Murphy: Republicans Could Have Used Reconciliation to Address Skyrocketing Costs But Chose to Write a Blank Check to ICE Instead

WASHINGTON - U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) on Wednesday took to the floor of the U.S. Senate to condemn Senate Republicans' unprecedented move to bypass the traditional appropriations process and fund the Department of Homeland Security through budget reconciliation. Highlighting recent instances of DHS's continued lawlessness and deadly abuse of children and detainees, Murphy called on his Republican colleagues to join Democrats and ensure the Department of Homeland Security is operating in compliance with the law.

Murphy laid out the hard facts of DHS's unflinching violence towards citizens and children in ICE custody: "The cameras aren't in Minneapolis like they were, but 17 people have died in custody in just the last month. … People are dying in ICE custody at a rate four times higher than during the Biden administration. ICE has detained 6,200 children. We've put 6,000 children in jail. 73% of the people that ICE have arrested have no criminal record. 95% of them have no violent criminal record. They say they're locking up the worst of the worst. 5% - one in 20 - have a violent criminal record. 170 U.S. citizens have been detained. Almost all of them were Latino."

He exposed the shocking scale of DHS's violations of the law: "A judge in Minnesota issued a ruling… that ICE was in violation of almost 100 court orders… How do you defend an agency that was told to stop acting illegally, and on 100 occasions, when reading the court order, just said, 'forget it. We are not obeying what the court tells us to do.' … We can't fund that kind of agency. We would be violating our oath of office, all of us, to fund an agency that just doesn't care about the law. To get 100 court orders telling you to obey the law, you have to be in violation of the law thousands of times."

Detailing the full damage of Trump's mass deportation campaign in American cities, he continued: "We're debating funding an immigration enforcement operation that is going after legal citizens, that is not targeting people who are a threat to this country, that exist just to try to stoke fear of our neighbors, that tries to make people think that immigrants are the biggest threat to this country so you're distracted by the fact that Donald Trump is stealing from you, the most corrupt president of this country."

Murphy slammed Republicans' twisted priorities and apparent disinterest in addressing any of the crises upending Americans' lives: "Republicans could have spent their reconciliation process on gas prices or the health insurance catastrophe that's about to hit Americans or reversing Trump's tariffs or trying to actually do things that will bring manufacturing jobs back to this country. But they're doing none of that. There's no conversation on the Senate floor right now about gas prices. There's no conversation on the Senate floor being led by Republicans about inflation. There's nothing being done to bring our manufacturing jobs back."

Murphy called out Republicans for rejecting basic, common sense reform proposals from Democrats: "Our asks were pretty minimal. All we wanted was to make sure that the money we were sending to the department of homeland security wasn't used for illegal purposes, it wasn't being used to tear-gas elementary schools or conduct 'show me your papers' raids in our cities… We're here today because Republicans didn't want to negotiate with Democrats over the Department of Homeland Security budget, because they knew they could pass that budget with only Republican votes."

Warning Republicans they'd come to regret this blatant power grab, he continued: "Let's just be clear -- once Republicans have taken the lid off this jar, there's no putting it back. Republicans are now using reconciliation to fund the ongoing appropriations of the government in an area where it was hard to get agreement with Democrats. Democrats are going to do the same thing, regardless of how the rules change, now Democrats are just going to say, you know what? When we have power, we don't need to negotiate with Republicans over the hard stuff. You've changed the practice of the Senate here. And you're going to have to live with the changes that you've decided to make."

A full transcript of Senator Murphy's remarks is available below.

Thank you very much, Mr. President. Mr. President, I was out in the hallways a week ago, and a reporter asked me a reasonable question. She said, do you think Democrats overplayed their hand in the negotiations over the DHS budget? Did you ask for too much, thus prompting the moment that we are in today as we do something unprecedented, debate using reconciliation to appropriate money for the ongoing expenses of the federal government? My answer was a confident no. For a few reasons. First, our asks were pretty minimal. All we wanted was to make sure that the money we were sending to the department of homeland security wasn't used for illegal purposes, it wasn't being used to tear-gas elementary schools or conduct show me your papers raids in our cities.

A lot things about here -- a lot of things around here are about politics, but this didn't seem to be about politics. We all have an obligation to only appropriate money to the federal government when the federal government is acting lawfully. But there's another element to this. We definitely didn't anticipate that Republicans were going to pull the plug on those negotiations when they did. I was part of those negotiations, up until the last minute. We thought that we had a potential deal in place in order to bring Republicans and Democrats together around funding all or most of the department of homeland security. We didn't get that done because Republicans decided, the Republican leader decided, instead to fund the federal government through this process, reconciliation, is whereby Republicans only need 50 votes.

