Immigration and Civil Rights Leaders Denounce Mass Deportation Provisions of Big, Ugly GOP Bill

Access online version of this press release HERE

Washington, DC — Following last week’s passage of the massive budget bill and its $150 billion-plus of new immigration enforcement money – which will turbo charge the administration’s mass deportation agenda – immigration, civil rights, and democracy groups were outspoken and consistent in their condemnation (see the statement from Joanna Kuebler, Chief of Programs at America’s Voice here). Among the reactions:

• Maya Wiley, President and CEO of LCCHR (The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights) said, “Every yes vote from Congress that passed this cruel and corrupt legislation doubles down on a dangerous agenda — an agenda that ends doctor visits for hardworking people and their families, that takes food from the mouths of children, and that callously cuts mental health support to students. What does it give us instead? More ICE raids on two-year-olds and high school students, on grandparents, and on workers. It gives us poorer schools and richer billionaires. It literally uses our tax dollars to drive inequality and the stripping away of civil rights, which this president promises with the stroke of his poisoned pen.”

• Janet Murguía, UnidosUS President and CEO said, “ The U.S. House of Representatives has voted to turn its back on the American people by advancing a deeply harmful and extreme budget. Members of Congress who passed this bill have once again betrayed the trust of their constituents — including the Latino community — and chosen cruelty over common sense. This budget makes the largest cuts to health programs and food assistance in U.S. history, and could make certain that for at least the next 10 years millions of American families — including Latino and other underserved communities — will face rising costs, fewer services and more fear in their daily lives. All to supercharge a cruel and ineffective deportation machine that is sowing chaos across our nation.”

• John Slocum, Executive Director, Refugee Council USA said, “This legislation is a shocking betrayal of our American values, challenges the foundations of our democracy, and represents an unprecedented rollback of basic health, nutrition, and humanitarian protections for all community members. It is a direct attack on our nation’s moral and legal commitments, forcing refugee families to go hungry or without healthcare. This legislation will not strengthen our economy or national security, but instead will do irreparable harm to individuals we as a nation have promised to protect. And it will impose unnecessary costs on local systems already under strain. RCUSA urges Congress to reverse course and move forward by prioritizing legislation that affirms human dignity, supports basic support services for all communities, and upholds the fundamental right to seek asylum, refuge, and humanitarian protection”

• Zain Lakhani, director of the Women’s Refugee Commission’s Migrant Rights and Justice Program said, “The Reconciliation bill is one of the most extreme attacks on immigrant women and families that we have ever seen. It supercharges the government’s ability to detain and deport immigrants with little to no oversight and no guardrails. It destroys access to vital public benefits for legally present immigrants fleeing violence, persecution, and abuse. And it guts lifesaving programs like Medicaid and SNAP for all Americans. We call on all members of the House to oppose this dangerous legislation, whose harms will impact communities across the country.”

• Angelica Salas, Executive Director for Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (CHIRLA) said, “Today’s passage of the big and destructive budget bill in the House is a blank check to fostering more chaos, family separations, and cruelty across the country from its most remote corners to the largest cities. With more than $45 billion additional dollars to expand detention facilities, $59 billion to militarize the border, $30 billion to expand the enforcement apparatus, and $10 billion to reward states who enact anti-immigrant policies, ICE, the Border Patrol, and other government agencies straying from their own mission but forced into this hateful project, are poised to feed to the insatiable appetite of the terror machine many times over.”

• Uzra Zeya, President and CEO of Human Rights First said, “As millions of Americans lose access to health insurance, this bill forks over more than $150 billion to supercharge the policies of grave harm we’ve seen these past six months. It will fund more disappearances of people seeking asylum in our country, more masked agents in our courtrooms and neighborhoods to detain and manhandle those following the rules to be here, and more prisons where families, including infants, can now be incarcerated indefinitely due to this Big, Ugly, Betrayal of a bill. This will lead to preventable deaths, put children at risk, and undermine our democracy. To paraphrase Senator Cory Booker, opposing this bill is a matter of right or wrong—not right or left.”

• Nicole Melaku, NPNA (National Partnership for New Americans) executive director said, “Today, the U.S. House of Representatives set the stage for the next four years by rubber-stamping a disastrous spending bill that strips vital social safety net programs to fuel a mass disappearance and deportation agenda. We are outraged that the bill prioritizes billionaire tax breaks—on the backs of working people, the elderly, the medically vulnerable, and the food insecure. The repercussions of this bill will be felt deeply across all communities—regardless of their political affiliations, rural or urban residency, or skin color—Americans will now reckon with the outcome of this piece of legislation.”

• Elizabeth G. Taylor, Executive Director of NHeLP (The National Health Law Program) said, “This is not about improving care or creating efficiency—it is about cruelty. It punishes people with disabilities, chronic illnesses, caregiving responsibilities, and low incomes. It tears away coverage that helps people stay healthy. It defies basic principles of fairness, decency, and good governance. President Trump repeatedly promised not to cut Medicaid. He pledged to stand with working families. Signing this bill breaks those promises. For more than 55 years, the National Health Law Program has protected and defended the rights of Medicaid enrollees. We know this fight. We’ve done it before. And we are ready to do it again. We will not allow these draconian policies to go unchallenged.”

• Ben Johnson, Executive Director of the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) said, “This bill is a profound disappointment. Instead of advancing practical, humane immigration reforms, Congress chose to funnel unprecedented resources into the Administration’s ruthless deportation machine, at the very moment the President is openly threatening to detain and deport U.S. citizens—a betrayal of American values so extreme it threatens the citizenship rights of us all.”