WASHINGTON – New reporting today shows that the White House is in conversations with Congressional Republicans about trading the human rights of migrants for more deadly walls, detention and wars. The policies on the table include a transit ban, keeping people at the border from accessing asylum, and nationwide expedited removal by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
Earlier this week, Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) announced the release of the supplemental funding bill. Their proposed bill includes money to increase the powers and reach of the Department of Homeland Security, border patrol agents and immigrant detention. President Biden’s negotiations threaten to worsen this already disastrous deal.
The Defund Hate campaign, a coalition of groups that advocates for decreased funding to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), offered the following statement:
“President Biden and Congress must stop negotiating funding that not only continues but also broadens the criminalization and harm of immigrants. Adding billions of taxpayer dollars for immigrant detention and border militarization would have devastating consequences for communities at the border and beyond. Any amount of approved funding would be added to the already $25 billion budget ICE and CBP collectively receive each year. As if these funding proposals weren’t harmful enough, President Biden has greenlit other anti-immigrant policies including expedited removal and limits on asylum. Make no mistake, these ineffective deterrence policies are deadly.
President Biden is using people seeking safety and peace as bargaining chips so that he can fund wars and violence abroad. Meanwhile, gutting asylum and writing ICE a blank deportation check will do nothing to address the real challenges caused by border militarization. Instead, President Biden and Congress must provide resources to support incoming migrants and to revitalize border communities. We urge President Biden and Congress not to cave to cruel demands rooted in racism, safeguard asylum, and withdraw the supplemental funding bill, which includes $7.8 billion to ICE and CBP.”
