Washington D.C.—Early this morning, the U.S. House of Representatives passed an enormous spending bill under the reconciliation process that has received widespread condemnation from communities across the country and groups that work to protect the rights of children, access to health care and food security, affordable housing, education, and more. This bill must still pass the U.S. Senate before it can be signed into law.
Mary Meg McCarthy, Executive Director of the National Immigrant Justice Center, stated the following in response:
“This bill is the most brazen attack on our communities in recent history. If it became law, this bill would roll back the clock on protection for children and families, hand approximately $150 billion to federal agencies to terrorize immigrant communities, plunge the United States into trillions of dollars in national debt, and deepen the chasm between the super-rich and low-income families across the nation. We cannot overstate the magnitude of the harms and devastation this bill could cause, if it becomes law.
“Congress must not be complicit in handing more power to the Trump administration as it is actively attacking the rights of our communities.”
Congress must refuse to fund Trump’s escalating attacks on immigrants and due process
Over the past five months, the executive branch has assaulted the most basic principles of our U.S. Constitution. We are witnessing an egregious power grab, as the Trump administration abducts U.S. citizen children, students, business owners, and people seeking asylum, and disappears them to remote jails in the south and torture prisons abroad. Meanwhile, the administration has gutted funding for legal services for children, detained people, separated families, individuals and families with pending court hearings, and people courts have deemed mentally incompetent to represent themselves in immigration courts. And it continues to attack oversight agencies, violate court orders and binding settlement agreements, and dismantle due process rights.
As House members fiercely debated the spending bill, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers were detaining people attending hearings at immigration court rooms across the country in a new enforcement operation that strips individuals of their day in court and will allow Trump to inflate mass deportation numbers.
Rather than supercharge operations like these through the catastrophic spending bill, Congress should act as a check on Trump’s abuse of power. Opposing this bill should not be a partisan matter. We commend members of Congress who spoke up against this bill and urge every U.S. senator to oppose this bill and stand with their constituents and the Constitution.