ACLU: How Your Elected Officials Are Voting on Key Legislation

How Your Elected Officials Are Voting on Key Legislation

Democracy is based on the principle that elected officials represent the people – that means they earn recognition when they defend our rights and face their constituents when they threaten our freedoms. And that starts with having reliable information about how members of Congress vote on the issues that matter most.

That’s why, as a part of the ACLU’s new Congressional Scorecard, we have been tracking how all members of Congress voted on key legislation since the start of the 119th Congress in 2025, which has brought on new attacks on civil liberties and civil rights as it coincided with President Trump’s second term. Trump’s second term.

The ACLU scored 12 bills in the House of Representatives and 7 in the Senate in 2025. This included legislation that made the biggest cut to Medicaid since it was created in the 1960s and funneled that money to fund President Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda, bills that threatened free speech, efforts to criminalize health care, and more. Our Congressional Scorecard assigns each member an overall percentage based on the share of votes they cast that align with the ACLU’s position.

Below, we analyze how lawmakers voted on key legislation and how the ACLU supported civil liberties on Capitol Hill.

Congress Pushes Wildly Unpopular Policies

In 2025, Congressional leadership, emboldened by President Trump, took every opportunity to divide our communities, attack the most vulnerable among us, and advance policies. Many elected officials in Congress are far out of line with their constituents on many of the most pressing issues of today.

Take for example H.R. 1, the so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill” that cut hundreds of billions of dollars in funding from Medicaid to supercharge immigration enforcement. This bill was opposed by the ACLU and by the people, too. Poll after poll continues to show that Americans across the political spectrum in states like AK, AZ, GA, ME, NH, NV think President Trump’s immigration policies, backed by his allies in Congress, have gone too far.

There were also two bills that would ban or even criminalize gender-affirming medical care for minors. While both bills narrowly passed out of the House of Representatives, they have failed to advance under Republican leadership in the Senate as most Americans oppose laws that would ban essential health care for transgender youth.

Active Year on Capitol Hill Blocks Harmful Legislation

The ACLU remains very active on Capitol Hill. Last year alone, we hosted 41 congressional briefings, organized 206 constituent meetings with congressional offices, organized 12 lobby days, and sent 54 policy explainers to lawmakers. In addition, we spent countless hours providing expert advice to lawmakers and staff. Backed by our People Power activist program and advocates across the country, the ACLU generated over 3 million online digital actions, petitions, advocacy forms, and messages to legislators – including over 56,000 constituent calls.

As a result of these efforts, the ACLU was able to move key members on issues such as transgender rights and immigrants’ rights. The ACLU took action against six anti-immigrant bills and amendments and helped prevent 83 percent of them from becoming law. Members of Congress, like their constituents, saw the unpopularity of President Trump’s policies. And despite several anti-LGBTQ+ bills being introduced, all efforts to establish new statutory restrictions on gender-affirming care have failed.

We also have a long history of building bipartisan majorities in defense of civil liberties. In 2025, ten Republicans in Congress have voted with the ACLU at least 25 percent of the time and were key to blocking efforts that threatened free speech and regulating artificial intelligence.

Americans Will Hold Congress Accountable

But there is still work left to do. Congressional leadership has started this year by advancing anti-voter legislation that would disenfranchise millions of Americans. Right now, Congress is also considering reforms to rein in ICE amid ongoing pressure from the public. We must continue to make our voices heard.

We have the opportunity to tell our representatives to oppose bills that restrict our rights and freedoms. Join People Power today to stay informed about what Congress is up to and how you can get involved in protecting our rights. Together we will fight and win.

Published February 27, 2026 at 12:02AM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/rm1RA0B

ACLU: How Your Elected Officials Are Voting on Key Legislation

How Your Elected Officials Are Voting on Key Legislation

Democracy is based on the principle that elected officials represent the people – that means they earn recognition when they defend our rights and face their constituents when they threaten our freedoms. And that starts with having reliable information about how members of Congress vote on the issues that matter most.

That’s why, as a part of the ACLU’s new Congressional Scorecard, we have been tracking how all members of Congress voted on key legislation since the start of the 119th Congress in 2025, which has brought on new attacks on civil liberties and civil rights as it coincided with President Trump’s second term. Trump’s second term.

