MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Now, we hear from Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut for his take on the DHS funding question. He is a Democrat, and he's on the line with us now. Good morning, Senator. Thanks for joining us.
CHRIS MURPHY: Good morning.
MARTIN: I understand that most of the caucus is planning to vote against this DHS funding bill. Just what went into your decision?
MURPHY: Well, DHS is an out-of-control agency. It is not complying with the law. And it's not just Minneapolis. I was in Texas last week, trying to get access to some of these detention centers where people are dying, and DHS wouldn't let me in. That's in direct contravention of the law. I went into one of these immigration courtrooms and saw them violating the law every day, disappearing immigrants who are here legally. This is an agency that's jeopardizing the safety of the people of Minneapolis, is violating the law left and right. And we're just not doing our job - we're not upholding our oath - if we're funding an agency that's out of control.
So that's what went into my decision. I only want to fund a federal government that's involved in complying with the law and is not running an agency that is ending up routinely with Americans and residents of this country being killed. And I think that's what people want. People want us to fund DHS, but they want us to fund only a department that is making our communities safer, not making them less safe.
MARTIN: Is the administration making any effort to change your mind and the minds of other Democrats? Are they offering, for example, any specific reforms that they could make to their immigration enforcement campaign that would make you and other Democrats comfortable with voting to fund DHS?
MURPHY: No. In fact, they're doing the opposite. When things started to get very dangerous in Minneapolis after the first shooting, they surged more untrained ICE and CBP officers into the city. After the shooting yesterday, they went on television and lied through their teeth to the American people about what happened, calling this young man, an ICU nurse who works with veterans, an assassin. So they are inflaming the situation. They are doubling down on their illegality. It's why the American people are turning against them in this operation and why they're demanding that Congress, you know, demand reforms, which is what we're going to do this week.
MARTIN: Just a point of clarification. The shooting was Saturday. The latest shooting was Saturday. So two arguments that we're hearing on the Democratic side against this - one is substantive, and one is political. Let's just take them separately. The first is that blocking this funding would be a mistake because it'll delay funds for things like disaster relief and the Coast Guard, and that ICE is going to be able to operate anyway due to the funding it got from last year's Republican tax and spending bill. What do you say to that?
MURPHY: Well, there's nothing that would stop us from constraining the use of dollars that are both in the annual budget, but also the Big Beautiful Bill. And the fact of the matter is, we aren't going to ask for the entirety of the Department of Homeland Security to be reformed. We're going to ask for targeted reforms that will make our communities safer. We're going to ask - you know, the things that we certainly could demand and talk about are ending these roving patrols of officers who are not trained to do that kind of door-to-door operation, requiring warrants for arrests, requiring identification and body cameras. You know, these are things that would make these operations safer, would result in fewer people being hurt. I think these are going to be commonsense reforms that we'll likely talk about, things that the Republicans really have no reason to be against because I think the American people will support them.
MARTIN: Well, the second argument against is political. I mean, this is an argument being advanced by, say, a Democratic think tank - that the administration is going to spin this as defunding law enforcement and that that tends not to go over well.
MURPHY: Well, listen. The - I think the American people are pretty clear about this. You see, you know, 60%, 70% of Americans in polls saying that ICE is out of control right now. They see an administration that is acting lawlessly. So as I mentioned, we're not going to be talking about, you know, doing away with internal law enforcement. We're going to be talking about reforming the way that ICE is operating so they're paying attention to the law again. They are not making these communities any safer.
And of course, we're starting to also learn that there may be a much more insidious motive here. Over the weekend, Pam Bondi sent a memo to the state of Minnesota and said, we'll leave Minnesota if you turn over your voting rolls to us. That sounds like they are using ICE as leverage to try to take control of elections. Donald Trump has made it pretty clear that he wants to rig the next election, and ICE seems to be potentially a pretext for that. So every day, this grows more serious. And every day, the - I think the public is making it 100% clear that they want us to only fund ICE, to only fund DHS, if this agency is acting lawfully. And that's the bottom line of what we are going to be talking about this week.
MARTIN: We have to leave it there for now. That's Senator Chris Murphy. He's a Democrat from Connecticut. Senator, thank you.
MURPHY: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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