Tuberville on ICE detaining US citizens: ‘Don’t put yourself in a situation where that happens’

U.S. Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala. on Wednesday shared his advice for American citizens who have been or may be wrongfully detained in ongoing raids by U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement officers.

“Don’t put yourself in a situation where that happens,” Tuberville said in a brief interview with Migrant Insider’s Pablo Manríquez.

“And I’m sure with all the illegals we have in this country, you’re going to probably have some mistakes happen. That’s going to happen. But again, as long as we take care of it the right way, understand they are our system, let them go.”

Over the last few months, there have been several reports of U.S. citizens being jailed by ICE.

Just this week, U.S. Army veteran George Retes, 25, was released from the Metropolitan Detention Center in downtown Los Angeles with no charges after spending three days in jail for reasons that he said were never made clear to him.

Retes was arriving to his security guard shift on July 10 at Glass House Farms in Camarillo, a marijuana farm, when he said several federal agents surrounded his car and – despite him identifying himself as a U.S. citizen – broke his window, peppered sprayed him and dragged him out, according to a report from AP News.

He told the outlet that federal agents never told him why he was arrested or allowed him to contact a lawyer or his family during his three-day detention.

And during those three days, authorities never let him shower or change clothes despite being covered in tear gas and pepper spray, he said.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom called Trump a “chaos agent” who has incited violence and spread fear in communities at a press conference on Wednesday.

“You got someone who dropped 30 feet because they were scared to death and lost their life,” he said, referring to a farmworker who died in the California raids.

“People are quite literally disappearing with no due process, no rights.”

When speaking with Manríquez, Tuberville said that even being around people who immigrated illegally, like Retes was, can put you at risk during raids.

“Again, if you’re going to be hanging around people that are not citizens of this country, some things like that are going to probably happen,” he said.

In an interview Wednesday on “Bannon’s War Room” Tuberville praised this week’s ICE raids at 14 locations across six Alabama counties.

Agents took more than 40 people believed to be undocumented workers into custody, as AL.com reported previously.

“We have got to get the bad hombres, number one, but if people are there around ICE, we can’t pass them up. We’ve got to deport them, send them home,” he told Bannon.

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