Now, both sides have used reconciliation to get things done that they wanted to get done, but never before has reconciliation been used as just a straight substitute for the appropriations process. Traditionally, appropriations bills need 60 votes. That means that the budget we write for the country every year needs to be one that Republicans and Democrats support, but we're here today because Republicans didn't want to negotiate with Democrats over the Department of Homeland Security budget, because they knew they could pass that budget with only Republican votes. Now, listen, I'm actually somebody that believes it's probably time to change the rules of the Senate. So I'm not going to sit here and tell you that I am defending or willing to defend all of the current rules of the Senate.

But let's just be clear…once Republicans have taken the lid off this jar, there's no putting it back. Republicans are now using reconciliation to fund the ongoing appropriations of the government in an area where it was hard to get agreement with Democrats. Democrats are going to do the same thing, regardless of how the rules change, now Democrats are just going to say, you know what? When we have power, we don't need to negotiate with Republicans over the hard stuff. We don't need your votes, because we'll just go fund the government through reconciliation. So you've changed the practice of the Senate here, and you're going to have to live with the changes that you've decided to make, because there are a lot of folks here who have defended the 60-vote threshold for appropriations. Well, that's probably going away, open if the rules don't change now, because of the actions that you've taken.

But I guess I come back to this sort of basic obligation we have, which is to just make sure we don't fund illegality. A judge in Minnesota issued a ruling, this is at the height of the assault on Minneapolis, that ICE was in violation of almost 100 court orders. That is stunning. Again, this isn't 100 instances where ICE was violating the law. This is 100 instances where ICE was violating the law, a court told them to stop, and ICE didn't stop. My Republican colleagues claim they're for law and order.

How do you defend an agency that was told to stop acting illegally, and on 100 occasions, when reading the court order, just said, forget it. We are not obeying what the court tells us to do. When we say this is an agency that was and is out of control, this is what we mean, an agency that does not care about the law, does not care what courts say, thinks it is accountable to no one except for the president of the United States. We can't fund that kind of agency. We would be violating our oath of office, all of us, to fund an agency that just doesn't care about the law. To get 100 core orders telling you to owe -- court orders telling you to obey the law, you have to be in violation of the law thousands of times.

In fact, federal courts have ruled, just between October of 2025 and February of this year, that's October, November, December, January, February, over five months federal courts ruled that ICE unlawfully detained, not hundreds of people but thousands of people 4,400 times in five months courts have ruled that Americans or legal residents of this country have been unlawfully detained. That is illegal behavior at scale. And I don't care what your politics are, whether they're right or left, they're inclusionary or nativist, you should not be willing to fund an agency that just doesn't care about the law, at scale. 48 people have died in ICE custody, 17 in just the last four months.

The cameras aren't in Minneapolis like they were, but 17 people have died in custody in just the last month. Between 2017 and 2021, when Biden was president, there were a total, in those four years, of 52 people have died. People are dying in ICE custody at a rate four times higher than during the Biden administration. ICE has detained 6,200 children. We've put 6,000 children in jail. 73% of the people that ICE have arrested have no criminal record. 95% of them have no violent criminal record. They say they're locking up the worst of the worst. 5%, one in 20, have a violent criminal record. 170 U.S. Citizens have been detained. Almost all of them were Latino.

You saw the videos of ICE and CBP officers going through the streets just detaining people based upon their accent. Just this week, ICE detained the wife of sergeant first class Jose Cerrano. He's an active duty U.S. Army soldier who has served our military for 27 years, including service in Afghanistan. His wife wasn't not following the rules. She was obeying the rules. She was showing up to her court appointments. But they detained her anyway, and now they are threatening to send her to Mexico, a country with which she has no ties. Sergeant first class Cerrano, because of his U.S. Military service, is not allowed to travel to Mexico. 27 years he's been serving this country, and they're going to deport his wife, who's following the law, to Mexico, and basically guaranteeing they will never see each other again.

Last month, a 5-year-old, who is nonverbal, with significant disabilities, was put in jail at the Dilley detention center in Texas, a detention center that I tried to get into to inspect because of claims of horrific conditions, and I was not allowed to go into that facility. Again, this should trouble Republicans and Democrats. I didn't show up unannounced. I gave them notice. They still didn't let me in, even though the law explicitly states that any member of congress, Republican or Democrat, has the right, the statutory right, to inspect facilities. This little 5-year-old, nonverbal 5-year-old, was in jail for three weeks. This place is called the baby jail. The boy literally melted down while he was there. He struggled to eat. His stomach became visibly swollen, because he was literally suffering from malnutrition, and he couldn't go to the bathroom.

