Ending Family & Child Detention: National Webinar

Monday, February 2
5:00 p.m. ET • 4:00 p.m. CT • 3:00 p.m. MT • 2:00 p.m. PT
RSVP

The National Coalition to End Family and Child Detention will hear directly from families who have been detained at the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, and how families around the country are being separated, detained, and deported. 

Organizers will cover new messaging guidance on these issues and explain the new “Paper Dolls to Free Families” campaign. The event will help you call on elected officials to end ICE’s abuse of families in our country.

ICE Out! National UU Week of Action

Help us take action this week and continue driving the message: ICE Out!  In this time of moral crisis, our faith calls us to live our values through courageous and prophetic action. 

To help you live that commitment, we invite you to join the quick reaction launch of the National UU Week of Action, led by various UU State Action Networks (SAN) in collaboration with the UU Solidarity Initiative (UUSI), as we organize a 40-hour phone call blitz to Congress, five straight days of virtual action hours curated by UU SANs

RSVPs by date:

• Mon. 2/2: Demand Congress impeach Secretary of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem.
• Tue. 2/3: Call on Target, Hilton, Enterprise, Home Depot, and Delta to denounce ICE.
• Wed. 2/4: Demand justice for Renee Good and Alex Pretti.
• Thu. 2/5: Solidarity with the kids and families at the ICE Detention Center in Dilley, TX.
• Fri. 2/6: Crafting Letters to the Editors demanding ICE Out.

Congregational participation: 

If your community would like to participate as a group, you can sponsor a one-hour segment during the blitz. All you need is 20 reliable people to call during the blitz hour and a captain to organize them. This is a great activity for your democracy action team, social justice committee, or immigration ministry.

Inaugural UUSI Event

Join our first session of the UU Solidarity Initiative (UUSI), a nationally coordinated effort by UU and UU-adjacent organizations to provide resources and opportunities to build strong solidarity communities with immigrant communities facing attacks.

Solidarity Session

Thursday, February 5
4:30 p.m. ET • 3:30 p.m. CT • 2:30 p.m. MT • 1:30 p.m. PT
RSVP (Online)

You've seen the UUSI operating in the background, even if you didn't realize it. Now we're ready for the next phase of our public launch!

We will provide context and lessons learned from the UU experience in Minnesota in responding to DHS, ICE, and CBP, and lay the foundation for ongoing capacity development.

Protect Immigrant Rights Webinar Series

Our friends at the National Immigration Law Center (NILC) are offering a four-part policy webinar series. These sessions will provide the essential tools and knowledge to help protect immigrant rights. Communities are counting on allies to have clear, accurate information.

Empower Communities: Health & Public Benefits
February 11
1:00 p.m. ET • 12:00 p.m. CT • 11:00 a.m. MT • 10:00 a.m. P
RSVP
How enhanced immigration enforcement is undermining the rights of immigrant families by creating barriers to health services and fear around accessing public benefits programs.

Empower Communities: Workers' Rights 
February 27
2:00 p.m. ET • 1:00 p.m. CT • 12:00 p.m. MT • 11:00 a.m. PT
RSVP
How increased immigration enforcement and other attacks on immigrant workers are undermining all workers’ rights.  

No-frills Action Hour

Join us for the next UUSJ no-frills action hour. In February, we will build on the work of UUs responding to violence in Minnesota by DHS, ICE, and CBP. We may focus on detention issues or another aspect of the needed engagement.

Thursday, February 26
7:30 p.m. ET • 6:30 p.m. CT • 5:30 p.m. MT • 4:30 p.m. PT
RSVP (virtual)

Tell the House: ICE Out! No DHS funding! No more attacks on our communities; not immigrants or their allies!

This is a pivotal moment. We’ve said it's the fight of our generation. The people of Minnesota and the Minneapolis community have shown the way forward. With this movement, Minnesota has earned national attention in its demand for justice. 

DHS, ICE, and CBP do not need more money. Instead, Congress should be clawing back billions of dollars, which have supercharged their enforcement capacity and, in turn, unleashed terror on our communities.

Email your Representative in the House today, as they resume negotiations in reply to the Senate’s vote last week. The federal agencies involved do not need more funding; instead, their overwhelming use of force must be outmatched by oversight and civilian control.

