Letter to U.S. Senate Urging Vote Against Homeland Security Appropriations Act

January 27, 2026
 

The Honorable John Thune 
U.S Senate Majority Leader 
United States Senate United States Senate
Washington, DC 20510 

The Honorable Chuck Schumer
U.S. Senate Democratic Leader
United States Senate United States Senate
Washington, DC 20510 

To the Members of the U.S. Senate,
We, the undersigned members of the California State Legislature, representing the most populous state and the fourth largest economy in the United States, strongly urge you to vote against the Fiscal Year 2026 Homeland Security Appropriations Act, which passed the House of Representatives last week and appears before you.
As written, the measure provides $64.4 billion in total discretionary funding, including $3.0 billion classified as defense spending and $61.4 billion as nondefense spending. Moreover, it allocates $28.0 billion to the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to “deploy high-tech surveillance and interdiction tools,” and $3.3 billion for the United States Secret Service to “maintain zero-fail missions by funding aggressive recruitment and retention.” The sizable investment in and the expansion of the Department of Homeland Security is alarming, given its real harms to American lives, including the recent murder of a lawfully abiding nurse who worked for our own Veterans Administration.
Over the course of the last couple of months, ICE has demonstrated a complete disregard for protected civil liberties by indiscriminately using violence against U.S. Citizens as a means of intimidation and coercive enforcement. Within the past year, federal reporting and independent trackers show a steep increase in people detained, with ICE’s average total detained population rising from roughly 39,000 in January 2025 toward figures in the tens of thousands by late 2025 - numbers tracked by TRAC, Migration Policy, and Project On Government Oversight - while ICE simultaneously broadened the footprint of facilities used across the country.
On January 7th, 2026, Renee Nicole Good was fatally shot by Jonathan Ross, an acting ICE agent. As communities reacted, ICE escalated the situation further by meeting protests with violence, resulting in the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti on January 24th, 2026. These deaths were cruel and unnecessary, and exemplify ICE increasingly operating outside of the scope of their jurisdiction by conducting operations with excessive use of force. In each situation, the Trump Administration quickly and erroneously claimed that ICE agents acted in self-defense, referring to Americans as “domestic terrorists” despite video footage and witness testimony that show otherwise.
Further, ICE has continuously targeted our most vulnerable populations by threatening and conducting immigration raids at K-12 schools. Most recently, ICE detained five-year-old Liam Ramos and his father and proceeded to send them to a detention center in Texas without due process. Actions such as these are inherently unconstitutional and have prompted parents and students to avoid bus stops, morning commutes, and schools, effectively disrupting everyday operations and local economies.
The Trump Administration has failed to take accountability or provide proper oversight of DHS operations and, more alarmingly, has suggested blanket immunity for ICE agents. Regarding the killings of U.S. citizens Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Homeland Security have refused to coordinate with local and state law enforcement on an independent investigation into the use of force.
The extreme overreach of the federal government should not be funded at the expense of other programs or with taxpayer dollars – especially when those very taxpayers are being endangered.
California is the fourth-largest economy with an annual GDP of over $4 trillion, and yet we, like other states, are vulnerable to detrimental federal actions and congressional fiscal decisions. The uncertainty of California’s budget is largely impacted by the erratic, disruptive, and uncertain nature of what’s happening in Congress. This has included: 1) cuts to MediCaid; 2) sharp increases in healthcare premiums due to the lack of congressional action on subsidies; 3) cuts to reproductive care, and 4) cuts to our local public health departments that serve as the frontline care for many families.
Even worse, the Federal Administration has been cutting essential funding to states as political retribution. In January 2026, the Trump administration moved to freeze over $10 billion in federal funding for child care, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families
(TANF), and social services in five Democratic-led states - California, Colorado, Illinois, New York, and Minnesota.
This is compounded by the passage of HR 1, which enacts the largest health care cuts in US history, with about $1 trillion cut from Medicaid. For California, the harm will be severe. Up to 3.4 million people could lose Medi-Cal coverage, and the state could lose $30 billion in federal funding each year. We, as legislators, many of whom help oversee California’s healthcare system and state budget, still do not know the full fiscal impacts on our state healthcare system or health insurance markets.
Americans should not pay the price of losing their healthcare, childcare, and emergency services to further the draconian and opaque actions of President Trump and Secretary of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem. At a time when the Federal Administration has heightened its rhetoric around fraud, Congress must exercise its constitutional oversight in demanding accountability and transparency before funding its unconscionable actions.
We therefore ask that you reject the proposal on the Senate Floor and instead work to fund critical programs like healthcare and social services.
Sincerely,