Jimmy Panetta Holds a Presser on ICE

Along with several law enforcement officials, non-profit directors, a doctor, and the Superintendent of Schools for Santa Cruz County

Earlier today, Jan. 29th, at the community health center on Capitola Road, in the Live Oak area of Santa Cruz County, CA, Congressman Jimmy Panetta (D-19) held a community roundtable with several non-profit directors, health professionals and law enforcement officials to address regional concerns about ICE visits to our community and the mayhem we are seeing in Minnesota.

The news media was invited for a press conference just after (Panetta’s office called this a “media availability” event). A dozen or so journalists from various new outlets showed up on the lawn outside the clinic at 12:30 pm, and people who were just leaving the health clinic after appointments stopped in the courtyard to listen also. Moment of Truth Dispatch was there on an invitation through KSQD. A news report is also available on Talk of the Bay for Thursday, Jan. 29, which you can find in the two-week archives at the KSQD website (for two weeks, anyway).

The topic is so important to our community that the Dispatch is printing the entirety of the press conference as a transcript, below, including our own and other journalists’ questions. This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity and redundant words and phrases have been removed. When a word is very unclear, we use [brackets] to signify our best guess.

Congressman Jimmy Panetta:

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for being here. Thanks to members of the press for being here. I appreciate this opportunity to talk about something not just from the federal level, but as we’re seeing, this is … something that we’re going to have to discuss from the ground up–especially when it comes to not just pushing back on this administration, but from organizing at the local level so that we can be prepared for any intervention by this administration.

I also want to thank Santa Cruz Community Health for allowing us to be here today to have this very, very important conversation. What we heard today at the roundtable that was convened was, basically, community leaders coming together to talk about not just what’s happening, but what we can do together going forward.

Obviously, the words that we heard were fear, frustration, but … most importantly, it’s about trust. It’s about trust, not just with our law enforcement, but with all community organizations and with our communities, to make sure that the people of Santa Cruz, of the Central Coast, of the 19th congressional district, continue to have trust in the institutions that do so much to protect the most vulnerable, that do so much to protect our citizens here …

Let me be clear that the DHS, ICE and CBP agents are not law enforcement. Instead, they are acting like a lawless, marauding mob posing as police. At the federal level, we are doing what we can to make sure that we prevent further deadly shootings of U.S. citizens and the violation of civil liberties by ICE and CBP agents.

And at the local level … we’re doing everything we can to prevent them, and prepare for them [ICE/CBP] … being in our communities. … As a federal representative, I have called for the removal and resignation of [White House Deputy Chief of Staff and Homeland Security Advisor] Stephen Miller, who’s driving this mass deportation policy. Let’s make no bones about it. He is driving this mass deportation policy, and [Homeland Security] Secretary Noem is implementing this policy.

… If there’s not the removal of those two administration officials, you will see impeachment resolutions in the House that I will support. We are working through legislation, through appropriation, through litigation, our arguments of our moral obligation, but also what we heard today: It’s time for coordination and preparation.

Now, look, when it comes to legislation, I firmly believe that this is another opportunity for Congress, for Speaker Johnson, to make sure that we reestablish our role as a check on the executive branch to defend several liberties and create a compromise to place common sense guardrails on ICE and CBP.

In the appropriation process, what’s going on right now in the Senate, we are using that to negotiate and affect change. Last week, before the shooting that took place on Saturday of Mr. Pretti, I voted No for the DHS appropriations package because I’m not going to be complicit when it comes to ICE and CBP agents lawlessness.

This week, the negotiations that are taking place right now are for legislation, legislation–not an executive action–but legislation combined with the appropriations to tighten the rules for use of warrants to make sure there’s a uniform code of conduct and enhanced training for ICE and CBP and that there’s no masks worn and that they do wear body cameras, as well as independent investigations for transparency and accountability.

But, with this Trump administration in charge and with the capitulating, Republican-led House and Senate in charge, the leadership that we’re seeing on these important issues has got to come from the bottom up, has got to come from this community on up. And that is exactly why we are here today, to do what we do best in the 19th congressional district.

We come together, we work together, we partner together to protect not just our most vulnerable, but to prepare to protect everybody, everybody in our communities. So I’m proud that there were so many people here to turn out, our public servants who are present, and all of us are proud to be able to come together so that we can continue to not just maintain the trust that our community has in our public institutions, but that they can have faith in our public institutions, be it the police, be it community health organizations, be at nonprofits, be it Second Harvest, be it their political leaders. We want to make sure that we act … not for what’s going on in Minnesota, but we act for the people here in the 19th congressional district.

