In the last few months, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has arrested immigrants at school, at work, in hospitals, and even at public protests. Since January, ICE has conducted more than 100,000 raids and between October 2024 and now, more than 158,000 immigrants have been deported. According to NBC News, deportations have increased by 50% since February, as the Administration spends the almost $168 billion on immigration enforcement funding Congress is sending its way.  

These deportations and raids only terrorize the immigrant families that our congregations support. 4.71 million U.S. citizen children live with an undocumented parent. It is these families that the government is ripping apart. These families must make a terrible choice – leave their child behind in the U.S., or agree to their U.S. citizen child being deported as well. This is a fundamental attack on a child's wellbeing. Immigrant children need parental support and guidance as they grow older. Separating them from their parents only creates more psychological and emotional trauma. 

In addition, the Trump Administration’s current policy of sending immigrants to mega-prisons abroad, and spending billions employing private prisons to detain immigrants in the states is immoral and unjust. Detention in El Salvador’s mega-prison system is taking place under an agreement that will cost the American government six million dollars for one year’s services. Each cell holds between 65 to 70 prisoners. In the last year, according to PBS, 261 people died due to lack of medical attention, abuse, and torture in El Salvador. Many of these prisoners are detained without due process or released after due process, such as Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who is still being detained in the United States, after spending months in a Salvadoran prison. 

And to get more detention beds, the Trump administration has modified dozens of existing agreements with contractors and used no-bid contracts to expand federal spending on private immigration detention. Just last week, GEO Group announced that ICE modified a contract for an existing detention center so that the company could reopen an idle prison to hold 1,868 migrants — and earn $66 million in annual revenue. GEO Group has been accused in numerous ongoing lawsuits of violating labor laws by paying detained immigrants extremely low wages (sometimes as low as $1 per day) for performing essential tasks within their facilities, as well as unsanitary living conditions, restricting access to fresh air, and sexual abuse.  

As people of faith, we are called to welcome the stranger and believe that everyone should be treated with respect and compassion. Separating families and detaining immigrants in unsanitary living conditions is a policy which rejects the dignity of our immigrant siblings, while lining the pockets of the private prison system and dictators abroad.  

Fight these attacks on our immigrant communities today!