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(Para ver la versión en español visite aquí).
Dear Neighbors,
A democracy does not lose its way all at once. It is often tested in the places where fear is allowed to become policy, where intimidation is dressed in the language of enforcement, and where violence is explained away as the cost of order.
Across this country, that democratic test is no longer theoretical. It is unfolding through a troubling escalation of violence surrounding federal immigration enforcement.
Since the current president returned to power, more than sixty people have reportedly died in ICE custody or during immigration enforcement operations. In recent days, more lives were lost. Joan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, a 26-year-old Colombian authorized to work in the United States, was fatally shot by ICE agents in Maine. Days earlier, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a Texas construction worker who had lived in this country for 35 years and, according to his family, was nearing legal status, was killed during an enforcement operation despite not being the intended target. Neither man was the subject of the action that ended their lives.
Behind that number are families, workers, parents, and neighbors whose absence leaves permanent wounds in the communities they helped build. We cannot allow such loss to become background noise. We cannot allow public power to become so militarized, so unaccountable, and so removed from human dignity that death becomes another line item in the machinery of immigration enforcement.
These are not isolated tragedies. They are warnings.
When agents operate in unmarked vehicles, when bystanders and workers are held at gunpoint, when people documenting raids are shot or threatened, when detention facilities become sites of neglect and death, we are no longer speaking only about immigration policy. We are speaking about the boundaries of state power—and whether civil rights retain their meaning when the person harmed is an immigrant, a worker, a neighbor, or someone the government has chosen to treat as disposable.
If those boundaries mean anything, accountability cannot be optional. No badge, no agency, and no federal mandate should place anyone beyond the reach of the law. When the presence of government inspires fear rather than trust, when heavily armed agents become symbols of uncertainty instead of public safety, and when families wonder whether a routine trip to work may end in tragedy, something fundamental has shifted.
Condemnation alone is insufficient. Principles must be translated into public policy. That is why I continue to join the growing calls for Congress to remove ICE from our streets, freeze and reallocate funding that expands detention, deportation, surveillance, border militarization, and the hiring of additional agents, and redirect those public dollars toward healthcare, housing, legal services, mental health care, and the social supports that actually make communities safer.
Those national debates are not separate from the responsibilities we carry here in New York. If democracy depends upon accountability, then every level of government must strengthen it before abuse becomes accepted as ordinary. This is why I introduced Senate Bill S176, the End Qualified Immunity in New York Act. Accountability is not an abstract legal principle. It is the foundation of justice. When government officials violate civil or constitutional rights, people must have a path to seek remedy. Silence cannot be the final answer to abuse. Immunity cannot be the reward for harm.
Yet accountability cannot stop at the state line. Congress must also advance the Bivens Act and the End Qualified Immunity Act so that survivors of DHS abuses and other violations by federal officers can pursue legal remedies when their rights have been violated. Protecting constitutional rights requires more than one reform. Congress must also confront another growing threat: the expanding partnership between federal agencies and private surveillance companies that profit from selling sensitive personal data and sophisticated monitoring technologies with far too little transparency or public oversight. Taxpayer dollars should never subsidize systems that undermine constitutional protections or place immigrant communities and communities of color under perpetual suspicion.
The lesson is urgent: democracy cannot defend itself with slogans. It must be defended through law, oversight, courage, and the refusal to normalize cruelty. A nation that grants power to its agents must also demand responsibility from them. A government that claims to serve the public must never be permitted to terrorize the public.
Our communities know the difference between safety and fear. Safety is care. Safety is housing. Safety is healthcare. Safety is education, due process, language access, legal support, and public institutions that meet people with dignity. Fear is not safety. Intimidation is not safety. Violence is not safety.
In the sections below, you will find community updates, resources, and opportunities for you and your family. We share them in the spirit of service, solidarity, and the belief that even in difficult times, our neighborhoods remain places where people show up for one another.
In Unity,
RJ
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