Congress must redress and contest our increasingly inhuman, brutal, and expanding Immigration Detention System

Tell Congress they must resist and undo the expansion of immigration detention. The disregard for basic humanity must stop; the casual violence and brutality must end. ICE Out! Say our communities. Congress should prioritize in-person oversight visits of detention centers and holding facilities. They must challenge the mushrooming detention industrial complex at every turn. Empty facilities and vacant beds will be filled.

We need Congress to adopt a new ethos of investigation, witness testimony, and oversight. Seeing the deadly conditions affects their policy thinking and helps keep the public informed.

A Pioneer Within UUSJ Passes

It is with deep sadness that we announce the passing of Lavona Grow. She was a founder of UUSJ. She served as board chair, volunteer executive director, policy team convenor, and as the leader in the formation of our Advocacy Corps. She helped bring the Advocacy Corps into being through will, grit, and passion.

Her vision of what UUSJ could be and evolve into helped transform us from a collective of Unitarian Universalists talking about advocacy into a collective doing the advocacy and lifting our commonly held religious values. 

Lavona cared deeply about the environment and climate, and was endlessly fascinated by the potential to shape better, more just outcomes through civic engagement and legislative activity. That passion shaped her early professional career and her later volunteer vocation.

You can offer a note of condolence or tender loving words through our UUSJ Kudoboard. This will be shared at her celebration of life.

Praying With Our Feet

We mobilized and showed up to pray with our feet. Our UUA President delivered powerful remarks at the press conference before the action.

See Rev. Dr. Sofía Betancourt’s comments on the UUA’s website, In Good Faith blog, or the full UUA statement here.

Rev. Dr. Sofía then joined others in nonviolent civil resistance at the U.S. Capitol and in the Senate office buildings. See a UU World article: UUA President Arrested During D.C. Protest

Images courtesy of Pablo DeJesús, UUSJ, and Rev. Michael Crumpler, UUA, plus Rev. Brandan Robertson, UUA.

Democracy in Action

During January, Ursula Scott and I (Fred Van Deusen) had the pleasure of attending a “CONVO” meeting with the UU Justice Ohio Board to share information about the democracy work we are doing at UUSJ to help local congregations. 

Rev. Tom Cruse and others organized the meeting, and Tom arranged it as a panel discussion with the two of us and Louise Lawarre from the democracy team at Heritage UU Church in Cincinnati. 

Ursula and I shared information about UUSJ’s legislative actions, our work with democracy leaders around the country, current activities we are involved with, and the democracy Action of Immediate Witness that we wrote, presented, and successfully passed at the last GA.

Louise discussed the work her team is doing and, to my surprise and delight, started by saying they are using our UUSJ AIW as a guide. They started by breaking the group into two pieces, with one piece focused on creating, reviewing with members of the congregation, and finalizing a democracy resolution for their congregation. The rest of the team's work was also consistent with the items in the AIW.

Her minister was at the meeting and spoke very favorably about the work this team had done and how much the resolution helped him guide and support his work with the congregation. 

I left the meeting feeling very good about the democracy work being done in Ohio and grateful that they invited us.

Protecting the Freedom to Vote Through State Voting Rights Acts

Campaign Legal Center

“The federal government's repeated failure to enact stronger voting rights protections means states must take a more proactive role in passing laws that protect the freedom to vote for all Americans.

This issue is particularly important given the weakening of federal voting rights laws by the U.S. Supreme Court, and the proliferation of anti-voter laws at the state level that disproportionately affect Black, Hispanic, Asian, and Native American voters.” Read the full report

Over-Policing, America’s Precursor for Violence by ICE today

Renee Good’s killing reveals how far the state will go, writes Mikki Charles for Open Democracy, “Until the fatal shooting of Renee Good, a 37-year-old US citizen and mother, by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent in Minneapolis earlier this month, many people still believed that federal immigration enforcement posed a threat only to undocumented immigrants.” 

Charles goes on to say, “This mass deployment of federal agents has deepened mistrust while confirming what Black communities have long known: immigration enforcement operates through surveillance, intimidation, and impunity. The same systems that have historically over-policed Black Americans are now reinforced through federal immigration power.”

