Dick Durbin: “This letter says it all. It spells out how dangerous this is if the Sullivan amendment passes. To think that, for…”

“This letter says it all. It spells out how dangerous this is if the Sullivan amendment passes. To think that, for whatever reason, a U.S. Senator is going to take a firearm away from a law enforcement officer of a Federal agency who is putting his or her life on the line every single day is just plain wrong. If Senator Sullivan wants to take away the enforcement authorities of this Agency, so be it. We can argue and debate that. But to require this Agency to execute warrants and make arrests but require that their law enforcement officials be unarmed is sending them into dangerous-- even deadly--situations. This Sullivan amendment is not well-thought- out. To offer this I think is a serious mistake. The Senator is offering it, he says, because of a 2013 incident in which EPA agents were part of a law enforcement task force that investigated a mining operation in Alaska based on allegations of environmental allegations. I don't know the particulars of that incident, but there was a review of the incident commissioned by the Governor of Alaska--a Republican Governor of Alaska--that found no evidence that these EPA agents broke any laws during the investigation.…”