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Today's guest hosts are Charlotte Hancock, Communications Director for Generation Progress, and Brent Cohen, Executive Director of Generation Progress and the VP of the Center for American Progress.

They discuss the fight to #DefundHate.  The Trump administration has been particularly cruel on the issue of immigration (for example, it was reported this week that President Trump sought out quotes for the cost of building an alligator-filled moat at the southern border and advocated for shooting people in the legs as they attempted to cross the border), but United States immigration policy, and the enforcement of those policies by Homeland Security, ICE, and CBP, has always been deeply flawed. Some of the most egregious actions of this administration have been highlighted fairly extensively by the media—the family separation policy comes to mind—however, the consistent violence, neglect, and physical and psychological harm experienced by people crossing into the United States who are held in our detention facilities is an enormous and ongoing crisis.

In order to address this, activist-led movements have called on the government to abolish ICE and/or significantly cut funding for ICE and CBP, but due to loopholes in the congressional appropriations process, ICE is still managing to claim more and more funding for themselves at the expense of other agencies like FEMA that desperately need the money.

To walk everyone through what’s happening with the #DefundHate movement, congressional appropriations, and immigration policy more generally, Charlotte and Brent are joined today by Yesenia Chavez, the Immigrants’ Rights Policy Analyst at the ACLU, and Amy Fischer, the #DefundHate Coordinator at the Detention Watch Network.

The website for the ACLU is ACLU.org and their Twitter handle is @ACLU.  Yesenia's handle is @MsYeseniaChavez.   The Detention Watch Network's website is DetentionWatchNetwork.org and their Twitter handle is @DetentionWatch.  Amy Fischer's handle is @AmyWFischer.

The website for "The Center for American Progress" is www.AmericanProgress.org and their Twitter Handle is @amprog.

Charlotte Hancock's Twitter handle is @CharlatAnne and Brent Cohen's handle is @BrentJCohen.

Image Credit: Office Of Inspector General Handout/EPA