Oppose ICE Funding Without Reforms to Prevent Abuse of Surveillance Powers

I am writing to urge you to oppose any funding for ICE, DHS, and Homeland Security without serious reforms and guardrails to prevent the abuse of surveillance powers against immigrants and American citizens. Recent whistleblower disclosures from within Border Patrol reveal the alarming scope of ICE operations that have expanded far beyond immigration enforcement. Operation Abracadabra is a nationwide campaign explicitly designed to tie every individual who crosses the border illegally to a foreign terrorist organization or transnational criminal organization, systematically treating all undocumented migrants as security threats regardless of actual evidence. Operation Benchwarmer places plainclothes agents in transport vans, sally ports, processing areas, and detention cells to gather intelligence from detainees at their most vulnerable moments without their knowledge. These operations represent a fundamental transformation of immigration enforcement into domestic intelligence gathering that targets both immigrants and U.S. citizens. ICE is now conducting surveillance of critics, social media monitoring, and using facial recognition technology to identify American citizens without consent. This is not border security. This is the infrastructure of authoritarian control. The consequences are already visible. The killing of Renee Nicole Good last week in Minneapolis by ICE officer Jonathan Ross, followed by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem's false accusation that Good engaged in domestic terrorism, demonstrates how far this has gone. Half a dozen federal prosecutors resigned over pressure to investigate Good's widow, and FBI officials are reportedly increasingly split over White House efforts to associate Good with extremist activity. As Vanessa Cárdenas of America's Voice stated, when thousands of over-militarized immigration agents descend on American communities akin to an invading military force, it actively harms public safety and diverts resources away from real threats like child exploitation, drug trafficking investigations, and disaster preparedness funding. I urge you to vote against any appropriations for these agencies unless they include enforceable restrictions on surveillance activities, independent oversight mechanisms, and clear prohibitions on targeting American citizens and peaceful critics. Our communities deserve protection from actual threats, not from our own government.