• Trump threatens to use the Insurrection Act to end protests in Minneapolis, AP
• Labeling Renee Good a “Domestic Terrorist” Distorts the Law, Brennan Center
• Tracking retaliatory use of arrests, prosecutions, and investigations by the Trump administration, Protect Democracy
• Despite profiling concerns, more law agencies are joining street-level immigration enforcement, StateLine
• Republicans are desperate to crack down on direct democracy, Democracy Docket
• Renee Good’s Murder and Other Acts of Terror, BostonReview
• ICE Raids and Overpolicing: A Call for Black and Immigrant Solidarity, Vanguard

ICE and CBP are out of control with violence

It was big news, back in October, when Pope Leo XIV told El Paso, Texas residents, “The church cannot be silent,” EPM, followed by American Bishops publicly lament Trump deportation policies after pope urges stronger voice, RNS. But they were positioned to see and hear about the state violence that would later be on display in Minnesota. 

Also see, National Faith Organizations Call for ICE Out of Our Communities in Wake of Tragic Shooting Killing of Renee Good, IIC, and Hundreds of clergy descend on Minneapolis and go on lookout for ICE, RNS.

For more on the full context, see several important pieces:

• ICE expansion has outpaced accountability. What are the remedies?, Brookings
• New Report Details ICE’s Expanding and Increasingly Unaccountable Detention System, AIC
• The GOP base is splintering over the president's immigration tactics, Politico
• Deaths at Adult Detention Centers, AILA

Supercharged Enforcement and Detention

The American Immigration Council (AIC) recently issued a new report on the expansion of immigration detention during Trump’s first year in office. Key findings include:

• By the end of 2025, the total number of people in detention under Trump had increased by almost 75% to about 66,000 people. Today, the total is over 70,000 people.
• From January to October of 2025, there has been a 600% increase in at-large arrests in communities across the country in the U.S. interior. 
• There has been a nearly 2,500% increase in the detention of people with no criminal record. They account for 92% of the increase in detention.
• 30 people died in ICE detention, making 2025 the deadliest non-COVID year ever.

The report reveals that "rather than focusing on serious public safety threats and flight risks, the Trump administration is primarily using detention to pressure people into giving up their chance to remain in the United States."

Expansion by the Billions

Throughout late winter and spring 2025, our Immigration Action Team warned that the funding allocations proposed in the reconciliation bill, which would become OBBBA, would significantly expand immigration enforcement and detention. Those funds would supercharge a draconian approach in our communities.

In July 2025, Congress authorized $45 billion for ICE detention to be spent through FY 2029, enabling ICE to acquire sufficient detention space for more than 100,000 people at a time.

• New Funding Increases Immigration Enforcement, NILC
• What’s in the Big Beautiful Bill? Immigration and Border Security Unpacked, AILA

UUSJ is urging supporters to contact their Representative and Senators to redress and contest our increasingly inhuman, brutal, and expanding Immigration Detention System.

Articles shared by the team

• DHS ramps up surveillance in immigration raids, sweeping in citizens, AP
• A Running Count of How Many People ICE Has Killed and Injured, The American Prospect
• Trump is losing normies on immigration: Americans might want more border enforcement, but they don't want ICE agents killing civilians, Medium
• Clergy Are Raising Holy Hell About ICE, Mother Jones 
• ICE recruitment: How I got a job with the anti-immigrant police, Slate
• Spanberger EO "gives new Governor the option" to end relationship between ICE and Virginia State Police, WVTF
• Immigration officers assert sweeping power to enter homes without a judge's warrant, AOL
• Minnesota On Strike, The American Prospect
• How many people has ICE harmed? The American Prospect

Stop Data Centers Now! Campaign Launch

Food & Water Watch has officially launched our Stop Data Centers Now! campaign. We’re ramping up efforts to halt the buildout of data centers at the local, state, and national levels and demanding a stop to all new data centers nationwide!

With you, we’ll stand up to Big Tech to stop these energy-intensive, water-guzzling facilities that threaten our communities. Learn more about our new data center campaign here.

Learn more about the new data center campaign here.

