MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
For more on this, I'm joined by Congressman Dan Goldman. He is a Democrat from New York, and he serves on the House Homeland Security Committee. Good morning, Congressman. Thanks for joining us.
DAN GOLDMAN: Good morning, Michel. Great to be with you.
MARTIN: So let me start with today's hearing. You and your colleagues will hear testimony from senior leaders at ICE, Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. What's the goal for you for this hearing today?
GOLDMAN: I want answers. I want to understand how they can justify essentially wreaking havoc and terror and killing American citizens all around the country in the name of immigration enforcement. The data is very clear that they are lawless. There's clearly use of excessive force and outside the bounds of the Constitution. But also the people they're going after are nowhere close to the worst of the worst. In fact, the vast majority of them have no criminal history whatsoever. And so we'll be looking for some understanding as to what the changes are that they intend to implement to respond to this outcry from the American people.
MARTIN: Do you think that your - any of your Republican colleagues share these concerns?
GOLDMAN: I do believe my Republican colleagues share these concerns. The question is, how willing are they to go public with them? It is notable, as Barbara said, that the - this hearing was called the day that Alex Pretti was killed. Saturday afternoon, the chairman issued a letter saying he wanted to hear from the ICE director and CBP director. And so there was clearly a response from Republicans, many of whom are up for reelection in November. And immigration has been something that they've leaned on in a misdirected way, but it is nonetheless now something that the public is outraged by their conduct. So I'll be interested to see how many of them actually go public in this hearing with criticisms.
MARTIN: So Democrats laid out 10 demands last week that they want to see before agreeing to fund DHS. And we understand that there is some agreement on body cameras. That's one of the things that Barbara Sprunt talked about, but that Democrats want to see this codified into law. Republicans, at least the administration is saying that this is dependent on funding. They'll start in Minneapolis first and then kind of roll it out as funding becomes available. But what else? What other things do you see as a bottom line for you?
GOLDMAN: Well, the body cameras need to be mandatory. It's not simply enough that you're supplying them, and it's quite odd to say that ICE does not have enough funding when it got $75 billion from the big ugly bill. But a lot of this is transparency because you have essentially masked secret police roaming the streets, demanding citizenship papers from people, killing people and having no consequences. So they're able to act with impunity because they're being protected by the Department of Justice. So, yes, first thing first, no masks. I was a federal prosecutor for 10 years. None of the criminal law enforcement agents who were actually going after bad guys wore masks. That's not the way we do things in America. You need to be transparent and you need to be accountable. That, for sure, is a nonstarter for us.
Other things is just simply implementing what the law already is. I don't see why it should be a problem to get a judicial warrant to search a home. That's what the Fourth Amendment requires. And much of this is reining in the lawless violence. But for me, Kristi Noem needs to go, and that's going to be a baseline. And I'm also very concerned about the efforts by this administration to interfere in the upcoming election by usurping power and grabbing voting rolls, voting machines, etc.
MARTIN: I don't know that that is part of the scope of this hearing or the individuals that you expect to hear from today would even have authority in this matter. But just to the question of face masks. I mean, Republicans have said publicly that that's a nonstarter for them. Have you heard anything privately that leads you to believe that there's negotiation on some of these other points?
GOLDMAN: Other than that, there's no good rationale or basis for them to say it's a nonstarter. Judges have been doxed repeatedly. Republicans don't seem to care about that, and you won't be doxed if you're following the law and you're not outrageously violating the civil rights of Americans and immigrants. So it is - this is not something that they can win in the court of public opinion because I think, A, their statistics are completely inflated and made up. We haven't seen any evidence of additional doxing. But moreover, that's the point, is that you have to act within the law, not behind a mask.
MARTIN: What I'm - I'm still trying to understand what convinces you that there may be a negotiation space on this point. And you keep referring to sort of the court of public opinion. We know from polling, for example, that Democrats are very disturbed by what they're seeing in the streets. Independents are very disturbed by what they're seeing in the streets. So we see Americans, overall, are very disturbed by what they're seeing on the streets, but it doesn't seem to be that Republicans, as a group of voters, don't seem to be as disturbed. They still seem overwhelmingly to support the government or the Trump administration's administration efforts. So I guess I'm wondering what leverage do you see that would encourage some of your Republican colleagues to see things your way?
GOLDMAN: Well, if you really want to get down to brass tacks, they need independence to keep the House majority. That's just a fact because they'll have to win battleground districts, and right now they're losing those significantly. So they can't just rely on Republicans to hold the House. I mean, that's a cynical political view of it. The other view is just simply that it's posturing on their part because there is no basis why civil immigration enforcement officers should be able to conceal their face and identity when criminal law enforcement agents do not. And that's the way that our democracy works. This is not some sort of USSR, where you have mass secret police roaming the streets with impunity.
MARTIN: You were a prosecutor, as you mentioned, for many years. Were you ever doxed? Did you ever feel threatened in the course of doing your job? Your identity was never secret.
GOLDMAN: No, I was never doxed as a prosecutor, although I have received many death threats as a member of Congress. In fact, I prosecuted mob bosses and certainly have received more threats from Donald Trump and his supporters than I ever did from the mafia.
MARTIN: Before we let you go, what do you say to those who believe a shutdown would be meaningless? Because, as you just pointed out, ICE received an enormous funding boost in the last bill, the $75 billion. A shutdown would affect other parts of DHS, like disaster response. What do you say to that?
GOLDMAN: Right. Well, if TSA is shut down, the Coast Guard shut down, FEMA is shut down. Those are significant areas of the Department of Homeland Security that the Republicans will be shutting down because they want to continue this lawlessness.
MARTIN: That's Democratic Congressman Dan Goldman of New York. Thanks for joining us. And I want to note we have open invitations to Republican leaders in Congress to join us on this program, and we will bring them to you when they agree to speak with us.
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