Abolish ICE and Protect Immigrants

Our vision

NY-07 was built by immigrants, who remain integral to our community; almost a third of the district was born outside the United States. Each community shapes the fabric of our district, from newly-arrived Dominican delivery drivers in Cypress Hills, Bangladeshi aunties who have spent their lives in Ozone Park, to Polish families who have lived in Greenpoint and Ridgewood for generations. We are stronger because of our diversity, united by our collective struggle and shared humanity.

But Donald Trump’s violent and inhumane immigration policy has created a national emergency. ICE is killing people in detention and in the streets, ripping families apart, and sowing distrust and fear in cities across the country. And they’re burning through our tax dollars and violating our privacy to do it. Corporations like Palantir, Amazon, and FedEx are lining their pockets with public money to enact mass suffering and surveillance.

We need to be honest about how we got here. Migration to the United States has been propelled by bipartisan imperialism, punitive trade policy, and an accelerating climate crisis driven by extractive capitalism. Instead of responding with compassion, Republicans rely on racism and fear, redirecting the justified anger of working-class Americans toward a convenient scapegoat: undocumented immigrants. Democrats, meanwhile, promise reform but fail to deliver, or even articulate, a clear alternative. And while they play politics, billions quietly flow to private corporations contracting with DHS and ICE to terrorize our neighbors. We cannot accept this reality. We must build a better future.

First, we must abolish ICE. It’s barely more than two decades old and has become a rogue agency that sews terror. We will build the political power to replace our current system with one that centers humanity and dignity of all people, and that invests in safe, efficient pathways to full citizenship. We will stand with our immigrant neighbors and ensure that those targeted by ICE receive reparative justice. At the same time, we must address the root causes of migration, from the political and economic instability created by U.S. intervention to the escalating impacts of climate change. We cannot afford Democrats in Congress who stand for anything less.

The plan

In Congress, Claire Valdez will fight to dismantle and abolish ICE on day one. She will call for the investigation and prosecution of ICE agents who have used excessive force, gained entry under false pretenses, or otherwise broken the law, as well as the officers and leaders responsible for letting these practices proliferate. To get to the root of the issue, she will push for real immigration reform, creating new pathways to citizenship and investing in judges and administrators to make our immigration process more efficient. Claire believes our district’s future, and our country’s, depends on protecting the dignity and rights of all people, no matter where they were born.

Dismantle the detention and deportation machine and hold ICE accountable

The detention and deportation system is not broken; it functions exactly as designed. Created in the aftermath of 9/11 by politicians who used fear to erode our civil liberties to establish a permanent security state, ICE has relied on private prison companies, surveillance contractors, and a web of federal enforcement programs to track, disappear, cage, and deport millions of people.

For decades, detention and deportation have been used as a weapon, not just against immigrants, but against the entire working class. When millions of people are forced to live in fear, wages are driven down, organizing becomes dangerous, and our communities are easier to divide, all while corporations like GeoGroup and Palantir profit billions off of detention and surveillance.

Claire knows we cannot reform a fundamentally broken system; we must abolish and dismantle ICE.

But abolition alone is not justice. The architects and operators must be held accountable. This includes everyone from the DHS officials that directed operations, the agents who knowingly broke the law, to the corporations profiting off of death and destruction. We will investigate every death in custody, every denial of care, and all egregious acts of abuse. And wherever the law was broken, there will be prosecution. Not years-long reports or Washington coverups, but justice.

For too long, people in power have made decisions from their cushy offices in Washington and behind a desk in their C-suites, thinking they’ll never have to answer for the harm they’ve done. That ends now. Claire Valdez will build consensus in Congress to deliver justice for those who were murdered and the communities that have been torn apart.

Claire will fight to:

• Abolish ICE
• End for-profit detention and deportation by terminating all contracts between DHS and detention and surveillance contractors and the ecosystem of businesses who profit off the misery of immigrant detention
• Demilitarize the border.
• Expose and prosecute the actors responsible by subpoenaing ICE leadership, agents, and private contractors so that there is real accountability and we never repeat our mistakes.
• Launch investigations into every single death and every single instance of abuse in ICE custody, including but not limited to medical neglect, retaliation, and sexual violence.

