On Thursday’s broadcast of CNN International’s “The Brief,” Rep. Lou Correa (D-CA) discussed the DHS shutdown and said that “the White House has a lot of the cards on this one. We passed that big, beautiful bill last year, with $170 billion,” and “can continue moving forward on this very small shutdown and continue to do what they’re doing. They have the cards. We have very few cards, and that’s why we have to hold firm on this one.”
Correa said, “Look, the White House has a lot of the cards on this one. We passed that big, beautiful bill last year, with $170 billion, more money than you’ve ever seen go to that agency, to do nothing but deport. And, remember, President Trump promised to deport the most serious of criminals. Today, what do we have? Mother Good, nurse [Pretti] killed, other citizens in my district as well, afraid for their lives. A lot of them want to come forward and say we’ve been beaten, arrested, jailed by ICE. This is not America. Remember, Homeland Security was designed to protect Americans from foreign terrorists. Now it’s become a police force that goes after anybody that gets in their way, including Americans, and what the Democrats, Hakeem, has done is asked, essentially, for, essentially, guardrails to make sure that when Homeland, when ICE, CBP is out there doing their job, they don’t disrespect our rights, they don’t go after us without a warrant, that they respect places like churches. These are reasonable requests. It’s up to the administration now to say, yes, we’re going to protect Americans, we’re going to protect law-abiding citizens, or we’re just going to run roughshod over people and kill more individuals.”
He added, “[T]hat’s really the issue right now, that big, beautiful bill, all of that money, they can essentially do what they want to do with that money without any consequences. We do need moderation. We do need commonsense folks to stand up, both Democrats and Republicans, to say, this is the United States, we have to protect citizens, and we have to protect individuals that are here working hard, honest, hardworking taxpayers. We need that. But, big, beautiful bill, $170 billion, they can continue moving forward on this very small shutdown and continue to do what they’re doing. They have the cards. We have very few cards, and that’s why we have to hold firm on this one.”
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