{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.banks.senate.gov/news/press-releases/fox-news-exclusive-massive-ice-sweep-fuels-gop-push-to-lock-trump-immigration-crackdown-into-law/", "FOX NEWS\u00a0EXCLUSIVE:\u00a0Massive ICE Sweep Fuels GOP Push to Lock Trump Immigration Crackdown into Law", "2026-09-28", "2026", "2026-09", "Republican", "Senate", "IN", "Jim Banks", "B001299", "www.banks.senate.gov", "banks", "https://www.banks.senate.gov/news/press-releases/", "scraper", "Banks warns aggressive executive enforcement today won\u2019t survive a future administration without new legislation\n\nClick here to read the full story or read below.\n\nEXCLUSIVE: A massive five- day ICE operation that netted 426 arrests across Indiana is fueling Hoosier Sen. Jim Banks\u2019 push for Congress to cement President Donald Trump\u2019s immigration crackdown into law before a future administration can reverse course.\n\nBanks hailed \u201cOperation Safe Community: Indiana\u201d in a Fox News Digital interview this week after federal immigration officers fanned out across his home state from Aug. 30 through Sept. 3, arresting 426 people with records involving sex crimes, assault, domestic violence, drug trafficking and weapons offenses, according to ICE.\n\n\u201cThis is why Donald Trump was elected in 2024: for mass deportation,\u201d Banks told Fox News Digital. \u201cIt was one of his key agenda items during the campaign. And in this case in Indiana, you see the direct result of it.\u201d\n\nICE also credited cooperation with state and local law enforcement agencies in carrying out the operation, something Republicans have flagged as a key aspect to successful enforcement.\n\nBut Banks argued the operation also underscores a limitation of Trump\u2019s crackdown: aggressive executive enforcement today does not guarantee that the same immigration policies survive the next administration.\n\n\u201cIt is important that we codify Trump border security measures and tough-on-immigration policies and make them the law of the land,\u201d he said.\n\nThe busts build on the lawmaker\u2019s seven-bill immigration package, previously reported by Fox News Digital, which targets issues including birthright citizenship, family-based immigration, H-1B visas, noncitizens\u2019 CDLs and congressional authority over Temporary Protected Status (TPS) to limit judicial intervention.\n\n\u201cIf this could happen in Indiana, it could happen anywhere,\u201d he added, arguing that the opposition has made it tougher to achieve immigration goals after displacing ICE from the 2025 immigration appropriations legislation.\n\n\u201cThey\u2019ve made that one of their biggest priorities in this Congress to defund our federal law enforcement, to stop ICE from doing their job, to deport violent criminals who are here illegally,\u201d he said.\n\n\u201cSo it is important that we codify Trump border security measures and tough-on-immigration policies and make them the law of the land so that the next time, God forbid, a Joe Biden ever gets elected back to the White House or someone that comes from that radical wing of the Democrat Party\u2026\u201d\n\nBanks also directed his frustration at his own party, criticizing the Republican-led Senate for failing to advance separate election legislation that he says should be another priority.\n\nMany on the right have pressed for passage of the SAVE Act, a bill requiring documentary proof of U.S. citizenship to register to vote in federal elections.\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s one of my biggest disappointments with this Republican Senate \u2013 we haven\u2019t passed [it],\u201d he said.\n\n\u201cI hope by the end of the year that we can find a way to pass it. I\u2019m going to keep fighting for it, but at the end of the day, the Trump administration and the Department of Justice is doing a lot crack down on illegals voting in our elections.\u201d\n\nIn a separate Indiana case, DHS arrested an illegal immigrant on Sept. 18 who had entered the U.S. during the Obama administration and later cast a federal ballot.\n\nICE Enforcement Division Assistant Director Patricia Hyde said the right to vote is the \u201ccornerstone of democracy\u201d in announcing the capture of Guatemalan national Helda Mendez-Merida for \u201cpoisoning our elections.\u201d\n\n\u201cWe cannot allow that sacred right [to vote] to be perverted,\u201d she said.\n\nBanks said such incidents keep surfacing \u201cbecause Joe Biden and Democrats flooded our country with tens of millions of illegals \u2013 they\u2019re still here [and] mass deportation is important.\u201d\n\nSenate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., has repeatedly pushed back on criticism he is not working hard enough to pass the SAVE Act or advance the Trump agenda.\n\nThune previously told Fox News Digital that he is an original co-sponsor of a previous version of the bill and that the 50-vote threshold needed to pass provisions that qualify for the parliamentary maneuver known as reconciliation remains a sticking point.\n\n\u201cI keep asking the question, am I the only one in this town that can count to 50? Because it seems like these questions recur and there are a lot of people out there who haven\u2019t seemed to internalize the fact that there aren\u2019t Democrats that are going to flip and vote for this,\u201d Thune said.\n\n###", 1, "2026-09-29T11:07:12Z", "2026-09-29T11:08:49Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.banks.senate.gov/news/press-releases/fox-news-exclusive-massive-ice-sweep-fuels-gop-push-to-lock-trump-immigration-crackdown-into-law/"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 0.8347588591277599, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}