Stand with communities targeted by ICE and rebuild in solidarity

Democrats have long struggled to articulate a clear, affirmative vision for our immigration system. By relying on half measures and capitulating to Republican-led racism and fearmongering, we have created a vacuum, one that has allowed a fear-driven agenda to dominate and ICE’s budget to balloon.

Beyond abolishing and dismantling ICE, we must fight for comprehensive immigration reform that establishes efficient, humane pathways to citizenship and guarantees legal status for the millions of people who already live and work here. We must also reckon with the well-documented harm inflicted by DHS and ICE over the past 13 years, and provide reparative justice, including financial and programmatic support, to individuals who have been unjustly and unlawfully targeted.

Claire will fight to:

• Provide a clear path to Lawful Permanent Residence for our undocumented neighbors, for immigrants who were unjustly deported, and who chose to self deport rather than face the harsh and punitive Trump administration.
• Increase the number of refugee cases accepted for people fleeing state-sponsored persecution. Claire will fight to raise the historically low cap of refugees accepted and make sure the new refugee threshold is met. She will also fight to make sure asylum seekers are able to live and work in the U.S. while their cases are pending decisions.
• Reintroduce the DREAM Act without the strict education requirements, allowing childhood arrivals to apply for citizenship and work in the U.S.
• Dramatically expand immigration judges and processing staff so cases move quickly and fairly. Waiting periods for green cards and immigration hearings are at an all time high. We must ensure proper investment in administrative and legal proceedings so our immigration process can be streamlined and efficient.
• Invest in wraparound legal and social support for those who have experienced violence, mistreatment, or have been separated from their families at the hands of ICE.
• Protect immigrant workers’ right to organize their workplaces by passing the PRO Act, which would guarantee all workers, including undocumented workers, damages if their labor rights are violated.

Address root causes of mass migration

Claire knows our fractured and inhumane immigration landscape is a symptom of larger global crises. Any honest immigration policy must go beyond stopgap solutions and address the problem at its roots. It is both impractical and unethical to wall ourselves from problems we have helped create.

Today’s era of mass migration is a tragic and predictable outcome of rapacious capitalism, reckless militarism, and the economic devastation wrought by decades of policy that have enriched corporations and elites at the expense of everyday people across the globe. Much of this has been actively fueled by the United States through decades of extractive trade policy, climate devastation, and support for repressive regimes. Claire believes that if we are serious about building a just and humane immigration system, we must be equally serious about building a foreign policy that offers working people across the world the opportunity for a dignified life wherever they are.

Claire will fight to:

• End destructive wars and targeted military operations that fuel political instability and displacement across the globe. Ill-informed, coercive foreign policy lays at the heart of massive refugee crises in Iraq, Afghanistan, Venezuela, El Salvador, and Syria, and we now see the same tragic story unfolding before our eyes in Iran. Claire will do everything in her power to reign in Trump’s reckless and nihilistic approach to global diplomacy.
• Push for decisive and brave action to combat the climate crisis, centered around a Green New Deal. Climate change is now one of the single largest drivers of displacement worldwide, its influence visible in the droughts, floods, wildfires and heatwaves that have ravaged much of the world. Claire will fight for a Green New Deal that combines aggressive decarbonization with a genuine commitment to global climate justice.
• Roll back restrictive US trade policy that has decimated local economies. U.S.-backed trade agreements have for decades pried open developing economies to a flood of subsidized American exports. These agreements have only served to fill the pockets of a handful of corporations, while undermining local farmers, hollowing out economies, and accelerating the very migration that politicians use to stoke fear. Claire knows these policies devastate workers on both sides of the border, and will push for the US to fundamentally renegotiate trade agreements to include enforceable labor and environmental standards that empower workers.
• Cut back US support for authoritarian regimes that exacerbate ethnic conflict or perpetuate the systematic oppression of minorities and dissidents. Claire will push for a thorough, public audit of all U.S. security assistance and arms sales, advocating that the Leahy Law, which conditions arms sales and military assistance on the meeting of human rights benchmarks, be enforced in full. The era of blank-check military partnerships with governments engaged in ethnic persecution must end.