Just two days before Rep. Seth Magaziner took his seat at a House Homeland Security Committee hearing on June 30, ICE agents in Texas arrested Sister Leticia “Letty” Ugboaja, a Catholic nun, as she walked to a Sunday Mass at ‘Our Lady of Sorrows’ Church in McAllen, Texas.
She was released the same day after bipartisan intervention from Texas lawmakers, who contacted DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin directly.
Even Republican Rep. Monica De La Cruz felt compelled to speak out.
“A Catholic nun on her way to church is not a threat to our community,” she wrote on Facebook.
Magaziner, a two-term Rhode Island Democrat, used the committee hearing that Tuesday and forced DHS officials to sit through a damning recitation of what he called the real cost of Trump’s immigration obsession: fewer child exploitation arrests, fewer weapons seized, an arrested nun, and a Border Patrol agent who shot a preschool teacher five times.
Magaziner opened by asking Assistant Director of Operations at Homeland Security Investigations Michael Krol how many agents had been pulled off child exploitation cases to work immigration enforcement.
Krol said he didn’t have the specific numbers, so Magaziner pressed further.
“The New York Times reported last year that under the Trump administration, agents worked 33 percent fewer hours on child exploitation cases because they had been reassigned to work immigration,” Magaziner said. “Does that number sound plausible to you?”
“I don’t know whether it’s 33 percent, but it sounds somewhat accurate,” Krol admitted.
Magaziner didn’t let up.
“They also reported that the number of indictments for child exploitation fell by 28 percent,” he continued, before delivering a pointed assessment. “There are children all over America being abused today, praying that today is the day that someone will come and rescue them. But because Stephen Miller and Donald Trump are obsessed with getting as many immigrants out of the country as possible, HSI has been forced to allow child exploitation cases to languish.”
He then pivoted to who exactly was being swept up in Trump’s immigration purge. “The vast majority of people who have been detained or deported in immigration enforcement are people with no criminal record,” Magaziner said.
“They’re rounding up kids, the elderly, grandmas, gardeners. Two days ago, they arrested a nun in Texas.”
He then asked about weapons cases, noting The New York Times had reported illegal weapons seizures dropped by 73 percent. Krol said he didn’t believe that number but couldn’t provide an alternative.
Magaziner closed by turning to acting Deputy Chief of U.S. Border Patrol Jason Schneider and walking through the case of Agent Charles Exum, who was deployed 1,100 miles from his home base in Maine to Chicago, where he rammed into a car being driven by preschool teacher, Marimar Martinez, before shooting her five times and sending “text messages to other agents bragging about it.”
Magaziner then posed a question to Schneider.
“How many Border Patrol officers were taken off of the northern border and instead sent to Chicago and Minneapolis roughly?”
Schneider attempted to compare the number of officers to the previous administration, claiming it was “far less,” before he was cut off as Magaziner reclaimed his time to close out his statements.
“Chicago is not on the border. Minneapolis is not on the border,” Magaziner said. “Securing the northern border is important. Securing all of our borders is important. We need to focus on that, not these immigration purges that have made American cities less safe.
Magaziner yielded back. Watch the full video here.
