Josh Acevedo is currently serving his first term as the El Paso city representative for District 2. Pious Ali has served as an at-large member of the Portland City Council since 2016. Both are members of the Immigrant Steering Justice Committee with Local Progress, a national network of more than 1,700 local officials.

As local lawmakers, we are charged with acting as voices for our communities and seeing to it that constituents’ concerns are heard. Although we are over 2,000 miles away from each other, both of our communities are involved in a sinister pipeline wherein refugees and immigrants deemed “illegal” by federal agents are ripped away from their homes, businesses and families and deported to detention facilities in places like El Paso. 

Beginning in January, Maine saw a dramatic uptick in ICE enforcement after Operation Catch of the Day was launched across the state with the aim of targeting supposed “criminal illegal aliens.” Portland was no exception to the siege. 

In one horrifying instance of ICE enforcement in Portland, an agent smashed a car window to extract a Guinean immigrant with no known criminal history while his wife and their baby were inside with him. A corrections officer with the local sheriff’s office was pulled from his car, which was left in the street abandoned and still running. 

Unfortunately, neither of these cases are unique as federal agents conduct raids and enforcement across the country. But each has a ripple effect that affects families and their community.

What people have experienced in Portland is happening all across the country. The most notable example is Minneapolis, where federal agents shot and killed two civilians in a matter of days, but few corners of this country remain untouched by ICE’s regime. For those detained, getting torn from your community is only the beginning. Detention centers are just one more place where immigrants experience indignity and abuse at the hands of federal immigration enforcement. 

Texas has more detention facilities and houses more detained people than any other state in the nation. Many find themselves in facilities in El Paso, far away from home and with little to no contact with their families. 

El Paso is home to the biggest ICE detention center in the country — Camp East Montana on Fort Bliss. This camp is a $1.24 billion facility run by a for-profit contractor using taxpayer money, two cases of tuberculosis have been detected, and there is little to no training for the staff running it. Even worse, it is egregious in its human rights violations. 

A slew of reports outlining the horrendous conditions detainees have faced that include human feces and urine flooding the floors, an inadequate food supply leading to food rationing among detainees, and physical abuse from guards that have led to three people’s deaths.

As a border community, El Paso experiences not only the Trump administration’s brutal enforcement regime but also the detention of immigrants from around the country who are forced to live in tent cities and substandard conditions, with little oversight or say from the local communities where these facilities are housed. The administration has announced plans to open mega-detention centers in warehouses throughout the country, including in El Paso.

Recently, the El Paso City Council adopted a plan to push back on ICE’s presence in our community. The plan includes a unanimously approved amendment from Rep. Acevedo to investigate establishing a moratorium on new ICE facilities in El Paso, which seeks to bar federal agents from city facilities without a warrant and launches an investigation to determine the current extent of El Paso’s cooperation with ICE and U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Ultimately, we want to make it clear that ICE is unwelcome in El Paso.

Portland, Maine, is taking action, too. Recently, the City Council passed a resolution co-authored by council member Ali urging the governor to freeze rent for residents sheltering in place to create stability for immigrant families when almost everything else is in upheaval. 

Families belong at home, together. People detained by ICE are community members who go to work every day, take their kids to school and care for one another. One thing that gives us both hope is the way our communities have rushed in to fill these gaps, knowing full well that there’s only so much they can do in the face of so much loss. 

In the aftermath of a “disappearance,” neighbors are seen checking in on the victim’s family members. People are patrolling school grounds during pick-up and recess times, watching out for ICE agents. It’s clear now more than ever before that as a community, we stand strong together, and elected officials are doing their part to protect our communities, too.

That starts with local government officials like us.