Washington, DC — The House of Representatives passed a Continuing Resolution late Tuesday that gives the Trump administration billions more for detention and deportation, including a staggering budget increase of nearly $500 million for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), bringing the agency to a nearly $10 billion budget. In response, Setareh Ghandehari, Detention Watch Network’s advocacy director, issued the following statement:
“The House bill backed by Trump will supercharge his cruel detention and deportation agenda and wreak havoc on communities nationwide with unprecedented immigration enforcement.
Immigration enforcement – the targeting, detention, and deportation of people – is fundamentally fraught with inhumane conditions, a lack of accountability and a culture of violence. ICE and Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the agencies carrying out immigration enforcement, are plagued by egregiously poor conditions and a culture of violence that results in system-wide abuses, including death. The federal government already wastes billions annually on ICE and CBP ($28 billion in Fiscal Year 2024) to profile, jail, and deport immigrants. This bill would skyrocket ICE’s astronomical budget while also slashing vital programs that serve millions of Americans, including housing, healthcare, public infrastructure, and food assistance programs. The bill fails to fund the Emergency Food Program (TEFAP) by $20 million, cuts $2 billion from projects to improve our roads and airports, cuts rent subsidies by more than $700 million, and cuts funding to the National Institute of Health by $280 million – all to enable Trump’s investment in the targeting, surveilling, arresting, detaining, and deporting of people.
Additionally, this bill strips away checks and balances, concentrating power over federal resources and giving the Trump administration, including Musk’s widely criticized DOGE, power to act with impunity. There will be virtually no guardrails – Musk’s free reign to dismantle the federal government will be bolstered.
Without a doubt, this bill is a blank check that will translate into the separation of families, disruption of daily life for communities as a whole, and most alarmingly, abuse and death. Taxpayer dollars earmarked for cruel and harmful immigration enforcement will come at the expense of prioritizing vital programs and services that support the needs of all Americans. At what point are our elected leaders going to push back against Trump’s hate and division, and instead demand funding for critical programs that support everyone’s well-being? It can be done and has been done. In Fiscal Year 2019 under the first Trump administration, driven by constituent demands, members of Congress blocked $1 billion of funding for ICE.
The Senate must deny Trump the resources he needs to carry out his cruel detention and deportation agenda by blocking the bill as a rebuke of Trump’s hateful agenda.”
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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.