In recent months, at least seven children have either died in custody or died after being detained by federal immigration agencies at the border. These children came to the United States desperate for shelter and safety, but found inhumanity and suffering, under our government’s care, instead.

Their deaths reveal just how dire the conditions are under which U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) are holding hundreds of children. Detention facilities are dangerously overcrowded, where migrants are forced to wear soiled clothes for days at a time. To make matters worse, CBP also appears to be holding children for extended periods of time in direct conflict with the Flores agreement, a set of legal guidelines that provide humane conditions for immigrant children in detention — guidelines the Trump administration is now attempting to dismantle, arguing in court that it doesn’t require CBP to provide basic toiletries to keep children clean.

The government may argue that their hands are tied by a lack of resources, but the truth is that these horrors are simply the latest attempt to dehumanize asylum-seekers and migrants, including children, and deny them basic care and dignity.

U.S. Border Patrol, the law enforcement arm of CBP, has more than doubled in staff and funding since 2003. CBP has dealt with even higher levels of border crossers arrivals in the past and has 17 times the budget it did in 1990.

And yet, the department continues to have a heinous track record of rampant reported abuses in detention facilities, with adults dying on their watch as well as children, all with almost no accountability standards. There have been 97 fatalities at the hands of CBP agents since 2004, including the murder of Claudia Gomez Gonzalez, an unarmed, indigenous 20-year-old woman who was shot and killed by a Border Patrol agent in May 2018.

The department has had ample time and resources to figure out their processes and be more forthcoming with a plan to address influxes of asylum seekers, particularly families, at the U.S.-Mexico border. Yet, they continue to be opaque in their answers to members of Congress and push misleading data about border crossings.

DHS’ campaign of deflecting and wearing down the American people’s standards for humane treatment of immigrants must stop now. It is unconscionable for our society to continue in this direction with the memory of preventable deaths now forever emblazoned on our history.

We cannot continue believing the falsehoods of the Department of Homeland Security and its agencies. Congress must demand transparency from DHS, so that real solutions to prevent these deaths can be enacted. Appropriators are currently deciding the next budget for DHS, including ICE and CBP, and they should ensure the agencies are not granted any more funding while children and adults continue to be abused and die while in custody.

The ACLU will continue its fight to ensure that immigrants are treated with justice and humanity. Our lawsuit to reunite families — which includes some of the children enduring these horrific CBP conditions — is ongoing. At the Border Rights Center, we are monitoring CBP’s actions to ensure that their actions no longer go unnoticed. And in Washington, we will fight to ensure that these agencies’ budgets do not increase, so that our taxpayer dollars do not fund the abuse of human beings.

The United States must provide dignified shelter and care to all people, including those accessing their legal right to seek asylum and refuge — period. We cannot afford any more lives lost.

Cynthia Pompa, Advocacy Manager, ACLU Border Rights Center

This week, President Trump kicked off his re-election campaign by tweeting a threat to deport millions of immigrants, apparently referring to his administration’s plans for mass raids on families across the country. Meanwhile, news continues to break about what his administration is already doing, as dizzying as it is horrifying: A six-year-old girl dying in the Arizona desert on the way to seek asylum, a premature baby languishing at a border holding site, a trans woman dying from pneumonia after asking to be deported rather than remain in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention without proper medical care.

What’s remarkable is that in the midst of the extreme rhetoric and reality, people across the country are finding common ground on immigration. In at least seven states, grassroots activists have quietly built coalitions necessary to enact pro-immigrant rights laws, many of which will limit the Trump administration’s ability to carry out its threats to deport millions.

One of the standouts is the Keep Washington Working Act, which will affect nearly one million Washingtonians — one in every seven people in the state — who are immigrants. It bars local law enforcement from acting as an arm of ICE — routinely questioning individuals about immigration status, notifying ICE that a noncitizen is in custody, and detaining someone for the purpose of facilitating their deportation. This law — and a variety of laws and policies that more than 400 counties have adopted since Trump came to office — make it harder for ICE to detain and deport people at the levels President Trump is threatening, since ICE relies on local law enforcement for the vast majority of its arrests.

Although Washington’s new law is among the most protective we’ve seen, it is far from alone. This summer, Colorado enacted a law that prohibits state and local law enforcement from honoring detainers, which are ICE’s written requests to hold people an extra 48 hours after their release date so that ICE can decide whether to detain them. And Connecticut’s governor just signed into law a measure to strengthen the state’s Trust Act, which is designed to protect due process rights of immigrants by requiring a judicial order to detain an individual for ICE.

Illinois’ governor is expected to sign the Keep Illinois Families Together Act, prohibiting state and local law enforcement from acting as ICE deputies through 287(g) agreements, which have a history of leading to racial profiling against Latinx communities. llinois’ legislature also extended the state’s effective ban on for-profit prisons to include ICE private prisons. Oregon’s legislature passed a bill that will make it safer for immigrants to participate in court proceedings by prohibiting judges from asking defendants to disclose their immigration status.

One reason these laws are passing is that coalitions have brought together unlikely allies: the big employers in each state. For some industries, protecting these workers is a matter of necessity: an estimated 70 percent of hired workers in the agriculture industry are immigrants. It is 50 percent in the dairy industry. And the tourism industry, from ski slopes to Disney World, relies on immigrant labor. Employers worry that ICE’s indiscriminate targeting of immigrant communities will force immigrants into the shadows and out of the state. Expect other states to follow Washington’s lead in passing pro-immigrant laws — through coalitions of local industries and community activists.

