Since January, federal leadership has given the public every reason to believe it cannot be trusted with more money, more power, and more discretion to pursue a cruel, costly, and unproductive immigration enforcement strategy that is destabilizing local communities. Yet, this week the House passed a massive budget bill (through a process known as “reconciliation” to pass certain tax and spending legislation) that would provide $150 billion in largely unrestricted funds to jail families, fund militarized deportations, and eliminate legal protections for children trying to reunify with family. This is in addition to devastating cuts to Medicaid health insurance, the Affordable Care Act, and the child tax credit that will mean the loss of support for thousands of Nebraskans and working families. The spirit of the bill is to fund tax cuts for the extremely wealthy and finance the single biggest increase in funding for sweeping and extreme immigration enforcement in the history of the United States. Now, more than ever, it is critical for Nebraskans to contact their U.S. Senators to urge them to vote against the bill in the Senate (as well as their House representative to share concern over the current bill).
Alarmingly, the House’s budget bill would increase ICE’s detention budget 13-fold to fund the construction of new facilities designed to detain families and children on a horrific scale. ICE detention facilities are notoriously unsanitary and rife with civil rights violations. During the first Trump administration, countless complaints were filed against detention facilities and at least 70 people died in ICE custody. Thus far, four months into the new administration, at least nine people have died in ICE custody. Despite the backdrop of abuse and death, additional funding allows the administration to build more private detention facilities, which have an even more alarming track record of abuse, remove people to foreign countries like El Salvador and South Sudan, or detain them in military bases like Guantanamo Bay. Historically, legal protections have significantly limited the detention of children and required reunification with family or qualified caregivers. The current House bill eliminates these protections and creates onerous fees and processes designed to hinder the placement of a child with a family member or caregiver.
Already, with current funding, federal administration policies are seeking to deport any person for any conceivable reason with whatever powers available. In that effort, the administration has relied on archaic interpretations of the Alien Enemies Act, a late-1700s law, to deny people from Latin America court hearings if they have certain tattoos or wear basketball apparel associated with the Chicago Bulls. This haphazard approach has led to countless mistaken removals including those of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a father previously granted protection from deportation to El Salvador, and Andry Hernandez Romero, a gay make-up artist seeking asylum in New York City. Beyond the mistakes, the Administration postures as champions of free speech while, at the same time, arresting and initiating removal proceedings against people daring to voice critique. This includes Mahmoud Khalil, a legal permanent resident who tried to mediate disagreements between Columbia University and pro-Palestinan movements, and Yunseo Chung, a 21-year-old student who has resided in the United States since the age of 7 and attended campus demonstrations. These strategies ignore the law and are contrary to the values of due process and freedom of speech that have been enshrined in the federal constitution.
Now, the budget reconciliation bill would offer the administration a slush fund of billions of dollars to continue this error-prone, retaliatory enforcement strategy. You can raise your voice to oppose the administration’s cruel enforcement strategy by urging your elected representatives to vote against the budget Reconciliation bill in its upcoming stages.
