The
ice surge is ending in Minnesota.
White House borders are Tom Holman 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 Holman 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
Holman and ever since then, he has been obviously a figure that's high-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
the United States and you were going to receive resistance from local law enforcement,
or if there was going to be kind of 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 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.
But how that was going to be accomplished is 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
had rolled out from the Senate, it was kind of dead on arrival in the House.
So there would have been some other type of negotiation 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 10 or so items that the Senate had laid out was not going
to happen.
So we find ourselves in a 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 has 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 shutting
down TSA at the airports and you're 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 all 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?
I've been asked that question specifically about the city of Milwaukee.
I don't think it's been necessary.
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 a sanctuary city.
There doesn't seem to be the level of certainly, I guess, animosity between local levels of
government and ICE being able to do their job.
So it just doesn't appear to me that we would be at the top of the list where maybe those
ICE agents may adopt.
So it's kind of, I guess, a wait and see, but doesn't appear 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 even
verify that work in the agricultural industries and it's a big sector.
Derry's 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 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 there are actual valid
documents.
And we know this has been going on for some time.
And I think that's probably what Senator Johnson is saying is that, hey, listen, 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,
you know, that eVerify 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 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
way.
They continue to just pretend like that type of poll number or support for photo ID doesn't
exist.
But 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 the bills by saying that you're asking for more information
other than a driver's license.
But in most states, I mean, the documents that you need to provide to get that driver's
license, unless there's a full-out kind of anybody who shows up, gets that initial document,
they fill it out and they're granted a driver's 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 is
part of this discussion in which I'm saying, listen, 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 time.
I run into people all the time that talked to me about that.
This would instill some, what I think, some concrete evidence that people that show up
the polls have some type of document in their hands, some type of driver's license in their
hand to prove that they're a citizen, to prove that they're a 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.
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 US DOJ wanting the voter rolls in every state, including Wisconsin.
And I know there's a lawsuit over that being considered right now.
But I understand that the point of those voter rolls for US DOJ is to determine the
number of potential non-citizens on them.
Do you think Wisconsin should hand over the voter rolls?
Yeah, I think 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
roll than actually the population of the entire state of Wisconsin.
So I think what it shows is that these voter rolls 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 rolls 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.
Okay.
Yeah.
All right.
If it's something you really think changes the structure of what I said, I guess, I'd
like to know what that is.
Oh, no.
We don't change the context or something, it would probably be a straight pull out 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 thank you.
All right.
Thanks very much.
Okay.
Have a good weekend.
Very good.
Thanks.
Thank you.
Bye.