Immigrant rights victories are also building on the strength of the criminal justice reform movement. This spring, Utah, Colorado, and New York enacted so-called 364-day measures, joining several states. These measures reduce the maximum jail sentence for misdemeanor offenses by one day, from 365 to 364 days. That protects immigrants from serious consequences imposed by federal immigration law that kicks in when the maximum possible sentence for an offense is 365 days or more— even if the person’s actual sentence is just a few days. Those consequences include detention, deportation, and loss of opportunity for individuals to adjust their immigration status. These reform measures ensure that convictions for minor offenses like shoplifting don’t carry devastating immigration consequences.

There is, of course, a serious backlash against these measures. Local politicians are taking their cues from President Trump. Florida Governor Rick DeSantis campaigned on and just signed into law a purported ban on “sanctuary cities,” over the opposition of business leaders and the Miami police chief, and even though there are no “sanctuary cities” in Florida. The North Carolina legislature is debating HB 370, which would force local law enforcement to do ICE’s bidding, even though sheriffs from the state’s biggest cities have spoken out against it.

Nevertheless, the wave of pro-immigrant legislation in the states — and the recent passage in the House of Representatives of the American Dream and Promise Act — represents a powerful cross-current to the Trump administration’s increasingly anti-immigrant rhetoric and policy.

And they show that presidential candidates have a clear mandate from voters. That’s why, as part of the ACLU’s Rights for All campaign, volunteers are asking presidential candidates to commit to an overhaul of our immigration system. We need a fair and achievable path to citizenship for people who are undocumented, far fewer people languishing in immigration detention, and an end to ICE’s reliance on state and local law enforcement to facilitate deportations. Many communities and state governments support immigrant rights — and they are enacting changes a new president should build on in 2021.

Naureen Shah, Senior Advocacy and Policy Counsel

Today, the Supreme Court announced that a governmental display of a 40-foot-tall Latin cross as a war memorial for all veterans does not violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. The decision ignores our constitutional commitment to official religious neutrality and is a slap in the face to non-Christian veterans. There is, however, a small silver lining: The opinion itself was narrow, making clear that the ruling is not an invitation for government officials to erect new religious displays.

In American Legion v. American Humanist Association, the court concluded that the Bladensburg Cross — originally built to honor a Maryland county’s World War I dead — is constitutional for a combination of reasons, including its nearly hundred-year history and the court’s belief that the cross has somehow taken on an “added secular meaning when used in World War I memorials.” But there are several flaws in the court’s reasoning.

First, in his opinion for the majority, Justice Alito cites the rows of white crosses that memorialize fallen American service members in World War I cemeteries overseas. Yet those crosses are tied to the individual faith of each soldier. Notably, the graves of Jewish service members in those cemeteries are marked with the Star of David, not a Latin cross. That’s because the Latin cross is inextricably linked to the Christian belief in the crucifixion of Jesus, the resurrection, and the promise of eternal life—a point emphasized in friend-of-the-court briefs filed by both the Baptist Joint Committee and the American Jewish War Veterans for the United States of America. As Justice Ginsburg explains in her dissent, the Latin cross is an “exclusively Christian symbol.” It is “not emblematic of any other faith,” and it certainly has “never shed its Christian character.”

Second, the Bladensburg Cross does not stand as a memorial to fallen World War I soldiers alone. Although the cross was erected in the 1920s on private land as a World War I memorial, the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission went out of its way in 1961 to acquire the cross and the land on which it sits — for the purpose of preserving the monument and, purportedly, to address traffic-safety concerns. But the Commission wasn’t satisfied with merely maintaining the cross’s connection to World War I; instead, it spent $100,000 renovating the monument, and then, in 1985, held a religious ceremony featuring prayer by a Catholic priest to rededicate the cross to veterans of all wars.

Finally, a constitutional violation shouldn’t be granted safe harbor merely because it has endured over time. The Bladensburg Cross was privately built and owned, and could have stood forever, undisturbed and without controversy. When individuals express religious beliefs or display religious symbols on private property — however prominently — it is perfectly constitutional. That changes, though, once the government decides to meddle with private religious expression by taking ownership over it. Here, the cross became a symbol of official religious preference for Christians when the Commission got involved. That the Bladensburg Cross has remained in place for so long, displayed and maintained by the government, only compounds and amplifies this message of religious exclusion.

Nevertheless, the court’s misguided focus on the monument’s age and the meaning of the cross as it relates to World War I necessarily limits the reach of today’s ruling. The decision merely permits the display of this specific monument given the unique circumstances surrounding it. It is not a license for government officials to put up religious symbols whenever and wherever they want. As the court’s majority emphasized, “retaining established, religiously expressive monuments, symbols, and practices is quite different from erecting or adopting new ones.”

Those who value the separation of church and state must remain vigilant. In rewriting the meaning of the Latin cross and treating it as a secular icon, even in these limited circumstances, the court has eroded fundamental constitutional principles. If the government can redefine the most recognizable and sacred of religious symbols and practices, and then co-opt them for official purposes, the Establishment Clause’s ban on government promotion of religion — and government preference for one faith — could soon become a relic of the past.

Daniel Mach, Director, ACLU Program on Freedom of Religion and Belief
& Heather L. Weaver, Senior Staff Attorney, ACLU Program on Freedom of Religion and Belief