So again, I appreciate everybody for being here, being a part of this, and I turn it over to Santa Cruz County Sheriff Clark.

Santa Cruz County Sheriff Chris Clark:

Thank you, Congressman. Yeah, good afternoon. Thank you for being here. My name is Chris Clark, I’m Sheriff Coroner of Santa Cruz County. And to be honest, I, you know, there’s so much anxiety and fear going on in our community. And I can’t imagine the conversations that happen literally on a nightly basis, based on everything that we’re seeing both locally and nationally at their dinner table, talking about, you know, things with our kids when it comes to food: How are we going to eat? When it comes to education and school-related issues, and then work, and then … How do we provide for our families? … and not the least of which is safety and public safety for which obviously I’ve spent my life so far dedicated to, and I want to make a couple things clear. One is that–and you should know–so just to reaffirm: us, as local law enforcement, do not enforce immigration related … laws, we don’t do that. That separation happens because … we have to be coordinated with our community and we have to work with them to be able to fix issues. People are not going to go dial 911 if they’re afraid that immigration status is going to come into play.

We do not enforce immigration related laws.

What you’ve seen on TV, and I want to … address that a minute, with some of the, just the really terrible, ugly, tragic things that we’ve seen in Minneapolis and other places. Us, and law enforcement, I can speak for us in this county, and I know I can speak for [Monterey County] Sheriff Nieto. We at law enforcement have a duty to intercede. If we are present, we see things like excessive uses of force or blatant violations of the law, we have a duty to intercede. That goes the same with the federal law enforcement [if they break the law], as it even does with our own, and we’re trained in that. …

And … I want to make this point known as well. You know, there is a lot of anxiety with regards to … do we know if it’s ICE? Do we know if it’s Border Patrol, DEA, FBI? If anybody approaches anyone, and you’re concerned that there could be some sort of question with regards to are they a legitimate federal law enforcement officer, dial 911. That’s what I’ve told folks in my community. Dial 911.

We will go. We’ll come, we’ll show up, and we’ll be able to determine are they who they say they are? And so if there’s any question with that, we want to make sure that we’re addressing that and that there’s not folks running around taking advantage of people [in] situations like that.

And then lastly, as far as safety–to touch on the sense that if anything happens in this [community], what you have, frankly, is really special in Santa Cruz County. And, I’ll tell you, regionally with Monterey County and San Benito, the coordination that we have.

Speaking for us, in Santa Cruz County … my relationship with the district attorney’s office–district attorney Jeff Roselle–is really, really close. We have coordination meetings … with his office, with other police chiefs.

If something terrible happens, like you’ve seen in Minneapolis … we have a process in place of investigating those situations. We have a protocol in place. This is nothing new for us when it comes to critical instances. And that’s the process we would execute and investigate those things.

And so really, I just want to thank Congressman Panetta for bringing all of us together from different sectors of the community, from food, from health care, from the police. It takes all of us. We are part of the fabric of this community. … Many of us live here. We raise our families here. And it’s so important to make sure that we’re doing everything we can to support the folks that live here. And that’s what I will continue to do as your sheriff. And I’m just so proud to be a part of this group. So with that, I will turn it over to Monterey County Sheriff Tina Nieto.

Monterey County Sheriff Tina Nieto:

Good afternoon, everybody. Thank you for coming out. And I want to thank everybody who came out and shared what’s going on. Congressman Panetta, thank you for bringing us together.

You know, I wrote a bunch of notes, but I sat there in this room and I listened to what was going on in this room. And here’s what I heard over and over again: The erosion of trust, the erosion of trust in our institutions, the fear, the anxiety, the struggles that our most vulnerable populations are going through.

And I’ve been in this business for 37 years now, 37 years of pledging to protect my community. I’m also a veteran. So I did my eight years protecting the nation. And I sit in my living room every night and I watch what’s going on in our nation and it bothers me. It not only bothers me–I sit with tears in my eyes, with my partner, as we say: What is going on?

We have dedicated our lives to protecting our communities. And like everybody, this is not a beginning, because I know we’ve been working on these issues. How do we protect Santa Cruz County, Monterey County, San Benito County, because these are communities that are made up of the most vulnerable?

