1. United States
2. Texas
3. Letter

I'm your constituent, and I'm asking you to reinstate guardrails on immigration enforcement: restore congressional oversight of ICE, prohibit stops based on how someone looks or sounds, and bring a legal status bill for long-settled residents to a floor vote. Congress handed ICE roughly $75 billion with few strings attached, making it the most heavily funded federal law enforcement agency in the country (NPR, April 2026). That level of funding, with no itemized reporting and no annual reauthorization, is a blank check. Look at what the check is buying. Of people booked into ICE custody, 73% had no criminal conviction, and only 5% had a violent conviction (Cato Institute, using ICE data). Masked agents are pulling fathers out of work vans while violent offenders remain on the street. In September 2025, the Supreme Court allowed agents to treat apparent ethnicity as one factor in deciding whom to stop (Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo). Without a statute, any citizen who looks or sounds a certain way can be stopped and forced to prove they belong here. None of us would accept a rule like that aimed at our own family. The economics point in the same direction. Unauthorized workers number 9.7 million, 5.6% of the U.S. workforce (Pew Research, 2023), and paid $96.7 billion in taxes in 2022, including $25.7 billion into Social Security they'll never draw on (ITEP). Penn Wharton projects that mass deportation would add roughly $350 billion to federal deficits over ten years while shrinking GDP. Employers lose crews. Prices rise. Nobody comes out ahead. Five specific requests: 1. Condition ICE funding on annual reauthorization and monthly public reporting of arrests, detentions, and use of force. 2. Pass a statutory bar on stops based on apparent ethnicity, language, or type of work, codifying United States v. Brignoni-Ponce. 3. Require visible identification and body cameras for immigration agents, and prohibit face coverings during civil enforcement. 4. Require an independent investigation, not the agency's own office, of every shooting or serious injury caused by an immigration agent. 5. Bring the bipartisan Dignity Act (H.R. 4393) to a vote, so people here for more than a decade who pass a background check and pay a fine can work legally and on the books. Immigration policy belongs to Congress. Write the rules instead of funding an agency to improvise them. And aim enforcement at people who hurt others, not at neighbors who've been here twenty years, built our houses, and paid for our roads.