Module 1: Racist bigotry

Chairperson

This is the Indivisible San Francisco/Indivisible East Bay model impeachment hearing on an article of impeachment for racism and bigotry. We are taking the roles of participants in a hearing by the House Judiciary Committee on one of the many articles of impeachment for President Trump. This is an abridged model hearing, without parties or opposition. Impeachment is not just for regular crimes but also for abuses of power and for failures of responsibility. We believe that the real Congress must impeach on all of the president’s offenses in order to protect the country, for justice for all, and to rebuild our democracy. Now, on to the model hearing.

Representative __________ will preside over the hearing of the Article of Impeachment on racist and bigoted policies and acts.

Presiding member

Thank you Chair _____ __________. The clerk will read the Article.

Clerk

In his conduct of the office of President of the United States, Donald John Trump, in violation of his constitutional oath to faithfully execute his office and to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in violation of his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, has repeatedly and severely harmed the country, its people, and immigrants with a wide array of racist and bigoted statements and policies. He subverted democracy and justice for partisan and hateful ends as he deliberately sought to divide the American people by race, national origin, and religion. This abusive conduct included the following offenses:

  1. The president made racist and bigoted public statements.

  2. The president advocated racist and bigoted acts of illegal violence and abuse by government personnel and by the public, and he abused the pardon power.

  3. The president falsely declared emergencies, misappropriated funds, used government resources for political purposes, and directed persecution against immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers.

  4. The president directed purposeful maladministration of the asylum and immigration process.

  5. The president directed mistreatment and torture of immigrants in detention.

  6. The president directed the purposeful separation of children from their families, including permanent separation.

  7. The president withheld and corrupted hurricane emergency disaster relief to the US territory of Puerto Rico.

  8. The president banned travel from Muslim-majority countries specifically.

These abuses of power are of sufficient gravity to merit Mr. Trump’s removal from office.

Presiding member

Thank you. The charges make up a frankly horrifying list of abuses. The president’s incredibly damaging pattern of racism and bigotry will become even clearer as the witnesses present evidence.

I call upon the first witness to testify about the president’s racist and anti-Semitic public statements.

Witness 1

At the president’s campaign announcement in 2015, he said of immigrants from Mexico, quote, “they're bringing drugs, they're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.” He has repeatedly singled out people of color, including members of Congress, for demonization. He called Rep. Elijah Cummings, who has since passed away, a, quote, “brutal bully,” and he called Rep. Cumming’s majority African-American district in Baltimore, quote, “disgusting, rat and rodent infested." He also said of Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, and Rashida Tlaib, quote, “Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.” Of note, Omar immigrated from Somalia as a refugee and is now a citizen, and Ocasio-Cortez, Pressley, and Tlaib were born in the US.

The president called El Salvador, Haiti, and African nations generally, quote, “shithole countries” while also saying, quote, “We should have more people from Norway.” He said that Democrats want, quote, “illegal immigrants to pour into and infest our Country,” and he repeatedly labeled a so-called “caravan” of immigrants from Latin America a, quote, “invasion.”

The president said that American Jews who vote for Democrats, which is a majority of them, show, quote, “either a total lack of knowledge or great disloyalty.” He said to a group of Jewish political donors, quote, "Is there anybody that doesn't renegotiate deals in this room? This room negotiates them, perhaps more than any other room I've ever spoken in." He also said, quote, "You're not going to support me because I don't want your money. Isn't it crazy?" These comments follow well-known anti-Semitic themes.

Presiding member

It is an understatement to say that those statements shock the conscience.

In what ways has the president advocated racist and bigoted violence and abuse by government personnel?

Witness 1

He asked the nation to study a false legend that General Pershing executed Muslim prisoners of war en masse using bullets dipped in pig’s blood. He meant it not as a cautionary tale but as an example to follow.

Joe Arpaio, who has a long history of abusive treatment and illegal detention mostly of Latino people, was pardoned by the president of criminal contempt of court. The president said that he issued the pardon because Arpaio was, quote, “convicted for doing his job,” and that, quote, “he kept Arizona safe.”

The president was reported to have promised federal border agents that he would pardon them if they committed illegal abuses. After the president left, in some cases the agents’ superiors told them not to break the law. Also, at a political rally, the president suggested that part of the border could become a free-fire zone against immigrants.

Presiding member

And how has the president incited racist and bigoted violence and abuse by the public?

Witness 1

After neo-Nazis and white supremacists rioted in Charlottesville in 2017, and after one of them killed Heather Heyer and seriously injured 28 people with a car, the president said, quote, “you had some very bad people in that group. But you also had people that were very fine people on both sides.”

While the president was not directly involved in violent racist and bigoted attacks by non-government actors, the pattern of his rhetoric likely has some effect, and violent attacks have increased sharply from the start of his campaign through today. One example was an attack on a synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018 by an anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant terrorist. An immigrant rights group was meeting there, and the terrorist killed 11 people and injured 6. Also, the anti-immigrant terrorist who went to El Paso in 2019 to shoot dozens of people, killing 20, used the term “invasion” in his manifesto.

Presiding member

Thank you for presenting that deeply troubling evidence.

I now call upon the second witness to discuss more of the president’s policies. How has the president misused government power against immigrants? 

