Washington DC - advocates slammed 's Tuesday address before a joint session of Congress during which the Republican president repeatedly boasted about his mass deportations.
A protester holds a sign reading "Immigrants Make America Great" during a March for Dignity in Los Angeles, California, on March 1, 2025. © MARIO TAMA / GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA / GETTY IMAGES VIA AFP
"Since taking office, my administration has launched the most sweeping border and immigration crackdown in American history," Trump bragged in his , doubling down on racist rhetoric casting immigrants as "criminals" who are "invading" the US.
"The media and our friends in the Democrat Party kept saying we needed new legislation, we must have legislation to secure the border, but it turned out, all we needed was a new president," he added to raucous cheers from the Republican side of the room.
Since returning to the White House in January, Trump has taken a designed to accelerate and expand his mass deportation agenda, including halting refugee admissions to the US, revoking birthright citizenship, and extending fast-track removal proceedings. Some of the orders have been .
The Department of Homeland Security, meanwhile, has at schools, hospitals, houses of worship, and other areas deemed "sensitive." It has also sought to end Temporary Protected Status for and , potentially leaving hundreds of thousands more people vulnerable to deportation.
"If we truly care about protecting American children, no step is more crucial than securing America's borders," Trump claimed.
A demonstrator raises a sign reading "No More Money For Mass Deportations" as immigrants' rights supporters march in Los Angeles, California, on March 1, 2025. © MARIO TAMA / GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA / GETTY IMAGES VIA AFP
Trump's Tuesday remarks triggered swift condemnation from human rights groups demanding Congress stop funding the president's mass deportation agenda.
"While Trump goes on TV tonight to continue his lies and demand Congress give him billions of taxpayer dollars to continue kidnapping immigrants, we must remember that his coordinated anti-immigrant attacks will have devastating consequences on thousands of American communities across the country," Bruna Sollod, senior political director of United We Dream, said in a press statement.
Republicans in the House and Senate are that would extend tax benefits to the ultrawealthy while cutting funding for Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and spending billions more on deportations and so-called "border security."
"Trump’s attacks are causing irreparable damage in the spaces where we all live; we see it in the workplaces without workers, the classroom missing their teacher, and the children without their parents," Sollod said.
"Every dollar that Congress approves for Trump’s anti-immigrant regime and is not only a dollar to continue these mass kidnappings, but a dollar less for our schools, our hospitals, our healthcare."
"We demand an end to the complacency from our elected officials who are considering even more funding for Trump’s mass abductions. Congress must not let a single dollar more go to these state-sanctioned kidnappings."
