Donald Trump and his supporters may call it the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. But for many, particularly immigrants and their allies, the budget reconciliation bill is atrocious, appalling. and abominable. Trump’s master plan to rid this country of all immigrants of color has targeted thousands of documented and undocumented immigrants for detention, with the goal of deportation. ICE has become more aggressive, by surveilling people in unmarked cars, then swooping in to homes, workplaces, and even schools. They kick in doors and smash car windows to gain entrance. They target young people in order to gain access to their parents. Daily arrest quotas for ICE agents have risen from 1,000 to 3,000. Terror-stricken parents are afraid to leave home or send their kids to school. Yet, none of this is enough to satisfy Trump’s thirst for violence against those he has targeted as the enemies of America.

The fiendish and cruel reconciliation bill will use American tax dollars to deprive people of health care with cuts to Medicaid, Snap, and other essential programs, in order to buy more weapons for the war against immigrants of color. House Republicans who passed the Reconciliation Act (HB1), voted to spend about $150 billion for border security and deportation, to hire 10,000 new ICE officers and 3,000 new border patrol agents, and allocate funding to detain one million migrants and to annually fly one million deported people out of the U.S. Remember the wall that Trump 1.0 told us Mexico was going to pay for? Forty-six billion dollars will be used to construct his long-awaited wall between the U.S. and Mexico border.

Emboldened by the acquiescent Supreme Court, Trump has designed a bill that targets those he falsely calls “invaders,” sacrificing needed programs in the process. Destroying programs that are crucial to the health, safety and welfare of us all, in order to disappear our neighbors, hurts all people who believe in the dignity and worth of human beings. It’s essential that we recognize that Trump’s vile tactics against immigrants hurt everyone.

Wasting no time to destroy as many immigrant lives as possible, on Jan. 20, 2025, Trump signed a series of executive orders to stop legal immigration, beginning by terminating the Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela (CHNV) Parole Program, terminating work permits and deportation protections for migrants from these countries. In May, the Supreme Court upheld Trump’s termination of the CHNV Parole program, leaving more than 500,000 people without legal status, prohibited from working, and subject to deportation.

He also stopped Ukrainians from entering the U.S. by barring the Uniting for Ukraine Program. With another flick of his pen, he suspended the Refugee Admissions Program, stranding thousands of refugees approved to come to the U.S. Immigrants from countries such as Haiti, Venezuela, and Aghanistan, which had been given Temporary Protected Status, found themselves facing the prospect of losing their legal status as immigrants.

As a result of the above executive orders, a whole new crop of previously legal immigrants, many of whom had been in the U.S. for years, holding down jobs, paying taxes, contributing to Social Security and Medicare, and growing the economy in so many ways, now found themselves without legal standing, the authorization to work, and subject to deportation.

The repercussions of removing hundreds of thousands of humanitarian parolees and TPS immigrants from the workforce impacts all of us. The loss of billions of dollars paid into Social Security and Medicare, labor shortages that can result in higher prices and a lowering of the gross domestic product, as less gets produced, can negatively affect the U.S. economy. Who will replace the hotel workers, waitstaff and cooks, housekeepers, home health aides, agricultural workers, construction workers, small business owners, and countless other professions we depend on?

Adding another layer of cruelty, some parolees have been slated by ICE for expedited removal from the U.S. Increasingly, immigrants reporting to immigration court have been told by ICE attorneys that their immigration cases are being dismissed, that they no longer have to check in on a regular basis. It’s a trick that delivers the unsuspecting immigrant, now without legal status, straight into the hands of ICE for expedited removal. Volunteers have taken on the role of accompanying immigrants to court to instruct them to refuse the offer to dismiss their case.

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Thousands of legal immigrants without legal status have created a justification for hiring more agents to detain, disappear, and deport human beings, hence the reconciliation bill’s request for billions of dollars to meet Trump’s ever-increasing deportation goals.

The moral fabric of our country is being torn to shreds, but there is much we can do. Last Monday, Rachel Maddow reported devastating stories of people slated for detention and deportation; a waitress, a four-year-old girl, a 9-year-old, all beloved members of their communities. Their communities fought back. People raised their voices in protest, demanding that their neighbors be freed. Community persistence paid off! ICE allowed each of them to return to the places they called home. We will not be silenced. Rachel Maddow asks an important question. In the face of an attempted takeover by a “dictatorial regime, what is this country going to allow him to do?” The protesters who saved their immigrant friends were resolved to defeat the actions of a “dictatorial regime.” It’s a reminder that together we have power.

Sara Weinberger lives in Easthampton.