Washington, D.C. – This week, as the Senate hurdles towards a final vote on Senate Bill S.5 –a bill that would enact sweeping and harmful changes to immigration policy, including rolling back vital due process protections– the Home is Here Campaign released the following statement urging Members of Congress to reject this bill in all its forms.
“As we speak, Congress is readying the next bill that would help make the Trump Administration’s indiscriminate terror campaign against immigrants possible. Senate Bill S.5 would give anti-immigrant states attorneys general like Ken Paxton overreaching power to arrest, detain, and ultimately deport immigrants in mass and without due process, a constitutional right that every single person should be guaranteed.
Under S.5, the elderly immigrant selling fruit on the street corner would be a target. The young, single mom selling candy bars in the subway station would be a target. The DACAmented person with a minor traffic violation would be a target. Our Black and brown neighbors around the country would become targets by simply going about their lives—subject to racial profiling by law enforcement that already discriminates against our communities. In the millions, immigrants whose home is here and who are a part of all of our communities would be rounded up, immediately arrested, and indefinitely detained in mandatory detention. Nothing –other than rejecting this bill in its entirety– will ever make this devastating piece of legislation right.
As the Senate prepares to add amendments to S.5, including possibly a pathway to citizenship for immigrant youth and others, our position remains the same: DACA recipients refuse to be used as bargaining chips for a bill that would target the very people in our families and communities. Any future pathway to citizenship would mean nothing for the millions of people detained and deported by this bill. We urge the Senate to immediately and urgently vote no.”