Call-to-Philanthropy: Disabled Immigrants are Not Your Pity Stories
Sandy Ho, Executive Director of Disability & Philanthropy Forum
April 27th, 2026
The lack of equitable, inclusive, and accessible funding to support disabled immigrants and migrants ensnared in this Administration’s mass deportation agenda should be more than a weekly headline.
It should be a crisis felt across the philanthropic sector.
As ICE’s deportation dragnet expands, disabled immigrants are being detained, deported, and abused – and their stories cannot be erased. This is why we say their names.
Wael Tarabishi was 30 years old. He had Pompe disease — a progressive neuromuscular condition that left him bedbound, reliant on a feeding tube, a tracheostomy, and his father Maher’s constant presence to survive. In 2008, the U.S. government granted Maher permission to remain in the country specifically to care for his son. Maher conducted his annual check-ins with immigration agents and followed the rules. But last year, Maher was handcuffed and detained by ICE during what he thought would be a routine check-in appointment. Wael begged for his father’s release and told anyone who would listen that he would die without him. Three months later, he did.
Bay is a deaf and mute Mongolian man who crossed the border seeking asylum and handed agents a letter explaining his fear of returning home. The letter, written in Mongolian and translated into English, explained his fear of returning to Mongolia, where he had been beaten repeatedly because of his disability. Agents refused to read the letter and placed Bay in expedited removal. At the for-profit Otay Mesa Detention Center, ICE interviewed him without an attorney or sign language interpreter. When an interpreter was provided, it was not in his language — Mongolian Sign Language.
Rodney Taylor came to the United States from Liberia as a toddler for medical treatment, underwent 16 surgeries, and has lived here nearly his entire life. He is a double amputee with two fingers on his right hand, a barber, and a cancer awareness advocate. ICE detained him in January over a burglary conviction from his teenage years — one that the state of Georgia had already pardoned in 2010. At Stewart Detention Center, Rodney is unable to fully charge his prosthetic legs and is unable to push his own wheelchair. A guard told him they would not help unless he was “dying or bleeding out.”
Charles Leo Daniel spent at least close to 1,000 days in solitary confinement at the for-profit Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma, Washington. Despite his serious mental illness, his prolonged period in solitary confinement is unacceptable under international law, as well as federal and state regulations. He died on March 7, 2024. No independent investigation has been made public.
These are not aberrations or pity stories. These are the intended results of an intentionally brutal, abusive, and ableist immigration system that continues to be exacerbated by the current Administration. As our colleagues at Grantmakers Concerned with Immigrants and Refugees highlighted in the death of Nurul Amin Shah Alam, these harms are preventable.
ICE detention has reached its highest population in years. The two federal offices that provided oversight — the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties and the Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman — have been shut down, while private prison companies are reporting record profits.
Millions of immigrants in the United States live with disabilities and are being detained without accommodations, deported without due process, and left without the care infrastructure their lives depend on. Their caregivers are being taken. Their medications are being withheld. Their wheelchairs are being confiscated. Their sign language interpreters are not being provided.
None of these needs should depend on your citizenship or immigration status. None should be used against you.
The Disability & Philanthropy Forum is naming what is happening. We are asking philanthropy to do more than respond to the crisis — we are asking you to fund the infrastructure, center disabled immigrant leadership, and recognize that disability justice and immigrant justice are not parallel movements. They are one.
We are calling on philanthropy to:
Fund at the intersection. Support organizations working at the crossroads of disability rights and immigrant rights — organizations that center disabled immigrant leadership and provide legal representation, direct services, and community organizing for disabled people in and at risk of detention.
Center disabled immigrant leadership. Consistent with the principle of “Nothing About Us Without Us,” disabled immigrants and migrants must be at the center of the solutions philanthropy funds — not as objects of charity, but as experts, advocates, and leaders.
Adopt a disability lens across immigrant, and migrant justice grantmaking. Every immigration-focused grant should ask: Does this reach disabled immigrants? Does this address the specific barriers this community faces? Does this include disability accommodations in its outreach and programming?
Sustain, don’t just respond. Crisis funding is not enough. The conditions that put disabled immigrants at risk — inaccessible systems, underfunded care infrastructure, a detention system designed without disability in mind — require sustained, long-term investment.
Ready to get activated and engaged? Here are just some of the disability-led organizations advancing solutions at the intersections of disability, immigrant, and migrant justice: