The ice surge is ending in
Minnesota.
White House border czar Tom Homan
announcing the move as U.S.
Senate Democrats vote to block
funding for homeland security
over demands for stricter rules
of engagement for immigration
agents.
Also this week, the House passes new
election rules aimed at preventing
non-citizens from voting.
Tonight, we're joined by Republican
U. S.
Representative Scott Fitzgerald.
From Wisconsin's 5th Congressional
District. And Congressman, thanks
very much for being here.
Good to be with you.
So a busy week, as always,
in Washington.
What's your reaction to the
immigration enforcement surge ending
in Minnesota?
I mean, I think the president
handled it very well.
Tom Homan has become a
figure that, quite
honestly, is very
well trusted by both sides of
the aisle.
If you go back even to the
Obama administration, the
president had a relationship with
Tom Homen.
And ever since then, he has
been, obviously, a figure to
tie profile. But I think what the
president did there made
a lot of sense,
de-escalate, bring down the
temperature, let's
figure out how to do a better job of
this, and so far it
seemed to have worked well.
So how would you grade the overall
operation, making mention here of
course of the two U.S.
Citizens killed by agents in the
midst of it?
Yeah, both obviously very
unfortunate incidents.
I think it did show
that the idea that
if you were going to go into
any community in United States
and you were going to receive
resistance
from local law
enforcement or if
there was going to be kind of this
this situation where
ice was not really
operating under the idea that
they were going to be able to go in
and apprehend people using
some type of
detain order,
then what you would end up with is
this back and forth in the streets
and certainly that
wasn't productive.
So, you know, unfortunately
The border was open for four years
under the Biden administration.
And one of the things that President
Trump ran on was that he
was going to apprehend those that
had criminal records and
deport them.
And, you know, but how that was
going to be accomplished has
varied from state to state.
Do you feel as though law
enforcement should be better at
de-escalating,
especially after seeing what
happened in Minnesota?
Well, I think we're in uncharted
waters, right?
I mean, this is not something that
the average
law enforcement agency has
really dealt with in the past.
If there was not
such a high number of
illegals and those with
criminal records, it's very easy for
them to simply go to
any county jail where they've
already been apprehended.
And there would just be a
turnover to ICE.
And other than in some
sanctuary cities, that is the way
it's always happened.
Now, there's a much higher number of
illegals in the states right now
than we've ever seen before.
But that process has
always served us well.
But we find ourselves in a
different position right now.
Meanwhile, the stopgap funding
for Homeland Security expires
at midnight.
What's your response to Democrats'
demands for new rules for ICE
and other agents, including not
wearing masks and
requiring the use of judicial
warrants?
Yeah, I mean, I think if you look at
the laundry list of things that
Senator Chuck Schumer and
rolled out from the Senate,
it was kind of dead on arrival
in the House.
So there would have had to been some
other type of negotiation.
And and it appears that the
White House did kind of make a
run at it, that they were trying
to pull together a
list that might have been
acceptable. But
The ten or so
items that the
Senate had laid out was not
going to happen.
So we find ourselves in an
unbelievable situation, I think,
of the Democrats kind of holding
this up again in a very
small government shutdown
related to Homeland Security, which
makes no sense.
Because ICE is funded.
It was funded in the one big,
beautiful bill.
There's still excess dollars
there. Homeland Security says they
can operate for months
with ICE being able to
still accomplish their jobs.
But yet you're shutting down things
like the Secret Service
and you're shut down TSA at
the airports and you are shutting
down the Coast Guard operations.
So there's all these other
provisions and parts of
Homeland Security that.
Are going to be left unfunded,
and they'll run out of money at
different times.
So this really is
the most political move we've
seen so far, I think,
from the Senate Democrats.
Would you like to see a surge of
immigration enforcement in
Wisconsin?
Uh, I've been asked that question
specifically about like the city of
Milwaukee.
Uh, I don't, I don't
uh, think it's been necessary.
Uh I know some people
disagree with that, but we just
don't see the numbers that
we've seen kind of in some of these
other areas.
But I know Madison is sanctuary
city.
Um, there, there doesn't
seem to be the level of
of certainly, I guess,
animosity between local levels of
government and ICE being
able to do their jobs.
So it just doesn't appear to me
that we would be at
the top of the list where maybe
those ICE agents may
end up.
So it's kind of, I guest,
wait and see, but doesn't
doesn't seem to be a good
thing for Wisconsin and I
think maybe not necessary for ICE.
I know that Senator Johnson has said
he doesn't want ICE to target
farmers.
What's your perspective on that?
