TRANSCRIPT: Leader Schumer Joins Morning Joe To Discuss Democrats’ Demands To Reform ICE

Washington, D.C. - Today, Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) joined MS Now's Morning Joe to discuss Democrats' proposed list of commonsense proposals to reform ICE and the importance of voting rights in the face of Republican attacks. Below are Senator Schumer's remarks:

Joe Scarborough: Let's bring in right now, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York. Senator, thank you so much for being with us. Obviously, possible shutdown for DHS is upon us. Masked agents are gunning down Americans in the streets. And it seems that some Republicans, most independents and most Democrats want things to change. You have an opportunity to do that. What are your demands going to be? I think maybe not so much with the president, but with a very recalcitrant House of Representatives.

Leader Schumer: Yep, well, Joe, we are together House Democrats, Senate Democrats. We're united from one end of our party to the other. And we put together some simple, commonsense proposals that are done every day, that are used by police forces and local sheriffs everywhere. They have three basic objectives.

One is to end these roving patrols. You can't just pick someone up on the street and put them in a dark prison without any kind of warrant. You can't bust someone's door down without any kind of warrant-that's the Constitution. Yet that's what's going on, despicably, on the streets of Minnesota and other places. We're also saying, in terms of the roving patrols, some places are off limits, schools, houses of worship, election places. We're saying there shouldn't be racial profiling when they pick people up. And we're saying they can't take an American citizen and lock them up without a warrant, without due process.

The second area we're talking about is accountability and enforcement. We need a code of force, a force code that's used by states, by police officers all over the states, when you use force and when you don't. We need real training for these people. When you watch the videos, you see they're totally untrained. They're brutal, they're nasty. We also need to have enforcement that you can go to court and stop this ICE force from doing things. And we need the local and state governments to be able to force them to do certain things they can't do.

And finally, and maybe most important, no secret police. These guys go around, these people go around with masks. It makes them more brutal. They're never accountable. No one even knows who they are. There should be no masks, except in the most of unusual circumstances-you know, if some guy's picture was put up by a terrorist group or something. But there should be no masks. There should be cameras. Everyone should have cameras and there should be rules on how they use them. And they have to have regular uniforms, not all the stuff they're wearing. But we cannot have secret police. And we cannot, you know, Johnson, the Speaker, has said he wants to keep the masks. Well, I guarantee you, when you go down to his district in Louisiana, the sheriffs and police are identified, fully identified with their name and their number-that has to happen across America to prevent these rogue forces from terrorizing cities.

Scarborough: No secret police. No, no, no, no secret police. I can't even believe we're saying that in America. It's so un-American. I understand the administration has expressed concerns about doxxing and things like that. No masks, no secret police, and also an understanding that we'll do whatever, everyone will do whatever they can to protect them from doxxing-

Schumer: Of course.

Scarborough: -And from other things if there are radical activists that try to bring harm to them. But police officers don't wear masks. Sheriffs don't wear masks. They shouldn't wear masks.

Schumer: And they face, the local police, the local sheriffs, face the same problems that these guys have in terms of the potential of doxxing, and they're able to deal with it but not mask up. This is just incredible. The American people are asking the Republicans and asking Johnson, "Why are you against police having identities? Why are you against, why are you still saying they should wear masks?" They don't have a good answer. They've had no good answers to any of these questions. And as you said, even President Trump is realizing that they're on the wrong side of this issue. They're on the wrong side morally. They're on the wrong side in terms of just being an American. Because we in America have always had these values, have always had this. And this rogue ICE group is just terrorizing our cities and violating the Constitution every minute they're on the streets.

Willie Geist: And it's showing up in the polling, as you say. Leader, good morning. Good to have you back with us on the show. I want to turn you to the elections in November and some of the early signs. We're seeing suspicious signs to a lot of people-thinking about Fulton County when the FBI showed up and took 700 boxes of material from 2020. Thinking about when the Justice Department said to the governor of Minnesota, give us your voter rolls and we'll scale back our ICE operations here. On and on down the line, there's reporting this morning from Reuters that the presence of Tulsi Gabbard, the Director of National Intelligence, in Georgia, that was not the first time, that she was in Puerto Rico last year trying to see if Venezuela had manipulated the vote in Puerto Rico. So, the administration has her working on this. So, my question to you is, what is the pushback? What is the recourse for these states? Because there is a danger that thumbs are being put on scales of the elections in November.

