Ann Toback’s Statement on Blank Check for ICE

“Congress just voted to direct $70 billion more in taxpayer dollars to ICE and Customs and Border Patrol — more than triple its last annual budget — despite them fomenting widespread terror in communities across the country. 

This funding from Congress will supercharge the Trump Administration’s cruelty and lawlessness, further enabling the Trump Administration’s inhumane and unaccountable mass detention and deportation regime, the separation of immigrant families and the abuse and even torture of innocent people throughout existing centers of detention, including the notorious Alligator Alcatraz black-site, and in a growing network of industrial-style “ICE warehouses” across our country. Since Trump took office last year, 60,000-70,000 people are being detained and more than 48 people have died in ICE custody. These figures are as shocking as they are unacceptable. We call on Congressional lawmakers who still have a conscience to put an end to this human rights catastrophe of MAGA’s making and publicly commit right now to clawing back the now $240 billion in immigration enforcement spending that Congress has allocated over the past year. Both Democrats and Republicans are responsible for this outcome.

Every community across the country is at risk, no political party is coming to save us and silence is not an option. The Workers Circle will continue to organize, train and equip people to Talk To Their Sheriffs about refusing to collaborate with ICE and hold Freedom Vigils at detention centers across the nation to fight fear and intimidation with community and solidarity, until we bring this unconstitutional cruelty to an end.”

– Ann Toback, CEO of the Workers Circle

ABOUT THE WORKERS CIRCLE:

The Workers Circle is a national Jewish social justice organization founded by Eastern European immigrants who came to the United States fleeing autocracy and persecution and seeking democratic freedoms. That history drives the organization’s work  today. Home to the grassroots power-building model of Democracy Circles, national freedom vigils, and the Talk to Your Sheriff program, the Workers Circle’s multigenerational activist community of 200,000+ people powers our strategic, non-partisan campaigns to empower voters, strengthen Constitutional rights, and demand the multiracial democracy we need.