Washington, DC — Today in a massive show of support, 1,025 organizations, including immigrant justice, human rights, civil rights, faith, and labor organizations sent a letter to members of Congress to express horror, outrage and deep grief about the recent shooting deaths by federal agents in Minneapolis. “We demand an immediate halt in all funding for these deadly operations until the violence, abuses, and deaths in American communities and in immigration detention centers stop,” states the letter. “Congress must refuse to provide one dollar to Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) or Customs and Border Protection (CBP) through the appropriations process and immediately take action to revoke the tens of billions already given through last summer’s reconciliation bill.”
Currently the Fiscal Year 2026 appropriations bill is being negotiated in Congress with the Senate voting this week on the package. Congress already handed the administration a windfall of $170 billion dollars last year through the reconciliation bill to supercharge the cruel targeting, detention and deportation of people and fulfill the Trump administration’s agenda. Currently, there are over 70,000 people in ICE detention, an all time high, with a record number of deaths in ICE custody, including six deaths in just the first two weeks of 2026. One of these deaths has been found to be a likely homicide at the hands of detention guards in Texas. Now, federal agents have shot dead Keith Porter Jr. in LA and Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, adding to ICE’s death toll of beloved family members.
The letter pleads: “How many people have to die, how many more lies have to be told, and how many more children must be used as bait and abducted, before Congress fulfills its responsibilities and stops these out of control agencies from continuing to violently attack our immigrant communities and communities of color, as well as their many allies and supporters?”
The full text of the letter can be found here.
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Detention Watch Network (DWN) is a national coalition building power through collective advocacy, grassroots organizing, and strategic communications to abolish immigration detention in the United States.