanik wanted that post, and she's not getting it because she is enabling the brutality of this administration.
03:47And that's what these people respond to is consequences.
03:50And so it's very important that we continue to organize and that we continue to show electorally that there are consequences for this because, unfortunately, with people who are so self-motivated, we should say, that's what they respond to.
04:14It is the FAFO theory of politics here that Republicans answer to.
04:20And so, you know, unfortunately, appeals to compassion, appeals to democracy, we clearly are not things that they care about.
04:28But showing them that there will be limitations to their power because they've built their power on cruelty.
04:35They've won elections on kind of this mandate of cruelty and talking about immigration and this idea that every DACA recipient, every dreamer is like a source of chaos in America.
04:46And so it's very important that we do that and we will continue to fight for Kilmar Abrego Garcia's release as well.
04:53So thank you.