CHC Chair: ‘ICE Is Not Just Busting The Budget, It’s Wrecking Our Economy’

Congressional Hispanic Caucus members joined America’s Voice to call for an end to the ICE Tax that’s making the lives of all working families more expensive.

CHC Chair Adriano Espaillat speaks during the End the ICE Tax press event

The Trump administration’s mass purge of immigrant communities is inflicting violence and creating havoc – and ripping away essential workers and raising the costs of everyday necessities from groceries to housing – and American families are paying for it all, members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus (CHC) said during a Capitol Hill event demanding an end to the ICE Tax.

ACTIONS HAVE CONSEQUENCES AND AMERICANS ARE PAYING THE PRICE

“ICE is not just busting the budget, it’s wrecking our economy,” CHC Chair Adriano Espaillat said during the Sept. 17 press conference, which was held alongside America’s Voice. “When food prices go up because farm workers go missing, that’s the ICE Tax. When construction grinds to a halt because no one is left to build homes, that’s the ICE Tax. When our elders can’t get the care they deserve because their caretakers and nurses are gone, that’s the ICE Tax. Americans have lost their patience with the ICE Tax.”

Under the administration’s anti-immigrant obsession, the abduction and deportation of the skilled farmworkers who feed us, the expert laborers who build our homes, and the essential healthcare professionals who heal us is resulting in entirely predictable results: higher food costs, a sharp decline in housing permits and healthcare that that’s now even more out of reach. The mass targeting of Haitian health workers alone will have “a catastrophic impact on the nationwide healthcare workforce crisis,” as NPR recently noted.

In their remarks during the Washington, D.C. press conference, lawmakers spanning regions across the country shared how the ICE Tax has been impacting their local communities in ways that impact all working Americans no matter their legal immigration status.

“Every week in San Antonio, there are restaurants announcing they’re closing, that they can no longer keep their doors open,” said Texas Rep. Joaquin Castro. “There are shops in towns across America who either can’t find the labor employees to keep them open, or they can’t find the buyers to keep them going.”

We’ve previously noted that in Orlando, Florida, some restaurants have lost an estimated 40% of revenue as immigrant staff members quit. ICE arrests have in fact been so aggressive in the state that one of the administration’s political allies, Miami-Dade Rep. María Elvira Salazar, released a video purporting to push back on its mass deportation efforts. Too little, too late: Rep. Salazar repeatedly voted to fund this agenda.

NO SURPRISE: THROW OUT IMMIGRANTS, PRICES SURGE

“Lettuce is up 32.1%, home healthcare is up 10.7%, landscaping is up 10.8%,” said New Jersey Rep. Analilia Mejia. “Ask yourself, why is this? What do these industries, these products, have in common? Well, immigrant labor.” When it comes to agriculture alone, 68% of the industry’s workers are foreign-born, and 42% of those laborers lack legal immigration status. But ICE made clear even before Trump retook power that these essential workers would not be off-limits, conducting outrageous raids that shook the farmworking communities days before his second inauguration.

In the ensuing arrests since then – including this summer’s record abductions – the fruits, vegetables, and dairy products “most produced in the United States by these workers have seen price increases substantially above the 2.6 percent core inflation rate,” as America’s Voice noted in the “End the ICE Tax” report. “If we seek to lower costs and put more money in people’s pockets, then the American people must demand that we eliminate this ICE Tax,” Rep. Mejia continued in her remarks.

AMERICANS REJECT EVERY ASPECT OF TRUMP AND ALLIES BLOODY AGENDA

The press event came as a slew of recent polls show that Americans are rejecting this expensive, bloody agenda, with one survey from Morris Predictive Insights/Verasight finding that 68% of respondents agree that the administration has been too obsessed with deportations and not obsessed enough with making everyday life more affordable. In another notable poll, a PBS/NPR/Marist survey finds that by a 62-37% margin, Americans say ICE’s actions are making the country less safe – including half who say “much less safe.”

Not so easily calculable are the human costs of mass deportations. In just this past month alone, yet another in-custody ICE death and a series of brutal, public arrests targeting U.S. citizens and immigrant community members alike have continued to spark outrage.

At the privately-operated Winnfield Correctional Center in Louisiana, Costa Rican immigrant Carlos Josué Marchena has become the 25th human being to die in ICE custody this year. In Texas, Venezuelan immigrant Wilber Rafael Garcés Pérez is being forced to languish at the South Texas ICE Processing Center, another privately-operated facility, despite still having a bullet in his back after being shot by mass deportation agents over the weekend. The DoorDash driver has since been experiencing paralysis on one side, The Washington Post reports.

“Wilber came to the United States legally,” Rep. Castro said. “He had work permits and was an asylum seeker. None of this should have ever happened.”

LEGISLATORS WHO ENABLED TRUMP’S AGENDA WILL FACE THE CONSEQUENCES

“This is the ICE Tax. It’s not a line item anyone voted on, but it’s real, and it shows up everywhere,” America’s Voice Executive Director Vanessa Cárdenas said during the Capitol Hill press event. “When this administration chooses mass deportation over people’s wallets, families pay the price. This is not what we signed up for. It’s time to end mass deportations and end the ICE Tax.”