He was only released after a children's entertainer named Ms. Rachel highlighted his case in a video. Like what are we doing? What are we doing? Like intentionally abusing children? This wasn't before Minneapolis. This happened just a month ago. Yesterday it was reported that the Trump administration is in discussions to send more than 1,000 Afghans, who are in the United States because they helped us during the Afghanistan war, they would be under the threat of death if they stayed in Afghanistan, we emergency evacuated them to the United States, because they helped us, because they protected our troops. And the Trump administration said yesterday that they are going to take a thousand of those Afghans, heroes that helped protect our troops in Afghanistan, and they're going to send them to the Congo.

Just for the point of being cruel. Just because it's mean. Just because it would be kind of funny to send a whole bunch of Afghans who helped us in the war to a country that is in a humanitarian meltdown right now. So, no, none of us should be signing on to fund an agency that is this lawless and this inhumane. That's the bottom line. Here's the second bottom line. People are suffering in this country right now. And they're not suffering because we let immigrants into America. They are suffering because gas prices in some parts of the country are over $6. On average, gasoline is over $4. It was just $3 a few months ago, and it's $6 and $5 and $4 for one reason only, this insane incompetent war that's being waged in Iran.

That's the only reason these gas prices are so high right now. The national average, as I said, is over $4. Americans have now paid more than $16 billion more at the pump than they should have simply because of Trump's war. $16 billion out of the pockets of American consumers, American families, American small businesses, sent to the oil companies, who are, by the way, making a killing off these high prices, just because of Trump's incompetent war in Iran. Americans, since Trump came into office, have spent $2,300 more on goods and services because of inflation and tariffs. The average family has spent an extra $2,000 in the last year and a half on the things they buy every day because of Trump's inflation and because of his tariffs.

There are 15 million people in this country who are on the verge of losing their health insurance because of a law that Donald Trump and Republicans passed in this congress, ripping health insurance away from seniors, the poor, and the disabled. The consumer price index is up 3.3% over last year. That is closing in on double what the federal reserve's target is. Unemployment is up since Trump took office. Long-term unemployment is way up since Trump took office. Unemployment for Black workers is up since Trump took office.

The tariffs, which are part of the reason that Americans have spent more than $2,000 extra because of Trump policies, were supposed to be tough, hard medicine in order to bring factory jobs back to the United States. Biden had increased the number of manufacturing jobs in this country. We had more manufacturing jobs at the end of Joe Biden's term than at the beginning. Do you know what's happened since Trump took office? He's reversed all of that progress. The tariffs are not bringing more jobs to the United States. We've lost them. We've lost 100,000 manufacturing jobs since Trump became president. So we're paying higher tariffs and losing manufacturing jobs. It doesn't make any sense. And so we're going to spend this week, on the floor, giving a blank check to an immigration enforcement agency that is out of control while ignoring the real problems that Americans are facing.

We could have spent this week -- Republicans could have spent their reconciliation process on gas prices or the health insurance catastrophe that's about to hit Americans or reversing Trump's tariffs or trying to actually do things that will bring manufacturing jobs back to this country. But they're doing none of that. There's no conversation on the Senate floor right now about gas prices. There's no conversation on the Senate floor being led by Republicans about inflation. There's nothing being done to bring our manufacturing jobs back. There's no second look at the last reconciliation bill they passed, which is going to end insurance for 15 million Americans. Instead, Republicans are handing billions of dollars in a blank check to an immigration enforcement agency that is right now hunting 5-year-old kids with severe disabilities and locking them up in baby prisons to the point that they have swollen bellies because of their sickness due to the inhumane conditions.

They are locking up the family members of 27-year military veterans, fighting for this country, just because it's mean and cruel. So we're going to have a chance to debate this over the next 24 hours and vote on it, but I think the American people are seeing where Republican priorities are, not on the stuff that matters to American families. I'm not saying that the people of this country don't want a secure border. They do. But that's not what we're debating here. We're debating funding an immigration enforcement operation that is going after legal citizens, that is not targeting people who are a threat to this country, that exist just to try to stoke fear of our neighbors, that tries to make people think that immigrants are the biggest threat to this country so you're distracted by the fact that Donald Trump is stealing from you, the most corrupt president of this country.

We could be spending this time -- we could even try to come together, Republicans and Democrats, to do something about inflation or the cost of gas. We've been begging our Republican colleagues to vote us with on these resolutions to stop the war in Iran because that's probably the fastest way to get the gas prices to come down. We could spend time working across the aisle to try to address the issues that are a real crisis for American citizens right now, costs, inflation, gas prices, health insurance, but, instead, we're about to send another blank check to an agency that is unconscionably out of control.