ACLU Denounces Committee Vote for Homeland Security Funding

WASHINGTON — The House Committee on Appropriations advanced a bill today that would increase the Department of Homeland Security’s budget for Fiscal Year 2019, a total of $51.4 billion.

If adopted, this budget would give Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection — the agencies responsible for family separation and the mass detention and deportation of immigrants — even more funding after receiving record levels of funding for immigration enforcement last year. The bill also allocates $5 billion for President Trump’s border wall.

Lorella Praeli, deputy political director at the American Civil Liberties Union, had the following response:

“This bill is an abdication of Congress’ oversight responsibility over DHS, and a reprehensible and wasteful use of taxpayer funds. In the wake of thousands of children being ripped away from their parents’ arms, Congress should be looking for ways to rein in CBP and ICE.

“Instead, these agencies are inexplicably rewarded by Congress with more immigration detention and $5 billion for Trump’s wall. Today the committee decided that its priority is to continue funding the administration’s war on immigrants using taxpayer dollars to tear families apart, terrorize immigrant communities, and further militarize our border with an ineffective and harmful wall. Every member of Congress should reject this proposal. Voters will remember those who enabled Trump’s deportation force this November.”