Dear Gloria,

I’m on the ground in El Paso, Texas, where I just returned from the El Paso Processing Center, one of the most notorious ICE detention facilities in the country.

This is the same ICE detention center from which many people were unlawfully sent to Guantánamo Bay without due process.

Amnesty is here to document the real-life impact of the Trump administration’s inhumane treatment of immigrants and people seeking safety. We’re here to expose the truth — and to demand accountability from an administration that is brazenly violating human rights and inflicting pain on people already suffering so much.

We’ve been monitoring disturbing reports of abuse in this detention center — people being assaulted by guards, thrown into solitary confinement, and threatened with being sent to Guantánamo and El Salvador. These threats and abuses have especially targeted Venezuelans, and we’re deeply concerned that this facility is a testing ground for further abuses.

That’s why I’m asking you to join me to oppose this cruelty. We have a concrete action you can take today.

Right now, the Trump administration is laying the groundwork for a massive expansion of immigration detention — seeking tens of billions of dollars in contracts for new detention centers, transportation, guards, and medical services. That’s a sixfold increase in spending, even though ICE doesn’t yet have the funding.

The decision is now in Congress’s hands — and soon, they will vote to either approve or reject this budget proposal. We simply cannot let it pass.

Urge your Senators and Representative to vote NO on any funding package that funds President Trump’s cruel immigration policies.

You’ve likely heard about this budget proposal — it’s part of a broader push in Congress to cut essential programs like Social Security, Medicare, food stamps, and nutrition assistance for children, so that funds can be redirected toward supercharging Trump’s mass deportation and detention machine.

If passed, the Trump administration will immediately have hundreds of billions of dollars to ramp up its work to target our immigrant friends and neighbors and tear apart our communities by:

❌Tearing families apart
❌Putting children behind bars
❌Allowing ICE into schools, places of worship, and hospitals
❌Expelling asylum seekers to Guantánamo Bay, prisons in El Salvador or other dangerous situations

That’s why our elected officials need to hear from us urgently. We have an opportunity to tell them we do NOT approve this harmful funding, but they need to know we’re watching them.

I’ll report back to you soon on everything we’re documenting in El Paso, so that you and the world can see the impact of President Trump’s cruel policies — and make a difference.

What’s happening — in El Paso and across the country — cannot stay in the shadows.

Thank you for showing up with us,

Billie Hirsch
Senior Director, Online Engagement
Amnesty International USA

P.S. My team and I embark on research trips like this (watch our latest video from the U.S.-Mexico border) with the utmost seriousness and concern for security. We do this work because it’s urgently needed when human rights are in danger, but it takes resources to be on the ground and conduct investigations. If you’re able to donate today, your gift will go a long way in sustaining efforts to expose violations and demand justice.