Also see: After a White Town Rejected a Data Center, Developers Targeted a Black Area Capital B News

Killing U.S. Soft Power on Climate

The Administration ordered withdrawal from 66 international bodies, conventions, and treaties, including key climate treaties, that they say are “contrary to the interests” of the country. The list includes 35 non-United Nations organizations and 31 United Nations organizations, many of which conduct pivotal climate change work. See the full post by Earth Org. Race to the Bottom

Green Issue Coverage

• What's behind Greenland's global attraction? Climate change, Earthbeat
• Trump moves to block courts from seizing Venezuelan oil revenue in US accounts, Reuters
• Faith, conservation and the Florida Legislature, The Invading Sea
• Orsted Wins Ruling to Resume US Wind Project Halted by Trump, Yahoo
• Mobile homes already have huge utility bills. Congress may make it worse, Grist
• From rent to utility bills: the politicians and advocates making climate policy part of the affordability agenda, Guardian 
• Yes, climate change can supercharge a winter storm. Here’s how, Grist
• Many Climate Risks Have Been Underestimated By Policymakers, Study Finds, Forbes
• Climate change has now shrunk US salaries by 12%. And worse is to come, BBC
• 2025 was so hot it pushed Earth past critical climate change mark, scientists say, CBS
• Climate change has already made the U.S. poorer, National Academy of Sciences
• High Seas Treaty "can end an era of exploitation", EJF
• What Justice on a Burning Planet?, The Nation
• The birth of the climate doula., The 19th
• In Helene's Wake, Rural North Carolina Turns to Solar and Battery Hubs, Mother Jones
• A cooler climate solution: Air-conditioning without the compressor, CNN 
• Faith Drives Environmental Activism, Greenville News
• Women saving climate data, Time
• Why forcing people to go green can backfire, Grist

Save Our Food Industry - A Letter to Congress

Sean Sherman, The Sioux Chef, Minneapolis
Read the full letter

“We are sounding an alarm from Minneapolis. The current situation we are experiencing is detrimental to our safety and well-being, and is already having a chilling effect on the entire American food system.  

Removing our immigrant friends, families, and neighbors while violating our constitutional rights is unacceptable and is detrimental to everything that makes us American. These tactics will force the closure of multiple restaurants nationwide and completely disrupt every aspect of our food sector, among many others. ICE is beyond dangerous for everything we stand for. People in Minnesota are tough, and we can handle this unfortunate situation, but we cannot accept that this is the new normal for all of America. If you have not signed the document, please do so now and share widely.”

Economic and Tax Clippings

• The 99% Don’t Need a Billionaires’ Forum. They Need Democratic Power, Inequality.org
• An Analysis of a Potential Reduction in Massachusetts’ Long-Term Capital Gains Tax Rate, ITEP
• A surplus of wealth tax foes, Politico
• A Wealth Tax That Will Work!, Robert Reich
• Treasury Cancels All Booz Allen Contracts Over Leak Of Billionaires’ Tax Data, Forbes
• How the Tax System Can Better Support All Families, TPC
• Mamdani Presses for Tax Hike on New York’s Wealthiest as Budget Deficit Looms, WSJ
• Social Security has ‘no bankruptcy or collapse in the cards,’ economist says — but benefits may change, CNBC
• Billionaire Tom Steyer Says He’d Vote for California Wealth Tax, Bloomberg
• The Non-Exodus of California Billionaires, TAP
• IRS head announces a shake-up on the eve of the 2026 tax season, ABC
• IRS Funding: Lawmakers Target Another $11.7 Billion In New IRS Cuts, Forbes
• States Can Push Back Against Reckless Federal Tax Policy. Here’s How., ITEP
• 5 Top ICE ‘Corporate Collaborators’ Saved $19 Billion in Taxes Under Trump: Report, Common Dreams
• Effective Tariff Rates and Revenues, PennWharton
• Now Is the Time to Tax the Rich in New York, Kathy Hochul, Jacobin
• States Take on Skyrocketing Health Premiums in Wait for Congress, Bloomberg
• NY Plan to Split From Trump Tax Breaks Would Save $1.4 Billion, Bloomberg
• How “Bitcoin Jesus” Avoided Prison, Thanks to One of the “Friends of Trump”, ProPublica
• Congress grills health insurance CEOs over high pay, Politico