First of a series.
I will be sending this letter to the Senator's office via the United States Postal Service and any response I get I'll post here verbatim.
Dear Senator Fetterman;
I am a resident of Pennsylvania and a constituent of yours and I'd you to answer a question or two.
The New Republic reported that:
The Department of Homeland Security shut down its office in charge of investigating civil rights complaints on Friday.
DHS closed its Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, which was created along with the department in 2002 to advise leadership on civil rights and liberties and to investigate agency complaints on everything from disaster response to immigration enforcement. Its 90 employees were told they will be paid through May 23.
And PBS reported on the case of Mahmoud Khalil, a legal resident who was arrested and shipped to Louisiana, there was this exchange as part of the reporting:
Immigration agents arrested Columbia graduate student Mahmoud Khalil in New York on March 8. They quickly moved him to New Jersey and then to Louisiana, where he remains detained. His lawyers are fighting the Trump administration's attempt to deport him over his pro-Palestinian activism. Yesterday, a federal judge made an important ruling about where his case will be heard. NPR's Adrian Florido reports.
ADRIAN FLORIDO, BYLINE: The night ICE agents followed Khalil and his wife into the lobby of their New York apartment building, Khalil got his lawyer, Amy Greer, on the phone. She told one of the agents, you can't arrest him. He's got a green card.
AMY GREER: And he said, oh, he'll go in front of an immigration judge. And then I started demanding for a warrant. I was like, you cannot take him until you show us a warrant. And the agent hung up on me.
The NYTimes reported that he has not been charged with any crime.
The arrest of this permanent legal resident has raised First Amendment issues for immigrants.
Senator, do legal residents of this country (permanent or otherwise) have the First Amendment right to protest Trump foreign policies?
You voted to confirm Pamela Bondi to be Attorney General of the United States of America (the only Democrat to do so) and Kristi Noem to be Secretary of Homeland Security of the United States of America (only one of seven Democrats to do so).
Considering all of the above, do you now have any comment on your confirmation votes for AG Bondi or Secretary Noem?
I'll await your answer, Senator.
(Note: This should have gone out yesterday - Friday's with Fetterman - but life got in the way.)
