John,

This Black History Month, let’s shine a light on this country’s state-sanctioned violence that has always targeted Black people.

Don’t forget about Keith Porter, a father who was killed this New Year’s Eve by an off-duty ICE agent. We must Say His Name when talking about the recent victims of ICE violence.

And remember: Trump initially sent federal agents to Minnesota to target Black Somali immigrants.

His administration recently stopped processing green card, asylum, and other immigration applications from people in 19 countries—primarily African and Black-majority countries. And he just revoked Haitians’ Temporary Protected Status, endangering 350,000 U.S. residents.

Last week his administration arrested six Black Minnesotans in connection with a peaceful protest at a church whose pastor works for ICE. Two journalists and four activists were targeted for exercising their First Amendment rights and for the color of their skin.

Trump’s followers also attacked two of my Black colleagues in recent weeks: Reps. Ilhan Omar and Maxwell Frost. Ilhan’s attacker had previously threatened her life, and the person who punched Maxwell said: “We are going to deport you and your kind.”

The criminalization of immigration is rooted in white supremacist ideology about who belongs here. And it’s intertwined with our country’s anti-Black systems of policing and incarceration, which emerged out of slave patrols.

No matter which party is in power, Black immigrants in the U.S. have endured racist policing and over-criminalization—as have Black Americans. In Minneapolis alone, police shot Philando Castile in his car and killed George Floyd on the street.

Each year, Congresspeople from both sides of the aisle keep spending more and more of our tax dollars on state violence—such as war abroad and policing and incarceration at home, including immigration enforcement and detention. These systems are all connected.

When the 13th Amendment passed, it abolished slavery—“except as punishment for crime.” Now incarceration is a big business, with for-profit prisons exploiting incarcerated people’s labor and getting big government contracts.

Black Americans are deeply familiar with state violence. About a week ago, Jackie Summers wrote in a social media post: “For Black people, this country has always been fascist. What’s new is who else is inside the blast radius… Study Black history. Our grief, our joy, and how we organized.”

For centuries, Black Americans have been leading resistance movements and movements for collective liberation.

We can look at what happened in response to Fugitive Slave laws, when armed white government agents kidnapped Black people around the country and forced them into slavery.

Everyday people came out en masse to defend their neighbors, blocking arrests and physically getting between them and U.S. Marshals. They formed vigilance committees to alert and show up for their neighbors who were at risk. These committees also helped people in the Underground Railroad, providing passage and shelter.

To overturn Jim Crow laws, Black Americans in the Civil Rights Movement trained each other and coordinated mass boycotts, during which they provided financial and material support for one another.

Our country has been here before, and we have been fighting back. We have blueprints for resisting and for building resilient communities.

For example, the Black Panthers provided free breakfasts for children, which has since been adopted nationwide in schools. They ran free community survival programs such as health clinics, ambulances, legal aid, education, food pantries, housing cooperatives, and more.

Ruth Wilson Gilmore, a leader in the ongoing movement for abolition, writes that abolition isn’t just about working toward a world with no prisons, it’s about building life-affirming institutions. She explains that “abolition's goal is to change how we interact with each other and the planet by putting people over profit, welfare over warfare, and life over death.”

In Congress I’m pushing to move funding away from state violence—including policing and prisons and immigration enforcement and detention centers—and instead invest those taxpayer dollars into our communities' needs.

If you agree, please sign our petition demanding Congress support care for our communities over criminalization.

Many transformative policies have already been introduced to get us closer to this reality, and I’ve been proud to co-sponsor many of them:

• The People’s Response Act would change our country’s approach to public safety by centering care and healing over punishment, including funding non-carceral and unarmed first responders such as mental health and substance use counselors.

• The Break the Cycle of Violence Act would provide needed resources for non-carceral community-based violence intervention programs.

• The People’s Justice Guarantee would reduce jail and prison populations, eliminate wealth-based discrimination such as pre-trial cash bail, end solitary confinement and forced labor, and so much more.

• The Dignity for Detained Migrants Act would end mandatory detention, prohibit family and child detention, end private detention facilities and jails, and assert clear standards for treatment of detained immigrants. The New Way Forward Act has similarities.

• The Dismantle Mass Incarceration for Public Health Act, which I introduced, would release people in ICE detention, people who haven’t yet been convicted, people who are pregnant, seniors, people nearing the end of their sentences, and more.

• The Justice For All Act, which I’ve introduced, would end qualified immunity for government employees and strengthen civil rights protections against discrimination—including prohibiting racial profiling in police investigations and activity.

• The Melt ICE Act would strip funding from detention and surveillance and redirect those resources into health care, housing, and real community safety.

More pieces of legislation are listed on our petition page.

Please add your name if you want to see Congress pass some of these transformative policies.

Black movement leaders created Black Futures Month to celebrate not only Black history but also to honor the ongoing work for a liberated future, where all Black people are free and thriving.

Together, we’ll keep working toward decriminalizing immigration and poverty, and moving away from criminalization overall. We’ll keep demanding investments in what actually keeps us safe: making sure everyone has what they need to survive and thrive.

With you in the fight,

Rashida