Video: Blumenthal: Watch These Videos of DHS Agents and "Ask Whether that's the America that You Know"

[WASHINGTON, DC] – Today, U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Ranking Member of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (PSI), delivered an opening statement at a bicameral public forum to receive testimony (available here) from five Americans who were unconstitutionally detained by agents of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

“I call on every American to ask yourselves what it means to be an American to you and to uphold basic American values. And watch these videos, each of your arrests and many others, and ask whether that's the America that you know, the America that reflects your values and American rights,” said Blumenthal.

“We're here seeking accountability. We probably need to change laws to really make the federal government accountable to people like yourselves whose rights have been violated. I know that we're going to be working on it here in the United States Senate, and you will be providing a powerful impetus to us in that work.”

Blumenthal and U.S. Representative Robert Garcia (D-CA), Ranking Member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, are hosting today’s forum as part of their ongoing inquiry into the increasing detention of U.S. citizens by federal immigration agents.

Earlier today, Blumenthal released a report highlighting firsthand accounts of twenty-two Americans who were physically assaulted, pepper sprayed, denied medical treatment, and detained – sometimes for days – by federal immigration agents. The report, Unchecked Authority: Examining the Trump Administration’s Extrajudicial Immigration Detentions of U.S. Citizens, contains new details of accounts that have already been made public as well as several encounters that have not been shared previously.

Video of Blumenthal’s opening statement is available here and the full text is copied below.

My name is Richard Blumenthal. I'm a United States Senator from Connecticut and the Ranking Member on the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. And I am honored to welcome all of you here. Thank you for being here. All the spectators, our staff, which has done such remarkably great work on this hearing, and most especially to Representative Garcia of the House Oversight Committee, where he is the Ranking Member, and he has been doing just extraordinarily valuable work as a point person on accountability. So, I admire and thank him for that work. Thank you for being here.

Most important, I'd like to thank our witnesses, who have come from far away and have braved a lot of adversity to be here—potential threats and intimidation that a lot of Americans may not appreciate without this hearing. We're going to be joined by our colleagues here, just to let you know. Senator Durbin is arriving right now. Members of the House will be coming as well. We’ll be running in and out, because we have votes in the Senate that are ongoing, and House Members are coming from the other side of the Capitol.

But just to lay out at the beginning why we're here. Today, the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations is issuing a report. This report ought to shock America's conscience. Americans should be shocked to read these stories. Twenty-two American citizens treated in a way we would not tolerate anyone in this great nation, our fellow citizens, being abused and mistreated. Americans should have a hard time recognizing our great nation in these shocking, stomach-turning, stories of fellow Americans assaulted brutally by agents of the United States government.

Our report documents twenty-two stories—and yours are among them—across ten different states, all across the United States, containing previously unreported details and new accounts. But we know that these twenty-two stories are among hundreds, literally among hundreds, that your voices and faces will reflect for us today. And they are fearful about coming forward because of intimidation and threats and potential retaliation. You have braved those threats and intimidation, and we are immensely grateful to you today.

Our report outlines, and we'll hear it from five witnesses today, stories that would be totally abhorrent to most Americans. And they follow a through line. There's a script—Americans living normal lives, citizens going about their business, taking kids to school or going to work. Immigration agents stop them, sometimes smashing into their cars, unprompted seizures at the airport, blockades at their streets, even intruding in their homes. Citizens are then subjected to brutal, physical violence. Children are treated with reckless disregard for their safety and well-being. Agents, frequently masked and unidentifiable, turn violent—without provocation—crashing their government vehicles into citizens’ cars and dragging them from those cars, slamming them to the ground and violently assaulting them. This kind of abuse is a pattern.

This excessive force has resulted in injuries to some of you and many others that have lasting impact on them. We're talking about bleeding wounds, broken ribs, concussions, other kinds of real, physical, serious injury. And it doesn't matter if you have documentation, a passport, a REAL ID. Most strikingly to me, aside from the physical violence, is the disregard and denial of proof of citizenship by these masked agents who have detained you and hundreds of others. No due process, total disregard for this document, which we hold sacred in the United States Congress and the American people hold sacred—the Constitution of the United States. No rights and no due process. Arrest first and investigate later.

And then, as if they are secret police, agents kidnap citizens and disappear them, throwing them into vans to be transported elsewhere, without telling people where, without giving them access to telephones so they can contact their families, taking away their phones, no access to lawyers, and no knowledge about how many days or hours they will be held. In fact, contrary to Justice Kavanaugh in the decision in which he concurred, Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo, not a quick stop, detention for days, literally. Of just twenty-two people we spoke to for our report, seven citizens were held for more than twenty-four hours, and two others were held for more than twelve hours—and a number of you for days, literally two days, three days. And by the way, the Department of Homeland Security will not tell us how many U.S. citizens have been detained. Nobody knows, apparently.

They've been held without access to necessary medical care, water, even bathrooms. They've been subject to indignities and disrespect. And when they are finally released, no answers. Sometimes charges against them, that are then dismissed, because they have no basis in fact or law.

And the effects are long lasting. Post-traumatic stress, kidney infections, trips to the hospital, fear of falling asleep only to have nightmares about being dragged out of their homes again.

In many instances, as you have told me, federal immigration agents make up charges of assault to justify their abuses of you. And thankfully, video evidence absolutely refutes those charges. They have invented them, made them up out of whole cloth.

I call on every American to ask yourselves what it means to be an American to you and to uphold basic American values. And watch these videos, each of your arrests and many others, and ask whether that's the America that you know, the America that reflects your values and American rights.

There's a lot more to say here, but I want to keep my comments brief because the focus today really should be on your faces and voices. We want you to tell your stories, which are so powerful, and that you have bravely come before us to tell us.

We're here seeking accountability. We probably need to change laws to really make the federal government accountable to people like yourselves whose rights have been violated. I know that we're going to be working on it here in the United States Senate, and you will be providing a powerful impetus to us in that work. And again, my thanks to you and to all of our colleagues from the House who are going to be joining us, most especially Representative Garcia, and I turn to him now.

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