The ACLU scored 12 bills in the House of Representatives and 7 in the Senate in 2025. This included legislation that made the biggest cut to Medicaid since it was created in the 1960s and funneled that money to fund President Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda, bills that threatened free speech, efforts to criminalize health care, and more. Our Congressional Scorecard assigns each member an overall percentage based on the share of votes they cast that align with the ACLU’s position.

Below, we analyze how lawmakers voted on key legislation and how the ACLU supported civil liberties on Capitol Hill.

Congress Pushes Wildly Unpopular Policies

In 2025, Congressional leadership, emboldened by President Trump, took every opportunity to divide our communities, attack the most vulnerable among us, and advance policies. Many elected officials in Congress are far out of line with their constituents on many of the most pressing issues of today.

Take for example H.R. 1, the so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill” that cut hundreds of billions of dollars in funding from Medicaid to supercharge immigration enforcement. This bill was opposed by the ACLU and by the people, too. Poll after poll continues to show that Americans across the political spectrum in states like AK, AZ, GA, ME, NH, NV think President Trump’s immigration policies, backed by his allies in Congress, have gone too far.

There were also two bills that would ban or even criminalize gender-affirming medical care for minors. While both bills narrowly passed out of the House of Representatives, they have failed to advance under Republican leadership in the Senate as most Americans oppose laws that would ban essential health care for transgender youth.

Active Year on Capitol Hill Blocks Harmful Legislation

The ACLU remains very active on Capitol Hill. Last year alone, we hosted 41 congressional briefings, organized 206 constituent meetings with congressional offices, organized 12 lobby days, and sent 54 policy explainers to lawmakers. In addition, we spent countless hours providing expert advice to lawmakers and staff. Backed by our People Power activist program and advocates across the country, the ACLU generated over 3 million online digital actions, petitions, advocacy forms, and messages to legislators – including over 56,000 constituent calls.

As a result of these efforts, the ACLU was able to move key members on issues such as transgender rights and immigrants’ rights. The ACLU took action against six anti-immigrant bills and amendments and helped prevent 83 percent of them from becoming law. Members of Congress, like their constituents, saw the unpopularity of President Trump’s policies. And despite several anti-LGBTQ+ bills being introduced, all efforts to establish new statutory restrictions on gender-affirming care have failed.

We also have a long history of building bipartisan majorities in defense of civil liberties. In 2025, ten Republicans in Congress have voted with the ACLU at least 25 percent of the time and were key to blocking efforts that threatened free speech and regulating artificial intelligence.

Americans Will Hold Congress Accountable

But there is still work left to do. Congressional leadership has started this year by advancing anti-voter legislation that would disenfranchise millions of Americans. Right now, Congress is also considering reforms to rein in ICE amid ongoing pressure from the public. We must continue to make our voices heard.

We have the opportunity to tell our representatives to oppose bills that restrict our rights and freedoms. Join People Power today to stay informed about what Congress is up to and how you can get involved in protecting our rights. Together we will fight and win.

Published February 26, 2026 at 06:32PM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/o0lzW3K

ACLU: ICE is Rapidly Expanding Dangerous 287(g) Agreements with Local Police

ICE is Rapidly Expanding Dangerous 287(g) Agreements with Local Police

Masked, lawless federal agents have become a symbol of the Trump administration’s violent drive to deport millions of people. But across the country, thousands of state and local police are increasingly mimicking these abusive federal agents, blending into their operations and intensifying fear in their own communities.

At least 77.2 million people — 32 percent of the country — now live in a county with a local law enforcement agency that has enlisted in the 287(g) program. The program is a set of partnerships between U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and state and local agencies that effectively turns local police into ICE agents. Under Trump, the number of 287(g)-participating agencies has expanded rapidly. In September 2025, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said it had trained, or was in the process of training, more than 10,000 officers under the program’s abuse-prone, street-level enforcement model. This is all while ICE has drastically reduced training requirements for officers overall and inadequately expanded its capacity to supervise them.

The ACLU’s new report, “Deputized for Disaster,” examines the 287(g) program and how the second Trump administration has used it to draw state and local police away from the needs of communities, and into a national deportation force that acts as though it answers only to the president. Here are the key takeaways from our report.

The 287(g) program draws state and local police away from the needs of communities

Prior research by the ACLU documented how the 287(g) program has fueled racial profiling, civil rights violations, and violence throughout its history. It has opened up law enforcement agencies to the risk of lawsuits that have cost millions. Under the second Trump administration, the 287(g) program is only growing more dangerous each day. "Deputized for Disaster" shows how the Trump administration has used the 287(g) program to supersize its deportation force. We found that the administration is using state and local police to conduct “show me your papers” dragnet-style enforcement, with the goals of more deportations and driving millions more to self-deport.

