A coalition of immigrant advocacy groups and federal legislators has launched “End the ICE Age,” a campaign urging Congress to defund and eliminate U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Delia Ramirez
“Loved ones are still dying in ICE detention right now, living in horrifying inhumane conditions. Our neighbors are being murdered in the streets by DHS agents,” said U.S. Rep. Delia Ramirez, D-Ill., during a July 23 press conference called to promote the campaign and the “Melt ICE Act,” a House bill she coauthored.
Known officially as HR-7190, the measure would abolish current immigration detention operations and policies and redirect DHS and ICE appropriations to the nation’s taxpaying communities. Both agencies would be eliminated, and U.S. immigration enforcement would be radically redesigned.
“An agency established to violate our rights under the pretense of ensuring our security cannot be reformed.”
The legislation “is a line in the sand because we know that an agency established to violate our rights under the pretense of ensuring our security cannot be reformed and must be dismantled piece by piece” and be replaced with “a new system that is founded on human rights dignity,” Ramirez said.
The premise of the bill is that because DHS and ICE were created by Congress, they can be eliminated by Congress.
“It’s an invitation for every single member of Congress who claims they stand with their immigrant neighbors to join us and melt ICE and dismantle DHS. We’re going to end the ICE age,” Ramirez declared.
The Detention Watch Network, Immigration Defense Project, Immigration Resource Center and Bend the Arc: Jewish Action launched “End The ICE Age” to support Ramirez’s efforts in Congress. They hope to close immigrant detention centers, remove ICE from American communities and redirect DHS funding.
“ICE kills people, ICE tears families apart and threatens community safety wherever they go,” said Setareh Ghandehari, advocacy director for the Detention Watch Network. “No one is safe when ICE is present, whether on the streets or in one of the agency’s more than 200 abuse-ridden detention facilities.”
Jesús G. “Chuy
The coalition deplores the expansion of the Trump administration’s detention and deportation agenda, which has reached previously unimaginable proportions, Ghandehari said. “We are in a watershed moment. The human toll and cost to all Americans continues to be shocking. ICE is operating the largest federal law enforcement agency in the U.S. with the largest immigrant detention system in the world.”
The need for Congress to act is urgent because ICE’s body count continues to grow and already includes 52 immigrants who died in detention and 10 fatally shot in their communities, said U.S. Rep. Jesús G. “Chuy” Garcia, D-Ill.
“The actions of ICE’s masked-agent squads reflect the shameless cruelty of Trump and (presidential aid Stephen) Miller’s policies paid for by our tax dollars. They’re executing innocent people on our streets, they’re racially profiling people, they’re breaking into people’s homes without a warrant, and the Republicans gave them $240 billion to do it.”
Like most of the other speakers, Garcia cited some of the more recent cases of ICE-involved violence, including the July shooting deaths of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston and Johan Sebastian Guerrero in Biddeford, Maine.
Just as concerning is that DHS is hiring ICE and Border Patrol with histories of mental illness and violence, he added. “They’re paying sadistic criminals like David Brouillette, who murdered Juan Sebastian Duran Guerrero in Maine, or Charles Exum, who shot my constituent Marimar Martinez five times in Chicago. These are violent mercenaries who brag about shooting and murdering people.”
The cruelty also shows in how these operations have been financed, Garcia added. “Because the Republican Party has no purpose other than to persecute immigrants, to give tax cuts to the rich and destroy democracy, they have no choice but to double down on their cruelty, all while our constituents struggle to make ends meet because these same politicians gutted their health care, education and nutrition assistance to fund ICE.”
Adelita Grijalva
U.S. Rep. Adelita Grijalva, D-Ariz., focused her outrage on the conditions immigrants are enduring in ICE custody.
“Our families and friends and neighbors are being thrown into overcrowded detention centers where disease spreads, basic medical care is denied, and people are treated as less than human. In Arizona, people have been exposed to measles in detention, pregnant women have suffered miscarriages while in ICE custody and people have died because of something as basic as a toothache that went untreated,” she said.
The nation instead deserves an immigration system rooted in human dignity and due process, she asserted. “It means ending private immigration detention, which profits from locking up immigrants and it means restoring resources at the border so asylum claims are processed fairly and efficiently.”
The book of Lamentations provides an instructive lesson in how Americans should view the suffering of immigrants under the Trump administration, said Eli Williams-Szenes, director of advocacy and political affairs at Bend the Arc: Jewish Action.
Eli Williams
“The chief argument of Lamentations, the goal of the text, is to make you look at suffering that is so egregious, so grounded in reality and in bodies and in blood, that it is unjustifiable no matter the context,” he said. “It is about suffering so terrible that no one is able to look at it and say, ‘Yes, that is what should have happened here.’”
The administration’s approach to immigration enforcement “is not OK under any circumstance according to anyone of good faith and good conscience, because children are watching their parents get taken by jack-booted thugs in the middle of the broad daylight,” he concluded.
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