LIBERTY AND JUSTICE FOR ALL

On 2026-09-01, Representative Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-NJ-6) delivered a floor speech titled "LIBERTY AND JUSTICE FOR ALL" in the House.

LIBERTY AND JUSTICE FOR ALL

Congressional Record, Volume 172 Issue 138 (Tuesday, September 1, 2026) [Congressional Record Volume 172, Number 138 (Tuesday, September 1, 2026)] [House] [Pages H5413-H5418] From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [ www.gpo.gov ] LIBERTY AND JUSTICE FOR ALL (Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 3, 2025, Mrs. Torres of California was recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.) General Leave Mrs. TORRES of California. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all speakers have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and include any extraneous materials on the subject of this Special Order hour. The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the gentlewoman from California? There was no objection. Mrs. TORRES of California. Mr. Speaker, I rise tonight to shine the light on a growing problem in Federal detention facilities, federally owned and privately supervised. Every single day, we stand in this Chamber, look at that flag, and pledge ``with liberty and justice for all.'' {time} 1840 Right now, those words are a hollow lie. Today, we learned that Edwin Jovanny Lopez-Cornejo, a 41-year-old Salvadoran man, died after a medical emergency at Delaney Hall in New Jersey. His family says he had complained about not receiving his medications. The day before he died, he told his mother he had lost feeling in his face and arm. Now, his family is left demanding answers. Edwin is not alone. Under this administration, immigration enforcement isn't just broken. It is lethal. We are witnessing a systematic deadly abuse of power by DHS, ICE, and Border Patrol. It is happening with complete arrogant impunity. The American public sees exactly what is happening, and they have rejected it so strongly that some have even lost their lives standing up against it: Renee Good and Alex Pretti, to name just two. This chaos is not accidental. It is a direct result of a policy that prioritizes arbitrary numbers over public safety. Under an aggressive quota demanding 2,000 arrests a day, raids have surged by 600 percent. In a single month, Federal agents swept up 800 people every single day who have had zero criminal records, relying on broad profiling, street roundups, and community checkpoints. To hold this wave of arrests, detention populations have surged by 140 percent, cramming over 60,000 human beings into overcrowded facilities, where basic standards of health, safety, and human dignity have broken down. In my home State of California, at the Adelanto facility, Carlitos Ricardo Parias, a man from Los Angeles held for months, filmed the filthy water detainees were forced to drink. It was crawling with live wormlike parasites in their potable water, just weeks after a Federal judge ordered the facility to fix those conditions. That isn't negligence. That is cruelty by design. When you treat human beings in an intentionally dangerous manner and deprive them of food that is not rotten and potable water, they die. Mr. Speaker, 76 lives have ended in ICE custody or immediately after release since January 2025. That is the highest death toll of any administration in its first 2 years in more than two decades. The mortality rate in ICE detention has exploded fourfold. What is the administration's response? To limit their own oversight visits, cutting them in half, from twice a year to once a year, and in some cases to once every 2 years. They have purchased privately contracted facilities to prevent State and local oversight. They think that changing the paperwork will wipe the blood off their hands. We all know that it will not. I am the mother of a law enforcement officer. I know what it means to wear a badge. I know the sacrifice required to protect a community. Let me be crystal clear: Protect the badge. Do not protect the bad behavior. When you excuse abuse, when you shield rogue agents, when you fail to hold Federal officers to the same basic standards as a basic peace officer in any city across the country, you destroy public trust and disgrace every honest officer trying to do his or her best to protect their community. I know the terror of this abuse personally. When we tried to conduct oversight, ICE responded by shooting CS gas and then lied about it. A vehicle matching an ICE van once tried to run me off the freeway, right in my district. So when I ask what an innocent family is supposed to do when an unmarked vehicle chases them down a highway; I am not asking simply to ask a question. I am exposing a dangerous, lawless reality. We cannot look away. Congress cannot remain silent while the executive branch operates a deadly machine of abuse, intimidation, military grade weapons, and imprisonment. When Members of Congress or Senators try to reduce deaths in custody and conduct oversight, they should never be met with lethal force. Liberty and justice for all does not end at the gates of a detention center. It does not disappear on a dark highway. These 76 people mean something. They are our neighbors. They are our friends. They are our relatives. