Tell your Representative: No DHS Funding Without Reining In ICE/CPB!
Call ONE of the Representatives. Note: only one of these Congressmembers represents you. Find out which one here.
Call Script
My name is __________. I am a constituent, and my zip code is _______. I am a member of Indivisible SF.
As my representative in the House, do NOT vote for any DHS bill or legislative process that fails to include significant and meaningful measures to rein in ICE and CBP's unchecked violence, impunity, and denial of basic human rights. You must insist on provisions prohibiting intimidation, abuse, ethnic cleansing, and murder. At a MINIMUM, any DHS funding bill must include the three very modest limitations included in the recent Senate bill. I also strongly urge you to include additional, stronger provisions to defend We the People from police-state overreach and abuse.
Background
Trump's MAGA Regime campaigned on – and is hell-bent on implementing – a massive deportation campaign targeting more than 10,000,000 nonwhite immigrants. This is ethnic cleansing. And it cannot be done without trampling on the Constitutional rights that protect all Americans, citizens and non-citizens alike. Police violence, military occupation, usurpation of power, and destruction of our traditional checks-and-balances democracy are the inevitable result.
In response to public outrage and mass street protests against the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti and the pattern of unchecked violence, impunity, and denial of basic human rights carried out by federal immigration enforcement agencies against our communities, Senate Minority Leader Schumer (D-NY) was pressured to insist on inclusion of three modest ICE/CBP reforms in the spending bill the Senate passed and sent to the House. Those, and possibly additional reforms, are now before the House.
The fundamental political issue for us is the behavior of ICE/CBP, its partisan politicalization by the MAGA Regime, and the role of immigration in American society.
After the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Acts and the Immigration Act of 1891, immigration-enforcement was shifted from individual states to the Treasury Dept.
In 1903, it was transferred to what is now the Labor Dept.
The Border Patrol was created in the Dept of Labor to enforce the Immigration Act of 1924.
In 1933 (Great Depression), the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) was established to enforce racially and ethnically restrictive immigration quotas.
In 1940 (WWII security concerns), those duties were transferred to the Dept. of Justice.
In 2003 (after 9/11), those functions were transferred to the Dept. of Homeland Security.
The Immigration Act of 1924 (AKA Johnson–Reed Act, or National Origins Act), along with the Chinese Exclusion Acts and similar laws, were created to limit or outright ban nonwhite immigration to America. A New York Times article in 1924 characterized the law's intent as, "to preserve [America's] racial type as it exists here today." (Particularly as to excluding Latin Americans, Asians, Jews, and people from the Carribean.) Today, that is the worldview the MAGA Regime is determined to restore and reimpose on America – it defines what they mean by "great again."
In the view of many progressives, Democratic Party leaders have been too accommodating towards MAGA immigration policies. House Democrats failed to add significant ICE/CBP reforms to the DHS bill that they sent to the Senate. And as Daniel Schuman and Chris Nehls of First Branch Forecast posted last Monday:
The deal that Sen. Schumer struck … weakened Democratic leverage to rein in ICE – the full weight of a government shutdown may have incentivized Republicans to provide more concessions. More than a few Democratic senators, including Sen. Schumer himself, likely were not all that interested in placing all that many more restrictions on ICE. ... [Hakim Jeffries] has the same problem that Schumer had … Democratic congressional leaders also are not confronting the policy purpose of an empowered ICE, which is the deportation of the undocumented population and terrorizing everyone else into submission. … Democrats seem afraid to articulate the idea of America as a nation of immigrants, which is the core of this political controversy. The Administration’s overt opinion is that racial diversity is corrosive to American society and American culture. Immigration is a wedge issue to make that argument.
After the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, street protests and public outrage mobilized by progressive organizations, including Indivisible, pressured Schumer to add three modest ICE/CBP reforms to the DHS funding bill:
Require operable body cameras at all times, with penalties for disabling. Require identification and prohibit face masks.
Impose a uniform code of conduct and require independent investigations into violations.
Prohibit neighborhood sweeps, dragnets, and patrols.
Those three provisions are right and necessary, but they are insufficient for the current crisis. A list of additional ICE/CBP reforms that are immediately necessary might include:
Prohibit ICE raids in sensitive locations, including schools, hospitals, courthouses, and churches.
Revoke ICE's claim that administrative warrants signed by ICE agents allow them to force entry and search homes and businesses, rather than doing so only with a warrant signed by a judge.
Reject racial and accent profiling.
Ban arrest and apprehension of American citizens (naturalized and native-born).
Affirm that violations of a person's civil rights is an individual criminal felony.
Return CBP agents to border patrol.
End top-down CBP and ICE arrest, detention, and deportation quotas.
Require an attorney and court appearance before deportation.
As required by the 6th Amendment, prompt hearings and case resolutions.
Conform to the Prison Rape Elimination Act for trans and intersex detainees.
Significant training requirements for all officers, regardless of prior experience.
Require that investigations be made accessible to state authorities without delay.
Release ICE and CBP statistics regarding criminal records and deportations.
Require FBI, CBP, ICE, to provide monthly reporting to the Office of Civil Rights.
Given the history, current reality, and MAGA ideology, incremental reforms to ICE/CBP and even DHS as a whole will only take us so far. There will always be one or more government agencies handling matters of immigration, customs, and cross-border travel. Long-term, we have to develop and win adoption of a just, equitable, and deracialized immigration policies, and then create or reorganize agencies to implement those policies.
References
Major spending package cleared while immigration talks continue, Roll Call. 2/3/26
The Street Moves First, Daniel Schuman and Chris Nehls, First Branch Forcecast, 2/2/26
The Border Patrol Is the Problem. It Always Has Been. Reece Jones, NY Times 2/2/26 (free)
What to know about the partial government shutdown, The Hill, 2/2/26
U.S. deportation tracker: Counting arrests, deportations, NBC News 4/15/25
Near Certain Cataclysmic Consequences of a Mass Deportation Program, NASW (Nat'l Assoc. Social Workers)
This Week's US Congressional Call Scripts:
