John,
This July 4th my colleagues will send out messages that uplift our country’s highest ideals such as freedom and democracy. But the same colleagues turn their back on the fact that the Guantánamo Bay facility is where the rights of people die—and we continue to see this fascist government led by Trump wanting to use it to unlawfully and indefinitely detain our immigrant neighbors.
Trump and other Republicans are trying to spend billions of taxpayer dollars to expand mass incarceration, including proposing to deport and imprison thousands of immigrants in notorious overseas torture prisons.
Recently ICE has been racially profiling U.S. residents and targeting people with tattoos, kidnapping them and sending some to Guantánamo Bay, a facility infamous for human rights abuses.1
Just last month the corrupt far-right members of the Supreme Court ruled to permit deportations of asylum-seekers and undocumented immigrants who’ve committed no crimes—not to their home countries but to random third countries where they lack community and legal status. They ruled that presidents can deport people, without meaningful review, to wherever a president designates a “safe country.”
I’m fighting back against these horrific governmental attacks on immigrants and on our constitutional rights. I just led 15 of my colleagues in Congress in calling on the Trump administration to immediately end the use of Guantánamo Bay for migrant detention—and to permanently close the detention facilities there.
Will you sign on today to join our letter demanding the immediate, permanent closure of Guantánamo Bay?
Fifty-five organizations endorsed our letter, which also demanded the administration “ensure that all detained individuals are treated with dignity, due process, and the protections guaranteed under both U.S. and international law.”
We must defend the rights of immigrants of all statuses and U.S. citizens, who are also swept up in ICE’s raids and sometimes illegally deported.2 During Trump’s last term, ICE unconstitutionally deported at least 70 U.S. citizens, and that number is sure to rise in this term—unless we do something about it.3
I’ve worked as an immigration attorney, I’m a daughter of immigrants, and I’ve been to inhumane immigration detention facilities, so I’ve seen our broken and dehumanizing immigration system up close. I’ve held the Department of Homeland Security accountable for its violations of our shared rights, and I’ve introduced policies to protect immigrants’ rights and free people from ICE facilities.
It is my duty as a Congresswoman, and an American, to raise hell until immigrants seeking safety and a better life are treated with dignity and respect, and have real paths to citizenship.
We have urgent work to do, and it includes fighting back against the fascist attacks on immigrants, including demanding the end of mass immigrant detention and deportations.
Will you add your name as a grassroots co-signer to our congressional letter demanding the Trump administration immediately halt immigrant detention at Guantánamo Bay, and to permanently close the detention facilities there?
Thank you for taking action. Together we’re demanding a government that invests in people’s needs rather than spending hundreds of billions of dollars on mass arrests, detentions, and deportations.
With you in the fight against fascism,
Rashida
1 Air Jordan Tattoo Prompts ICE to Send Venezuelan Migrant to Guantánamo Bay
2 Woman seen on video being detained during DTLA immigration raid is a US citizen, family says
3 ICE Has Deported at Least 70 U.S. Citizens
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