No Republicans Show Up For Joint House-Senate Hearing On ICE Murders, Brutality. Big Surprise.

Wouldn't want to give the impression that victims of ICE violence are human, after all.

Luke Ganger, brother of Renee Good, places a hand on the back of her other brother, Brent, during their testimony Tuesday. Video screenshot, Oversight Committee Democrats on YouTube

Democratic members of the House and Senate Oversight Committees held a joint hearing Tuesday on the violence and murder that have been inflicted on Americans by Homeland Security agents carrying out Donald Trump’s agenda of ethnic cleansing via mass deportations. Because the forum was convened by the ranking Democratic members of both committees, Rep. Robert Garcia (D-California) and Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Connecticut), no Republican members bothered to show up. You know, not because it showed Trump and DHS in a bad light, but because it would be wrong to dignify an event that hadn’t been called by the committees’ leadership. Americans may be dying, but there’s such a thing as respect for the institution, after all.

The Democrats heard testimony from Luke and Brent Ganger, the brothers of Renee Good, who was murdered January 7 by ICE goon Jonathan Ross. They also heard from other survivors of ICE violence, including Marimar Martinez of Chicago, who on October 4 was shot five times after Border Patrol agent Charles Exum crashed into her car, then lied that Martinez had rammed him and threatened him with a gun she did not have. Also testifying at the hearing were Aliya Rahman of Minneapolis, whose violent arrest in Minneapolis went viral after DHS goons dragged her from her car a week after Good’s murder, as she tried to explain that she was disabled and had a medical appointment nearby, and Martin Daniel Rascon, who in August was shot at by federal agents for being brown and riding in a pickup truck with two family members, who were suspiciously also brown. Why was there no testimony from Alex Pretti’s family? Darned if we know, could be that will be the focus of a later hearing.

All of those who testified are US citizens, and allegedly have constitutional rights, if you can believe that.

Here’s the full video of the testimony, which runs three hours if you watch all the committee members’ questions, or about an hour if you only watch the statements by the witnesses.

Renee Good’s brother Luke Ganger summed up what many Americans have been feeling, noting, “In the last few weeks, our family took some consolation, thinking that perhaps Nee’s death would bring about change in our country. It has not. The completely surreal scenes taking place are beyond explanation.”

He said that he and his brother came to the hearing to “ask for you to help” to bring some sort of positive change from their family’s tragedy. No, they didn’t seem satisfied that Greg Bovino got demoted or that Kristi Noem said that DHS officers in Minneapolis will at some point start wearing body cameras, and possibly even turning them on.

Good’s brothers were followed by Marimar Martinez, who described the surreal experience of leaving work as a teacher at a Montessori school on a fall Friday, after she and children prepared for Halloween-themed activities the following week. She acknowledged that she had followed unmarked DHS vehicles, honking her horn to warn neighbors, and shouting “La Migra!” The DHS goons then crashed into her car, and fired at her as she drove away, noting that she had swerved to avoid them as they exited their SUVs. “On Saturday, my own government was calling me a domestic terrorist, and I was in a federal detention center with the bullet holes all over my body.”

She called Exum her “attempted executioner,” and recounted how she later learned that while she was hospitalized after the shooting, he had boasted in a group text to other goons, “I fired 5 rounds and she had 7 holes. Put that in your book, boys.” Her attorneys also told her that body cam footage from the sole agent who had one showed that Exum, who seems to have a flair for drama, yelled “Do something, bitch!” at her before shooting her. But he shot her anyway, even without her doing anything. It’s OK because you can be shot dead for honking your horn, it’s treason, you know.

Despite video evidence showing she hadn’t caused the crash, DHS continues to label Martinez a “domestic terrorist,” because they never admit wrongdoing.

Martinez told the hearing that she’s not only haunted by the physical scars of the five bullets that tore into her, but also, “Perhaps even worse, the mental scars will always be there as a reminder of the time my own government attempted to execute me, and when they failed, they chose to vilify me.”

She said that she wasn’t testifying only for herself, either. “I am Renee Good. I am Alex Pretti. I am Silverio Villegas Gonzalez. I am Keith Porter,” Martinez said. “They should all be here today.” (Porter and Gonzales were also killed by ICE agents in separate incidents, in Los Angeles and Chicago, respectively.)

In her testimony, Aliya Rahman recounted her confusion and inability to process the conflicting orders DHS goons shouted at her from both sides of her car on January 13, after she turned onto a street where she had a medical appointment at the Traumatic Brain Injury Center in Minneapolis. Her brain injury and autism, she said, made it difficult to make sense of what the screaming men demanded, starting with an officer who told her, “Move! I will break your effing window!” she said. As she tried to make sense of the chaos, an agent shattered her passenger-side window, the broken glass flying at her and further overloading her senses. She tried telling the goons she was disabled, but an agent replied “Too late!” and then the goons dragged her out of the car, reaching toward her with a “large combat knife” that she assumed was meant to stab her, but which they used to cut her seatbelt off her.

“Shooting pain went through my head, neck and wrists when I hit the ground face-first and people leaned on my back. I was carried facedown through the street by my cuffed arms and legs while yelling that I had a brain injury and was disabled.

“I now cannot lift my arms normally. I was never asked for ID, never told I was under arrest, never read my rights, and never charged with a crime.”

Twitter legal experts agreed that all she had to do was comply with all the conflicting demands she heard, both to move immediately and to hold still. The Twitter experts also agreed she had to be lying about being disabled, or that if she is, then she has no business driving and should be deported, although she was born in Wisconsin.

The last ICE victim to speak, Martin Daniel Rascon, a US citizen like the others, cried frequently as he told about riding in a truck driven by his father-in-law, Francisco Longoria, in August. On their way home from running an errand, unmarked vehicles boxed in the truck, and masked armed men pounded on the windows, demanding the occupants get out. The goons, who never identified themselves, smashed the windows, and in an attempt to escape what he thought was a carjacking, Longoria drove away, after which the goons fired multiple shots, somehow not wounding anyone in the truck. Rascon recorded the attack on his cell phone.

Once they got home, Rascon said, they called 911 to report that four masked men had tried to kill them, and local cops then came and handcuffed Longoria. The goons who had just attacked them came into the house, misidentified Rascon as the driver, and insisted that there hadn’t been any shots fired. And once again, DHS insisted that Longoria, his son, and Rascon were domestic terrorists who attacked the agents with no provocation, although a judge dropped the charges because they were bullshit.

Rep. Garcia thanked the witnesses for their testimony, saying, “I’m so sorry that the stories are horrific, and I promise you that every single one of us, whether it’s the House or the Senate, we will hold all of those that caused you harm accountable. You all deserve justice and you deserve peace. And it’s horrific that anyone in our country has to go through what you have all been.”

As of Wednesday afternoon, neither Garcia nor Blumenthal has been accused of mortgage fraud or other crimes, but we’re certain the administration is working on finding something to put them in their place. Maybe Trump will decide Blumenthal should finally be prosecuted for fibbing about his military record during Vietnam. There has to be some law to get him.

OPEN THREAD.

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[Oversight Committee Democrats on YouTube / Guardian / Capitol News Illinois / LAT]

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