Congressional Letter: 120th Congress Must Prioritize Bold Immigration Agenda

Letter from 150+ organizations representing immigrant rights, labor, health care, faith, anti-poverty, racial justice, reproductive justice, and other advocacy sectors, urging the 120th Congress to enact a bold immigration agenda, prioritizing justice and accountability for immigrant communities.

In the next Congress, Members of Congress have the opportunity to advance legislation presenting a bold vision for transformative immigration legislation. Congress must develop a proactive agenda to:

1) Boldly advance citizenship protections without unnecessary and harmful compromises. Congress must embrace legislation that provides pathways to permanent protections and citizenship for the immigrant community, without measures that make it harder to claim humanitarian protections or add further immigration enforcement resources or surveillance measures.

2) Claw back enforcement slush funds granted by budget reconciliation. Congress must reassert its power of the purse and redirect the Department of Homeland Security’s unprecedented slush funds toward programs that address human needs. The tens of billions in enforcement and detention slush funds sitting in DHS’s coffers are directly fueling harms in your communities when these funds should instead be supporting the everyday lives of your constituents.

3) Make meaningful changes to immigration enforcement and repeal harmful laws passed by Congress. Congress must not grant additional appropriations for ICE or the Border Patrol until transformative changes are made. Congress must transform our immigration enforcement system to ensure communities never again experience the horrors they are enduring. It also must repeal the anti-immigrant provisions in the reconciliation bills: H.R. 1 and S.2.

4) Conduct robust oversight and investigations into the harms inflicted on communities by the administration’s immigration policies. The American people need to feel confident that Congress will never hold back in confronting unprecedented cruelty and lawlessness. This should include aggressive investigations into: deadly uses of force by immigration agents; ICE operating near schools, hospitals and places of worship; detention abuses and deaths in custody; family separation; racial profiling and the unlawful use of warrantless arrests; inter-agency information sharing and privacy violations; the delays and termination of longtime protections and statuses; and third country deportations that put people in danger.