We’re farm workers. We’re ag. We’re hospitality. And they [workers in these fields] deserve to be defended by the people that we ask to put trust in us. Every single person here, we’re in some sort of institution where people have to trust us to do our jobs. What I want to let the community know, that Sheriff Clark already talked about, is that every law enforcement agency in the state of California has a duty to intervene if they see an illegal use of force taking place.

It doesn’t say if it’s our federal partners or if it’s municipality, but if it’s law enforcement, they’re supposed to stop the action. [Believe she meant: they will stop an illegal action even if committed by other “law enforcement” or feds.]

We’re held to that standard. What I can tell you in Monterey County as your Sheriff, if you’re watching this, is that I’m here to protect our vulnerable populations. I’m here to protect the laws that we put in place because I believe that we’re [a community of?] a rule of law, and I too am tired of what I view as some of the lawlessness, as some of the people not being held accountable for their actions. And my hope and my prayer for our nation to our president is to do the right thing. Please do the right thing. And I’ll just start crying, so I’m going to walk away. I’m going to turn it over to Santa Cruz DA, Jeff Roselle. Thank you, sir.

Santa Cruz County District Attorney Jeff Roselle:

Thank you. I just want to start by thanking all of you for being here. I think it’s incredible and it is a sign of this community that there’s so many people out there that are interested in this. I want to thank Congressman Panetta for bringing all the folks that you see before you here together. And what you see before you are people from education, health, social services, agriculture, law enforcement. And that is what makes Santa Cruz County and Monterey County a special place because we have coordination like this.

And I want to tell you on behalf of law enforcement, that is exactly the model that we have. All of the chiefs, the sheriff, the DA’s office, work together in Santa Cruz County and row in the same direction.

And we are all committed to protecting the citizens and the people that live in Santa Cruz County. If there is some sort of a violation of law, rest assured, we will investigate it under state authority. And if somebody deserves to be prosecuted, we will work on that and we will prosecute to the best of our abilities. So I just want to say in closing, thank you for being here, and thank you to everybody up here for being so collaborative, which is exactly what law enforcement is like in our county. Thank you.

County Supervisor Felipe Hernandez (Watsonville area):

So really briefly, I want to thank Supervisor Monica Martinez’s staff that’s here, I think, somewhere. … Last week, we had the opportunity to create the ad hoc committee called SHIELD. I still haven’t memorized the acronym–Safeguarding, Health, Inclusion, Essential services, and Local Defense. So, we did that so that we can respond quickly to any issues that come up so that we could … create policies, ordinances, resolutions that help create safety for our community.

Right now, within our social services, our human services department, we’re seeing a decrease of people filing for MediCal. We’re seeing that people are scared to go to essential services in Watsonville. Just last week, when immigration came to–ICE came to Watsonville–folks were [calling] … They’re scared to go to work, scared to work in agriculture, scared to work in the tourism hospitality industry, and scared to work in construction sites.

We can’t live with this level of fear. We have to do something. So we’re doing different policies. We’re going to create different policies. We’re going to collaborate with our community partners to make sure that we have input from everybody. And so that’s what this ad hoc is about, this SHIELD ad hoc that we’re doing. And that’s pretty much it. So thank you very much.

Erica Padilla Chavez, CEO of Second Harvest Food Bank:

Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Erica Padilla Chavez, and I serve as the CEO of your food bank, Second Harvest Food Bank. I want to begin by thanking Congressman Panetta for putting this wonderful roundtable together, an opportunity for all sectors of our community to connect and hear firsthand how we are preparing, should we see what we’re seeing in other parts of the country.

I want to publicly state that your food bank has been and will continue to be committed to making sure anyone in our community who is in need of food has the access to it. And we are laser focused on that. And there’s a lot we’re doing to ensure that our neighbors that may be feeling anxious to come out and pick up food, that they have avenues to obtain it.

I want to thank the network of over 65 partner community agencies, many of them schools, some of them government agencies, churches and the like, for stepping up and supporting us and making sure that we give our neighbors the food they deserve. There is no more important essential need for anybody than food. And I ask our communities to stand with us. Your food bank does not operate without you. We need the community to be engaged and we are here to do what we know we’ve done well for 53 years, take care of our Santa Cruz neighbors. Thank you.

