Pressley Has Stood in Vigorous Defense of Immigrant Communities in MA 7^th and Nationwide, Fought to Bring Detained Neighbors Home and Close the Dilley Detention Center

Pressley Has Led Efforts in Congress to Address Childhood Trauma, Championed Policies to Support Child Health, Education, Safety

Video (YouTube)

WASHINGTON – Today, Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley (MA-07) rallied with colleagues, caregivers, advocates, and impacted families to demand the end of child and family detention. While the Trump Administration continues attacking our immigrant neighbors, detaining families, and traumatizing children, Congresswoman Pressley delivered powerful remarks where she discussed the importance of keeping families together, protecting children from trauma, and ensuring immigration policies do not place children and families in harmful detention.

The rally was organized by the National Domestic Workers Alliance and the 10 Steps Campaign, and featured an installation of 620 teddy bears and paper dolls—one for every ten children arrested by ICE—alongside a rally and public story hour on the Capitol grounds.

In a March Oversight committee hearing, Rep. Pressley centered the children detained and traumatized by ICE who are being forced to bear the effects of lifelong trauma. In February, in her boycott of Trump’s State of the Union, Rep. Pressley spent the day uplifting the stories of children traumatized and detained by ICE through counterprogramming engagements, a floor speech, and an office installation depicting their stories and art.

A transcript of the Congresswoman’s remarks at the rally is available below and the video is available here.

Transcript: Pressley, Advocates Rally to End to Child and Family Detention, Demand Trump Stop Traumatizing Our Neighbors
U.S. Capitol
May 20, 2026

Hello, movement family! 

And indeed we are one movement family, one human family. Our freedoms and our destinies are tied. 

Thank you for being here today. Thank you for speaking out, and thank you for speaking up for our babies and our neighbors. 

James Baldwin once said, “the children are always ours, every single one of them, all over the globe, and I’m beginning to suspect that whoever is incapable of recognizing this may be incapable of morality.”

Three months ago, I stood in the well of the house floor and decried the child abuse taking place behind the wall at the Dilley Detention Center, a baby prison. 

Children denied formula, water too putrid to drink. Sick babies, children with disabilities deteriorating. Fathers holding their babies in their arms as they scream, unable to sleep under the bright prison lights. Children’s drawings torn to shreds by guards to try to hide the truth from the world. Mothers with high-risk pregnancies thrown in vans and dropped along the border with nothing but funds in a commissary account. 

The world is watching. The world is watching as the United States is destroying the lives of children and parents. Trauma that can endure for a lifetime. Innocent babies, hardworking people who committed no crime came to this nation with hopes and dreams, who fled horrific violence, who work demeaning jobs and make unspeakable sacrifices for their babies’ survival. 

Let me be clear, no family should be torn apart by this government. No family should be detained. No family should be separated. 

We must close the Dilley Detention Center immediately. We must reunite families. 

Our immigrant families are our neighbors, our coworkers, our loved ones. 

Seeking asylum is a human right. Being undocumented is not a crime. Families should be able to live and work in our communities while they go through the immigration process.

In a just America, these families would have been offered a just legal process, compassionate care, and a pathway to residency and citizenship. 

A parent seeking safety for their child is always just. A child seeking a childhood is always just. 

Many of the families at Dilley have been mired in the process of working towards legal status for many years, like a family of four that’s locked away at Dilley right now. Before they were kidnapped by ICE, their dad was working late shifts at two jobs and driving Uber to make ends meet. Their two daughters were thriving at their school, their mother beloved by neighbors, and building a life for their family. 

That’s what this fight is about. That’s who it’s for. Our effort is not futile, it is righteous. Every family we have fought for the release of is proof that we are powerful, and our advocacy matters. 

Those who are driving this hurt and harm, they want us to feel small, they want us to feel defeated, they want us to feel isolated, but we are powerful, and we will not give in to the ease of cynicism. We will practice the discipline of hope when families are counting on us to stand in the gap.

Not when seven year old Mathias is begging to go back to school from behind the wall of the Dilley prison.

Not when nine-year-old Valentina is praying to God to free her from behind the wall of the Dilley prison.

Not when 11-year-old Manreet spent her birthday behind bars vomiting from the toxic water at Dilley.

Not when two-year-old Daphne, from my district, has spent months asking where’s daddy?

To every family impacted, no matter the status of your paperwork, no matter how many months you have called America home — this congresswoman loves you. 

You deserve to be safe. I’m so proud to call you my neighbor, and I will fight for your childhood like you are my own child, because you deserve that. 

You deserve a childhood. You deserve a life free from fear. 

Thank you.

—

Congresswoman Pressley has been an outspoken advocate in defense of immigrant communities and fought to bring detained neighbors home.

