1. United States
2. Ore.
3. Letter

I am writing to urge you to oppose House Bill 4371 and any legislation that expands immigration detention funding without addressing the systemic abuses occurring in these facilities. Between 2012 and March 2018, 1,448 allegations of sexual abuse were filed with ICE, including 237 allegations in 2017 alone. The Government Accountability Office reported in 2013 that officials failed to report 40 percent of sexual abuse allegations to ICE headquarters, and only 7 percent of 215 allegations from 2009 to 2013 were substantiated. These numbers reveal a system that fails to protect vulnerable people in custody. The case of E.D., a 19-year-old asylum seeker and domestic violence survivor from Honduras, illustrates this failure. While detained with her 3-year-old child at the Berks Family Residential Center in Pennsylvania, she was sexually assaulted by an employee who later pleaded guilty to criminal institutional sexual assault under Pennsylvania law. The detention center is attempting to avoid liability by claiming the assault was consensual, despite the inherent power imbalance in custodial settings that makes genuine consent impossible. Congress voted in July 2025 to add $170 billion to the administration's budget for immigration enforcement, funding indiscriminate raids and expanding a detention system plagued by abuse. This massive investment prioritizes enforcement over accountability. The Department of Homeland Security didn't finalize Prison Rape Elimination Act implementing regulations until 2014, eleven years after Congress passed the law, and even those standards don't protect immigrants in all detention facilities because the agency only applies requirements to new or modified contracts. I urge you to vote against House Bill 4371 and instead support legislation that requires comprehensive oversight, mandatory reporting of abuse allegations, and independent investigations of all detention facilities before any additional funding is allocated. Our immigration system must prioritize human dignity and safety over expansion.