On Thursday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “All In,” Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) defended his vote against the Laken Riley Act by stating that “people are going to be targeted because they’re brown.”
Host Chris Hayes asked, “[T]here’s a sort of a test of this happening now with this piece of legislation that would essentially make larger the category of immigrants who are here undocumented without status who can be put into the deportation queue if arrested, not convicted, for a set of category of crimes. So, it enlargens that. It also, in a more — well, a part that a lot of Democrats are very focused on, it gives state A.G.s unprecedented power to essentially intervene in immigration court proceedings. [37] Democrats voted for this piece of legislation sponsored by Republicans. It just passed over cloture, 8[4]-9. You voted against it. Why, and do you think it’s an ominous sign that this is getting Democratic votes?”
Swalwell answered, “Because people are going to be targeted because they’re brown. That’s what’s going to happen in America, because we’re not saying now that you have to go through the court process and be convicted of a violent crime — and I don’t want any undocumented individual who commits a violent crime to be here. I think they should be removed after they serve their sentence. But what this says is if the officer just says, you know what, that person looks like they’re undocumented, I’m going to pull them over, now, in the officer’s mind, whether it was a lawful detention or not, he’s got the person pulled over. And if they are undocumented, [not] having committed any crime, supporting their family, going to work, working in an agriculture field, working in hospitality, they’re gone. It’s the predicate now to deport. And I think that’s wrong. And by the way, we have a workforce crisis in America. So, if we can get rid of the most violent folks in America, secure the border, we don’t want to disrupt the people who are out in the fields doing these jobs that no one else will take, the people who are working in our restaurants, the people who are working in our hotels, because the cost for everyone else will go up.”
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