Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.
Congressman Eric Swalwell: Of course.
Sargent: Well, I want to start with some responses from MAGA figures. There’s JD Vance.
Sargent: Vance also said:
Sargent: There’s Randy Fine, who said:
Sargent: Congressman Swalwell, you want to respond to all that?
Instead, Donald Trump has sent these mother-murdering thugs into our community. And of course this is what was gonna happen because it started with putting ICE in the streets and then deporting a six-year-old, stage 4 cancer victim, U.S. citizen, dragging women by their hair. Those apparently were the lucky ones when you look at what happened to Ms. Good.
Goldman: Yeah, well, basically what the officer is going to say would be that, I personally, subjectively, myself believed that she was driving her car right at me and using her car to try to run me over, and therefore I had to shoot her in self-defense. And because the standard is subjective and it allows for the officer’s own view to carry a lot of weight, it will be very difficult for him to be prosecuted with the current status of qualified immunity.
Sargent: Okay, I want to break that down a little bit more. So one piece of this is that it removes the protection against lawsuits from victims who allege that their constitutional rights were violated. That’s one piece, yes?
Sargent: Okay, the second piece of this is more complicated. If they thought they were doing what they needed to do to execute federal law, they’re generally protected from prosecution. You guys are trying to remove that and put something in place that’s a lot more clear and doesn’t necessarily turn on what the officer says he or she thought, right?
Again, it’s just saying, Look, we see what you’re doing. We’re not helpless to stop you. And we’re going to bring account to the acts that you’re committing in our communities.
Goldman: Well, it would be an objective standard. So it would be what a reasonable person standing in the shoes of that officer would and should have thought. And that’s important because it still does give an officer a real and legitimate argument that, I’m acting in self-defense or that I reasonably believed that I was doing this. But the other thing that I do think is also very important about this is it narrows and identifies what the duties and responsibilities defense is.
And so they should never have been in the situation they were in where they were trying to take a woman out of a car. That was not part of what they should be doing. They could ask her to move if they needed to. It doesn’t look like from the video that she was doing anything that was obstructing them. But for them to then be able to just say, I have this blanket defense that I thought she was coming after me and therefore I shot—I mean, basically they should be treated as a civilian would be treated.
Swalwell: Well, certainly I would expect any other administration—and by the way, if this individual is not pardoned, a future administration federally could prosecute this individual. But yes, certainly Keith Ellison, the attorney general of Minnesota, or the Hennepin County district attorney would have the ability to do that.
And so if they’re going to commit false imprisonment, kidnapping, battery, assault against the most vulnerable in our communities, you have to charge them with the crime. And the second you start doing that, I promise you these guys are going to think twice.
Goldman: That’s right. The one thing to know, though, is it’s still unclear that it could be charged by a state or local prosecutor. Because it’s a federal officer, and generally, even if it were charged in the state, it can be removed to federal court because of the Supremacy Clause.
Kristi Noem had a press conference today where she said, On the one hand, we’re going to go through the policies and procedures to conduct this investigation. Then right after that she said, And we know that those policies and procedures are going to reveal that he acted within his authority. She literally has already made up her mind even though presumably there’s a lot more to the investigation—in talking to witnesses, in talking to the other officers—that you would want to do.
Sargent: Okay, well, I want to ask about funding for ICE. Obviously, Trump and Stephen Miller have gotten huge infusions of federal money. They’re about to dramatically expand recruitment for ICE. This will get much worse. I’ve got to think this shooting in Minneapolis should make it very hard or even impossible for most Democrats to support the level of funding that ICE is getting. Congressman Swalwell, what do you guys want Dems to do in the upcoming budget debate to rein in ICE funding or dramatically limit it?
That’s not what they’re doing. They’re chasing people through the fields and factories where they work. They’re going to churches, they’re going to schools, they’re terrorizing people who are here with all of their documents. And again, they shot a U.S. citizen in the face. They deported a six-year-old with Stage 4 cancer.
