A 5-year-old child detained and sent with his father to a Texas immigration detention facility.
Minnesotans shot – and even killed – at the hands of federal agents.
U.S. citizens arrested by masked officers in broad daylight.
These headlines should be enough to make anyone rethink their support of President Donald Trump’s immigration agencies.
The death of 37-year-old ICU nurse Alex Pretti on Saturday – caught on camera from multiple angles — must finally shock this country’s lawmakers into action.
The country is horrified by abuses committed using hundreds of millions in tax dollars. According to a recent survey from Data for Progress, 55% of voters think any increased funding for immigration enforcement agencies is a bad use of taxpayer money. New York Times polling released on Friday, meanwhile, found that 61% of people believe ICE’s tactics have “gone too far.”
Voters who watched yet another American protester shot down in the middle of a Minneapolis street are looking to Congress to rein in ICE.
Voters who watched yet another American protester shot down in the middle of a Minneapolis street are looking to Congress to rein in ICE. And senators currently hold the fate of ICE and Border Patrol funding in their hands.
This week, the Senate is meeting to vote on six government funding bills ahead of a Jan. 30 government shutdown deadline. If Congress now renews the ICE budget with no strings attached, it will become complicit in the violence, violations of rights, and chaos ICE is fomenting every day.
Thankfully, Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., seems to understand the urgency of this moment. The minority leader vowed on Saturday night to oppose any funding package that includes DHS funding. There can be no business as usual for DHS at a time when it is rampaging through communities, wreaking havoc and inflicting physical and constitutional violence.
Senators have worked hard to negotiate bipartisan compromise spending bills (no easy feat), and they should go ahead and pass the five bills funding other departments. But any bill that would fund ICE and Border Patrol without any meaningful limits is effectively endorsing the conduct of rogue agencies that are causing indelible harm to people across the country, including many U.S. citizens. No senator should want that on their record or their conscience.
ICE is randomly stopping people who appear Black or Brown, including off-duty cops – and demanding they show proof of citizenship. Small business owners who were able to survive the Covid-19 pandemic now worry about how they’ll survive ICE’s Operation Metro Surge, with customers too afraid to leave their homes.
Alex Pretti and Renee Good were shot by federal agents at point blank range. They should both be alive today.
But the shootings weren’t the beginning of ICE’s cruelty, nor the end.
Within 72 hours of Good’s death, over 1,000 protests sprung up across the country. That’s not an aberration. According to at least one survey, a majority of American voters watched the video of her killing. Many, it seems, were horrified. This weekend, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said some 15,000 people braved subzero temperatures to peacefully demand ICE get out of their city.
Last Tuesday, a medical examiner ruled that the death of a 55-year-old man detained at Fort Bliss, Texas – the former Japanese internment camp repurposed as part of ICE’s deportation machine – was a homicide, due to asphyxiation; ICE officials initially called it a suicide.
Just a few days ago, federal agents detained Liam Conejo Ramos – a 5-year-old preschool student – in Columbia Heights, Minnesota. Local school officials claim ICE vehicles are tailing school buses and trying to enter school grounds. On top of that, a leaked Department of Homeland Security memo showed that the department has been telling ICE agents it’s OK to break down doors and force their way into homes without a judicial warrant. The Fourth Amendment was written to protect us from exactly this: heavily armed government forces invading our property at gunpoint, and on their own say-so. These agencies are also attacking our First Amendment right to speak out. People who simply videotape agents’ behavior, stand on sidewalks, pray in front of ICE facilities, or watch these masked and armed agents are facing gas and pepper balls, as well as seemingly indiscriminate arrests and physical assault. Some will fret about another funding fight after the bruising, record-breaking shutdown in the fall. But this situation is completely different. Now the Senate has an opportunity to put its foot down. Some will fret about another funding fight after the bruising, record-breaking shutdown in the fall. But this situation is completely different. The question is not whether to use government funding as leverage to accomplish a policy aim. The question is whether the funding Congress is considering for DHS will be used to violate the law, and our rights. There’s a long list of things Congress should insist on before ICE and Border Patrol get another dime. For example, ICE needs to end warrantless arrests and home invasions without judicial warrants. Border Patrol needs to stop policing our cities. And the administration must turn over all evidence and witnesses related to the killings of Good and Pretti to Minnesota investigators. Last week, the ACLU’s polling showed that 54% of voters oppose any increased budget for ICE’s enforcement and detention budget. And 65% support Congress holding rogue agencies and officers accountable for constitutional violations, using something like the proposed Bivens Act to do so. Everywhere ICE goes with its lawless dragnets and wanton violence, communities suffer. Kids stay home from school. Businesses lose employees and customers. Citizens and legal residents are harassed and asked to “show their papers,” arrested, and even locked up because of the color of their skin or their language or their accent. And of course, thousands of people have been terrorized, traumatized, ripped away from their families — and sometimes — tragically killed. The American people don’t want to live in this kind of police state. Senators should listen. And then do something about it.
Mike Zamore is the national director of policy & government affairs at the ACLU. He spent 14 years as a Senate chief of staff.