Faris Sabbah, Superintendent of Schools, Santa Cruz County:

Good afternoon. My name is Faris Sabbah. I serve as your Santa Cruz County Superintendent of Schools. And today, I stand, we all stand here in solidarity with the students, families, and immigrant communities of Santa Cruz County. We know that students cannot learn if they’re feeling fear. And for the past [year], we have witnessed a constant attack on immigrant families, our most vulnerable communities, and [on] public education. This is a devastating campaign of injustice and intimidation.

In recent weeks, these attacks are escalating into a pattern of lethal violence, followed by brazenly false propaganda to deflect and deny what we’ve all seen. In public education, we teach lessons from history. What we are seeing in Minneapolis proves once again that when the rights of the most vulnerable communities are under attack, soon all of our rights are under attack. The only question is how we will respond?

I want to thank Congressman Panetta for convening this important conversation today as we assess our region’s resources and preparation needs. And I applaud Congressman Panetta for voting No on the recent appropriations bill to continue to fund these brazen attacks in our communities. We cannot fund violence, injustice, and unaccountability. We must urge our senators to hold this line.

Locally, we have a strong network of partners who provide support, support resources and training to our immigrant community, including the leaders standing here today. Our schools have an important role. Schools … must continue to be safe and trusted spaces for every student and family. Schools are more than just places for learning. They are centers for well-being, for food distribution, health and mental health support, and trusted community spaces.

Let there be no doubt about one thing every child has a right to a public education regardless of immigration status. And our schools do not cooperate and will not cooperate with immigration enforcement. We do not collect information about immigration status and we do not allow immigration officers on our campuses without a warrant. Signed by a judge. Schools have clearly established protocols for responding to any attempted immigration enforcement. The Santa Cruz County Office of Education works with the Santa Cruz County Immigration Coalition to provide resources, training, and legal information accessible online through our website. We are also partnering with the Santa Cruz County Supervisors new SHIELD subcommittee to carefully evaluate any additional steps that we can take to safeguard our community.

Today I want to ensure our community that … that there have been no attempts at immigration enforcement actions at schools here in Santa Cruz County. We will immediately notify our community if that is to change.

To our families, now is the time to strengthen your relationship with schools as trusted allies in our, in your children’s well-being. Ask your school and non-profit providers about child safety plans and why they are so important to your family. Attend know-your-rights trainings and volunteer with support of nonprofits that lead this work such as Community Action Board, Community Bridges, Second Harvest Food Bank, Your Allied Rapid Response, and so many others here today and in our community.

I want to conclude by once again thanking Congressman Panetta for gathering us here today for an important conversation about the safety of our community. This is a moment when each of us are called to respond from demonstrating and advocating to providing safeguards, services and support. Now is a time to raise our voices for our students, for our families, and for the values we uphold here in Santa Cruz County and across the Central Coast. Thank you for being here and thank you for standing up for our community.

Ronaldo Hernandez, Doctor, Commissioner, CCAH

Thank you. Thank you for being here this afternoon. I’m [Ronaldo] Hernandez. I’m a local physician–internal medicine, hospital medicine–practicing here in Santa Cruz County. I’m also a commissioner with the Central California Alliance for Health, which provides medical services for the entire Central Coast.

One of the things I really wanted to touch on … and I guess there’s a human face when it comes to things that I’ve seen, it’s really a second pandemic, if you will, a man-made policy-driven pandemic. The communities that suffered the most during COVID were our farm worker communities, our agricultural communities, our multi-generational families. And they fed us throughout the entire pandemic. They showed up to work. There was no way that they could remotely work, and we were all better because of it.

And now because of these policies that are being [implemented] out of Washington and the way that they’re trying to be implemented is affecting that same population again with as much devastation as the pandemic did. Over 70 percent of the admissions with COVID to [community] hospitals came from those communities and their health is now being affected again.

We can talk about stress. We can talk about the effect on communities at large, but [what] we’re really talking about here is people, human beings that have medical problems and a whole host of things, and I’m grateful that Congressman Panetta got us here today, that we work with our law enforcement individuals, that we work with the Farm Bureau, and people that provide the services for people within our community.

But it comes down to that very thing that we’re talking about, and this is what that Panetta talked about–and that is trust, a breakdown in trust in their communications [commmunity?]. I feel like this is actually … deliberate in terms of the dissolution of trust that our community is having in institutions. We see it in healthcare, with people pushing back on immunizations, and what we know is sound medical science. We know that they’re pushing back on elected officials and what’s happening there, and we also know they’re pushing back on law enforcement. These pillars of our community that we rely on to keep us living together and living comfortably and interacting in a safe and healthy way are being dissolved.

