In the last year, massive federal funding has poured into ICE and Border Patrol, giving them the resources to expand their detention and deportation operations for years to come. We have already seen how dangerous this is in communities across the country.
Now the administration is trying to use this money to carry out a massive expansion in detention facilities across the country. They have been buying up properties and sometimes actually converting warehouses into camps that will hold human beings, often in dangerous and horrifying conditions. And it doesn’t end there. Republicans in Congress are trying to jam through even more funding for Trump’s mass deportation machine.
We have a chance to stop this expansion in its tracks, in partnership with experts across the country, by speaking up and demanding our elected officials do the same. And here’s the good news: pressure has already proven to work. Several ICE detention centers have already been blocked or delayed thanks to intense local, state, and legal opposition, including lawsuits and even some property cancellations. Even some Republicans are criticizing the warehouses — from Pennsylvania, to Tennessee, and beyond.
Check this map created by Project Saltbox to learn if a warehouse is being proposed near you, and then call on your Members of Congress to oppose any expansions.
Fill out this form right now and we’ll connect you to your Members of Congress. Tell them you want them to publicly oppose any warehouses or detention centers being expanded in your community or anywhere in the country.
The email to your Members of Congress:
Dear Senator/Representative:
I am writing today to ask that you publicly use every tool at your disposal to oppose any proposed expansion of DHS detention facilities in our community and around the country.
We cannot accept these proposed, horrifying build-outs anywhere — these facilities are well documented as holding human beings in dangerous and horrifying conditions. Such facilities already detain over 70,000 people a year, and new “mega-warehouses” will lead to even more people being held in inhumane, dangerous conditions.
Specifically, I urge you to:
- Publicly oppose the purchasing and establishment of any new warehouse-style detention facilities
- Investigate the network of unregulated ICE "holding rooms" that have detained thousands of immigrants under dangerous conditions.
- Demand cuts to all ICE funding used to warehouse immigrants, and block any federal funding that would be used to build, renovate, or operate these facilities.
Immigrants are essential members of our local communities, and we cannot accept an inhumane facility like this in any of our communities, anywhere in the United States.
I expect you to use your power as my elected official to reject localized expansions of Trump’s mass detention and deportation agenda.