Schumer: Well, again, by seeking these election records for no reason, they are violating state laws, federal laws, and the Constitution. And we are in the courts fighting them every step of the way. We are also having oversight hearings and investigations as to what is happening here. Mark Warner yesterday did a great job questioning what the hell is Tulsi Gabbard doing here. She's the head of DNI. She's for international intelligence. Nothing to do with local. They're trying to intimidate local elected officials. And another thing we are doing is working with the local elected officials, how to avoid this intimidation, how to do their jobs. You know, we have millions, I guess hundreds of thousands of local elected officials who are very proud they go to the polling place and make the wheels of democracy work every election. We're not going to let them be intimidated. We're going to stand right by them.

Jonathan Lemire: So, Leader Schumer, this talk about election security has revived discussions of the SAVE Act, which you have said you oppose. Proponents of it say that it's, you know, to have ID, you have to prove U.S. citizenship to be able to vote. Some of the claims they make, to be clear, are overstated. We know there's not widespread election fraud. But polling does suggest, there's a new Pew Research poll, that 95% of Republicans, but also 71% of Democrats like this idea. So why do you not?

Schumer: It's Jim Crow 2.0, and I called it Jim Crow 2.0, and the right wing went nuts all over the internet. That's because they know it's true. What they're trying to do here is the same thing that was done in the South for decades to prevent people of color from voting. For instance, if you change, if you're a woman who got married and changed your last name, you won't be able to show ID, and you'll be discriminated against. If you can't find a birth certificate or a proper ID, you'll be discriminated against. This is vicious and nasty. And I said to our Republican colleagues, it will not pass the Senate. You will not get a single Democratic vote in the Senate. We're not reviving Jim Crow all over the country. And when the American people hear what exactly it is doing and what its intent is doing, they're gonna be against it, as well.

Scarborough: Well, we'll debate that later, certainly, about voter ID. But right now, I want to stick with the issue at hand, and that has to do with ICE and DHS. Even if you cut off the funding, and this is a concern that Mika has brought up a good bit, even if you're able to cut off their funding, they have such a massive budget from this past year. I'm curious, with all the health care cuts that are hurting working Americans, middle-class Americans, with all the cuts that are hurting people in rural America, is there any way you can claw back some of those funds and instead of giving it to a secret police force so you can get it back to farmers and people in upstate New York in the middle of Kansas and give them some health care relief?

Schumer: Yeah, the American people are seeing just what you say, Joe. They want money for health care, and they don't want money going to these rogue police forces all across the country. What we can do, and what we proposed, and what Hakeem Jeffries and I came out with is very simple. The restrictions that we want to put on ICE that I mentioned apply not just to the new money that they're trying to get, and we don't want them to have without any restrictions, without restrictions, but will apply to all the old money, as well. So, the idea of no masks, the idea of coordinating with your local police team, the idea of being allowed to sue will apply to the old money, as well, and greatly restrict it.

Scarborough: All right, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York, thank you so much, and while you're here, I just feel I should just say this in front of you and everybody else, that today in 1994, Medgar Evers, the Klansman that killed Medgar Evers, was found guilty of murder and faced life in prison. And he died in prison 31 years after he shot Medgar Evers dead in his driveway while his children were inside. For those who believe they can act with impunity today, and I am not comparing anything to anything, I am just saying, and, Senator, I'm sure you can confirm this, I mean, the wheels of justice do grind slowly at times, but they do move forward, and people should not feel like they can act with impunity in the streets of America and gun down Americans and not ultimately face justice.

Schumer: You're so right, Joe, but we have to fight for it every step of the way, particularly with these new dark forces that have come about in America and who really don't believe in democracy, elections, justice, or rule of law. We have to fight, but you are right. There is justice if you fight, fight, fight, even if it takes too long to get there.

Scarborough: All right, thank you so much for being with us.

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