• As a leading voice and legislator, Rep. Pressley’s advocacy to protect children from abuse and trauma dates back to her days as a Boston City Councilor. In her first term in Congress, she partnered with the late Chairman Elijah Cummings to hold the first Congressional hearing on childhood trauma on the Committee on Oversight and Reform.
• Rep. Pressley leads the STRONG Support for Children Act, which would support communities in addressing childhood trauma through healing-centered, neighborhood-based, gender-responsive, culturally specific, and trauma-informed approaches that acknowledge the impact of systemic racism and inequities over generations. She has called for such trauma-informed and child-centered approaches to every issue, including: surging baby formula to Gaza, addressing the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on students, addressing sexual harassment targeting girls, committing to end gun violence, and more.
• Rep. Pressley has shone light on the inhumane attacks by ICE on immigrant communities and pushed back against the reckless agency. During Oversight Democrats’ bicameral shadow hearing on the use of violence by ICE, Rep. Pressley highlighted the urgency of the moment by uplifting stories of traumatized community members she met with during her trip to Minnesota with Rep. Ilhan Omar (MN-05) and invoking the horrifying detention case of five-year-old Liam Ramos. In the Massachusetts 7^th, Rep. Pressley has recognized and supported the many families torn apart and children suffering from the detention of a loved one—including harrowing attacks on Massachusetts families in their daily lives, abductions of dedicated workers at the Allston car wash, visiting Tufts graduate student Rümeysa Öztürk during her unlawful detention and pushing to bring her home, and more.
• At last year’s State of the Union Address, Rep. Pressley was joined by Claire Bergstresser, an Everett constituent, dedicated public servant, AFGE union member, and wheelchair user who was terminated during Trump’s mass federal layoffs from her service providing fair housing with HUD. In 2024, Rep. Pressley was joined by Priscilla Valentine, Boston teacher, first-generation American, and student debt relief recipient. In 2023, Rep. Pressley was joined by Jaqueline Sanches, a Mattapan resident, early educator, and mother of two. In 2021, Rep. Pressley was joined virtually by Christina Morris, a Hyde Park resident, union carpenter, and mother of four. In 2019, Rep. Pressley was joined by Estefany Pineda, a DACA recipient, as her guest to the State of the Union Address. In 2020, she invited Nneka Hall, a professional doula and healthcare justice advocate, as her guest to the State of the Union. In 2020 in the midst of the impeachment trial, the Congresswoman personally boycotted the speech and delivered the official response to the 2020 State of the Union Address on behalf of the Working Families Party.
• As immigrant communities have been under siege by the Trump administration, Rep. Pressley has been a leading voice in pushing back and defending our immigrant neighbors.
• Rep. Pressley convened immigrant entrepreneurs and small business owners, community advocates, and municipal leaders to hear of the essential role that immigrant-owned small businesses play in Massachusetts’ economy and communities and how they are suffering under Trump’s attacks.
• In January 2026, Rep. Pressley and Senator Markey held a field hearing with members of the Haitian community on the importance of extending Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Haiti. Testimony was documented in the Congressional Record.
• Rep. Pressley also leads a discharge petition that could compel the House vote on a bill to require the Trump Administration to extend TPS for Haiti for three years. 
• In February 2026, during Oversight Democrats’ bicameral shadow hearing on the use of violence by ICE, Rep. Pressley demanded Congress end qualified immunity to ensure federal law enforcement officers are held accountable for breaking the law and murdering civilians. Rep. Pressley called on her colleagues not to settle for bare minimum reforms in funding negotiations for the Department of Homeland Security, instead urging them to fight to rebalance power and restore accountability.
• In January 2026, at the invitation of Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (MN-05), Congresswoman Pressley went to Minneapolis to meet with organizers and community members impacted by ICE’s violent operation in Minnesota, where they have murdered bystanders, terrorized schools and small businesses, and abducted children and parents.
• Following the ICE murder of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, Congresswoman Pressley and Senator Ed Markey (D-MA) introduced the Qualified Immunity Abolition Act of 2026, which builds on the lawmakers’ prior work by granting victims the right to sue federal law enforcement officers—not just state and local—for civil rights violations and abolishing the defense of qualified immunity in these suits. The expanded legislation would help deliver accountability for families abused by law enforcement, including ICE agents.
• Congresswoman Pressley delivered a floor speech on the need to end qualified immunity for federal law enforcement, including immigration officers. Watch the floor speech here.
• In January 2026, Congresswoman Pressley condemned the ICE murder of Renee Good in Minnesota and motioned to subpoena all records and footage related to the shooting, but Republicans obstructed it. Footage of Congresswoman Pressley’s motion to subpoena is here.
• In December 2025, Rep. Pressley convened and welcomed home the workers and families impacted by the cruel and unlawful ICE raid at an Allston car wash in November. Rep. Pressley delivered a powerful speech on the House floor condemning the Allston ICE raid and defended the vibrant immigrant communities who are being maliciously stolen from their homes, ripped from their families, and unlawfully detained and deported by the Trump Administration and Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
• In June 2025, Congresswoman Pressley convened immigrant justice advocates, local leaders, and impacted families to tell Donald Trump and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE): Hands off our immigrant neighbors. 
• Rep. Pressley has also been an outspoken critic against the unlawful detention of Rümeysa Öztürk, a Tufts PhD student, Somerville resident, and constituent of the Congresswoman’s who was unlawfully detained for weeks in retaliation for her protected speech. After weeks of advocacy and Congressional oversight, including a visit to detention centers in Louisiana, Rep. Pressley and Senator Ed Markey welcomed Ms. Öztürk to Massachusetts following her arrival from ICE detention in Louisiana.
• Rep. Pressley has also spoken out against reports of ICE activity in the MA 7th and other municipalities in Massachusetts.

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