Grow a Spine

I’m sharing this letter I just sent to the 7 House Democrats that voted to fund the Department of Homeland Security. Feel free to borrow any language from this letter and give them hell yourself. I also recommend contacting your senators to urge them not to pass this budget.

Edit: if you are sending email, their websites require a mailing address to show you are a constituent in their district. Thankfully, they include their district mailing address right in the footer! 🤔

To:
Rep. Henry Cuellar
Rep. Jared Golden
Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez
Rep. Laura Gillen
Rep. Donald Davis
Rep. Tom Suozzi
Rep. Vicente Gonzalez

It is unconscionable that you would vote to fund the Department of Homeland Security after the blatant human rights abuses they’ve demonstrated.

These are all things you knew — or should have known — before your vote:

• At least 32 people died in ICE custody last year. 7 of those were in December alone. It was the deadliest year in over two decades. Source: “2025 was ICE’s deadliest year in two decades. Here are the 32 people who died in custody”, The Guardian, 2026-01-04
• Silverio Villegas González was killed by an ICE agent in Chicago September 12, 2025.
• Keith Porter was killed by an off-duty ICE agent in Los Angeles December 31, 2025.
• Geraldo Lunas Campos was killed while in ICE custody in Texas January 3, 2026.
• Renée Good was murdered by an ICE agent in Minneapolis on January 7, 2026.

These are just some of the prominent cases we are aware of. Every day there is ample new video evidence of agents acting with violence and intimidation towards people. They act as an unaccountable paramilitary force instead of a civil immigration enforcement agency.

Rep. Suozzi, you referred to your responsibility “...to govern, not to lurch from one manufactured crisis to the next.” These are human lives, not manufactured crises. You are naive if you think “additional training and the use of body cameras” is going to stop these authoritarians.

Rep. Gillen, you said this bill is about “stopping child trafficking,” except the immigration enforcement actions you are supporting are literally ripping children from their families and shipping them across the country.

Rep. Davis, you said that “...reliable support for natural relief is non-negotiable.” Your vote for this clearly communicates that the violence and death detailed above is negotiable.

Rep. Cuellar, your statement on this bill doesn’t even acknowledge ICE or the atrocities your vote funds. Shame.

Rep. Gluesenkamp Perez (representative’s statement), no agency is ever sacrosanct and calling for defunding an agency over its rampant abuses is absolutely a solution. ICE is only 23 years old and we had civil immigration enforcement before that.

Rep. Gonzalez, your statement speaks “regrettably” about ICE abuses as if you’re not in a position to do something about it. The next best thing you can offer is you asked administration officials to let the President know about the negative effects ICE raids are having? Naive and weak.

All of you: grow a spine.

If you do not have the courage that this moment requires to oppose these authoritarian human rights abuses, I and many others will work tirelessly to ensure you do not get reelected.