Washington, DC – Today, U.S. Attorney General nominee Todd Blanche is testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee, the first of two days of hearings on his confirmation to lead the Justice Department permanently. The hearing comes eight days after ICE agents shot and killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston and two days after agents shot and killed Johan Sebastián, a 25-year-old, in Biddeford, Maine. Both men were on their way to work when federal agents took their lives. Neither killing has resulted in an independent investigation, body camera footage, or a single agent being held accountable.
Blanche has already shown the country how his Justice Department handles ICE killings. After federal agents killed Renee Good and ICU nurse Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, Blanche went on NBC’s Meet the Press and declared that agents were “acting humanely,” blaming Minnesota’s governor and mayor rather than the agents who pulled the trigger. As Deputy Attorney General, he also declared there was no basis for a criminal investigation into the officer who killed Good, a statement that contradicted an internal FBI review that had already found grounds to open a civil rights investigation.
As Blanche’s confirmation moves through the Senate this week, Vanessa Cárdenas, Executive Director of America’s Voice, released the following statement:
“Todd Blanche has already told us what kind of Attorney General he would be. He called ICE agents ‘humane’ the same week they killed a mother and an ICU nurse, and he cleared them before his own FBI finished investigating. Now two more people have been killed within days of each other and he’s asking the Senate to hand him the Justice Department permanently. Blanche is putting local law enforcement at risk and diminishing public confidence in public safety by his embrace of ICE tactics. Senators on that committee owe the American people more than a confirmation hearing that lets Blanche dodge tough questions about the recent ICE deaths. These senators have an obligation to get a straight answer about whether the next Attorney General will hold ICE accountable or keep covering up for their brutality.”
Here are four key questions Blanche owes the American people as his confirmation moves forward:
- Neither the agent who killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo nor the agent who killed Johan Sebastián wore a body camera, and DHS’s account of both killings has already collapsed. Witnesses in the van contradict ICE’s version of the Houston shooting, and Secretary Mullin retracted his own account of the Maine shooting within hours. Will you commit, on the record, to an independent DOJ investigation into both killings that includes local law enforcement?
- Justice Kavanaugh’s concurrence in Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo gave ICE legal cover to treat someone’s perceived ethnicity, language, or occupation as grounds for a stop, a practice now known as a “Kavanaugh stop.” Does your Justice Department support agents stopping people based on how they look, how they sound, or what work they do?
- You told the country ICE agents were acting “humanely” the same week they killed Renee Good and ICU nurse Alex Pretti. Do you still believe that, now that ICE has shot and killed two more people in the last eight days?
- As Deputy Attorney General, you declared there was no basis for a criminal investigation into the officer who killed Good, a conclusion that contradicted your own FBI’s internal review. Will you handle the cases of Salgado Araujo and Johan Sebastián the same way?