Countless vulnerable people have been caught in this dragnet. In Florida, local police pulled over a 22-year-old cancer patient and assisted Border Patrol in arresting her father, who was driving her home from the hospital. Florida police have also reportedly invited Border Patrol to run immigration checks on concert-goers, and set up immigration checkpoints on the only highway into the Florida Keys, a major tourist destination, leading to more than 300 immigration arrests.

As the administration concentrates executive power into its deportation force, it blurs the lines between federal and state and local law enforcement. This is a recipe for further civil rights violations: as local police follow the cues of federal agents, abusive tactics spread, and responsibility becomes unclear. For example, an estimated 200 law enforcement agents from federal, state, and local agencies descended on a racetrack in Idaho where families had gathered, arresting more than 100 people and zip-tying children and adults, including U.S. citizens. In the aftermath, local police denied their involvement, and those detained and separated from their children found it difficult to pinpoint exactly who was responsible.

The 287(g) program also causes officers to neglect critical public safety needs, as they redeploy their already-limited time and resources to federal immigration enforcement. And it changes the way communities live — people avoid going to work, taking children to school, and interacting with police or the government entirely, even when they are the victims of crimes including domestic violence, sexual assault, and human trafficking.

The Trump administration is concentrating its power through 287(g) agreements with more than just law enforcement

While the 287(g) program has already resulted in abuse, the administration has set in motion dangerous plans. These include the use of 287(g) agreements on university campuses, which has caused some students to leave college, and the use of state National Guard for immigration enforcement. This undermines public trust in the National Guard’s response to legitimate emergencies, threatens the crucial separation of military and civilian roles integral for democracy, and puts troops in legal and ethical jeopardy.

Increasingly, ICE is enlisting partners from new agencies, diverting them from their core missions and creating even greater fear among communities. The Louisiana State Fire Marshal, charged with preventing and investigating fires, has joined the program, along with agencies like Louisiana Wildlife & Fisheries and the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, which regulate the environment and agriculture.

This is all part of the Trump administration’s plan to concentrate government power — federal, state, and local — to fuel his deportation machine. He is sowing distrust between communities and law enforcement, threatening public safety, and driving people into hiding.

Local police should serve their communities; states and cities must say no to the 287(g) program

People should be safe to live in their communities — without fear of local police sworn to protect them, now operating as immigration agents. In 2026 and the waning months of 2025, New Mexico, Maine and Maryland all enacted legislation to ban 287(g) agreements, joining six other states who have long prohibited participation in the program.

Where banning 287(g) is not possible, states and cities must limit their officers’ involvement, consider the risks of participating, and strengthen oversight of the program. State and local law enforcement should not be complicit in widespread, flagrant abuse. Instead, they should stand up for their communities and refuse to take part in the Trump administration’s growing deportation machine.

Read the full report.

Published February 26, 2026 at 09:22PM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/8T7MdwE

ACLU: ICE is Rapidly Expanding Dangerous 287(g) Agreements with Local Police

ICE is Rapidly Expanding Dangerous 287(g) Agreements with Local Police

Masked, lawless federal agents have become a symbol of the Trump administration’s violent drive to deport millions of people. But across the country, thousands of state and local police are increasingly mimicking these abusive federal agents, blending into their operations and intensifying fear in their own communities.

At least 77.2 million people — 32 percent of the country — now live in a county with a local law enforcement agency that has enlisted in the 287(g) program. The program is a set of partnerships between U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and state and local agencies that effectively turns local police into ICE agents. Under Trump, the number of 287(g)-participating agencies has expanded rapidly. In September 2025, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said it had trained, or was in the process of training, more than 10,000 officers under the program’s abuse-prone, street-level enforcement model. This is all while ICE has drastically reduced training requirements for officers overall and inadequately expanded its capacity to supervise them.

The ACLU’s new report, “Deputized for Disaster,” examines the 287(g) program and how the second Trump administration has used it to draw state and local police away from the needs of communities, and into a national deportation force that acts as though it answers only to the president. Here are the key takeaways from our report.

