American citizens who say they were victims of violence at the hands of federal immigration agents are set to testify on Capitol Hill on Tuesday, including the siblings of Renée Good, the woman shot and killed in Minneapolis last month.
Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal (Connecticut) and Rep. Robert Garcia (California) sponsored the forum, focused on what they call “violent tactics and disproportionate use of force by the Department of Homeland Security.”
Among those expected to testify are Marimar Martinez, who was shot by a federal agent in October and later charged with assaulting that officer, charges that were later dropped; Aliya Rahman, a traumatic brain injury survivor dragged from her car by agents in January; and Martin Daniel Rascon, who was shot at by border control agents in California in August. Brent and Luke Ganger, Good’s siblings, are also expected to testify.
At the same time, lawmakers on Capitol Hill voted Tuesday to end the partial government showdown and start negotiating new accountability measures for immigration enforcement — a deal Senate Democrats made with the White House after federal agents shot and killed ICU nurse Alex Pretti in Minneapolis on Jan. 24.
In the furor and protests over Pretti’s death, the Trump administration tasked border czar Tom Homan with overseeing the deployment of 3,000 federal immigration officers that began in Minneapolis on Dec. 1.
Homan has said the federal government could shift forces to more “targeted” raids if they received sufficient cooperation from state and local officials. Advocates in Minneapolis have said that ICE raids have continued in their city, despite the cooling political rhetoric, and protests have continued.
Homan has vowed “zero tolerance” for those who obstruct the work of federal agents. At least 16 protesters in Minnesota have been arrested on charges of assaulting federal officers, the Department of Justice has said.
A report from Democrats on the House Oversight Committee released Tuesday alleged Pretti’s and Good’s deaths were the inevitable result of “increasingly aggressive — and frequently unlawful — tactics … documented across the country.”
Immigration agents have dragged people from their cars, tackled workers at their jobs, detained people on school grounds, unlawfully forced their way into homes without a judicial warrant and stopped people “without any apparent reason other than the color of their skin,” the report alleged.
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