1. United States
  2. Utah
  3. Letter

Deny ICE and CBP Funding Until Constitutional Rights Are Restored

To: Sen. Lee, Sen. Curtis

From: A constituent in Salt Lake City, UT

February 16

I urge you to deny all funding to Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection until these agencies correct their operations and comply with constitutional protections that apply to anyone on U.S. soil. The Constitution guarantees due process rights to all persons within our borders, not just citizens, yet ICE and CBP are currently violating these fundamental protections. These agencies have abandoned legitimate immigration enforcement. In Minneapolis, operations targeted the city based on false claims about Somali Americans spread by a right-wing YouTuber, despite 91 percent of Somali Americans being citizens and most others being legal residents. ICE and CBP lack jurisdiction over welfare fraud, yet thousands have been detained, intimidated, or harmed. Two people, Alex Pretti and Renee Good, were killed. Residents remain too terrified to leave their homes, devastating local families and businesses. The agencies are detaining people semi-randomly, including legal residents and U.S. citizens, violating their constitutional rights to due process. An Irish drywall contractor who lived legally in the United States for 20 years and is married to an American citizen was detained. This chaos has caused thousands of Department of Justice lawyers to quit, and the resulting flood of lawsuits has overwhelmed remaining staff, collapsing basic federal law enforcement functions. The Big Beautiful Bill already provided ICE with $75 billion and CBP with tens of billions. If these agencies claim future operations will focus only on targeted enforcement, this reserve is more than sufficient. Denying baseline funding is the most effective way to draw down this excessive allocation while preventing further constitutional violations. I demand that you provide no funding to these agencies until they demonstrate a return to lawful immigration enforcement that respects the constitutional rights of all persons on U.S. soil, including citizens, legal residents, and anyone else within our borders. Continuing to fund agencies operating outside constitutional bounds harms constituents and undermines the rule of law.

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