And I think it’s time for us to work together to make sure that we reinvigorate our relationships with one another and our community working with our established individuals, our people that we look to for leadership and to continue looking forward again.

Healthcare is here for that. We’ll stand beside everybody … healthy communities, healthy communities [?] absolutely and thank you again for all your attention. I appreciate you. Thank you.

Elaine Johnson, Executive Director of Housing San Cruz County and President of the NAACP:

Our civil rights are trying to be stripped. We cannot go back there. I cannot tell you how much, especially in the month of January, as we celebrate Martin Luther King, that we are reminded … of all of the work that our ancestors did to get us here today.

We cannot go back. And so I am inviting everyone of us who comes out, whether you’re [protesting] on Ocean Street … Whatever you’re doing, we must do more. There are so many of our community members who are afraid to leave their homes. You know, as Farris said, they’re afraid to go to school. You know, they’re afraid to go get their housing vouchers–that I’m hearing about with my other hat. And we just cannot go back.

I’m incredibly grateful for Congressman Panetta bringing us together because it brought me comfort knowing that I’m not carrying this by myself. Because it’s a lot for all of us to carry. And so what I ask of you is to remind yourselves every day when you get up, whether it’s at work, whether it’s at the store, wherever that is, to remind us: What can I do today to make sure we don’t go back? Because we’re in this together. We have to worry about our neighbors, we have to worry about our friends, we have to worry about our coworkers, because everybody is impacted right now. So, I say thank you so much for coming out this morning and it’s a pleasure being with my colleagues here.

Questions from reporters:

Moment of Truth Dispatch/KSQD:

In Minneapolis, we are seeing what appear to be violations of the Constitution–of the First Amendment, to protest, to record events, and of the Fourth Amendment, the right to a warrant before search and seizure. We see breaking into homes. Will local law enforcement enforce and uphold the Constitution here in our community, and what would that look like?

Sheriff Clark: Yeah, so as I discussed … what we’ve seen has been … these events have, as we’ve all witnessed, involved … violations of what could be the Constitution, could be violations of state law. And so, as I mentioned before, that’s exactly what local law enforcement is here for. … As I mentioned, we have a duty to intercede. If we’re there … if things are witnessed, there’s an investigation that’ll take place. And then we’ll work with the district attorney’s office. We’re going to work with the state. And so we’ll be able to take all that information … and obviously investigate that to the [fullest] extent. We can then prosecute whom and hold whomever is responsible with that.

[One question and answer unclear. Not included here.]

Joan Hamill, Good Times

So, I’m with Good Times. My name is Joan Hamill, but I’m also a mom and have two kids at home and the table dinner table conversation turns to: what can we do as a family and how can I as the leader of my family and a single parent bring hope to thisnext generation–that I saw as the hope?

They’re telling me it feels hopeless. What would you say to that next generation to give them hope and maybe something that would inspire them to action?

Panetta: It was funny, one of the presenters at our roundtable was a doctor who–Dr. Hernandez brought him … I forgot his name. Scott Drew? And he talked about how he had to have a sit down with his five and I think eight-year-old, in which he said: “Look, what you’re seeing on TV”--those people, they’re not law enforcement.” [He was] trying to make a difference between our law enforcement that we have here in our communities, to sort of separate and remind our youth, remind our community of what it means to trust law enforcement and to act like proper law enforcement.

And so continuing to have those conversations to really remind people what we do here in this community, that’s building that trust, not just cracking down on people, but making sure … we de-escalate situations. We heard about that in the roundtable, of how basically law enforcement has the proper training here and that how they understand what it means to use their common sense what it means to use their training in certain situations and so I would have those conversations with your children, with other community members, of letting them know as we’re demonstrating right here that we are here to protect people we are here to make sure that their rights are upheld, upheld, not torn down—that’s exactly the purpose of the roundtable.

Sabbah: I could add I’m also a father of a young man who’s at college and another who’s a 10th grader in Pajaro Valley … school district. And I think we would all agree that we’re experiencing some very dark times and that our democracy is at risk. And when I think about working with young people and seeing how they’re looking at their world, I think there’s an opportunity for them to participate, to speak up, to stand up, to participate in finding solutions, because I think that as they find agency and their own voice to be able to share how this is affecting them, it gives me inspiration to recognize the power and the brilliance of our youth and that they are going to help us to make sure we protect our democracy.

