Is the lighting too much over here
on my left side?
How's the lighting?
You look fine.
Okay.
I see others are on here already.
So boss, we're going to give folks a
couple more minutes and then
we're gonna kick it off.
It says int admit.
This is somebody's work, so.
To make this film.
Recording in progress.
Bye everybody!
This is Gwen Moore and
I hope am I
speaking with you Samara are we
letting people in at
this point?
So everyone is on the call right
now.
So just want to say thank you to
everyone for joining the
Congresswoman's press call.
We have a decent amount of folks on.
So we're gonna kick
everything off.
I'm gonna hand it over to the
Congresswomen and she's gonna
debrief you all on her visit to
the Dodge County Jail to
see Ramon Morales
Reyes.
And if you have any questions after
she speaks, just use the raised hand
option. Thank you.
Thank you so much for that Samara
chef.
And thank you all for joining me
today.
I did go up to the Dodge
County jail for the second time
this week.
And this time I was successful
in actually meeting with
Ramon Morales Reyes.
I am happy to report
that he
is in decent health.
His healthcare needs are being met
to his satisfaction.
He actually does have
diabetes, type 1
diabetes, and
he feels confident that his
health care needs are being met.
I can tell you that he
was a very humble man, very
religious person,
saying that he receives pastoral
care twice a week
from members of his
religious affiliation,
and strangely enough, He said he
felt no animus.
Toward the man who
victimized him twice,
not only stabbed and robbed
him, but then also
put forth the horrific
lie that he
had sent a death threat to
the president of the United States.
And I told him, sir, you are
so much better than me because I
would have a lot of hard feelings,
particularly, well,
just being stabbed and
rob and then lied on in this manner.
But what I am
really outraged about is
that as you open up the
website of Homeland Security,
the first thing you see on their
homepage is
this disinformation about
Ramon Morales Reyes.
They have his picture,
the letter that he supposedly
wrote, the whole description
of how he threatened to
kill the president and.
You know, it's, when I spoke with
the sheriff,
Sheriff Dale
Schmidt last
Monday, he had agreed
that all that had been debunked
and no one
believed that to be true.
And yet, when you open
up the Homeland Security website,
that is the first thing that you
see.
And that,
I don't know if he knows that, I
don't think he has access to the
internet.
But he continues, he gets visits,
his family is allowed to visit him.
But he is very, very
concerned about the safety
of his family.
And this website that
continues to spread this
disinformation is
something that I'm concerned with.
So one of my first tasks
will be to
commit to paper a
request from the Department of
Homeland Security.
Kristi Noem, that they please
take that disinformation down and
take it down and clarify
what has happened,
you know, to report that the
perpetrator has
in fact, been arrested
and is being held.
I feel concerned
because there
was supposed to be a
bond hearing for
Mr. Morales Reyes.
That was postponed and
his attorney is
using this time to gather more
information to support
his case that he
actually he does have a lot of ties
to the community and
no serious
criminal records that
he does his family and
three American children,
two of whom are minors.
That he's the major breadwinner
in his family.
And to
really be able to create
a
record that would demonstrate
that he ought to
be able to at least
enjoy his freedom while
his U visa claim,
which would cover him and his wife,
is being processed.
He was to
be a witness
in the case against
the gentleman who stabbed
him.
Stole his bike and then lied
on him and did
it and wrote this letter
deliberately to
have him deported so that he
wouldn't be available to be
a witness and it's
so sardonic that
the Department of Homeland Security
is continuing to
perpetrate this disinformation
and I Hope that it
won't.
I hope that that's not
the attitude of ICE
as they go into the
proceedings. He's going to be seen
next Tuesday for
his bond hearing.
And this disinformation is
still a part
of a part of
what he has to be concerned about.
Uh, I,
um,
uh, again, uh
Mr. Morales-Reyes,
uh reported that, uh-
that he didn't have any complaints
about the place.
I asked him about the food and
he said, you know, come see, come
sigh, that it was okay,
that he had no other complaints,
that he was allowed
privileges to go outside
to the open air space
in the prison and that he felt
that he was being treated very
decently.
Um, before I turn it over
for questions, I just want to make
one point.
I'm concerned about Mr.
Ramon Morales Reyes,
but this is way bigger
than this one person.
I think that
we've seen
this time and again when
there is no sense that
there are any consequences
for perpetrators of
crime against immigrants
or against you know, LGBTQ
or any of these other
people that it emboldens
people who are, have a
propensity toward crime
to harm them.
My concern is that, you
know if this case, if
Mr. Morales Reyes is
indeed deported,
deported because he came to the
attention of ICE,
because he was a victim of
crime, that we can we
can just forget about.
