Thank you. Thank you, all. Please. I know it's, uh, I know it's a warm day in Washington, but we could have got a lot worse weather in midday in Washington DC. So, we're honored to have you. We're honored -- I'm honored personally to be able to join you, today and I know from the entire Trump administration, the president who we heard earlier is overseas to this great team behind us, we are proud to stand behind the men and women in blue, and we will keep on doing it every day for the next three and a half years.
God bless you. Now I want to express my gratitude to all of the service organizers, including of course the president of the fraternal order of police, Patrick Yoes, and his executive director, Jim Pasco. Thank you, guys. I want to thank Glenda Lehmann, president of the national FOP auxiliary -- auxiliary board.
Thank you, Glenda, and the work that you all do that everyone here does to advocate on behalf of men and women in blue around our country is vital. You fight for law enforcement officers and their families. You help foster warm relations between the communities that law enforcement serves and the police officers who wear the badge.
And most importantly, you make sure our great officers get the dignity and respect they deserve including from people in power. You hold the people in this building account -- to account and you make sure they stand up for the men and women in blue. Thank you. Now, one of our administration's greatest goals is to give the American people a renewed sense of ownership over their own country.
Ownership over their homes, over their neighborhoods, and over their city streets. But none of that would be possible if we don't have a functional system of law or the means to enforce it. Law is the root of ordered liberty in the United States. It is the foundation of a peaceful society. A nation of laws gives certainty to its citizens.
It enables them to participate in civic life, to work and raise families to build a business, all with the assurance that they have a consistent and dependable legal system that will keep them safe as they work every day to realize their dreams. But a society that fails to enforce its own rules or that chooses to do so haphazardly can make no such promises to its people.
And over the last few years, too many Americans saw exactly what that looks like. The city blocks in flames, storefront windows shattered, countless citizens made victims to random crime and mob violence. In America, we honor the men and women who recognize the value of a peaceful, orderly society and who have chosen to devote their lives to preserving, as the president said, that fragile barrier between civilization and chaos.
And today of course we mourn those who made the ultimate sacrifice in the line of duty. These men and women chose their careers not for enrichment or self-exaltation and, as you all know, not because it pays better than every job on earth but for the unshakable belief that we have a civilization that is worth defending.
They woke up each and every morning. They put on their uniforms. They said goodbye to their loved ones, and they stepped into the unknown. They ran toward danger when others would flee. They didn't hesitate. They didn't waver. They stood tall when others could not. Those officers upheld the rule of law. They fought for that line between civilization and chaos so that freedom could remain more than a promise.
It could be the reality of day-to-day life in this country, the foundation of our prosperity and the foundation of American greatness. And we gather today all of us in debt to these fallen officers united in grief and united in gratitude. We mourn their sacrifice, their heroism, their courage, and compulsion to protect, which extended well beyond their loved ones and across the entire communities they served.
But above all today, we mourn the actual officers, the individual men and women who have been taken from us far too soon. We mourn officers like David Lee, an 18-year veteran of the Saint Louis Metropolitan Police Department. Last September, Officer Lee was responding to a single car crash on Interstate 70, a highway I've driven a number of times.
As he was retrieving traffic cones from his own vehicle, an illegal immigrant speeding and under the influence of alcohol lost control of his car and struck officer Lee. He was critically injured and passed away during surgery. He died as he lived, serving others tirelessly without fail, and he left behind a grieving wife and two beautiful children.
We mourn officers like Fernando Esqueda, a deputy sheriff who had served the Houston area with the Harris County Sheriff's Office for five years. Now, after his department launched a manhunt against the suspect thought to have violently assaulted a nearby clerk, Deputy Esqueda sprang into action. His fellow detectives were able to narrow down an area of interest for the suspect's getaway vehicle, but unable to find the car, they ended up dropping the search.
Yet Deputy Esqueda returned to the spot and was able to make a positive ID on the vehicle. As he reported the news to his fellow -- fellow deputies, he was killed in a cowardly ambush attack. Deputy Escajeda was 28 years old. His life unfairly taken in his prime, but his funeral last July, as so many of you know, brought over a thousand community members to honor and respect that great fallen hero.
And finally, we mourn officers like Hamilton County Special Deputy Sheriff. Larry Henderson. Now, I realize this case occurred not in 2024, but more recently, not even two weeks ago in fact. But the story hits especially close to home because I am of course a person who calls Cincinnati my home. Deputy Henderson was an exemplary public servant to southwestern Ohio, the part of the country that made me who I am. He dedicated 33 years of his life to protecting the people of Hamilton County, Ohio.
