Following new reports over the past week of shocking and deadly violence by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Border Patrol and as the U.S. Senate prepares to vote on a federal appropriations bill which would provide billions of new tax dollars to these agencies, National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC) Executive Director Mary Meg McCarthy issued the following statement:
“With the death toll mounting at the hands of ICE and Border Patrol, it is past time for Congress to intervene and block any additional funding for these agencies.
“In the past week alone, the world has witnessed the murder of Alex Pretti at the hands of Border Patrol agents and the abduction of five-year-old asylum seeker Liam Ramos in Minneapolis, and learned that ICE officers choked Geraldo Campos Lunas to death inside ICE’s East Montana Detention Center at Fort Bliss, Texas. Mr. Lunas is already one of six people to die in ICE custody in 2026. Mr. Pretti was the second person to be murdered in cold blood by ICE officers on the streets of Minneapolis, following the fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good on January 7. Liam is one of thousands of children who have been disappeared by ICE with their families or left behind following a parent’s abduction. The pace of these killings and disappearances is staggering.
“As we mourn the people our communities have already lost, we also must urgently act to defend our most basic constitutional and human rights. The Trump administration is acting as judge, jury, and executioner — ignoring federal court orders, undermining the most basic rules of law, and unleashing deadly violence in U.S. neighborhoods. And while the Trump administration has pushed ICE and Border Patrol’s lawlessness to new and shocking lengths, evidence of these agencies’ violence against Black, Brown and Indigenous communities has been well documented since they were established less than 25 years ago.
“Congress must end its complicity with the lawless conduct of ICE and Border Patrol and use the fiscal year 2026 Homeland Security Appropriations Bill to stop the Trump administration’s rising authoritarianism. NIJC calls on all U.S. Senators to stand with the majority of the U.S. public and vote against sending any more funding to ICE and Border Patrol.”