And so there are amazing opportunities for youth to engage in a positive way. [Muffled] … with United Way, there’s Empower Watsonville, with PVPSA, the Youth-led Leadership Alliance. I could go on and on.

Many of these agencies that are here, the Black Student Union, are there to create these opportunities for young people, and for them to help us find those solutions. And that partnership with our youth is inspiring to me personally, and it gives me hope, and I think it helps to remind them that some of the things that are most important are things we have to fight for.

Reporter from Santa Cruz Local, name unclear

This reporter asked about a Republican-sponsored bill, House Resolution 488, which Congressman Panetta signed onto in June of 2025, which encourages cooperation between local law enforcement and federal agencies, and expresses “gratitude” toward ICE in the context of an attack on pro-Israel protestors in Denver, CO. The reporter mentions this happened around the time that “ICE was in Los Angeles, right there in California. How has your opinion towards DHS [changed]?”

Panetta: Look, first of all, that resolution had nothing to do with ICE and immigration.

Reporter: It did.

Panetta: It did not. It had everything to do with anti-Semitism and about the unfortunate attack that took place in Colorado, even before the one person, the one victim, died, where a person who was here–unfortunately [on] undocumented status–attacked people, peaceful protesters who were purposefully protesting about peace in the Middle East.

And so there were, I think, 14 lines that had to do with anti-Semitism and what we’re doing as a country to fight against anti-Semitism, something that has risen over, I think, 200 percent in the last few years. And then in the last line, it thanked law enforcement, including ICE. And so I wasn’t going to let that sort of Republican-put-in line prevent me from standing up and showing my support against anti-Semitism. And that’s why I voted Yes. Thank you. Next question.

P.K. Hattis, Santa Cruz Sentinel

What Democrats are asking for–of reigning in, you know, federal immigration agents. Some of your colleagues have called for the abolition of ICE, the dissolution of it. I wonder if you support that. And if you could just elaborate [on that].

Panetta: Look, yeah, let’s be clear. I think obviously we’re going to continue to need immigration enforcement, but the way they do it is the problem right now. The way they’re doing it is the problem, in the reckless, ruthless manner that they’re out there marauding around not just going after undocumented not actually just focusing on anybody and everybody who looks like they’re undocumented. This is not the way to do it and what happens is you end up, then, harassing not just non-citizens but citizens as well, as we’ve seen in Minnesota, as we’ve seen throughout this country.

And what’s going on is that you’re seeing these deadly incidents that are occurring that are inevitable when–not only that you have agents acting like that, but you have this administration making these absolutely irresponsible conclusory statements summing up what they think is happening.

And they’re trying to tell us what we actually saw, and go against what we’re actually seeing. And I think that’s putting them into a corner right now, because of what the people have done to be out there in the streets [to] peacefully protest and peacefully document exactly everything that these agents are doing. And I would encourage people to continue to do that in a nonviolent way because right now that’s how we’re getting transparency and accountability.

… that’s putting them [the administration] into a corner right now, because of what the people have done to be out there in the streets [to] peacefully protest and peacefully document exactly everything that these agents are doing. And I would encourage people to continue to do that in a nonviolent way because right now that’s how we’re getting transparency and accountability.

But what we want to do legislatively is make sure–and as we heard this in the roundtable, just like our local law enforcement agencies do: you’re not going to wear masks, you’re going to properly identify, you’re going to wear body cams, there’s going to be independent investigations, you’re not going to search homes without a judicial warrant when it comes to actually doing your job.

You’re going to be properly trained. We’re going to increase the training, not to this reduced 47 days of training and homage to the “47th president,” but actually have proper training for that you know how to engage not just in any sort of detentions with undocumented, but how you not just escalate a situation, but how you de-escalate a situation. And most importantly, as I’ve always heard from law enforcement, use your common sense, use your moral obligation. That’s why they hire–that’s why people like that should be hired to understand what it means to serve and protect. That’s what we’re doing in the United States Congress. That’s the negotiations that are going on right now in the United States Senate, to basically say: we’re not going to be complicit with how ICE and CBP is acting right now.

Instead, we’re going to negotiate with you or we’re not going to fund you more. That’s what it comes down to.

Again, thank you everybody for being here. I appreciate this opportunity. Thanks for everybody for standing together as we go forward, and continuing to do our jobs and serve and protect. Thank you.

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Full video of press conference, credit to Nyanko Nyasu