The 287(g) program draws state and local police away from the needs of communities

Prior research by the ACLU documented how the 287(g) program has fueled racial profiling, civil rights violations, and violence throughout its history. It has opened up law enforcement agencies to the risk of lawsuits that have cost millions. Under the second Trump administration, the 287(g) program is only growing more dangerous each day. "Deputized for Disaster" shows how the Trump administration has used the 287(g) program to supersize its deportation force. We found that the administration is using state and local police to conduct “show me your papers” dragnet-style enforcement, with the goals of more deportations and driving millions more to self-deport.

Countless vulnerable people have been caught in this dragnet. In Florida, local police pulled over a 22-year-old cancer patient and assisted Border Patrol in arresting her father, who was driving her home from the hospital. Florida police have also reportedly invited Border Patrol to run immigration checks on concert-goers, and set up immigration checkpoints on the only highway into the Florida Keys, a major tourist destination, leading to more than 300 immigration arrests.

As the administration concentrates executive power into its deportation force, it blurs the lines between federal and state and local law enforcement. This is a recipe for further civil rights violations: as local police follow the cues of federal agents, abusive tactics spread, and responsibility becomes unclear. For example, an estimated 200 law enforcement agents from federal, state, and local agencies descended on a racetrack in Idaho where families had gathered, arresting more than 100 people and zip-tying children and adults, including U.S. citizens. In the aftermath, local police denied their involvement, and those detained and separated from their children found it difficult to pinpoint exactly who was responsible.

The 287(g) program also causes officers to neglect critical public safety needs, as they redeploy their already-limited time and resources to federal immigration enforcement. And it changes the way communities live — people avoid going to work, taking children to school, and interacting with police or the government entirely, even when they are the victims of crimes including domestic violence, sexual assault, and human trafficking.

The Trump administration is concentrating its power through 287(g) agreements with more than just law enforcement

While the 287(g) program has already resulted in abuse, the administration has set in motion dangerous plans. These include the use of 287(g) agreements on university campuses, which has caused some students to leave college, and the use of state National Guard for immigration enforcement. This undermines public trust in the National Guard’s response to legitimate emergencies, threatens the crucial separation of military and civilian roles integral for democracy, and puts troops in legal and ethical jeopardy.

Increasingly, ICE is enlisting partners from new agencies, diverting them from their core missions and creating even greater fear among communities. The Louisiana State Fire Marshal, charged with preventing and investigating fires, has joined the program, along with agencies like Louisiana Wildlife & Fisheries and the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, which regulate the environment and agriculture.

This is all part of the Trump administration’s plan to concentrate government power — federal, state, and local — to fuel his deportation machine. He is sowing distrust between communities and law enforcement, threatening public safety, and driving people into hiding.

Local police should serve their communities; states and cities must say no to the 287(g) program

People should be safe to live in their communities — without fear of local police sworn to protect them, now operating as immigration agents. In 2026 and the waning months of 2025, New Mexico, Maine and Maryland all enacted legislation to ban 287(g) agreements, joining six other states who have long prohibited participation in the program.

Where banning 287(g) is not possible, states and cities must limit their officers’ involvement, consider the risks of participating, and strengthen oversight of the program. State and local law enforcement should not be complicit in widespread, flagrant abuse. Instead, they should stand up for their communities and refuse to take part in the Trump administration’s growing deportation machine.

Read the full report.

Published February 26, 2026 at 03:52PM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/9N4ruqh

ACLU: Rümeysa Öztürk: I Saw the Horrors of ICE Detention Firsthand. It is No Place for a Child.

Rümeysa Öztürk: I Saw the Horrors of ICE Detention Firsthand. It is No Place for a Child.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Rümeysa Öztürk was unlawfully detained by ICE agents in Massachusetts in March 2025 for an op-ed she co-authored in the Tufts Daily. She was held in a for-profit detention facility in Louisiana for weeks. She has spent her time after being released working on her dissertation. She now holds a Ph.D. in child study and human development.

Each day, I read more news about children as young as two years old who are detained in a for-profit ICE detention center in Dilley, Texas, away from their friends, schools, and communities. I see reports of handwritten letters from children asking to be released, as they describe the fear they experience day in and day out while in detention. As an applied developmental scientist who spent more than 13 years studying child and youth development, as well as someone who has firsthand experienced the horrors of encountering immigration enforcement and the inhumane treatment and conditions that follow, I am deeply concerned for children impacted by immigration enforcement surges.

