Washington Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal is the ranking member of the the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Immigration Integrity, Security, and Enforcement.
She represents the 7th Congressional District, which includes most of Seattle, as well as parts of Burien, Shoreline and Vashon Island. Jayapal is one of about two dozen naturalized citizens serving in Congress.
Jayapal recently came to the KNKX Seattle Studios near Pike Place Market to talk with Morning Edition host Kirsten Kendrick, about issues involving immigration, the Justice Department under the Trump Administration, and more.
Interview Highlights
On the U.S. Justice Department’s internal memo that prioritizes revoking citizenship of naturalized citizens who commit certain crimes and offenses such as financial fraud and sex trafficking
Denaturalization has been used in our country's history, once for good after World War II, when people who had committed war crimes were denaturalized, and once for bad during the McCarthy era, when there was an absolute purge of people based on ideology... And the thing is, when you become a citizen, you pledge allegiance to the United States. It's actually required that you renounce your allegiance to everywhere else, and the idea that somebody would be able to just lose their citizenship because they don't agree with what the President of the United States is saying, that this can become a tool for weaponizing dissent, is terrifying.
What Jayapal thinks will happen if this policy is carried out
There are practical questions about what would happen to those people, because now they're not citizens of anywhere. But I think it goes beyond that. It's a question of what it means to be American. If you take that away by making this a temporary status that any President could decide that they'd like you or they don't like you, you will fundamentally affect the character of the United States. What's to stop then the government going after U.S. [born] citizens and saying, "I don't like what you think."
Jayapal’s response to the Justice Department saying this is needed to protect the integrity of citizenship and national security
The integrity of our national security depends on people really believing that they are part of this country and that they are going to do everything that they can to uphold the laws and the Constitution of the United States of America, and it does not help us to have people feel like they're just going to be targeted if they don't agree with what the President is saying. It's not that there aren't cases from time to time where denaturalization is appropriate, that has been the case throughout the history. But it's very rarely used, and for very good reason.
What Jayapal is hearing from constituents
What I'm hearing is just a lot of despair... I visited a senior center in my district. About 150 seniors there. And so many of those questions were about, what does it mean for our democracy to have institutions like the Education Department and the Consumer Protection Bureau agencies destroyed and talent lost... A lot of people bring up immigration. I think people are absolutely in disbelief, almost, that we can have masked men being sent into the streets of the United States of America to kidnap and disappear immigrants.
How Jayapal is working with people from across the country
There's also a lot of resilience. I mean, there's a lot of hope. I run something called Resistance Lab...which is a two hour virtual training. We've trained over 12,000 people in all 50 states on how to really counter - peacefully, nonviolently - authoritarianism. I think everybody is looking at, what does this mean for our country? Will our democracy survive? This is the positive part! They want to do everything they can to make sure that they're preserving democracy. And that's a beautiful thing, and it gives me a lot of hope.
