Pressroom

Washington, DC — The surge of disapproval over Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Trump administration’s cruel mass detention agenda has resulted in a fight over funding for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), with Democrats rejecting the original proposal which included billions of dollars for ICE and Border Patrol. With the deadline for passing the 2026 Homeland Security Appropriations bill set to expire tonight, Congress will be faced with a decision about whether to continue funding ICE and Border Patrol, the agencies that are carrying out the Trump administration’s violent and chaotic detention and deportation campaign.

This week, an NBC News Decision Desk poll revealed that 29 percent of Americans support abolishing ICE. Another study from Pew Research in January showed that 64 percent of Americans oppose keeping large numbers of immigrants in detention centers while their cases are decided.

ICE agents are escalating violence to a deadly degree, and people across the country and across the political spectrum are demanding an end to the ICE age, uniting to protect themselves, their immigrant family members, neighbors, and friends. It’s clear that the American public wants their tax dollars to be used to strengthen families and communities, not to target, detain and deport immigrant friends, neighbors and coworkers.

Setareh Ghandehari, Advocacy Director at Detention Watch Network, issued the following statement:

“The evidence against ICE is indisputable. ICE kills people and threatens community safety, and no one is safe when ICE is present – whether on the streets or in one of the agency’s more than 200 abuse-ridden detention facilities. People are dying in detention and ICE agents are tearing families apart and shooting people on the streets, making people less safe and causing chaos wherever they go. The American public is intensifying their demand to abolish ICE, yet ICE is still operating the largest federal law enforcement agency in the US with the largest immigrant detention system in the world due to unprecedented funding. We must demand members of Congress act now to cut ICE funding, get ICE out of communities nationwide, and shut down ICE detention centers for good. No more abuse and death at the hands of ICE and no more ICE funding while people lose health care, struggle to pay rent and kids go hungry.”

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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.