DHS Funding Bill Fails to Provide Oversight

The House had a chance to repair public trust, defend our constitution, and impose accountability, but did not.

Washington, DC – On January 22, 2025, the House passed its appropriations proposal for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) by a narrow margin, and then passed a larger package for the Pentagon and departments of Health and Human Services, Labor, Housing and Urban Development, Transportation, and Education. The House has now passed all twelve annual appropriations bills. The Senate is expected to consider similar measures upon return from recess. Legislators intend to pass the bills before the January 30 deadline and the prospect of a partial government shutdown.

The DHS proposal was controversial due to concerns about the activities of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP). Recent reporting highlighted ICE deployments in communities and local impacts.

In response, Unitarian Universalists for Social Justice (UUSJ) made the following announcement.

Pablo DeJesús, Executive Director, UUSJ, stated:

“The House has failed to provide oversight of ICE and CBP with the passage of this measure. They failed to respond to the concerns, grief, and outrage voiced by people of faith, goodwill, and conscience in Minnesota and Minneapolis. They have ignored what Minnesotans – and so many others nationwide – experience as federal invasion and tyranny.

This legislation gives even more taxpayer dollars for detention and enforcement at a time when the governance regime is deploying terror and force in our communities. Allowing reckless, likely lawless behavior through ICE, CBP, and DHS. This funding will further undermine our traditions of welcome, hospitality, and dignity that so many Americans show to migrants, refugees, and asylees–our neighbors and friends among us.

Despite provisions for body cameras and extra training, it will erode our rights in practice, in situ. The right to observe, monitor, record, fact-check, and object to government activity under the First Amendment. It does not improve security for local communities in their close-proximity interactions with federal agents.

Perhaps the Senate will act as the Constitution intends, where the House has failed. Perhaps they will defend our constitutional rights in program and practice with a muscular oversight role commensurate with the separation of powers, checks, and balances the framers intended. But they must be reminded of the needed actions.

Unitarian Universalists, therefore, reiterate our call for accountability and guardrails, as well as the immediate end to ICE operations in all our communities. No more funding for ICE and CBP. Pause the appropriations negotiations. No more budget bumps until investigations are complete. Those within ICE who are complicit in recklessness and lawlessness must be held to account first.

We call for a restoration of the rule of law and respect for local communities: ICE and CBP must not be allowed to act like secret police. Ignorance, surprise, the benefit of the doubt, or trust in professionalism no longer serve as a defense for these votes. We ask Congress to protect the most basic features of our legislative republic, to side with the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. DHS Secretary Kristi Noem must be required to answer, in detail, for the activities on the ground by ICE and CBP under her authority.

We will continue to side with love. Joining in solidarity with our neighbors, immigrant communities, and their allies, their supporters. We will welcome the stranger. We will hold elected leaders accountable when they put our families and communities at risk.

-#-

Established in 1999, Unitarian Universalists for Social Justice is a network of Unitarian Universalist individuals and congregations that lifts up the light of reason, the warmth of community, and the flame of hope to advance equitable national policies and actions aligned with UU values through witness, education, and advocacy. We envision a just, compassionate, and sustainable world community. Follow us on social media.

###