There is no shortage of research that demonstrates the connection between family detention and deportation proceedings of children and negative educational outcomes, elevated levels of distress, mental and physical harm, trauma, and decline in multiple aspects of well-being. Currently, approximately 1 in 12 children in the U.S. face risk of deportation of a loved one and the lasting negative impacts on their psychological and physical well-being. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has detained at least 3,800 children since mid-January 2025. Of those 3,800 kids, more than 600 unaccompanied children have been put in custody of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and were taken from their parents in many cases.

Regardless of my role as researcher, on a human level I am constantly thinking: What do children feel when they first encounter immigration enforcement, who are usually armed and masked? Do their little bodies tremble or freeze? What happens when federal agents take their parents away from them? What does it mean for a preschooler to be detained? What is their crime? Is it being born or, perhaps, seeking asylum? What sense of childhood remains when immigrant children are detained in inhumane conditions?

What I experienced as an adult paints enough of a bleak picture. As a 30-year-old, I was unlawfully abducted from the street by masked and armed agents for being a co-author in a school op-ed at Tufts Daily that advocated for Palestinian human rights. I was sent to a for-profit ICE prison thousands of miles away from school and the community I’d built in Boston, not to mention thousands of miles away from my family in Turkey. The experience has been profoundly harmful to me, even as an adult. Despite the immense care, love, and support from my community, there has still not been a single day when I have felt safe walking the streets again — not even on my way home or to school. It’s not just the moment of abduction that is terrifying, but also where one will go and the inhumane treatment they may face that cannot be considered developmentally appropriate for any single child. Research suggests that interacting with the immigration system poses harm to children’s long-term development. Previous personal accounts indicate that suffering continues throughout the lifetime.

As I continue to heal from my own experience in a for-profit ICE prison, I can’t help but wonder if children detained will ever feel safe again. I worry about how they will grow up and carry this adverse experience for a lifetime. Interacting with immigration enforcement not only poses developmental risk to children detained in those shameful places for longer periods of time, but also to children (including citizen children) whose parents are detained at the for-profit ICE prisons. In the for-profit prison where I was unlawfully detained, I met countless mothers who cried everyday longing for their children. I met mothers in the deportation process whose hearts were shattered when their children were taken into foster care. I listened as some mothers tried to speak with their children on tablets, only to have officers order them to close the tablets or take them away, leaving their children in tears. I met mothers whose babies were taken from them just weeks after birth. I met with a pregnant mom waiting for her deportation. Her children are American citizens.

But these cruel immigration raids aren’t only harming immigrant children or children with immigrant parents. The experience also affects classmates who are waiting for their detained peers to return. These same children are trying to make sense of what they see on news reports of kids being detained, of disappearing classmates, students, and adults on the street during ICE raids. Children and their teachers are being taken from their communities, leaving classrooms and communities in fear. There are accounts of BIPOC and immigrant children being bullied at school.

We must all ask ourselves: is this really the world we want for our children — one where they are afraid to go to school, home, hospitals, neighborhoods, playgrounds, museums, and libraries for fear of immigration detention?

I hope there is an end to family detention so that these parents and young children can proceed with their cases while living in their communities, going to school, getting medical treatment, and playing with their friends. Too many children are facing detention because of ICE’s rampant operations. But detention is no place for a child. It’s cruel and unnecessary. We can all take action, whether that means raising our voices to demand an end to child detention, or simply educating ourselves on how current immigration policies are impacting children.

Published February 25, 2026 at 01:03AM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/RbPciWs

ACLU: Rümeysa Öztürk: I Saw the Horrors of ICE Detention Firsthand. It is No Place for a Child.

Rümeysa Öztürk: I Saw the Horrors of ICE Detention Firsthand. It is No Place for a Child.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Rümeysa Öztürk was unlawfully detained by ICE agents in Massachusetts in March 2025 for an op-ed she co-authored in the Tufts Daily. She was held in a for-profit detention facility in Louisiana for weeks. She has spent her time after being released working on her dissertation. She now holds a Ph.D. in child study and human development.

Each day, I read more news about children as young as two years old who are detained in a for-profit ICE detention center in Dilley, Texas, away from their friends, schools, and communities. I see reports of handwritten letters from children asking to be released, as they describe the fear they experience day in and day out while in detention. As an applied developmental scientist who spent more than 13 years studying child and youth development, as well as someone who has firsthand experienced the horrors of encountering immigration enforcement and the inhumane treatment and conditions that follow, I am deeply concerned for children impacted by immigration enforcement surges.