Witness 2

Asylum seekers have the right to enter US territory to present themselves and start the application process. Customs and Border Patrol has unlawfully prevented many asylum seekers from entering. For some immigrants who entered without papers, the administration scheduled immigration court appointments at gratuitously remote locations and/or scheduled phantom appointments. In many cases, the administration has prevented lawyers from accessing immigrant clients. Also, for some documented immigrants in the US, even some who have lived here for years and have established careers and families, the administration has found petty and gratuitous grounds to revoke their legal status and to begin deportation procedures. The president has fostered a state of terror for immigrants in this country.

In addition, in order to build a taller border wall as well as to deploy the military to the southern border, the president falsely declared emergencies and then misappropriated funds. He shut down the government, causing widespread harm, in an attempt to get more wall funding. As for the military deployment, it was carried out in advance of the 2018 election, supposedly against the approach of a so-called caravan of Latin American immigrants, and then it was ended around the time of the election. 

Presiding member

What do we know about the mistreatment and abuse of immigrants in detention? 

Witness 2

CBP often confines newly-apprehended people in inhumane and torturous conditions. In some facilities the temperature is so cold that they are known as hieleras [ee-lair-ahs], or iceboxes. CBP often provides grossly inadequate medical care or flat-out refuses to provide it, leading to several deaths, including children. In many CBP facilities, the lights are on in the confinement areas all night. CBP regularly provides grossly inadequate resources for eating, drinking, bathing, sleeping, clothes washing, and other basic necessities of healthy life. The issue is not a matter of lack of resources, since CBP could simply not detain these people. In several instances the administration blocked members of Congress from seeing these facilities.

Meanwhile, CPB detains many children beyond the maximum time allowed by the court-ordered Flores Agreement and has also purposefully been separating them from their families. Often immigrant children arrive with relatives or guardians who are not their direct biological parents, and often CPB does not recognize such custodial relationships. In thousands of cases—thousands, even for infants—CPB did not keep records that would allow children and parents to be reunited, something that amounts to live orphaning. Those who are reunited still have suffered severe emotional trauma, and often their relationships with their parents are greatly damaged. Some of the immigrant children are given over to the custody of American foster parents. The issue is not out of a lack of logistical capacity, since, for example, in at least one facility female detainees’ menstrual cycles were systematically tracked, in order to interfere with their reproductive rights.

Presiding member

Those abuses should never occur in a moral, law-abiding administration. We can see horribly troubling echoes of the United States’s past, of things like the forcing of Native American children into adoption and the erasure of Native American culture.

Please now report on the second to last item, what happened with hurricane disaster relief for American citizens in Puerto Rico.

Witness 2

The president dithered on sending material support for Puerto Rico in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, even though the landfall of the category 4 storm was anticipated well in advance. As the emergency resources available to the administration languished, thousands of people suffered without proper shelter or supplies and in difficult circumstances, and several hundred people died. Even after the president signed into law a bill that Congress passed with disaster relief funding, his administration illegally withheld some of the funds. The president falsely disparaged Puerto Rico as too corrupt to receive aid, an excuse that doesn’t end the legal obligation to send it. Meanwhile some of the funds have been wasted on contracts with political cronies of the administration.

Presiding member

Every preventable death is a tragic injustice. We must hold the administration to account.

Finally, how was the Muslim travel ban an abuse of power?

Witness 2

In his 2016 campaign, Mr. Trump called for a, quote, “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.” Once in office, the president ordered an end to travel from 7 Muslim-majority countries, on false or exaggered security claims. Despite later dropping Iraq from the list and then adding travel restrictions on some other countries, and despite that the Supreme Court set aside the president’s bigoted statements to rule to uphold the Muslim travel ban on a 5-to-4 vote, it is indeed a plainly discriminatory practice. It harshly restricts many innocent people’s movements and upends their lives, out of religious and/or racial prejudice.

Presiding member

Thank you. The totality of this evidence is truly shocking. And in terms of discriminatory abuse, with this article we haven’t even covered misogyny toward women, personal sexual assault by the president, or discriminatory policies toward LGBTQ+ people. That is the subject of a whole other article.

Let me emphasize, as disturbing as this hearing has been, the events that we have discussed are real. They have happened and are still happening. These racist and bigoted abuses of power, on top of their clear immorality, also violate the First Amendment’s protection of the freedom of religion, the 5th and 14th Amendments’ guarantees of due process, the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection before the law, and many other provisions of laws and treaties. We cannot wait for the president to do any more grave harm for us to hold him accountable.

Regardless of all of the other high crimes and misdemeanors that the House of Representatives is investigating, this set of abuses is on its own more than enough to warrant the impeachment, conviction, and removal of Mr. Trump from the presidency.

Chairperson

Thank you Representative _________. We will now vote on the committee recommendation for the article of impeachment on the mistreatment of immigrants. All in favor, say “aye.”

Full committee

Aye.

Chairperson

All opposed, say “nay.”

Full committee

[Silence]

Chairperson

The clerk will record that the “ayes” have it. The Article of Impeachment on the mistreatment of immigrants is hereby referred to the floor of the House with a recommendation of “do pass.” [Bangs gavel]

Thanks for watching. We encourage you to call your US Representative and Senators today to let them know that you support the impeachment and removal of Mr. Trump from office. Please also participate in town halls and impeachment rallies near you. Our system of government only works with your engagement, and your calls really can make a difference.