AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. We spend the last part of this show with Congressmember Adelita Grijalva, who was among several Democratic lawmakers who boycotted Trump’s State of the Union last night. She joins us now from Washington, D.C. Her district includes Tucson, Arizona, near the southern border with Mexico.

Congressmember Grijalva, thanks for coming back on. As we heard that violent description of what happened to Aliya, I thought about you being pepper-sprayed intervening in an ICE attack in your district. Talk about why you didn’t attend last night the State of the Union.

REP. ADELITA GRIJALVA: I just — I couldn’t in good conscience sit there and listen to Trump go on and on with what we knew was going to be hours of lies, gaslighting and maligning the very people that I represent. He talked about — and that’s literally exactly what he did. He broke his own record for just continuing to just spew during the State of the Union. There was no attempt to try to bring this country together. He literally pointed at Democrats and called them out. And, I mean, so I am grateful that I wasn’t there.

I did watch it, because I think it’s important for me to understand what is it that he’s saying, so we can push back on it. But, I mean, at one point he was handing out a lot of medals, right? And I literally said out loud, “I am waiting for him to give himself a medal.” And in the next breath, he said, “I think I should get one of those medals.”

You know, he continued to talk about — and I feel like we are dismissing some of the jokes — right? — about, you know, it should be his third term, that kind of thing. I feel we need to be very afraid of — we know what he has done when he caused a violent outburst, something that has changed our country forever, because he thought that he won the election. It doesn’t matter that we all know that that’s not true, because there are a percentage of people in this country that believe every lie that he spews. It doesn’t matter how much evidence is backing it up. And his campaign of cruelty has devastating consequences. Just like you heard the stories in Minneapolis, we have those same stories all over the nation and including in our district, 7th District.

AMY GOODMAN: I’m sorry to say we only have a minute to go, but I wanted to ask about you giving your seat up to Mubashir Khalif Hussen, a Minnesotan of Somali descent who was a second guest of Congressmember Ilhan Omar of Minneapolis. If in these last seconds you can tell us why you gave it to him, another man, a U.S. citizen, who was attacked by ICE?

REP. ADELITA GRIJALVA: Because I thought it was really important when Trump was going to spew lies about the state of our union, that he has to look into the eyes of the people that he’s harming directly. And I had the opportunity to hear his story when I went to Minneapolis, and I just, you know, offered my seat to Ilhan because I knew she had a lot of people directly impacted that she could bring with her.

AMY GOODMAN: In the last 20 seconds, the expansion of these ICE detention centers that you have been fighting all over the country?

REP. ADELITA GRIJALVA: Yep. I mean, they want to pop up everywhere. It’s just literal warehouses of human suffering. And I’m afraid for this country. I’m afraid for the constituents in my community, because he is locking up citizens. And the process to get them out is costly, expensive and is tearing our communities apart. And he —

AMY GOODMAN: Congresswoman Adelita Grijalva, I want to thank you so much for being with us, the first Latina to represent Arizona in Congress.

That does it for our show. Democracy Now! produced with Mike Burke, Deena Guzder, Nermeen Shaikh, María Taracena, Nicole Salazar, Sara Nasser, Charina Nadura. I’m Amy Goodman. This is another edition of Democracy Now!