Mass deportation remains unchecked, unaccountable and unabated. No more blank checks
At a time when food banks are seeing long lines and Americans are worried sick about how to afford a doctor’s visit, the Trump administration wants to waste billions more to ensure its mass deportation agenda rages on.
And, top Congressional Republicans are demonstrating they are willing accomplices to give a blank check and unchecked chaos to armed and masked agents despite the loud call from the American public for accountability. South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham (a one-time champion of a pathway to citizenship for the 11 million undocumented, believe it or not) announced a Senate Budget Resolution that does nothing to address the daily costs burdening working families, instead prioritizing around $70 billion, and possibly even up to $140 billion, in new spending for ICE and CBP through the end of Trump’s presidency – and with no guardrails or no accountability.
Because that’s just what these agencies need – another monstrous check on top of the $190 billion they already got last year under the ugly budget law.
Meanwhile, mass deportation agents boast about getting bonuses for harassing American teenagers like 16-year-old U.S. citizen Arnoldo Bazan. He said that the mass deportation agents who physically and verbally abused him “even celebrated” that they would get a bonus for detaining him and his dad. But that’s just one example of the kind of abuses that are still happening in states across the country. Now that ICE and CBP could be looking at billions more in funding through another budget reconciliation bill, reported abuses under the mass deportation agenda warrant further scrutiny.
CHILDREN TARGETED, DETAINED, TRAUMATIZED
Many of the administration’s most reprehensible attacks have been targeted at those least likely to be able to defend themselves: our children. In Texas, nearly 600 kids were held at the nation’s lone migrant family jail “in recent months without enough food, medical care or mental health services, as their time inside stretched beyond court-mandated limits,” the AP reported. One mom told NBC News in February that she feared for her toddler’s life after she became seriously ill – and only continued to deteriorate – after being targeted and detained at the camp.
“It began with a fever, then a cough that wouldn’t ease. Her nose clogged with thick mucus. Her breathing grew strained and wheezy,” the report said. By the time that detention staff decided to get Amalia to a hospital, she had to be treated for pneumonia, Covid-19, RSV and respiratory distress. “Thank God,” Valero Marcano said when staff acknowledged Valeria needed urgent medical attention. “Because you haven’t done anything.”
In recent weeks, children’s educator Ms. Rachel has been among leading voices urging the closing of the Dilley migrant family jail, writing that kids “held in immigration detention endure trauma, neglect and conditions that violate basic standards of health, safety, dignity and human rights.”
But as 16-year-old Arnoldo recently made clear, this mass deportation agenda traumatizes all children. During a March hearing hosted by Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Rep. Robert Garcia (CA-42), Bazan bravely shared how agents put him in a choke-hold and called him – a minor – an “illegal idiot” and “border hopper.” He still struggles with the ordeal and gets shaken when he sees law enforcement.
“When I go to school, I pray I come home safely,” he said. “Whenever I hear sirens or see an officer, my heart starts racing. I don’t even know when I will see my father again.
DETAINEES PACKED ‘LIKE SARDINES’ AND DYING AT TERRIFYING RATES
In Florida, staff at the so-called “Alligator Alcatraz” appeared to defy a federal judge’s ruling “ordering detention center officials to provide access to timely, free, confidential, unmonitored and unrecorded outgoing legal calls,” the AP reported. When detained individuals dared to complain that they were being denied their rights, they were beaten and pepper-sprayed.
“Six days after the reported attack, Raiko Lopez Morffi’s right eye was still swollen and black during a video call with his lawyer Katie Blankenship, who took screenshots of his injured face and arm,” Truthout reported. Lazaro Hernandez Galban, another detained man, “said one guard told him to ‘watch what you say’ before a group of them entered the cage in a cloud of tear gas that prompted an older detained man to pass out, and began to beat and kick Morffi and others.”
In Arizona, Democratic lawmakers that conducted an unannounced inspection of a detention facility expressed horror at conditions they witnessed inside, including human beings packed like “sardines” and begging for help, the Arizona Mirror reported.
