Source: United States House of Representatives – Congressman Hakeem Jeffries (8th District of New York)
Today, House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries appeared on MSNOW’s All In, where he made clear that Democrats will continue demanding reform to Donald Trump’s out-of-control Department of Homeland Security that is unleashing harm on the American people.
ALI VELSHI: House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries joins me now. Leader Jeffries, good to see you. Thank you for being with us tonight.
LEADER JEFFRIES: Great to see you.
ALI VELSHI: Let’s talk about these demands—the masks, the ID, but the racial profiling. As you note in the list of demands, that is in contravention of the Fourth Amendment, although the Supreme Court in its ruling having to do with Los Angeles, did muddy those waters. It’s in contravention of the Fifth Amendment, due process. It’s in contravention of the Fourteenth Amendment, equal protections. This shouldn’t be that hard to get agreement on the fact that these basic things that ICE are doing are wrong and unconstitutional and unlawful.
LEADER JEFFRIES: Well, that’s exactly right. This shouldn’t be that complicated for my Republican colleagues. Unfortunately, they continue to bend the knee to the Trump administration to try to unleash this extremism and brutality on the American people. Our view here, top line is simple. Taxpayer dollars should be used to make life more affordable for everyday Americans, not brutalize or kill them. We know ICE is out of control and needs to be reined in along with the other related agencies. Immigration enforcement should be fair, should be just and it should be humane. And we’ve got to make sure that there are dramatic changes at DHS and, in the absence of that, there should not be a funding agreement that moves forward.
ALI VELSHI: What kind of leverage do you have on that? Because if that funding agreement doesn’t move forward—this is a DHS specific funding agreement—obviously some employees will work and have to work without pay. DHS overwhelmingly has employees like that who have to stay at work. There’s some FEMA activity there, there’s some TSA activity, there’s Coast Guard. How do you manage that situation if there’s a so-called DHS shutdown?
LEADER JEFFRIES: Well, we support FEMA, of course. We support TSA, hardworking agents who help keep us safe as we transit from one place to another via airplane. And we, of, course, support the Coast Guard. Now, if we confront a situation where there’s a DHS shutdown, it’s because Republicans will basically have decided that they don’t mind shutting down FEMA or Coast Guard or TSA because they don’t want ICE to be held accountable and they don’t want ICE be forced to conduct themselves like every other law enforcement agency in the country. That’s fundamentally what we’re trying to achieve here so that this type of violence and brutality and assault and extremism that we’ve seen is not unleashed on American citizens, on law-abiding immigrant families and on the American people.
ALI VELSHI: You have, at the moment, your Republican colleagues have a three-vote lead in Congress. Right now, polls are closed in New Jersey, in the House primary special election. Tom Malinowski seems to be in the lead at the moment. But the bottom line is that election is going to be on April 16th. It’ll most likely be won by a Democrat. At that point, you’ve got a three-vote lead from Republicans. Talk to me about this. There’ve been a lot of elections around the country where Democrats have won by much larger margins than they won in November. Tell me how you use that to motivate your Republican friends.
LEADER JEFFRIES: Well, listen. Republicans have been losing races up and down the ballot across the country since January of 2025. In fact, you can’t point to a meaningful race that Democrats have lost. Of course, in the off-year election in November of 2025, we won all across the country in New Jersey, in New York, in Virginia, in Georgia, in Pennsylvania, in Mississippi, of course, in California Prop 50. We then won the Mayor’s race in Miami in December, for the first time in 30 years a Democrat. Now we’ve been leaning into the issues that we know matter to the American people—driving down the high cost of living where Republicans have failed, fixing our broken healthcare system. We know Republicans have brought us a healthcare crisis that is devastating the American people. And we’ll continue to point out as Democrats that Republicans can either stand on the side of the American people and uplift our values and our way of life, or continue to be reckless rubber stamps for Donald Trump’s extreme agenda. And if they continue to do the latter, they’re going to lose. And hopefully, you’ll have a handful of enlightened Republicans decide that they better stop functioning in a cult-like fashion and start functioning like they’re part of a separate and co-equal branch of government, not a wholly owned subsidiary of the Trump cartel.
ALI VELSHI: And we started to see some of that on some bills, right? We started to, obviously, with the Epstein Act, we saw it. But in other places where some Republicans have been pretty open about going over and voting with Democrats. Can you whittle away enough of that before the next election in a way that causes Republicans to say, hey, we have to stop this. We are not only going to lose our majority in November, most likely, but we may lose it effectively because enough Republicans will defect.
LEADER JEFFRIES: Well, that’s right. We only need a handful of Republicans, for instance, to join us in our efforts to bring about dramatic change with respect to DHS and the way in which ICE agents are conducting themselves on American streets all across the country. And we have been successful in pushing discharge petitions where we’re forcing votes on the House floor and Republicans are joining us. That was the case on the Epstein files. That was the case where 20 Republicans joined Democrats in the latter part of last year when we overrode in the House a Trump executive order that ripped away collective bargaining rights from more than a million hardworking federal employees. And as you know, in the beginning of this year, we were successful in passing a three-year extension in the House of the Affordable Care Act tax credits to prevent tens of millions of Americans from experiencing dramatically increased health insurance premiums, copays and deductibles. Every single Democrat, at the time 213 of us, were joined by 17 Republicans in getting that done. And so we’ll continue to press our case. We have them on the run, and we’re not going to let our foot off the gas pedal.
ALI VELSHI: Let’s talk about the Epstein stuff. The Clintons have agreed to testify in the House, and Hillary Clinton is saying, ‘Let’s make it public. Let’s just put it all out there.’ How will that affect your decisions if you become the Speaker of the House? If a former President has been asked to testify before the House, does that mean that you ask Donald Trump to do the same?
LEADER JEFFRIES: Well, listen. Certainly Donald Trump likes to conduct himself as if he should be held to a standard different than every other American President or former President. And we can’t allow that to happen, on all of the things. And certainly it’s going to be the case that in a Democratic majority, we’re going to fight hard to tackle the issues that matter, to drive down the high cost of living, fight hard to fix our broken healthcare system, of course, but also at the same period of time, we’ve got to clean up the corruption that exists in Washington, DC, in the Congress, with the Supreme Court and also deal with Donald Trump and his administration, who spend all of their time, it seems like, trying to enrich themselves, their family and their friends, as opposed to focusing on doing their job to make life better for the American people. We will hold the Trump administration accountable in a manner consistent with what the House should be all about, a check and balance on an out-of-control administration.
ALI VELSHI: What do you think of the business about nationalizing elections? Every day, Donald Trump sort of says it differently and then some Republicans say they don’t like it and the White House walks it back. But he is talking about, not actually, not changing our entire election system, just changing in some places. He mentioned Detroit, Philadelphia and Atlanta. I wonder what they all have in common. It’s dangerous talk. One can laugh about it but it’s really dangerous talk.
LEADER JEFFRIES: It’s dangerous talk. It unsettles the American people, and it should. Listen, Donald Trump understands that if there is a free and fair election in November, and we’re going to make sure there is one, that the House is lost. Democrats are going to take back control of the House of Representatives. And the Senate is looking increasingly shaky as well because the American people are rejecting this extremism. Donald Trump and Republicans have failed. They failed on the economy. They failed on healthcare. They’re failing on immigration enforcement. They failed to address the challenges of the American people and certainly address them in a way that is consistent with who we are as we celebrate our 250th birthday. And so we have adopted an all-hands-on-deck approach in terms of making sure that it’s the American people who are the ones who decide who controls Congress in the aftermath of the November midterm elections, not Donald Trump and his extreme sycophants.
ALI VELSHI: Congressman, good to see you. Thank you for taking time for us tonight.
Full interview can be watched here.
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