For Immediate Release // Please Excuse Cross Posting
Tuesday, May 17th, 2022

Will House Appropriations Continue to Fund Nativist Deportation Infrastructure?

Washington, DC – In response to ICE Acting Director Tae Johnson testimony before the House Appropriations DHS Subcommittee, NDLON Campaign Director Salvador G. Sarmiento released the following statement:

“Under Donald Trump, we saw an expansion of ICE collusion with nativist groups openly promoting the racist ‘replacement theory’ now being talked about in the wake of the shooting in Buffalo, New York. Not coincidentally, the Trump cabinet members who promoted that dangerous rhetoric, in addition to Trump himself – Bannon, Sessions, Miller – were also the main architects of ICE’s expansion during the Trump years.

“That infrastructure plotted by Jeff Sessions, by Stephen Miller, and promoted by nativist hate groups like FAIR and CIST, is still in place today, and it is massive. Just in Florida and Texas, it counts over one-hundred new contracts between ICE and local police and sheriffs to harass and profile working people, to arrest non-white immigrants, and to deport them.

“Today, Democrats are funding it.

“At what point will House Democrats on Appropriations show some leadership and stop enabling and funding this infrastructure designed by nativists? In states like Texas and Florida, where GOP governors are legislating pro apartheid policy on a regular basis, there is a great deal that House Appropriations Members could do, beginning with immediately shutting down the 287g deportation regime in those states.

“Shutting down these nativist policies is the kind of examples we need to demonstrate that we do have power to root out white nationalist violence in all its forms. All the same, immigrant communities and our neighbors and families have no problem identifying the actors and policies that want us to disappear- and we will continue to oppose them vigorously.”

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