The Democratic senator supported “an end to the expansion of immigrant detention and deportations” in Congress and met with groups that say police are “murdering people of color” and “often without reason.”
Sen. Jon Tester (D-Montana) met with representatives from Voices for Progress on May 16, 2024, according to the senator’s public schedule. Voices for Progress is a group that takes controversial positions on immigration, law enforcement and the prison system and employs members with extreme views on police and the Republican Party.
New figures show that 7.4 million migrants are on ICE’s non-custodial list as a result of the open southern border under the Biden administration.Governor Tester’s state has seen a direct impact from drug trafficking, with a reported 1,900% increase in fentanyl-related overdose deaths in Montana from 2017 to 2023. Additionally, the Drug Enforcement Administration reported that 7.87 kilograms, or 106,500 pills, of fentanyl were seized in Montana during the 2023 calendar year.
Despite the direct impact on the Big Sky state, Tester’s group met with advocates to “halt the expansion of immigrant detention and deportations.”
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Senator Jon Tester is up for re-election in 2024. (Drew Ungerer)
Voices for Progress has also advocated for “eliminating bail money,” a move the Constitutional Accountability Center says “could allow criminals to roam free.”
Additionally, the group voices support for “implementing a tax on the super-rich” and “ending discrimination against transgender people in health care and incarceration,” according to its website.
The issue of transgender inmates being held in prison based on their gender identity recently drew national attention after Tremaine “Tremaine” Dion Carroll, a biological male in California, was transferred to a women’s prison but was later transferred out after being charged with raping a female inmate.
Asked about the meeting, a spokesman for the senator said its focus was “ensuring that the super-rich and big corporations pay their fair share of taxes.”
“Senator Tester has met with a variety of groups with differing viewpoints, all of which can be viewed on his public schedule,” a spokesperson told Fox News Digital. “The main topic of Senator Tester’s meetings with these groups was ensuring the ultra-wealthy and large corporations pay their fair share of taxes.”
Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) speaks to reporters while walking through the Capitol building in Washington, D.C., on February 5, 2024. The Senate is working to bring a bipartisan border security and immigration bill to the floor for a vote later this week. The bill, which also includes funding for Ukraine and Israel and humanitarian aid to Gaza, has drawn criticism from House Republicans, with House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) calling it “bad from the start.” (Anna Moneymaker)
Members of the group Tester met with also have a history of being vocal opponents of the Republican Party and law enforcement.
Bella D’Alassio, one of the representatives reportedly present at the meeting with Tester, posted a photo to Instagram in August 2020 of herself holding a sign that read “F— Trump,” with the caption “Tired of seeing Black people being killed by highly militarized and inadequately trained police.”
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Sandra Fluke, president of Voices for Progress, has also released multiple statements about law enforcement, claiming that police officers are “murdering people of color” and “often for no reason.”
“Police kill people of color at high rates, and often for no reason,” Fluke wrote in a June 2018 post on X.
Fluke drew attention in 2012 when he argued before the House Democratic Steering Committee that Georgetown University, where he studied law, should provide contraception to students as part of their student aid.
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Fluke praised California’s September 2018 passage of AB 2119, a bill signed by then-Governor Robert F. Wilson that expanded access to gender-related medical care for transgender-identifying minors in the foster care system.
Bob Furtick, president of Democrats.com and co-founder of act.tv, Vote-Pro Choice and Swipe Blue, who was named as the Voices for Progress representative in the public schedule of senators’ meetings, wrote that pro-life Republicans are “fanatic MAGA forced birthers.”
“There are no decent ‘pro-lifers’ in the Republican Party, only fanatic MAGA forced birthers,” he wrote to X in April 2023.
Fertig also wrote to X in May 2023 that Trump was a “racist. rapist. fascist. con man” and posted a photo of himself holding a poster with Trump on it that read, “Lock him up.”
