Washington, D.C.- This week, both chambers of Congress are moving forward a budget process to supercharge President Trump’s agenda. Today the Senate will consider a budget resolution that will propel the reconciliation process forward with a bill that focuses on immigration and defense spending. At the same time, the House of Representatives is working toward its resolution that combines immigration, defense and taxes, among other things, into one resolution. According to the Associated Press, Donald Trump’s top aides Tom Homan and Stephen Miller met privately with Senators last week to express that the federal government could not continue Trump’s mass deportation and detention agenda without billions more in funding.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the infamous government agencies at the center of Trump’s attacks on immigrant communities, currently receive more than $28.8 billion in combined federal funding - budgets that increased at astronomical rates under both Democrat and Republican presidencies. The Senate resolution would infuse immigration and military agencies with a combined $340 billion dollars to carry out Trump’s mass deportation plans, allotting $175 billion specifically to immigration agencies. At the same time, the Republican lawmakers seek to slash funding to critical public infrastructure and social safety net programs that serve millions of Americans.
Setareh Ghandehari, advocacy director of Detention Watch Network, offered the following statement about the Republican’s budget resolution:
“It’s clear that Republican lawmakers are taking orders from top aides within Donald Trump’s administration, including Tom Homan, Trump’s border czar, and Stephen Miller, an architect of some of the cruelest immigration policies in history. In just a few short weeks, we have seen the lengths this administration will go to carry out a mass deportation and detention agenda designed to sow fear, terrorize immigrants, tear families apart, and pit communities against each other while lining the pockets of private prison companies and defense contractors. People across the United States are concerned with the price of groceries, the safety of our aviation systems, and the mass layoffs of federal workers, yet the Trump regime is focused on spending billions of taxpayer dollars on cruel and inhumane immigration enforcement, detention, and deportation while making sweetheart deals with his billionaire friends. Detention Watch Network urges Senators to boldly and unequivocally oppose any bill that funds Trump’s cruel attacks on immigrants and harms working people across the country.”
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Detention Watch Network (DWN) is a national coalition building power through collective advocacy, grassroots organizing, and strategic communications to abolish immigration detention in the United States.