Ever, ever,
being able to get any cooperation
out of immigrants,
that they will not help local police
in their enforcement efforts,
won't help the FBI in
securing the
whereabouts of
people who truly are criminals,
people who people who really are
writing letters threatening the
life of the president.
This is a much
bigger issue.
And that I think that
Mr. Morales-Reyes is
a victim.
He's a victim and
that's the lens through which
he needs that his proceedings
need to go forward.
His U visa, the
visa that is set aside
specifically for people
in Mr.Morales-Rayes'
position that
they are,
that there are threats
against them.
That he's a very
perfect example of why
he,
that this should bully his case
to stay in this country.
He's...
He has a stable work situation
that if he receives
his bond, he believes he'll be able
to return to work and be
a useful immigrant.
So, Samara.
Hey, boss.
Have you wrapped up your briefing?
Sure.
Okay. Um, so we can open
it up for questions.
If anyone has any questions, just
raise your hand or unmute yourself.
Hi, this is Montse with CBS and
Telemundo. Could you explain why
he is still under
detention and what that next
process will be like for him,
please?
Thank you for asking that question.
Well, it went up Monday.
We spoke with Sheriff
Dale Schmidt
and asked him that very question.
And his response
in his defense was that, look,
we have a contract
with ICE.
We don't know the exact number
of detainees that they have there.
It may be as many as a hundred.
They say that we're just
contractors.
All we do is detain people.
And provide transportation.
We don't have anything to do with
the adjudication of cases
right, wrong,
you know, or indifferent.
That they're not, that there's no
court appearances
that are conducted
by the Dodge County
court.
That these are all federal and
that if Mr.
Morales is that they'll
transport him to Milwaukee or they
will. Enable video
hearings but but he's still
there because the
Dodge County Sheriff
has not been any given any
directives to do anything except to
hold him.
Congresswoman Moore,
we do know that DHS did
issue somewhat of a clarification
saying he's no longer under
investigation for
threatening the president, but they
have made it clear they do want him
deported.
So how active, how involved
will you be in this
process now in
trying to prevent that from
happening.
Well, I mean, as you well know,
that I have a record for supporting
victims of violence.
And again, as I said,
this would be a very
chilling, have a very chillin'
impact on getting us
to have immigrants for
the going further, whether legal
or undocumented,
to participate in investigations.
Because he's, like I said he's a
double victim, he's the victim.
Of a crime, and
were we to just deport
him, the message would
be loud and clear to all
the traffickers out there,
all the batterers and
murderers,
that anything you do
to an immigrant will be
just fine because you can threaten
them by their immigration status
and say, look, I'm going to
do what this guy did.
I'm gonna send a letter and we're
gonna. Tell DHS
and tell ICE on you,
otherwise you will continue
to be my prostitute.
You will continue be my mule,
the trafficking drugs back and
forth. You will to give
me your money or whatever threat
that there
is. It would have a very
chilling impact on
being able to bring
perpetrators of crime to justice.
Okay, I'm seeing a couple more
questions.
Let's start with Ruth and then
Marissa.
Hi, Congresswoman Moore.
I am wondering, it's Ruth Conner
from the Wisconsin Examiner.
I'm wondering if you've had any luck
communicating with ICE.
I know you and Representative Pocan
had talked last week about the
difficulty in getting any answers
out of them.
And also, if you have any sense of
how many people in Wisconsin have
been detained by ICE
since the start of the second
Trump administration.
Well, one of the things that we did
with trekking back
up there was
to
gain the confidence of
Mr. Morales-Reyes and to
get a release
form that would authorize
our office to speak
to ICE regarding
his situation.
And we intend to use that
authorization immediately, if not
sooner.
To ask some of these questions
and to
really share our concern
and belief that this will
undermine the safety
of everybody for
them to
deport him, particularly
to deport before the
process, the U visa process
is
played out.
What we have talked about
continuously throughout
this is that everybody,
citizen or not, regardless of
your immigration status,
everybody on our soil is
entitled to due process.
And I would hope that if I
were to go to Mexico or to
Poland or China
or anywhere else, and
I were detained, particularly for
some erroneous reason that I
would have due process and
our constitution guarantees that
And he does have a U visa
application and it's being
reviewed that
will take all
things into consideration,
hopefully.
And so while ICE claims that they've
clarified, I'm going to ask them
to take that off their website
because, you
know, when the average American
goes to the DHS
site, the first The only thing they
see is his picture
and this disinformation.
Could you tell me if you've talked
to them yet and how many people in
Wisconsin have been detained, if you
know?
Okay, the second part, I don't know.
The sheriff did not know.
I am thinking that there's
space maybe for up to 100.
