Congressman Sam Liccardo Condemns ICE on the House : “Stop Digging Graveyards for the Living"

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Congressman Sam Liccardo (CA-16) took to the House Floor to condemn Immigrations and Custom Enforcement (ICE) for their role in the deaths of 52 people in their custody since President Donald Trump took office.
“Fifty-two people have died in ICE custody since Donald Trump took office, mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, daughters and sons, every one someone's child and every one a child of God,” said Liccardo . “Someone loves us, someone mourns us, and when we die, grief takes part of them with us. My heart aches for the families who never got the chance to say goodbye, who never held their loved ones' hand before they died alone behind barbed wire and concrete.”
His somber speech ended with a moment of gratitude for the cities and localities for using local zoning laws to mitigate the expansion of ICE detention facilities and protect the health and safety of our communities. Liccardo’s office created a toolkit to help communities enact ordinances, and so far, the City of San José, San Mateo County , and Napa County have taken a step toward advancing such ordinances.
Read Liccardo’s full remarks below or watch on YouTube . A downloadable version is available for media distribution here.

Floor Remarks:
I'd like to thank Representative Torres for her leadership. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
A graveyard of living people, that's how Lorenzo described Camp East Montana, the ICE detention facility where guards denied him sunlight and fresh air for a full month. Lorenzo persevered. 52 others would never feel the sun upon their face again. 52 people have died in ICE custody since Donald Trump took office, mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, daughters and sons, every one someone's child and every one a child of God. Someone loves us, someone mourns us, and when we die, grief takes part of them with us. My heart aches for the families who never got the chance to say goodbye, who never held their loved ones' hand before they died alone behind barbed wire and concrete.
I have undocumented neighbors in San Jose who have lived there for more than two decades. They have built lives there. They have built families there. Some coach for youth sports teams. Others volunteer at their church. Several have built businesses, employing U.S. citizens, and all have built our community.
This is not the first time our country has put the most ambitious of our dreamers and doers behind bars. In 1942, my father came home, telling my grandfather that his friend was missing from their weekly pickup baseball game. It turned out his friend, Norm, had been taken with his family from their home on Fifth Street in San Jose and incarcerated in Heart Mountain, Wyoming. Norm was a Japanese American. That young boy returned to San Jose and grew up. And decades later, I had the honor of working for him as his intern. His name is Norm Minneta, and he served in this Congress for two decades. But the incarceration of 120,000 Japanese Americans left an indelible stain on our country.
The last of those who endured it still walk among us, and the ghosts of those who did not endure it still haunt our national conscience. So history will harshly also judge us for the abuse, for the abuse of an inhuman treatment of our undocumented neighbors. Too many of us have declined to speak out, or perhaps only when ICE’s chaotic cruelty takes the life of an American citizen, as in Minneapolis. Yet the deaths in our DHS detention centers continue unabated, accompanied only by the incriminating silence of the quietly complicit.
I'm proud that in my own Bay Area region, San Mateo County, the City of San Jose, the County of Santa Clara, and the County of Napa have all taken steps to obstruct the construction of new detention centers in our communities. We're helping them and others with a toolkit that includes a model ordinance, but local leaders should never have to fight this battle alone. Congress must act. We must defend human dignity; we must uphold our Constitution; and we must stop digging graveyards for the living.
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