Letter to the Hon. Paul Ryan, Speaker of the House, the Hon. Nancy Pelosi, Democratic Leader of the House, the Hon. Rodney Frelinghuysen, Chairman of the House Committee on Appropriations, and the Hon. Nita Lowey, Ranking Member of the House Committee on Appropriations - Rosen Joins Letter Urging House Leadership to Include Permanent Daca Solution in Upcoming Omnibus Bill

Letter

Speaker Ryan, Democratic Leader Pelosi, Chairman Frelinghuysen, and Ranking Member Lowey:

With the newest government funding deadline on March 23, 2018 looming, tens of thousands of Dreamers continue to lose their protection from deportation since President Trump rescinded the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program on September 5, 2017. And while numerous stopgap measures to fund the government have been enacted since September of last year, zero legislative action has been taken to protect Dreamers permanently. Congress is long overdue in acting on this issue, and the failure to pass the Dream Act has resulted in countless lives put in peril. Meanwhile the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) tears families apart by targeting Dreamers, long-term residents, asylum-seekers, families and children for detention and deportation. As the negotiations for the Fiscal Year (FY) 2018 Omnibus Appropriations bill are ongoing, we urge you to:

Include the bipartisan Dream Act;

Reduce funding appropriated to DHS's detention and deportation machine, specifically funding for detention beds, deportation agents operating under Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP), and border militarization; and

Oppose any funding that expands the construction of walls or fencing at the southern border, and to instead allocate border security resources to modernize the infrastructure and technology at our ports of entry.

The appropriations for ICE and CBP have come at significant, detrimental cost to our communities throughout the country because all immigrants are in the crosshairs of the Trump Administration's mass deportation agenda. When agents for both ICE and CBP operate without any discretion or regard to length of residence in the U.S. and deep ties in our communities, the fear and mistrust in our neighborhoods is heightened. It is an abuse of ICE and CBP funds to rip fathers from U.S. citizen children and tear severely ill children or young infants from their parents' arms. Now more than ever, we cannot fund the detention and deportation of valued members of our communities on the border and in the interior and vulnerable individuals and families seeking refuge in our country, especially when the key components of DHS that enforce our nation's immigrations law operate with negligible oversight.

As Congressional leaders, we must exercise our powers responsibly to protect the Dreamers through legislative action and to wield our power of the purse to ensure that the Department of Homeland Security does not make immigrant families and communities casualties of a reckless, indiscriminate detention and deportation machine.