Shontel Brown

WASHINGTON - U.S. Rep. Shontel Brown, a Warrensville Heights Democrat, has introduced legislation that would repeal the $75 billion cash infusion last year’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” gave to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and reverse $186 billion in cuts it made to food assistance.

The “Feeding Families Not Fear Act” Brown introduced last week with Massachusetts Democratic Rep. Jim McGovern has been referred to the House Agriculture and Judiciary Committees. With no cosponsors and no Republican support, it has no realistic chance of passing in the current Congress, but serves as a political statement against two of the law’s most contested provisions.

“Trump’s Big Ugly Law isn’t just bad policy, it’s a betrayal of the American people and American values,” said a statement from Brown, who serves as vice ranking member of the House Agriculture Committee. “The Big Ugly Law paid for a massive new slush fund for ICE by cutting basic food benefits that help families put food on the table. And that reckless blank check is now paying for mass deportation, mass arrests, and mass detentions in communities nationwide.”

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act — signed into law by Trump on July 4 — allocated $30 billion in new funding for ICE arrests and deportation programs and $45 billion for new detention centers, while cutting $186 billion from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. Forty-two million Americans rely on SNAP each month to buy food. The Congressional Budget Office predicts more than 2 million people will see their food assistance terminated as a result of the law.

According to the USDA, 18% of households in Brown’s district rely on SNAP benefits, the highest rate of any Ohio congressional district. In McGovern’s Massachusetts district, 16% of households rely on SNAP.

The ICE funding has come under scrutiny from multiple directions. An analysis by ProPublica found that more than 170 U.S. citizens have been detained by ICE agents during Trump’s second term. And according to the libertarian Cato Institute, which analyzed leaked ICE booking data, only 5% of people detained by ICE have violent criminal convictions, while 73% have no convictions.

McGovern, co-chair of the House Hunger Caucus, was pointed in his criticism of the ICE spending.

“Republicans tell us all the time there is no money to fight hunger, no money to help families with the cost of groceries, no money to help small growers and local farmers,” McGovern said. “According to them, there’s never any more to help working people who are struggling to get ahead. But those same politicians have no problem writing a $75 billion check to ICE—creating an absurd slush fund bigger than the entire military budgets of most other nations. This is all about demonizing immigrants to distract from Trump’s billionaires-first betrayal of the American people."