Washington, D.C. — On Thursday, America’s Voice convened lawmakers, law enforcement leaders, and advocates to sound the alarm on the Trump-Miller administration’s deadly deportation machine, following the recent ICE killings in Houston and Biddeford, Maine. Speakers warned that federal agents, armed with billions in congressional funding and emboldened by recent Supreme Court rulings, are prioritizing arrest quotas over human lives while operating with no local accountability.
Vanessa Cárdenas, Executive Director of America’s Voice, stated: “The Trump Miller deportation machine is cruel, costly, chaotic, and now deadly on a growing scale. They are killing our fathers, our neighbors, our coworkers, with no regard for human life. As long as there is a quota of arrests to meet, ICE agents will continue to hunt immigrants indiscriminately, and with the Supreme Court’s blessing, they are free to racially profile. Congress needs to hold this administration accountable.”
Maine House Speaker Ryan Fecteau stated: “A young man, one of our neighbors, was gunned down in our streets. His life was taken from him and his family because ICE decided to use lethal force, and we want answers. The family deserves answers, and as American citizens, we deserve accountability from an agency that has continuously operated with impunity. Back in January, ICE detained 200 people in our state, only 17 of whom had criminal records. The notion we keep hearing from the Trump administration, that this is about getting the worst of the worst off our streets, simply isn’t true.”
Mendota Heights, Minnesota Police Chief Kelly McCarthy stated: “My citizens are afraid, and they’re afraid for their friends and their family because of the brutality that they saw on a day-to-day basis here in Minnesota. We would have reports of masked men taking people off the streets. We would have kidnapping reports. We wouldn’t be able to discern what was an ICE action from an actual crime committed that we would normally deal with. When you have distrust — legitimate reasons for distrust — of government at any level, it affects the trust of government at every level.”
Lieutenant Diane Goldstein (Ret.), Executive Director of the Law Enforcement Action Partnership (LEAP), stated: “When the concerns raised after the Minneapolis shootings weren’t meaningfully addressed, another controversial shooting followed in Houston. Before the investigation in Houston could even begin in earnest, another fatal shooting occurred in Maine. That’s what happens when accountability stops serving its intended purpose. Independent oversight isn’t just about determining what happened after a tragedy. It’s how law enforcement identifies systemic problems, earns public trust, and prevents the same mistakes from happening again. When those safeguards break down, so does public confidence in the legitimacy of law enforcement itself.”
Watch the full press call here.
