Organizational Letters to Congress

Dear Members of Congress:

As you consider the FY2022 Continuing Resolution (CR) Appropriations request for anomalies required for a short-term CR, we write to urge you to oppose the White House’s requests for additional funding or flexibility in spending for immigration enforcement and detention operations. We ask, specifically, that you reject the request from the White House for additional flexibility to increase spending on Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention and removals above the Fiscal Year 2021 levels. We also caution against providing additional flexibility for U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) funds that could be channeled towards further border militarization and enforcement. It is critical that Congress assert its authority to stop the administration’s unaccountable runaway spending on its abusive detention system and protect against further border militarization.

ICE has expanded its detention system with little accountability at a dramatic rate, in part because Congress has failed to use its power to rein in the agency’s wasteful and abusive operations. CBP also has a record of mis-using funds appropriated by Congress for humanitarian purposes, spending instead on enforcement. Now, the White House FY2022 request for a short-term CR includes an anomaly request to utilize ICE “Operations and Support” funds for Alternatives to Detention programs, which entail ICE supervision and electronic surveillance programs, and detention and removal operations for non-citizens apprehended crossing the southwest land border between ports of entry. The request is completely unwarranted, especially given that Congress funded ICE in FY2021 to detain 10,000 more individuals than are currently detained and more than double the amount of people that were in detention at the time.

The White House is also requesting flexible spending on CBP “Operations and Support” to “respond to changing migration patterns across the southwest land border.” If such flexibility is granted, Congress must include guardrails to ensure this funding is used as intended for timely processing and support for Afghan evacuees, and not for enforcement purposes. Furthermore, any funding to mitigate the effects of COVID should ensure that individuals are not held in congregate settings, but instead released responsibly in coordination with community-based and operated local shelters and community groups.  

The immigration detention and enforcement system’s abusive history is long and well-documented. A look at this past year alone reveals the cruelty of this system to which Congress continues to dedicate billions in funding. People in detention continue to file complaints of abuses, including medical neglect, violations of disability rights, and racist and discriminatory treatment. Rights groups continue to document persistent abuses, including due process violations, committed by Border Patrol agents against asylum seekers along the Southwest border.

In March, more than 245 organizations wrote to urge Congress to prioritize the wellbeing of all immigrant and border communities by dramatically cutting funding to ICE and CBP as a first step to ending the United States’ enforcement-only response to migration. Last month, as the end of FY2021 approached, more than 190 organizations sent a letter to reiterate the need for Congress to take bold action in FY2022 to reduce the United States’ reliance on incarceration for immigration processing. Today, we write again to raise alarm over the White House’s request for additional funding for immigration and detention enforcement on a short-term CR that will continue already bloated enforcement budgets. To make good on its promise to reimagine a humane immigration processing system, the administration should be working to support, not further militarize, border communities; and to reduce, not increase, the population of people detained by ICE.

Congress has the power and the resources to ensure that people navigating their immigration case can do so with their families and with their community—not behind bars in immigration detention. As you consider the White House short-term CR FY2022 anomalies requests, we, the undersigned organizations, strongly urge you to recognize the critical role of Congress to protect immigrant and border communities from the dangers of ICE’s deadly and unnecessary detention system and Border Patrol’s unaccountable enforcement tactics.