No Boots, No Beds, No Racist Wall
Senator Dianne Feinstein
SF Office: (415) 393-0707
DC Office: (202) 224-3841
LA Office: (310) 914-7300
Fresno Office: (559) 485-7430
San Diego Office: (619) 231-9712
If you can't get through to one office, try another. There is no benefit to calling one office over another. Leaving a voicemail is as good as reaching a live person.
Senator Kamala Harris
SF Office: (415) 981-9369
DC Office: (202) 224-3553
Sacramento Office: (916) 448-2787
LA Office: (213) 894-5000
San Diego Office: (619) 239-3884
Call the SF office first, but try the other offices if you can’t get through. If you can’t get a live person, leave a voicemail and also send a follow-up email written in your own words.
Note: only one of the following two Congresswomen represents you. To find out which one, click here.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi
SF Office: (415) 556-4862
DC Office: (202) 225-4965
Call the SF office first, but try the DC office if you can’t get through. If you get voicemail, hang up and try a few more times to talk to a real person. Don’t give up! Short direct messages are most effective.
Rep. Jackie Speier
San Mateo Office: (650) 342-0300
DC Office: (202) 225-3531
Keep calling if you don’t get through. Voicemails are logged daily into a central report across offices.
Call Script
My name is __________. I am a constituent, and my zip code is _______. I am a member of Indivisible SF.
I ask [MoC] to reject the current working budget deal in favor of a bill that keeps the government open with NO new funding for:
Increased detention beds.
Additional HSI agents.
Trump’s racist wall.
Please don’t give in to Trump’s hostage-taking. Please support ONLY a clean budget deal, and place strict limits on DHS and HHS reprogramming authority!
Context
Negotiations on the funding deal are continuing, with Senate leaders saying Monday night they’ve reached a tentative agreement that includes $1.375 billion for border "barriers," including 55 miles of new fencing. The deal also excludes Democrats’ demands to limit immigrant detention funding for ICE.
This is a unacceptable. House Democrats must stay strong and reject any additional funding that will allow Trump to tear more families apart.
Please, please, please call your House Representative and tell her that this is a NO GO deal. We demand a bill that keeps the government open with NO new funding for:
Beds. In two years, Trump has dramatically expanded the number of immigrants being incarcerated. In President Obama's last year in office, 34,000 immigrants were in ICE detention. Now the number is close to 50,000—far above the 40,500 for which Congress had authorized funding.
How can ICE detain more people than Congress has authorized? Because DHS uses their transfer and reprogramming authority to effectively steal money from other programs, such as FEMA, to jail more immigrant families. It is the responsibility of the Congress to end this financial shell game, once and for all, and impose strict limits on what ICE can spend.
Boots. Negotiators are considering giving Trump more Homeland Security Investigation (HSI) agents. Don't be fooled. HSI agents are ICE agents -- and funding for HSI agents is funding for Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda. ICE HSI agents conduct highly militarized worksite raids. The National Immigration Law Center has a great resource with more information on HSI agents here. Congress must NOT increase HSI’s funding -- it must cut it and prohibit HSI from arresting workers, while conducting this type of “papers, please” enforcement.
Trump’s racist wall. Negotiators are currently considering including $1.375 billion for border wall funding, which will devastate local communities, as private land is seized using eminent domain, just so Trump can fulfill his hateful campaign promise to build his racist wall along the southern border. It’s critical to keep up the pressure on our MoCs and tell them NOT ONE PENNY for Trump’s hateful wall.
Background:
Republicans are demanding more than $2 Billion for a wall that is inherently racist because it is rooted in the false claim that nonwhite immigrants from south of the border are murderers, rapists, and terrorists who must be walled out of America. Democrats are offering a lower amount for improved border security aimed at stopping the inflow of narcotics and human trafficking through technology, upgraded ports of entry, and improvements to existing fences where they make sense.
The Trump administration has vastly expanded the number of immigrant children and families being held in detention. Last year, Republicans increased the maximum number of authorized detention beds to 40,000. But according to reports, DHS is now holding close to 50,000 people. To do so they are shifting funds from other programs -- such as FEMA emergency aid -- to finance ever increasing mass detention. Democrats are demanding that the 40,000 person cap be lowered, which we in ISF support. But unless DHS's authority to shift funds is curbed, a lower cap is simply cosmetic -- it won't have any effect. Moreover, preventing an agency from transferring funds at whim is basic good governance. When Congress appropriates money for a specific purpose a cabinet secretary should not be allowed to use those funds for some other politically-motivated purpose.
Democrats want to significantly lower the number of already-resident immigrants who can be swept up in raids and then detained and deported even though they have peacefully lived and worked in the U.S. for years. By placing a low cap on the number of such detainees, they hope to force DHS to focus on real criminals and violent offenders rather than rounding up and deporting people who lack legal authority to be in the country but are productive and otherwise pose no threat. Republicans are yelling that capping the number of detention beds would prevent ICE from detaining "dangerous criminals," but they define as "criminal" anyone who is in the country without proper papers regardless of the years they have been here or their actual behavior.
References
TRUMP’S LATEST TEMPER TANTRUM AND THE SHOWDOWN OVER THE WALL, Indivisible National.
TRUMP WANTS TO DECLARE A FAKE EMERGENCY TO GET HIS WALL, Indivisible National
ICE’s Fiscal Mismanagement: Deceit and Abuse, Detention Watch Network
Shutdown Negotiations Still Snagged As ICE Detention Policies Come to the Fore, Ed Kilgore. New York Magazine