Sargent: Congressman Goldman, let me just ask it this way to you. If Democrats take back the House, what should their position on ICE be? I think it’s obvious ICE can’t continue in anything like its current form. What should Dems be for? Is it abolishing it? Is it crushing it? Is it defunding it dramatically and putting major strictures on it so it’s barely recognizable? What should House Democrats in the majority, if they get it, be for?
ICE is essentially a military now, and it’s only supposed to be for civil infractions. My district office in downtown Manhattan is across the street from 26 Federal Plaza, which is where the immigration courthouses are and where the immigration detention center—actually, it’s not a detention center, it’s a processing facility that’s been used as a detention center.
So they are violating the law not just with the excessive force that we see all over the place, but also by deporting so many people who are not criminals. Seventy percent of those arrested in New York by ICE have no criminal record whatsoever. Seventy. And yet we’re told it’s the worst of the worst and it’s criminals and all this. It’s not.
Sargent: Well, I want to give Congressman Swalwell a chance to answer the same question. Abolish ICE, crush ICE—what’s the way to understand it?
Sargent: Okay, let’s just go back to the measure you guys are introducing. I just was hoping to drill down a little more into how it actually works. So just walk us through what the removing of immunity actually does in terms of exposing an ICE agent to some form of prosecution, whether it’s state, federal—what’s the way to get them under the new regime that you would put in place?
It would not be immediately thrown out under qualified immunity that exists today. And she would be able to make her case. And as Dan said, a more objective standard based on, like, the reasonableness or unreasonableness of the officer’s conduct.
This would take away defenses that they would have. And again, when you’re a prosecutor, to really drill down: To charge any individual with a crime, you have to be convinced that you can prove that case beyond a reasonable doubt. Not that you can get an indictment, that even post-indictment that you can prove that case to a jury of that person’s peers beyond a reasonable doubt.
Sargent: Well, Congressman Goldman, just to boil this down as simply as possible: Your bill, if it were to pass, simply would make this officer and any other rogue officer who did something like this potentially more vulnerable to a state prosecution than he currently is or would be.
The biggest difference—and while this has much more direct impact on civil lawsuits, as we have been talking about, Greg—the civil standard of qualified immunity also has an application in criminal law. Which means that because you would have a defense to the murder by saying, I reasonably... I subjectively... I personally believed that I was under attack and therefore I had to use force, equal and opposite force. Now that personal, subjective belief would no longer be the standard. The standard would be what a reasonable officer in that situation would think.
Sargent: So under this bill, Keith Ellison could more easily charge this officer with a crime than before? And do you think that should happen?
And sadly and unfortunately, Greg, in this administration—and we cannot normalize this—there’s no independence of the FBI and the DOJ from Donald Trump, the White House, the Homeland Security. It is all an apparatus of Donald Trump. So whatever Donald Trump decides is what is going to happen with the FBI. So there’s no hope that the FBI or the Department of Justice will charge this case. They’ve already concluded otherwise.
Sargent: I think that’s very clear. Just to close this out, Congressman Swalwell, what do you expect to happen in the upcoming budget battles? What stand do you expect Democrats to make here? I cannot see how Democrats vote for ICE funding in anything like its current form now. I guess every House Democrat opposes it? And what happens in the Senate? Is there a consensus position Democrats will reach that would represent an acceptable level in funding or what? What happens?
Goldman: And remember, because of all the Big, Beautiful, Big, Ugly Bill funding, ICE got $45 billion last year. And they’re giving $50,000 hiring bonuses. And they’re not training these agents who are masked and anonymous and are wreaking havoc on our communities with violence and now with murder. We are not going to—I am not going to vote for anything that allows that to continue.
Sargent: Yeah, and simply put, I mean, the Senate is going to have a tough situation. There’s going to be pressure on Senate Democrats to not support anything like this level of funding. Congressman Swalwell, Congressman Goldman, thanks so much for coming on with us today.
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