Friday, May 1 @10am: NorCal Resist 20th Anniversary of A Day Without Immigrants march and rally. Gather at Southside Park at 10 am. The event will include a rally at Southside Park, a march to the John Moss Building, as well as an art action with community speakers, musical performances, and food and beverages with NO ICE!
Call them detention centers or concentration camps -- whatever you call them, they’re inhumane, morally bankrupt, and political liabilities. Trump's trying to expedite construction of new camps, but because of the public outcry, he’s hoping to keep the whole business out of the headlines.
So let’s get loud about it. Let’s start with some facts and context.
Detention expansion is key to Trump’s goal of one million deportations. Last week, we finally got the Department of Homeland Security’s 161-page 2027 budget proposal. In it, DHS brags about a record-breaking 440,000 deportations last year, and promises to more than double that to one million of our neighbors deported annually.
Deportation camps are central to how they get there. DHS itself says the new camps are “critical to meeting…[the] tasked goal of arresting and removing one million aliens per year.” Detention Watch Network’s toolkit explains that the agency is looking to construct a couple dozen to house upwards of 10,000 people each, often for months on end in cramped and horrific conditions.
These camps are moral abominations. Since Senator Jon Ossoff started an investigation into ICE’s camps last year, he's received more than a thousand “credible reports of human rights abuses": mistreatment of pregnant women, separation of children from parents, physical and sexual abuse, overcrowding, and unsanitary conditions. One grim statistic captures the scale of this horror: The death rate in ICE detention is increasing. In 2026, we’re seeing an average of more than one death every week.
These camps are also a political liability for Trump and his allies. The regime is trying to keep the escalation quiet because the more people hear about these camps, the more they oppose them. That backlash is a real problem for the GOP.
The peak number of detentions in US history came on January 24, the same day DHS agents murdered Alex Pretti for exercising his First Amendment rights to defend his neighbors. Public opposition exploded, the political winds shifted, and Trump made a tactical retreat. After their defeat in the Twin Cities, the White House advised Republicans to stop talking about mass deportations, and the number of detainees has dropped -- but the DHS budget proposal makes clear the regime still plans a massive escalation.
Grassroots activists are throwing sand in the gears, though, successfully rallying public opposition to the camps, including in red states. We’ve seen successful grassroots and legal campaigns in Mississippi, Oklahoma, Utah, Texas, Virginia, New York, New Hampshire, Maryland, and Michigan -- in Tennessee, the opposition of GOP candidates for governor and two dozen local GOP officials successfully killed a project.
On April 25, we're making a big stink. On Saturday, we’re joining Detention Watch Network and other partners on a national day of action against these camps. The regime can try to dramatically increase construction, but they can’t make us be quiet. As long as we have First Amendment rights, we intend to use them in defense of our neighbors. Read on for more ways to stand Indivisible with your community.
In solidarity,
Ezra Levin
Co-Executive Director, Indivisible
Your weekly to-dos
- Keep telling Congress: Trump's war has to end. Despite his erratic announcements of victory/ceasefires/imminent war crimes, Trump's war on Iran grinds on, at the expense of thousands of lives across the region, the wholesale disruption of the world economy, and soaring costs for Americans. We must meet Trump's incompetence and inconsistency with a steady determination of our own to neither give up nor give in. Tell your Members of Congress: Either they do all they can to end the war that Trump and Israel launched, or the blood is on their hands, too. After sending an email via the above link, please call your representative and your sena
I had conversations with high schoolers and retirees alike who were looking to get into organizing for the first time. There was urgency in those conversations. There was clarity, and resolve — but also hope, and joy. A sense that it is we, together, who make our futures. That no one is coming to save us, and that this is not a cause for despair, but for action. We alone are responsible for our democracy. We alone can build a future of dignity, peace, and abundance for all the people of this city and state.
No Kings was not the struggle. It was a place to meet, to count ourselves, to feel in our bones that we are not alone. The struggle is what comes next: in your union, in your neighborhood association, in your DSA chapter, in your school board meeting, in the conversations you have with your coworkers about why things are the way they are and how they could be different.