The Dodge County jail is
just a contractor.
We did ask Mr.
Morales Reyes and of course, he
doesn't know,
there's one other
person, a cellmate next
door to him who speaks Spanish
that he has some confidence in.
But I don't think that person may
necessarily be an ICE detainee.
He knows that there are women there.
He does not know how many women are
there.
And as I said,
I think we'll be able to get more
information. We do have a
direct number for ICE.
And as a matter of fact, an
ICE agent was supposed to meet
us there.
And I don't know what
happened to them.
They texted us later on
and asked if we were.
You know, it was still gonna come.
So maybe they got their signals
mixed up, but we thought for sure
that we would have had the
opportunity to speak with someone
from ICE.
So we did email
them back to let them know that we
had met with him
and that we do intend to follow up
and follow through.
Are you planning on going back then?
Is that part of the follow through?
Well, our prayer is that he's
going to be bonded out.
He has a bond hearing on
Tuesday.
He's not a danger to the community.
He has ties to the Community.
He has wife and children.
He has job that he can go back
to. He's a not a flight risk.
And so I am
hoping that I don't have to go back.
Another question, if I may.
The due process, I think, has been a
larger conversation, especially
considering Yesenia Ruano, the MPS
teacher's aide, who is
also threatened deportation when she
has a T visa, this man has
a U visa.
What do you think that speaks to
the process and government as
these victims could be deported
while they're asking the federal
government for protection?
Well, it certainly is a departure
from our
current law, past law.
And that is something
that we're going to be raising with
ICE.
Why can't we follow the protocols
and the legal
protocols to
which we have been accustomed?
These processes are
in code, and that
ought to be honored.
Okay, are there any other questions?
Let me thank you for
joining me today.
This is very distressing to
me because,
Ruth, to really
tag
onto your last comment
and intervention, we do have a
broken immigration system.
It moves entirely too slow.
There are no guarantees
for due process.
I think that...
That right now, if we
follow through with deporting,
particularly either
one of these individuals,
Ms. O'Reon or Mr.
Reyes, it will
embolden criminals.
Just to take a slight tangent,
but to make my point,
I was the author of the Violence
Against Women Act.
When we put in the provision,
to protect indigenous
women who
were nine, 10 times as
likely to be murdered and raped
and end up missing.
And why was that?
Because tribal chairman,
tribes had no authority to
arrest non-Indians.
And so, you know, you can just go up
there, go, you know,
near a reservation.
Find some Indian
woman, you know, maybe go
to a bar or something, and just
rape her knowing
that there was no Barney Fife
coming out to get you.
There was no sheriff or local
police, and tribal tribes
had no right before
that intervention
through the Violence Against Women
Act that enabled it.
And I mean, how does a regular
American know these things?
Who knows, but they seem
to know.
They seem to know that
if you want to rape somebody,
a good victim is
an Indian woman because there's
nobody that the Calvary
is not coming.
That's the message that we'll be
sending if we deport
these individuals.
If you're some pimp out
there,
some trafficker, some drug
pusher, and you want
someone
to abuse,
All you gotta do is
find an immigrant.
It's anymore
I just want to know if
Mr. Morales-Reyes had any
message to the president or DHS
after being accused
in such a very public way and
does he have a sense that he's in
the middle of this
big debate and big controversy
around immigration in our country
on what should happen?
Well, you know, thanks for asking
that question, because I'm not sure
that he's aware of what's happening
outside of his jail cell.
We did reassure him that
people were concerned about
him, that there's a community,
especially in Milwaukee, that cared
about what was happening to him.
And honestly,
He said he's praying for this man
that stabbed
him and robbed him and lied on him.
And like I said to him, you know,
God bless you.
You're better than me.
And so I don't know.
He was very humble.
He was a very humble and
I believe he was very sincere
when he said that he's praying
for the man.
Uh, and,
uh, so I, I don't
know. That he is fully aware.
I know that he's scared.
He does not wanna be deported.
He does want to be separated
from his family.
And I don't know that he
has any awareness.
You know, I did take
a staff person with me.
Spoke fluent Spanish,
and so I don't
know.
I don t know that he has television
or any privileges like that that
he would even be able to
understand it if it were in English.
Thank you guys again.
You're all my friends.
You got Samara's email
address if you have any questions.
We'll keep you in touch
with
everything that we do.
We're gonna work on this letter
immediately, if not
sooner, and
try to make
some impact before
Tuesday.
Thank you all for covering
this issue and staying on
top of it.
And yes, like the congresswoman
said, I will be keeping you
all aware of any updates and any
work that the congressman continues
on Mr. Reyes'
situation.
We're going to close out now.
Thank you.
Recording stopped.