There is no shortage of research that demonstrates the connection between family detention and deportation proceedings of children and negative educational outcomes, elevated levels of distress, mental and physical harm, trauma, and decline in multiple aspects of well-being. Currently, approximately 1 in 12 children in the U.S. face risk of deportation of a loved one and the lasting negative impacts on their psychological and physical well-being. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has detained at least 3,800 children since mid-January 2025. Of those 3,800 kids, more than 600 unaccompanied children have been put in custody of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and were taken from their parents in many cases.

Regardless of my role as researcher, on a human level I am constantly thinking: What do children feel when they first encounter immigration enforcement, who are usually armed and masked? Do their little bodies tremble or freeze? What happens when federal agents take their parents away from them? What does it mean for a preschooler to be detained? What is their crime? Is it being born or, perhaps, seeking asylum? What sense of childhood remains when immigrant children are detained in inhumane conditions?

What I experienced as an adult paints enough of a bleak picture. As a 30-year-old, I was unlawfully abducted from the street by masked and armed agents for being a co-author in a school op-ed at Tufts Daily that advocated for Palestinian human rights. I was sent to a for-profit ICE prison thousands of miles away from school and the community I’d built in Boston, not to mention thousands of miles away from my family in Turkey. The experience has been profoundly harmful to me, even as an adult. Despite the immense care, love, and support from my community, there has still not been a single day when I have felt safe walking the streets again — not even on my way home or to school. It’s not just the moment of abduction that is terrifying, but also where one will go and the inhumane treatment they may face that cannot be considered developmentally appropriate for any single child. Research suggests that interacting with the immigration system poses harm to children’s long-term development. Previous personal accounts indicate that suffering continues throughout the lifetime.

As I continue to heal from my own experience in a for-profit ICE prison, I can’t help but wonder if children detained will ever feel safe again. I worry about how they will grow up and carry this adverse experience for a lifetime. Interacting with immigration enforcement not only poses developmental risk to children detained in those shameful places for longer periods of time, but also to children (including citizen children) whose parents are detained at the for-profit ICE prisons. In the for-profit prison where I was unlawfully detained, I met countless mothers who cried everyday longing for their children. I met mothers in the deportation process whose hearts were shattered when their children were taken into foster care. I listened as some mothers tried to speak with their children on tablets, only to have officers order them to close the tablets or take them away, leaving their children in tears. I met mothers whose babies were taken from them just weeks after birth. I met with a pregnant mom waiting for her deportation. Her children are American citizens.

But these cruel immigration raids aren’t only harming immigrant children or children with immigrant parents. The experience also affects classmates who are waiting for their detained peers to return. These same children are trying to make sense of what they see on news reports of kids being detained, of disappearing classmates, students, and adults on the street during ICE raids. Children and their teachers are being taken from their communities, leaving classrooms and communities in fear. There are accounts of BIPOC and immigrant children being bullied at school.

We must all ask ourselves: is this really the world we want for our children — one where they are afraid to go to school, home, hospitals, neighborhoods, playgrounds, museums, and libraries for fear of immigration detention?

I hope there is an end to family detention so that these parents and young children can proceed with their cases while living in their communities, going to school, getting medical treatment, and playing with their friends. Too many children are facing detention because of ICE’s rampant operations. But detention is no place for a child. It’s cruel and unnecessary. We can all take action, whether that means raising our voices to demand an end to child detention, or simply educating ourselves on how current immigration policies are impacting children.

Published February 24, 2026 at 07:33PM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/BO6Z9nV

ACLU: Congress Must Rein in ICE to Improve the State of the Union

Congress Must Rein in ICE to Improve the State of the Union

In times of war and peace, prosperity and depression, American presidents have complied with their constitutional obligation to deliver to Congress an update on the nation.

It’s a hallowed tradition, but this year, due to President Donald Trump’s own actions, the state of this union is bleak. However, the good news is that We the People are showing tremendous courage and pushing back to protect each other.

Our country approaches a crossroads at ever-increasing speed, pushed to this brink by the Trump-Vance administration’s lawless immigration force. The administration says U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol are pursuing the president’s cruel mass deportation agenda. But the implications are far broader, causing violence, chaos, and civil rights abuses at an accelerating rate. Around the country, federal agents have descended upon communities, targeting citizens and noncitizens alike, going after young children and families.

