OPPOSE ATTACKS ON IMMIGRANTS IN CONGRESS

RECONCILIATION RESOURCE TOOLKIT FOR IMMIGRATION ADVOCATES (updated 7/1/25)

** Congress is considering legislation that would steal health care and nutrition assistance from children in order to deport our neighbors and expand tax cuts for billionaires. Urge your Member of Congress to oppose! **

Tell Congress: Stop Wasting Our Money Attacking our Communities! 

In this document (jump-linked):

What is happening?

On May 21, the House of Representatives passed their reconciliation bill by a vote of 215 to 214. On July 1, 2025 the Senate passed their version of the bill on a narrow 51 to 50 vote. The bill that Republican leadership are calling the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act of 2025” makes abundantly clear that too many members of Congress were willing to put the interests of billionaires over their own constituents.

We now expect the House to vote on the bill as it passed the Senate. You can read a short explainer of the what is in the bill that passed the Senate here.

This bill will leave millions uninsured and at risk of poverty and hunger, while supercharging immigration detentions and disappearances. It constitutes a threat to American democracy and community safety. It also adds an estimated $4.5 trillion to primary deficits over the coming decade and additional trillions to the national debt.  

The House still has the opportunity to stop this bill! We encourage you to reach out to your Members now to urge them to VOTE NO!

What’s in the Bill?  

The reconciliation bill moving toward a vote in the House presents a generational threat to the democratic rule of law and community safety across the country. This bill will deprive children and families of nutrition and health support programs while supercharging an immigration enforcement agenda that threatens communities and constitutional protections. The policies it will supercharge are not just a question of immigration, they challenge the foundations of our democracy.

The bill unleashes approximately $150 BILLION for immigration detentions, disappearances, and community disruption. The bill’s immigration provisions:

  • Provide approximately $150 billion in largely unrestricted funds for the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement agenda, which has already prompted a constitutional crisis in its lawlessness
  • Manipulate the reconciliation process to make dramatic changes to immigration law, including efforts to scrap statutory protections for unaccompanied children
  • Dramatically expand the detention and jailing of immigrants, including billions for the detention of children without any restriction on the duration of detention
  • Target immigrant children for invasive physical examinations and summary deportations without a day in court
  • Impose prohibitive  “fees”, that operate like penalties, for immigration related applications that have never had a fee attached before, including a minimum $100 penalty to apply for asylum
  • Provide $1 billion to divert military resources toward civil immigration detention and enforcement
  • Exclude trafficking and domestic violence victims, refugees, asylees, and people with Temporary Protected Status, among others, from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the Affordable Care Act, Medicare and the Affordable Care Act
  • Cut more than 2.6 million children from the benefits of the Child Tax Credit if they don’t have a parent with a Social Security Number (even if they pay taxes using a tax identification number)

Read more about the House bill’s immigration provision here; for a detailed title-by-title analysis, check out this running analysis.  

Across the board, the bill targets working families and vulnerable members of our communities by decimating safety net programs that feed our children, provide basic access to health care, and keep our communities safe. Under the bill:  

  • Approximately 17 million people would lose their health insurance
  • Millions of people will be at risk of losing their household’s food assistance because of harsh work requirements; nearly everyone who receives support through Medicaid and SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) would be at risk of losing benefits, including people with disabilities and seniors
  • Families from historically marginalized communities would be at greatest risk – 2/3 of the children who participate in Medicaid or SNAP are from communities of color; these communities include refugees, people granted asylum, and survivors of trafficking and domestic violence, all of whom would lose eligibility for SNAP
  • The nearly 14 million children who rely on both Medicaid for health care and SNAP for food would be a particular risk of poverty and hunger
  • The harm caused to children by the resulting hunger and deprivation of health care is described by experts as likely “serious and generational in scope,” including shrinking lifespans and worse educational and career outcomes for young people
  • Onerous new paperwork and administrative burdens on Medicaid applicants could push more than 2 million people off the program.

Draft email to your Member of Congress:

Re: Oppose the Harmful Reconciliation Bill!

Dear [Member of Congress name / staffer name]:

I am reaching out to urge [Representative X] to vehemently oppose the reconciliation bill. This bill lays the groundwork for the U.S. government to steal food and health care from children in order to fund tax cuts for billionaires and supercharge disappearances.

Our communities are already suffering disruption because of the Trump administration’s lawless and chaotic approach to immigration enforcement. ICE is ripping parents from children and deporting U.S. citizens. Many mixed status families are already afraid to send their children to school because of the increased immigration enforcement in our communities. Mental health professionals warn of the long-standing harm prolonged detention and mass deportations will cause children.

We can hardly imagine the scale of the harm if Congress provides tens of billions toward these lawless actions. [Consider adding specifics here about the impact immigration enforcement actions have had in your community.]

Our communities will also be devastated by the reconciliation bill’s provisions that decimate access to programming that ensures millions of children have food and health insurance. In our communities, parents are frightened they will lose their ability to feed their children; and we all worry about the millions who will become uninsured. [Consider adding specifics here about the ways in which slashing safety net programming will impact families.]

We urge you to stand with our communities and against the interest of billionaires and private prison executives. Oppose the reconciliation bill.

Sincerely,

[  ]

Resources & Advocacy Tools

Advocacy Tools

Town Halls: Attending a town hall is an important way to make your voice heard. Indivisible.org provides these tips on how to identify upcoming events where your representative can hear directly from you.

Op-Eds and Letters to the Editor: Submitting a written piece to your local newspaper or major newspapers is a great way to get your message heard and maybe even read by your Member of Congress. Each publication will have their own requirements (including a strict work count). For example, this is the criteria and submission form from the Lincoln Journal Star (a Nebraska newspaper). Three keys to getting your message printed: timeliness, personal spin or an intriguing intro line, and brevity.  

E-Mail Your Member of Congress: Use this link to send an electronic message to your Congressional representative.

Resources

Contact with questions: