the country. Seattle is a hub of creation, developing and advancing
cutting-edge technology and research. Nearly 160,000 immigrants in
Seattle work in STEM. Over 40 percent of people in Seattle with STEM
degrees are immigrants.
  Immigrants also make tremendous contributions in construction and
housing. We are an agricultural State, and we have immigrants working
across our farms everywhere--and in manufacturing and business.
  As Republicans raise costs and destroy our safety net, it is
immigrants who are keeping Social Security afloat. A report from the
Social Security trustees shows that immigration improves the Social
Security trust fund's solvency, specifically showing that when
immigration increases, the trust fund's deficit decreases.
  Just looking at 2022, undocumented immigrants paid $25.7 billion in
Social Security taxes that take care of our seniors who are receiving
Social Security today. They contribute even as they have no expectation
of ever benefiting.
  Donald Trump and Stephen Miller always claimed that they were going
after the worst of the worst. That is clearly not what has happened.
Rather, they have been about ending all immigration to this country of
any kind.
  Since Trump came into office, 400,000 people have been detained
across the interior of our country. That includes parents of U.S.
citizen children, which has harmed over 11,000 kids.
  USCIS data shows sharp declines in approvals for all kinds of
immigration benefits, including work visas and family reunification. In
2025, overall approvals dropped 27 percent. We don't have full data on
student visas yet, but what we do have shows a 31-percent decrease.
  Mr. Speaker, this is all inflicting lasting harm on our economy and
our country. Immigrants are an essential part of our history, our
present, and our future. I will never stop fighting for a
comprehensive, humane immigration system that recognizes the tremendous
contributions, the values, and the threads that immigrants weave
throughout this country to make us as a country whole.

  This has never just been about immigration. It is about who we are as
a country and what we are willing to stand up for.
  Mrs. RAMIREZ. Mr. Speaker, who are we as a nation? I thank
Congresswoman Jayapal for powerfully reminding us that we cannot talk
about having ideals and being a country that stands up for children and
opportunity, and continue to dismiss those who contribute every single
day in making that reality.
  To continue this conversation around the contributions and the impact
that immigrants make every single day in this Nation, I yield to the
gentlewoman from Arizona (Mrs. Grijalva).
  Mrs. GRIJALVA. Mr. Speaker, I thank the Congressional Progressive
Caucus vice chair, Congresswoman Ramirez, for hosting this Special
Order hour.
  I rise today during Immigrant Heritage Month to honor our hardworking
immigrant communities and call out the cruel and dangerous actions of
the Trump administration.
  While communities across America are honoring generations of
immigrants who built our Nation, Trump and his administration are
choosing fear, cruelty, and division.
  This administration is carrying out a mass deportation agenda that is
tearing through our communities, our barrios, and our families to
target people who have lived in this country for decades, who own
businesses, and who are students, leaders, teachers, and nurses in our
community.
  This administration wants to erase the contributions of immigrants
while benefiting from their hard work, innovation, and sacrifices.
  Let me remind them: Immigrants are not outsiders. They are the reason
America looks the way it does.
  I want to highlight Karla Toledo. She was brought to this country at
1 year old. She was violently pulled from her home and put in
detention, inhumanely detained for 4 days. She was released on the
lowest bond possible, and her charges were dropped.

                              {time}  1840

  The day before yesterday, ICE and DHS embarrassed by the spotlight
and the black eye, are bringing new charges against her for
deportation. We are sick as a community of being scapegoated. We are
sick as a people of being scapegoated.
  I am the granddaughter of a bracero, a guest worker, a hardworking
Mexican immigrant who came to this country seeking opportunity.
  I am the daughter of a Member of Congress, who spent his life
fighting for immigrants and working families.
  The Trump administration can attack immigrants, but they cannot erase
their stories. They cannot erase our stories. They cannot erase our
contributions, and they cannot erase the truth. Immigrants built this
country.
  (English translation of the statement made in Spanish is as follows:)
  ``Immigrants are part of our history, past, present, and future.''
  ``Los inmigrantes son parte de nuestra historia, nuestro presente y
nuestro futuro.''
  No amount of fear or cruelty will change that.
  Mrs. RAMIREZ. Mr. Speaker, I now yield to the gentlewoman from
Michigan (Ms. Tlaib), one of my colleagues who has been at the
forefront, really pushing back on all the terror that we are seeing
around the country, whether it is in detention, whether it is in the
abductions that are happening on the ground, or if it is at check-ins
and making sure that people feel safe to go to court.
  Ms. TLAIB. Mr. Speaker, I thank my good colleague from Chicago,
Congresswoman Ramirez, for her incredible advocacy and her sharing and
vulnerability in expressing her lived experience or sharing her lived
experience in this Chamber.
  I am proud to be the daughter of Palestinian immigrants. My father
came to this country at 19 years old. He was the guy in the 1970s that
would pull up his arms and say: Which watch do you want? He never felt
any kind of human dignity ever in his life until he joined the Ford
Motor Company and became a member of the United Auto Workers.
  My mother, who was 3 months pregnant with me on the airplane here to
the United States from Palestine, came here with an eighth grade
education.
  Both of them could have never imagined in their lifetime that their
eldest daughter would be the first in the family to graduate from high
school, as well as achieve a college degree, and then later become one
of the first Muslim women elected to the United States Congress.
  These are the stories that I wish people would share more about our
immigrant neighbors. I want to uplift those stories--the resilience,
the contributions of so many of our immigrant neighbors across our
country, especially in my district.
  I grew up in southwest Detroit where there are 20 different ethnic
groups. It taught me diversity. It made me a better person to be able
to be around that type of strength, all of the different stories that
were so similar to my parents' stories.
  What I also love about my current 12th Congressional District is you
can go in a community, and it is a huge, beautiful African diaspora, a
Caribbean community, an Arab community. All throughout my district,
there is so much love, and so many of our communities with immigrants
are centered on family.
  However, this Immigrant Heritage Month carries a heavier weight as
this administration continues to target our immigrant neighbors day
after day.
  It has been incredibly painful, not just for myself and immigrants in
our country, but for the American people, to watch our immigrant
neighbors being abducted by masked DHS agents, our children being torn
from their parents and some even zip-tied, and our disabled seniors
being left to languish in detention camps. The images have been
horrifying.
  I wish to highlight one story of Maykol Duarte. He was from southwest
Detroit. He was in high school. He was a high school student with only
a few credits away from graduation. He was racially profiled by local
police and handed over to ICE. He was on his way to a field trip, Mr.
Speaker, with his friends, and now he was torn away from his loving
community and deported to Colombia.
  These are real-life stories, heartbreaking consequences of policies
of this administration centered on cruelty.