Department of Homeland Security Lawlessness Affects All of Us

For months, the Trump administration has encouraged federal agents to commit horrifying abuses claiming they have "absolute immunity.” The results have been devastating: Renee Good, Alex Pretti, Ruben Ray Martinez, and Keith Porter Jr. are dead at the hands of federal agents. Another 39 people have died in ICE custody in the second Trump administration, including 8 just this year. And it’s only February. In addition, ICE has detained at least 3,800 children under this administration.

Federal agents have masked up, demanded to see people’s papers, scanned their faces, and taken people off the street simply for “looking” Somali, Latino, or Asian. Citizens have been dragged from their homes in their underwear, thrown in unmarked vans, driven to detention centers in federal buildings, shackled at the ankles, and denied water. Communities in Minneapolis, Chicago, Charlotte, D.C., New Orleans, Los Angeles, and beyond live in fear — their anxieties justified by accounts of federal agents dragging children from their beds in the middle of the night, stalking families outside hospital emergency rooms, staking out schools, and following kids home.

None of this can be justified as pursuing people who pose a serious public safety theat. According to a leaked internal DHS document, fewer than 14 percent of people detained have been convicted of a violent crime. Instead, these tactics are calculated to inflict terror on anyone not born in the U.S., regardless of their immigration status, as well as on their families and communities.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agents, acting more like a secret police force from a totalitarian country than from a nation of laws, have also targeted people exercising their First Amendment rights. People who record federal agents, peacefully protest, offer mutual aid in their communities, or even pray in front of ICE facilities are being sprayed directly in the face with tear gas and pepper spray, shot with pepper balls, surveilled digitally, and followed home. Many have suffered injuries, had property damaged, and experienced severe trauma.

Communities Pushed Back. Congress Should Follow. 

Despite these direct assaults on our constitutional freedoms, we are also seeing the fortitude and resilience of our communities. Minnesotans have turned out week after week — sometimes in sub-zero temperatures and always at personal risk from violent federal agents — to document and peacefully protest the attacks on their neighbors. And their courage has already forced the administration to retreat. The administration has said they’re pulling back agents from Minnesota, although they have not even suggested they are stopping their unlawful policies and practices. The Border Patrol’s ringleader, Greg Bovino, was demoted. Some agents have admitted to lying about agents’ violence.

Public opinion is firmly against Stephen Miller’s dystopian police state and the federal government’s violence overall, and we’re making it known. Nearly 300,000 people joined the ACLU to send messages to their members of Congress, urging them to reject any bill that would fuel ICE and Border Patrol’s lawless operations.

Thanks to the powerful advocacy of people across the country, Congress recently refused to fund DHS without new restrictions. Now, the administration is grudgingly acknowledging a need to negotiate further limits on ICE.

Congress has the power to rein in this rogue agency. Congress must protect our rights by ending ICE's rampant racial profiling and halting the construction of huge human warehouses. It must stop ICE from putting small children behind bars and push for accountability so victims of abuse can get justice. Congress must mandate transparency, so federal agents take off their masks, turn on body cameras, and fully cooperate with any federal, state, and local investigations into wrongdoing.

These important steps would serve as just a downpayment on dismantling the lawless and bloated secret paramilitary force, with a budget bigger than the Marine Corps’, currently terrorizing our communities. We’ve seen the cost of Miller’s hate-fueled terror campaign, from rights violations to the suffering of small businesses because their employees are targeted. People are afraid to get urgent medical care, even to give birth. Classrooms are half-empty. Witnesses to crimes are afraid to come forward. Immigrant family members, friends, and neighbors are afraid to leave their homes and take part in daily life — unable to make the many contributions to our communities we have long counted on.

Ultimately, we need to remake an immigration system that roots enforcement in the rule of law, creates a pathway to citizenship for those who have been longstanding residents, and celebrates the ways immigrants make our country stronger rather than scapegoating and dividing.

You can count on President Trump telling us tonight that the state of the union is the strongest it’s ever been. He may be right, but not in the way he thinks. His attacks are backfiring because we know that our union is strongest when we defend the rights of all of us. It’s up to us to create a stronger, better America, and it starts with Congress reining in the president’s rogue DHS paramilitary.

Published February 24, 2026 at 06:35AM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/dx3avoj