Yeah, I mean, we know that there's a
high percentage of individuals
that have gone through
E-Verify that work in
the agricultural industries.
And it's a big sector.
Dairy is huge for us, obviously,
here in Wisconsin.
And this is an issue that's been
discussed in Congress for numerous
years.
It's not that a farmer doesn't
have uh...
The ability to ask for specific
documents when they hire somebody
to work for them they do
and oftentimes those documents are
presented to them and then i
think there's just not much
follow-up as to whether or not
uh... Their actual valid
documents uh...
And we know this has been going on
uh... For some time and
and i think that's probably what
senator johnson is saying is that
they listen you know, there's
enough of a gray area here.
That we know exists,
that for right now,
it doesn't appear that there's
any real momentum
from Congress to
make significant changes to
immigration to the point where
that e-verified
system is not
upheld or changed,
or that you're
going to have the ability to
kind of make significant changes
when it comes to agriculture and the
people that work in that industry.
On elections legislation
ahead of the midterms,
new requirements would
require proof of citizenship to
register and vote.
Now Democrats of course say this is
voter suppression and
solution in search of a
problem because non-citizen voting
is a small number.
What about that?
I mean, I've been through this as
majority leader of the Wisconsin
State Senate.
I've now been through it,
through numerous bills in the House
of Representatives.
Listen, at the end of the day, 85%
of Americans think that you should
have to present some
form of ID when you go vote.
It's bipartisan support.
The response from
the other side of the aisle.
Has been, I
think, almost laughable
in that they continue
to just pretend like
that type of
poll number or support for
photo ID doesn't
exist.
There's no other reason to support
it other than people are not
presenting their IDs at the polls.
Congressman, this is something more
than that though, right?
It's a passport or a birth
certificate to register to
vote, which is a higher
bar than just a photo
ID.
Yeah, I mean, there's a
lot of criticism from the other side
of the aisle. I mean you can nitpick
any of these bills by
saying that you're asking for
more information other than a
driver's license.
But in most states, I'm in the
documents that you need to provide
to get that driver's license.
Unless there's full out
kind of anybody who shows up gets
that initial document,
they fill it out and they're granted
a driver license.
It is still
some form of ID,
and I'm not saying that
the bill, the SAVE Act,
which I think is
well done and has been crafted
correctly, I've
never been a big supporter of just
federalizing these election laws.
I think it's important to keep some
of these things decentralized.
So for me, somebody that's
served in the state legislature for
so long, I mean there as part of
this discussion in which I'm saying.
This is what American people
need to believe in
the election cycle, especially in
Wisconsin, where I run into
constituents all the time that
still think that the 2020 election
was manipulated by rules
related to COVID.
It happens all the times.
I run in to people all the the time
to talk to me about that.
This would instill
some, what I think,
some concrete evidence that
people that show up at the polls
have some type of document
in their hands, some type of.
Of driver's license in their
hand to prove that they're a citizen
and prove that they're Wisconsinite
and they should be voting in that
election.
Congressman Scott Fitzgerald, we
leave it there, thank you so much.
Thank you, good to be with you.
That we, I'm
sorry my mic was off.
I wondered if I could ask you
another question that we might use
as a pullout or something, I don't
know. But it has to do with
the U.S.
DOJ wanting the voter rolls in
every state, including Wisconsin.
And I know there's like a lawsuit
over that being considered
right now.
But, you know, I understand
that.
The point of those
voter rolls for USDOJ is
to determine the number of
potential non-citizens
on them.
Do you think Wisconsin should hand
over the voter rolls?
Yeah, I think, you know, some of
this is coming from
many people
now questioning where
our Wisconsin Elections Commission
has established a
higher number of individuals
on the voter
than actually the population
of the entire state of Wisconsin.
So I think what it shows is
that these voter roles are either
outdated, haven't been purged,
include duplicates, and they look
very messy.
And that's what I think is
the genesis of people starting
to question whether or not
Wisconsin's voter roles are actually
accurate.
Okay, thank you on that.
And I want to say, my fault,
I took this longer than
the allotted time that I had.
And especially in your
last question before I
thanked you, that was like super
good.
And I'm wondering,
we may need to go back in and
edit something for time.
Yeah, yeah, I mean if it's
something you really think changes
the the structure of what
I said, I guess I'd like to know
what that
Oh no, we don't change the
context or something, it would
probably be a straight pullout
of one question and answer
or something. But again, the stuff
right at the end was really
good.
And I just let it go instead
of saying.
Thanks very much.
Have a good weekend.
Very good.
Yeah, thank you,
thank