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Espaillat), chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. Mr. ESPAILLAT. Thank you, Congresswoman Torres, for your leadership on this issue and convening us here tonight. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to forcefully speak against the Trump administration's horrific ICE abuses and to demand accountability for the deaths of 76 individuals that have died at the hands of DHS since the start of 2025. Whether in ICE detention or due to violence in our street, DHS is responsible for the deaths of 35 individuals--and one more today--this year. The American public is outraged at the brutality of ICE, and they demand accountability. We demand accountability. For that reason, Members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus went to court in order to access those detention centers so that we could exercise our oversight duties and make [[Page H5414]] sure that the conditions are right and humane. According to polls, 63 percent of Americans, both Democrats and Republicans, disapprove of the way ICE is enforcing immigration laws. We all know ``ICE is out of control''; ``ICE estan fuera de control.'' In July, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, Congresswoman Sylvia Garcia, and Homeland Security Democrats held an oversight forum in Houston after the killing of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo. Like Lorenzo's family, dozens of families across the country continue to mourn the unjust death of their loved ones. We know these deaths could have been prevented. That is why the Hispanic Caucus has continued to push for guardrails in all ICE funding, requiring for ICE agents to identify themselves, no masks during enforcement, body cameras recording all enforcement actions, limits on firearms used in civil immigration operations, and protections of sensitive locations, and many more. In less than a year, Republicans have given nearly a quarter of a trillion dollars to immigration enforcement without any guardrails. Not one. The CHC will continue to demand reforms and accountability. Mrs. TORRES of California. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Garcia). Ms. GARCIA of Texas. Thank you to the gentlewoman from California for the time. Mr. Speaker, I am here to speak about a killing in my district. On July 7, an ICE agent shot and killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, an unarmed man with no criminal record, who was not even the target of their investigation. He was headed to a construction job when ICE aggressively pursued his van in an unmarked vehicle. No sirens, no body cameras, no dash cameras, just two unmarked cars following him. Then, an ICE agent fired through the open passenger's side window where Mr. Lorenzo's brother was sitting and killed him. Afterward came the same disgraceful playbook we saw after the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis. They claim Lorenzo, who was the driver, had weaponized his vehicle and that an agent had acted in self-defense. I spoke directly with two of the men inside that van. They told me ICE never identified themselves, never gave commands, and no agent was ever in front of the van. Then, in an added layer of cruelty, DHS, the Department of Homeland Security, released Mr. Salgado's name publicly before notifying his family. I was at the hospital when his son had to learn, through Facebook, that his father was dead. It was sickening. It was disheartening. It was despicable. Days later, DHS tried to smear Lorenzo even further by suggesting that drugs had been found in the van. It was not drugs. It was a homemade electrolyte mix workers use to survive the Texas heat. {time} 1850 This is an outrageous abuse of government power. ICE pursued the wrong van and killed an unarmed man who wasn't their target and had no criminal record, and now we are expected to trust DHS to investigate itself. That is laughable. Absolutely not. No way. We need a real, independent investigation. We need all evidence released, and we need real accountability. We also need the truth about what happened to Mr. Salgado. His family deserves the truth. The public deserves accountability. We need justice for Mr. Salgado, and we need justice for all those killed at the hands of ICE or those in the custody of ICE. We demand accountability, and as the gentlewoman has said, we need real justice for all. Mrs. TORRES of California. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Castro). Mr. CASTRO of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I rise today because we have all witnessed the brutality of ICE on the streets of America, and Members of Congress have witnessed that brutality behind the closed walls of detention centers across our Nation. ICE has become a rogue, abusive agency that should be disbanded. ICE agents are roving across our communities with impunity, killing people in cold blood, including U.S. citizens, while Donald Trump's cronie