Trump's ICE agents have pushed and shoved members of Congress, detained the mayor of the largest city of New Jersey without due process, and have arrested a judge! What’s next? Who is next? 

Tell Congress to stop cutting programs like Medicaid for families to pay for ICE’s human rights abuses.  Now is the time to put some constraints on ICE, not massively increase its funding.  

A Trump Administration-backed ICE is demonstrating an increasingly troubling disregard for due process, for human rights, and for the rule of law.  This past week, I witnessed it firsthand. I joined a contingent of NJ-based immigration activists as part of a peaceful protest to support Newark Mayor Ras Baraka and three sitting members of Congress as they sought to inspect a recently reopened ICE detention center.  I watched as ICE officers allowed the Mayor to enter their gates before seemingly asking him to leave. Mayor Baraka then left peacefully with no resistance when masked and heavily armed ICE officers forcibly arrested him, ripping him out of the arms of two members of Congress, both of whom were Black women using their bodies to protect him. [1] [2] [3]

The way that ICE treated the Mayor and the members of Congress was shocking – no respect, no decency, no humanity.

Take action now - Tell Congress NO to cutting Medicaid, SNAP, early learning, and public schools to fund the massive expansion of ICE’s ability to conduct human rights abuses and due process violations. 

What’s happening? Right now, Congress is debating making massive cuts to Medicaid, HeadStart, SNAP, Veterans benefits, and public schools in order to give tax breaks to billionaires and also to turbocharge ICE’s out of control human rights abuses of immigrants and the people who support them.

These policies hurt families and our economy – and also undermine our democratic institutions and processes. If ICE can target judges, mayors, and members of Congress, they can target any and all of us. 

Since it was established in 2003, ICE spending has almost tripled from $3.3 billion to $9.6 billion in 2024. [4] Yet, the current budget negotiations would pump even more money into ICE and other agencies with proposals to spend an additional $175 billion on family separations, sending people without due process to prisons in other countries where they are likely to be tortured, and other human rights violations! [5] This is money that could instead fund basic needs programs for our communities and families, such as: Expanding health insurance to the four million uninsured children in the country;  and expanding Head Start to serve four in five children in low income families. [5]

Congress was established to be a voice for us - the people. Now more than ever we need members of Congress to stand firmly with our families and protect our collective due process rights by saying no to funding ICE overreach and mass human rights abuses 

Add your name to our letter urging Congress to stop cutting Medicaid and other programs for families to fund ICE’s human rights abuses.

References 

1. Trump officials ‘created confrontation’ that led to arrest of Newark mayor

2. Mayor Baraka of Newark, New Jersey, arrested at immigration detention center he has been protesting

3. New Jersey mayor arrested in protest at migrant centre

4. The cost of immigration enforcement and border security

5. TRADE-OFFS: Senate Republicans Would Increase Spending for Pentagon and Deportations at the Expense of Solving Our Worst Problems