The “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” would multiply funding for policing and incarcerating these members of our communities and increase fees for those seeking legal protection, all while denying families with status access to vital social programs. The Senate must reject this cruel bill.
From starting the sanctuary movement in the 1980s to calling for the DREAM Act in 2012, the PC(USA) continues to push for the just and humane treatment of all who live in the United States. In 2022 the General Assembly declared the PC(USA) to be a “Sanctuary and Accompaniment Church,” encouraging congregations to support immigrants, refugees, asylum seekers, and their children, and to resist efforts by the government to separate families.
In doing so we head the call to “let mutual love continue… [and] show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.” (Hebrews 13:1-3)
Rather than hospitality and welcome, this spending bill further funds deportation efforts which are already separating families and neglecting due process. The bill would provide $140 billion for border militarization and interior enforcement, including:
· $46.5 billion for physical barriers alongside the southern and northern borders, including more than 700 miles of a border wall;
· $45 billion to immigration detention, more than 13 times the 2024 detention budget;
· approximately $30 billion for ICE enforcement operations.
For the first time in U.S. history, those seeking asylum will be required to pay a $1,000 fee and those with applications pending in the backlogged system will pay annual fees.
The bill would also cut off a huge number of taxpaying, lawfully present immigrants – including refugees, asylees, trafficking survivors, Temporary Protected Status (TPS) holders, humanitarian parolees, and others – from Medicaid, Medicare, and Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) eligibility. An estimated 1 million children would be excluded from the Child Tax Credit–which reduced child poverty to a record low– because they or their parents lack Social Security numbers.
While cutting resources to those who need it most, this bill expands the policing and incarceration of our immigrant neighbors. This is not the way of our God who is impartial and just toward all, a God who left us the timeless charge in scripture to defend the stranger, the foreigner, the migrant, the immigrant and the refugee.
Add your voice to the chorus of faithful witnesses and urge your Senators to vote NO on this cruel bill.