Hakeem Jeffries

Well, newly hired individuals, those people who've gotten 47 days of training, those people who may have been hired absent actual criminal background checks, like they should not be on the streets.

They should not be enforcing immigration laws.

They are deeply unqualified.

Many of them probably should have never been hired.

And we've got to get to the bottom of that, which is part of what we're saying needs to occur in this particular instance.

Certainly, Kristi Noem is a disaster.

She's got to go.

Stephen Miller has to go.

But you can't just change policy personnel.

You've got to change the underlying implementation of those policies, not just the people who are directing what is occurring.

I think to your question, the agents who have been newly hired as a result of the $75 billion slush fund that Republicans put into place as part of their one big ugly bill, they shouldn't be on the streets right now until we have a clear understanding of who they are, whether they've been properly trained,

And of course, we got to change the legal landscape so that they understand that if they violate the law, they can be criminally investigated and prosecuted at the state and local level, as opposed to what they're being told right now, which is that they have the benefit of so-called absolute immunity.

And we know the Department of Justice will never go after them.

You know, when it comes to actual...

ICE agents and DHS agents, it's much worse than that because we're dealing with two different things that have to be unraveled.

So it's this notion of absolute immunity and it's this notion of sovereign immunity connected to the fact that they are federal law enforcement officers, which is why part of what we have demanded in the context of the type of changes that are necessary before the DHS funding bill can move forward is that state and local authorities

Attorney generals like Keith Ellison or Tish James have the explicit authority to actually investigate ICE agents when they break the law, particularly violently, and to criminally prosecute them if the facts in the law justify that action.

And we believe this is absolutely critical to changing behavior because if ICE agents actually know that they can be held accountable

for the type of violence and brutality being unleashed on the American people, as opposed to the Department of Justice looking the other way under Pam Bondi.

She's a disgrace.