This Budget Resolution would:

• Multiply ICE’s Deportation Capacity.  In FY2024, Congress appropriated over $9.1 billion to ICE, with $8.7 billion of it directed to the agency’s core operations, the Senate budget resolution would allow up to $350 billion to target families and workers. Congress will be signing a blank check to give ICE added capacity to meet arbitrary quotas, target individuals in churches, schools, courthouses, grocery stores and conduct home raids resulting in entire families being deported.

• This funding will make more vulnerable children more susceptible to prolonged detention and deportation. Meanwhile, the Trump administration initially halted funding for organizations that offer legal services for unaccompanied children; then funding was reinstated. This "halt" or cut would have kept children from receiving direct legal representation, health services, and other critical services. We worry this funding cut could happen again.

• This funding will broaden ICE’s deportation power by giving ICE agents power to indiscriminately target immigrants – which the data is already bearing out. ICE has expanded the expedited removal authority to effectively nationalize Arizona and Texas’ “show me your papers” laws, and encouraging racial profiling. 

• Vast Expansion of Detention Capacity. In his FY2021 budget request (the last of his first term), Trump requested funding to support 60,000 beds. Reconciliation and transfers of funding from the Department of Defense could allow his administration to easily meet (or exceed) this figure. In fact, The Washington Post reported that the administration plans to open four new 10,000 bed detention facilities, as well as 14 smaller sites with space for 700 to 1,000 people.

• The administration is using military assets and bases including Guantánamo Bay, dramatically expanding deportation capacity. Trump’s use of large-scale detention facilities on military bases would exacerbate the well-documented abuse inherent to the detention system.

• More Deportation Officers. Today, ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) has a workforce of over 8,500 employees, including more than 6,100 deportation officers and 750 enforcement removal assistants. Reconciliation funds could allow the President to hire over 10,000 more deportation officers

This budget resolution will negatively impact Americans’ lives, our communities and the economy while doing next to nothing for real public safety.

• Mass deportation fears are forcing people to withdraw from public life to avoid potential encounters with immigration authorities. This climate of fear isolates entire communities, eroding trust in institutions and creating long-term social disengagement that affects not only unauthorized immigrants but also legal residents and U.S. citizens.

• Businesses that rely on immigrant labor—such as construction, agriculture, and service industries—are facing workforce shortages as employees become reluctant to travel to and from work. Investment giant Goldman Sachs has cautioned that Trump’s immigration restrictionism could cost the U.S. GDP between 0.3 to 0.4 percentage points (for context, U.S. GDP growth was 2.8% in 2024).

• Mixed status families that form the backbone of countless American communities will be devastated. Deporting the parents of U.S. citizens creates ripple effects extending far beyond that single household. Local businesses lose valued employees, schools lose engaged parents, and places of worship lose community leaders. For children, the loss of a parent can mean psychological trauma, educational setbacks, and economic hardship that can shape their futures for years to come. Increased funding for enforcement does not just affect those targeted—it destabilizes entire communities.

UU Grounding:

As of General Assembly 2024, as Unitarian Universalists, we have agreed to “adopt new language on core religious values.” We agree love is the power that holds us together and is at the center of our shared values. The values we share include all the following, which we hold as inseparable and deeply interconnected: Interdependence, Pluralism, Justice, Transformation, Generosity, and Equity. (Read more on the Article II revision process.) With these agreed core religious values in mind, we also ground our call for support of immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers in the following Unitarian Universalist Statements:

1. Protect the Dreamers, the Recipients of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival (DACA) with a Pathway to Permanent Residence, 2023 Action of Immediate Witness

2. Undoing Systemic White Supremacy: A Call to Prophetic Action, 2021 Statement of Conscience

3. Protect the Rights of Immigrants and Asylum Seekers, 2019 Action of Immediate Witness

4. End Family Separation and Detention of Asylum Seekers and Abolish ICE, 2018 Action of Immediate Witness

5. Build Solidarity with our Muslim Neighbors, 2016 Action of Immediate Witness

6. End Immigrant Child and Family Detention Now, 2015 Action of Immediate Witness

7. Immigration as a Moral Issue, 2013 Statement of Conscience

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