1. United States
2. Pa.
3. Letter

I am writing as a Pennsylvania constituent to follow up on my prior correspondence regarding systemic failures in federal immigration detention and to address the role Congress plays through appropriations. The pattern is now unmistakable. Across multiple facilities and over multiple years, immigration detention has produced preventable deaths, medical neglect, prolonged denial of access to counsel, unsafe living conditions, family separation, and the abandonment of individuals upon release without transportation or support. Reports of children suffering harm, detainees dying in custody, basic necessities being withheld, and humanitarian discretion being routinely denied point to a system operating without effective accountability. Congress cannot treat these outcomes as separate from funding decisions. Appropriations are not neutral. When Congress continues to fund agencies and contractors without enforceable conditions, it effectively underwrites practices that produce predictable harm. Oversight without financial consequences has not worked. I am asking you to use Congress’s most powerful tool: the power of the purse. Will you oppose appropriations that fund immigration detention facilities that fail to meet basic standards for medical care, access to counsel, nutrition, climate control, and sanitation? Will you support conditioning funding on independent inspections, transparent public reporting, and meaningful consequences for facilities that violate humanitarian and constitutional requirements? And will you support withholding or redirecting funds from detention operations that repeatedly fail to protect health, safety, and family unity? Detention is a policy choice, not an inevitability. Funding it without strict conditions is also a choice — one that carries moral, legal, and financial consequences. Taxpayer dollars should not sustain a system that repeatedly produces suffering without necessity or justification. If Congress is unwilling to impose conditions or consequences, then continued funding is indefensible. I urge you to use the appropriations process to force real reform, accountability, and a shift away from practices that harm families and undermine public trust.