FFI Decries Passage of Heartbreaking Anti-Immigration Bill

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: media@freedomforimmigrants.org 

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Trump’s spending and anti-immigration bill slashes tens of billions of dollars from health care, food assistance, education programs, and other vital services to provide a staggering $150 billion for immigration enforcement and makes Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) the largest law enforcement agency in the United States. Among other destructive provisions, the bill funds: 

  • $45 billion for building new immigration detention centers to detain families and single adults; this amounts to 13 times that of ICE’s current fiscal detention budget and represents a 265 percent annual budget increase to ICE’s current detention budget; 

  • $32 billion to expand immigration enforcement and deportation operations, including for hiring additional ICE personnel; 

  • $75 billion for border enforcement and militarization, including expansion of Customs and Border Protection (CBP), border wall construction, and border surveillance technology. 

Following passage of the bill, Laura Hernández, executive director of Freedom for Immigrants, issued the following statement: 

“I’m heartbroken. Our government has failed us yet again. This deplorable bill cuts life-saving health care and vital food assistance from tens of millions of working people in order to accelerate this administration’s campaign of fear, chaos and division. Millions of our neighbors and loved ones now live in fear of being snatched away from their homes, streets and workplaces by masked agents in unmarked vehicles and sent to black box detention sites. This is our heartbreaking reality. 

“This destructive bill drastically expands what is already the world’s largest immigration detention system to an unprecedented scale. Detention is dehumanizing by design, and its expansion will undoubtedly result in more human rights abuses and preventable deaths. With this bill, the government is not only betraying our people, but rewarding the private prison corporations who pocket billions of dollars from these horrors. 

“When I think of detention, I think of the missed birthdays, the empty chair at the dinner table, the family now struggling to make ends meet. I think of the time running out on the phone call home, the heavy breath of exasperation and mental anguish on both sides of the line. I think of the dread of not knowing how or when detention ends, the not knowing when or if parents will hug their kids again. I think of the everyday, mundane horrors experienced inside immigration detention, where abuse is so routine and unchecked its failures can only be understood as features, not bugs, of the system. I think of the insulin denied to the diabetic, the racist violence inflicted upon Black and Brown people, the individual thrown in solitary confinement for advocating for their rights. These are the images that haunt me, and these are the scenes our lawmakers have just voted to intensify all across the country at a scale never before seen. Shame on every one of them.” 

BACKGROUND: WHAT IS IMMIGRATION DETENTION? 

  • The U.S. operates the largest immigration detention system in the world. Since its inception, the profit-driven detention system has been rife with rampant racism, physical violence, fatal medical neglect, sexual assault, and torture, among other harms. Recent investigations add to decades of evidence demonstrating that ICE’s deliberate callousness puts lives at risk and that nobody is safe in detention for any period of time. There have been 13 deaths that we know of in ICE custody this fiscal year, making it one of the deadliest years on record. 

  • Although immigration detention can be triggered by criminal charges, immigration detention is technically an administrative, or civil, form of confinement. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, is the primary federal agency tasked with detaining immigrants. ICE uses a patchwork of private detention facilities, contracted local jails, and federal prisons to lock up immigrants in prison-like conditions while they wait for their immigration case to resolve, a process that often takes years. Immigration detention is key to facilitating deportations. 

  • 90 percent of all people held in ICE custody are held in privately-operated detention facilities, emphasizing the perverse profit incentive that undergirds the detention system. This profit incentive leads to prolonged detention and gives rise to cost-cutting measures, including forced labor and deficient medical care. 

  • The Trump administration has utilized ICE’s sprawling network of secretive jails to accelerate its broader authoritarian efforts to crack down on political dissent and eliminate due process. Often placed in remote areas, ICE detention centers operate as black box sites and Constitution-free zones. Rights are routinely deprived from individuals in ICE custody, and it is notoriously difficult for family members, legal representation, and the press to visit detention sites. Their remote and secretive nature impedes oversight and facilitates a culture of impunity and abuse among ICE and detention officials. Despite brutal conditions and a pattern of retaliation, immigrants in detention continue to courageously step forward to expose abuse and advocate for their freedom. 

See Freedom for Immigrants’ journalist resources to learn more about immigration detention. 

###

Freedom for Immigrants is an abolitionist organization working to end immigration incarceration by organizing with and following the leadership of currently and formerly incarcerated immigrants. We’re building a future in which all people can move freely and thrive. Learn more at www.freedomforimmigrants.org/.