John,
So far in Trump’s second term, ICE has locked up an unprecedented 66,000 people — the vast majority of whom have no criminal record at all — in what has become the largest for-profit incarceration system in America: the immigrant incarceration industrial complex, sometimes called immigrant “detention.”
People are being kidnapped off the streets, disappeared into for-profit detention centers, and shuffled from facility to facility so their families and lawyers can’t find them. The for-profit companies that run these jails donated tens of millions of dollars to Trump’s campaign, and now are reaping huge profits from the unprecedented flow of $45 billion of taxpayer dollars to expand mass detentions.
These immigrant incarceration facilities dehumanize immigrants with subhuman unsanitary conditions, freezing temperatures and no access to medical care or even lawyers. At least 225 judges across the country (including 23 appointed by Trump) have already ruled that these tactics violate due process. Don’t let anyone tell you that these are “criminals”: ICE’s own statistics show that over 73% of those incarcerated have no criminal record and the remaining 27% have committed minor infractions like traffic violations. Research shows that over 170 US citizens have even been abducted and detained.
This year alone, 23 people have died in ICE custody — a record high. One man died with his hands and feet tied together, and ICE claimed it was a suicide. This administration continues to lie about it all.
This has to stop.
Yesterday, I introduced the Dignity for Detained Immigrants Act along with 124 original co-sponsors and a powerful coalition of immigrant rights advocates. My bill would finally overhaul this abusive system from the ground up by:
As an immigrant, as the Ranking Member on the Immigration Subcommittee, and as someone who knows these stories could have been mine, I cannot and will not accept the cruelty that’s happening right now as normal. That’s why I have held five shadow hearings to draw attention to what is happening. That’s why I developed a brand new Immigration Justice Resistance Lab training on what regular people who hate what is happening can do, right now, to push back.
Sign up for our next Resistance Lab on Sunday, December 14, where we’ll be specifically focusing on immigration justice. This is a great way to get involved in a massive nonviolent movement to protect immigrant communities.
But I need your help now, John. Building the momentum to pass this bill will take all of us. If we’re going to overcome the dark-money machine behind mass detention and organize a national movement strong enough to protect people from these abuses, then I need you in the fight with me.
This is about reclaiming our values, refusing to accept cruelty as policy, and building the people-powered movement capable of taking on the for-profit detention industry and winning.
We can stop the lawlessness and abuse happening in our name. We can create an immigration system rooted in dignity, justice, and humanity. But we can only do it together.
Thank you, truly, for being part of this fight.
In solidarity,
Pramila Jayapal
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