Washington, D.C. – Today, the House of Representatives voted 263-156, with 46 Democratic votes to pass the amended Senate version of HR 29/S.5, a devastatingly harmful bill that will further criminalize Black and brown people of various immigration statuses across the country. For some, it will mean indefinite detention after a simple arrest, without a charge or conviction.
Alarmingly, this bill also has no age restrictions, meaning immigrant children are among those vulnerable to increased enforcement and can be indefinitely detained and deported. Following the shameful action of Democrats who have buckled to the MAGA agenda and supported this horrifying legislation, the bill now heads to Trump’s desk, marking an alarming and major step forward in fulfilling Trump’s mass detention and deportation agenda.
Juliana Macedo do Nascimento, Deputy Director of Federal Advocacy of United We Dream Action, said:
“It is shameful beyond words that Democrats caved to MAGA fear-mongering and ceded such an important opportunity to block the violent and devastating consequences of Senate Bill S.5, and in fact broadened its reach by accepting amendments from Republicans that made the bill even worse. It is because of their political cowardice and their inability to even read the legislation in full and understand its consequences, that people in states like Arizona, Nevada and Michigan will be deported after being arrested for something like petty theft, without conviction and without their due process rights.
These deportations will be on the hands of all the Democratic House members that voted for this today, and on Senators John Fetterman (PA), Ruben Gallego (AZ), Mark Kelly (AZ), Catherine Cortez Masto (NV), Jackie Rosen (NV), Jon Ossoff (GA), Raphael Warnock (GA), Jeanne Shaheen (NH), Maggie Hassan (NH), Elissa Slotkin (MI), Gary Peters (MI) and Mark Warner (VA). Their constituents will pay the price of their ill-conceived political expediency.
Democrats cannot spend the next four years rolling over to Trump and continuing to go against the wishes of the majority of Americans who strongly support a pathway to citizenship and sensible solutions that meet the needs of working families and communities that immigrants are a part of.”