Congress, Don’t Give DHS a Blank Check to Undermine Our Local Economies

This story is part of TPM Café, TPM’s opinion and news analysis center.

Two weeks ago, three of my employees were carpooling to work at our Minneapolis nonprofit when they realized they were being followed by federal agents. As soon as they parked, officers surrounded them with guns drawn and pointed at my staff. They arrested an employee who they said “fit the description” of the person they were looking for – which basically means he has brown skin. “I’m just checking his papers,” they said. Note: it is here legally. By morning, he was in Texas.

This is our reality here in Minneapolis: constantly monitoring the daily atrocities committed by ICE agents as they invade our neighborhoods and terrorize our neighbors. The results of two months of ICE occupation in Minnesota? Two dead Americans, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, both shot by federal agents on video. Ninety-six court orders were violated in one month. Mass searches without a warrant have been ruled unconstitutional. Businesses destroyed to the tune of millions of dollars per week, according to the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Before Operation Metro Surge, there were only 150 immigration agents in Minneapolis. We saw nearly 3,000 in our city at the height of the operation, which border czar Tom Homan announced Thursday was finally coming to an end. But it remains to be seen how quickly the officers will actually leave, and another American city could easily be next.

Congress votes this Friday on funding the Department of Homeland Security. Before another blank check arrives, they need to understand what they are funding. It’s not just about immigration control. This is economic sabotage wrapped in racism.

Restaurants simply cannot operate when workers are terrorized because of the color of their skin. In Minneapolis, Mexican markets are empty, Somali businesses are closing and immigrant-owned restaurants are down 60 to 70 percent. But it goes well beyond restaurants. Seventy-three percent of agricultural workers are immigrants. More than a million immigrants work in restaurants. Our food system will collapse when you consider the impact on manufacturing, distribution, institutional kitchens and tourism. You can’t violently harass immigrant communities and expect our food systems to survive when immigrants and people of color have been the backbone of the American food system throughout its history.

What should terrify every American city: follow the money. Congress allocated about $75 billion to ICE under the Big Beautiful Bill, including $45 billion for expanded detentions. Private prisons run by GEO Group and CoreCivic, both massive Trump donors, are building facilities across the country for more than 100,000 prisoners, nearly doubling the size of the entire federal prison system. Congress must ask itself what the motive is for these federal facilities and why they would double the size of our current federal prison system for seemingly temporary detentions.

These facilities operate using cheap, forced labor. Inmates work 40 hours a week for just $1 a day, a figure unchanged since 1950. With inflation, that figure is now expected to exceed $13. ICE pays these companies between $100 and $150 per person daily to operate their detention centers.

Nothing stops detention centers from hiring detainees to work on farms, slaughterhouses and manufacturers, thereby turning immigration operations into a for-profit business. Prisons already do this. DHS builds permanent infrastructure while creating labor shortages through immigration campaigns, then filling them with $1-a-day forced labor while private prisons profit.

Minneapolis is the test case. We are living the model that could be deployed in every major American city. Our restaurants, our markets, our entire food system are being dismantled in real time. The economic devastation we are experiencing – $10 million to $20 million in weekly losses – is what awaits Denver, Houston, Los Angeles, New York and all the cities with vibrant immigrant communities that keep our food system running.

All Democrats must stay the course, not only on funding DHS, but on all attempts to dismantle checks, balances and equality in America. The SAVE Act must also be stopped because it requires passports or birth certificates to register to vote. Twenty-one million Americans do not have these documents. The bill disproportionately affects low-income voters, people of color and married women who have changed their names. Trump’s allies are already considering having ICE agents at polling places. Steve Bannon explicitly stated: “We are going to have ICE surround the polling places. » This is voter suppression, pure and simple.

Here’s what we must demand from Congress: Freeze DHS funding citing unconstitutional violations, undertrained and overmilitarized agents, racial profiling, and proven negative economic impact in Minnesota. Kill the SAVE act. Investigate private prison contracts and show where that $45 billion is really going. End the detention and hunting of people without criminal records.

I am delivering a letter with nearly 3,000 signatures from the food industry to every office in the Senate and House this week. Our communities cannot function under terror, and we cannot watch our entire food system dissolve because of poor planning and terrible execution.

Democrats and a handful of Republican senators blocked DHS funding two weeks ago and are expected to negotiate reforms this week. Hold the line. No financing without responsibility. No SAVE law taking away the right to vote. No permanent detention centers that many people of color view as a modern-day slave system.

The food industry is on the lookout. We will remember who voted to continue this terror.