But even after having retired recently from the force, Deputy Henderson continued to step up and serve his community. While directing traffic near the University of Cincinnati during a commencement event, he was attacked and killed by a man he'd never even met, a man who we now know targeted Deputy Henderson simply because he was an officer of the law.
Deputy Henderson devoted his career to protecting the lives of complete strangers only to have a complete stranger take his own, and it's a story all of you know too well and happens too often in our country. Now that case is now in the courts where I pray his family gets the swift justice that it deserves.
But all of us here today pray for Deputy Henderson, Deputy Esqueda, for Officer Lee, and for the many other peace officers we recognize and honor here today. Their sacrifice was not in vain but in the furtherance of the most noble ideals and most critical mission of our nation. They laid down their lives to defend safe homes, peaceful neighborhoods, and the quiet order that gives structure and decency to our great American society.
And today, we pray as well for the families, the friends, and the other loved ones of every one of these officers mourning even today people who were taken from us far too soon. Behind each of those officers' badges was a beating heart, a family waiting to hear how the day went, a home left emptier and quieter and sadder than it should be. And I want to speak directly to all of those personally mourning here today.
Your loss is our nation's loss. Your grief is our grief. Your heartbreak is our heartbreak. You all feel their absence with a depth and level of pain of course that I can't possibly begin to comprehend, but I'm here today to tell you that our administration and I believe the whole of the American community stands with you, both as fellow citizens but also as beneficiaries of the ultimate sacrifice laid down by your loved ones.
We love you, and we're grateful to you. Their names will never be forgotten nor will their heroic act of service which inspire our nation and fill us with great purpose. I hope you know how deeply our administration from President Trump on down care about them and care about you. Backing our nation's fallen officers as well as their families has been a consistent priority the president's whole life from when he was a real estate developer in New York to now when he's the president of the United States.
The president and all of us, we love you, we care about you, and we will do everything in our power to help you. It's why last month he took executive action to defend our nation's law enforcement officers including by creating strong new legal protections and directing federal resources to improve training and pay.
It's why our great attorney general here, the Department of Justice is working even today with punishing state and local jurisdictions that restrict our peace officers' ability to do their jobs and with pursuing the death penalty for criminals who murder our cops. And finally, it's why the president cares so deeply about the crisis we inherited at the border, about stopping the violent criminals, the cartels, and the culture of lawlessness that were allowed to pervade our nation for far too many years.
And while we're talking about policy, I want to be clear about one last thing. The Trump administration has zero tolerance for anyone who threatens to defund, abolish, or otherwise diminish our law enforcement heroes. And I know that none of us here like crime. But last year in November, I think the American people killed the defund the police movement and they used Donald J. Trump as the murder weapon.
It is gone from this country, and we're never going to let it come back. And just as President Trump and the administration are filled with strong leaders, we have no tolerance for weak willed municipal leaders who allow petty crime to take root all over our communities. We have no tolerance for people who defy our immigration laws or surrender entire blocks of their own cities to Antifa and other ridiculous organizations.
And perhaps worst of them all, we have no tolerance for far left prosecutors boosted in their elections by faraway billionaires who come into office and simply decline to take action against criminals. We are going to fight against crime. We are going to fight against criminals, and we are going to empower all of you to do your jobs every single day.
Over the past four years, too much of our country was subjected to a giant radical experiment about what happens when you stop enforcing the law. And it's our police officers, it's all of you, it's your families and our sacred fallen loved ones who bore the brunt of it, but that ended on January the 20th, 2025. This administration will never disparage or degrade our police officers and particularly not the memory of those who died defending our society.
That is our promise. Our sacred obligation to never forget, to never allow the sacrifice of our fallen officers to be met with silence or allow their courage to be met with indifference. Because what our fallen heroes gave us was not just safety. It was stability, dignity, the freedom to live our lives knowing we were safe knowing that somebody was watching out for us and for our children.
And while these officers' watch has ended, the responsibility they carried now falls on all of us. We honor them not only in eulogy, not just with words, but in action in how we raise our children, how we stand up for our communities, and how fiercely we defend the values that they died fighting for. To the next generation, let the example of these fallen heroes be a lesson that freedom is not inherited.
It is upheld. And that a civilization's peace is not inevitable. It is earned and it is kept by those who are willing to protect it. May God bless the law enforcement officers who gave their lives for their nation and the values we hold dear. May God provide comfort and grace to those of us left grieving in their absence.
And may continue to bless all of us, those in blue and all Americans across our country, and let us continually be true to the sacrifice that all of our officers in blue made and continue to make every single day. Thank you all. God bless America. It's an honor to be with you, and I'm glad to be here.