And while mass deportation agents have stopped executing Americans in the streets, the deadly brutality continues behind detention walls, with immigrants dying in ICE custody at an unprecedented rate of once a week. In California, Jose Guadalupe Ramos-Solano died March 25 while detained at the privately-operated Adelanto ICE Processing Center. In Indiana, Tuan Van Bui died April 1 while detained at the Miami Correctional Center. In Louisiana, Alejandro Cabrera Clemente died April 11 while detained at the privately-operated Winn Correctional Center. And just one day later in Florida, Aled Damien Carbonell-Betancourt, 27, became the 17th person to die while in ICE custody in 2026.
Carbonell-Betancourt is “the 47th person to die in federal immigration custody during the current Trump administration,” said Syracuse University professor Austin Kocher. “He is also the third person from Cuba to die in ICE custody. Unless something changes dramatically, ICE is on predictable track to report 60 detention deaths by the end of the year.”
MILITARY SPOUSES DETAINED, AMERICAN FAMILIES SEPARATED
The U.S. has turned its back on American military service members who’ve put their lives at risk in service of our nation, detaining a number of spouses of active-duty soldiers. In Texas, ICE abducted Deisy Rivera Ortega, the wife of a service member who has served in the military for nearly three decades. Rivera Ortega actually holds legal protection that forbids her deportation to her native El Salvador, CBS News reports. So officials are instead trying to deport her to Mexico – a country she has no ties to.
“’I don’t really understand why, because she followed the rules of immigration by the T since day one,’ Serrano said, noting his wife had an active work permit at the time of her arrest,” CBS News reports. “I love the Army. (The) Army helped me out for almost 28 years. It’s not the Army, sir. It’s ICE,” Serrano continued. “ICE is out of control right now, sir, taking away rights, as soldiers, that we have.”
This family’s ordeal is representative of how the administration’s mass deportation agenda – and potentially billions of additional dollars that could fund it through the next couple of years – represents a threat to family unity all over the country. In Wisconsin, four U.S. citizen children are without their mom despite an immigration judge ruling last December that she’s entitled to a green card, Wisconsin Public Radio reports. Last year, Elvira Benitez-Suarez, who has called the U.S. her home for nearly four decades, “was traveling with her husband and two youngest children to Niagara Falls,” the report said. “Their GPS took them on a wrong turn and into Canada.” Now that wrong turn risks tearing this American family apart permanently.
“My mom is not a criminal,” said her daughter, Natalie. “She does a lot of good things, she helps us, she helps the community, she helps her church, she helps others.”
Americans have been making clear they want reforms to the lawless and deadly mass deportation agencies that have been wreaking havoc across our communities and terrorizing our neighbors, regardless of legal status. Just look at all the neighbors flooding their local government offices to oppose the opening of ICE warehouses in their communities:
And look at the majority of midterm voters who say that they approve of shutdown demands seeking to rein in mass deportation agents, including mandating the use of body cameras, requiring agents to ID themselves, and an independent investigation of abuses of power, among a number of items. But the administration has instead refused to agree to reforms and has instead tried to play us with much-hyped personnel changes that included the firing of now-former DHS Secretary Kristi Noem.
No more blank checks – especially when resources would be better served helping families keep a roof over their heads and food in their bellies.
“American taxpayers shouldn’t have to foot the bill for mass deportation that inflicts violence in our streets, violates our rights, and destroys vital sectors of our economy,” said America’s Voice Executive Director Vanessa Cárdenas. “That is exactly what the GOP proposes to do, choosing to ignore soaring gas prices and access to affordable healthcare, housing, and education.”
“Donald Trump and Stephen Miller’s mass deportation machinery of ICE and CBP are out of control and unaccountable to American taxpayers. These renegade agencies cannot be given another dime, let alone funding for the remainder of the Trump and Miller term – especially as the administration lays out their official quota of one million deportations per year. Talk about ignoring the clear will of the American people.”
“Instead of more funding, ICE and CBP and the mass deportation machinery do need reform and accountability, as the sheer volume and examples of cruelty remind us on a daily basis,” she concluded. “The American people are demanding accountability, not a blank check.”
