Democrats warm to making ICE funding a line in the sand: ‘Operating outside the law’
The killing of Renee Good and the Trump administration’s surge of agents to Minnesota has Democrats approaching a topic they previously considered a third rail: not supporting additional dollars to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
The House of Representatives and the Senate are currently negotiating spending bills to keep the government running until the end of the fiscal year.
One of the 12 bills funds the Department of Homeland Security, which houses ICE as well as Customs and Border Protection (CBP), and each of the bills needs to clear the 60-vote hurdle known as the filibuster to pass.
And Democrats are considering using spending on ICE as leverage.
“It’s obviously natural that Democrats would want to make sure that any money we spend in DHS is being spent lawfully, and right now that department is full of unlawful activity,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), the top Democrat on the Appropriations Subcommittee for Homeland Security, told The Independent.
This comes after many Democrats were outraged about the murder of Good by ICE official Jonathan Ross last week, when Ross shot the mom in her SUV in Minneapolis.
Murphy said that he did not want to see money go toward additional lawbreaking.
“I’m just not interested in funding an agency that is operating outside of the law and it’s making our communities less safe,” Murphy said. “We’re not going to write a comprehensive immigration enforcement reform bill in the appropriations bill, but in every bill, there’s language on how our money is spent, and I want to make sure that our money is spent lawfully.”
And Murphy is not alone in his opposition to increasing money to ICE.
Sen. Tammy Baldwin from Wisconsin, another member of the Appropriations Committee, told The Independent that she would not support additional money for ICE.
“I have to ask my Republican colleagues, who are obviously taking the lead on these, is this what they want to rubber-stamp for residential neighborhoods and cities across this country, thousands of masked, armed agents coming into their communities?” Baldwin said.
On Monday, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison announced that he would sue the Trump administration for its “unprecedented” crackdown on immigration.
Rep. Kelly Morrison and Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Min.)–along with Rep. Angie Craig –attempted to visit the Whipple Building in Minneapolis to see ICE detainees this weekend.
“They have surged into our state, they are terrorizing our communities, they are not making us more safe,” Morrison told The Independent. “There needs to be reform at ICE at a minimum, and yes, the funding of ICE has to be put on hold until those reforms are put into place.”
Omar said she is not surprised that more people are moving toward her direction.
“I mean, when it comes to DHS and the way that they have been able to allow ICE and border control to act unlawfully, it doesn’t surprise me that not only the American public has thrown on them, but also lawmakers here in Congress,” she told The Independent.
Democrats have limited levers of power given that Republicans control the House and Senate while President Donald Trump occupies the White House.
But the appropriations process gives them some negotiating power as they showed last year when they opposed a continuing resolution in an attempt to force a vote to extend expanded tax credits for the Affordable Care Act’s health insurance marketplace.
ICE received a massive increase in its budget in Trump’s signature “One Big, Beautiful Bill,” including $29.9 billion for enforcement operations and hiring up to 10,000 new agents.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) highlighted how cuts to Medicaid paid for the beefing up of ICE.
“I want everyone to understand, the cuts to your health care are what’s paying for this,” she told The Independent. “Understand how these dots connect. You get screwed over to pay a bunch of thugs in the street that are shooting mothers in the face.”
During his press conference, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said he wanted to see some changes to policies for ICE.
“Clearly, there are common-sense measures that need to be put in place so that ICE can conduct itself in a manner at least consistent with every other law enforcement agency in the United States of America at the state, local and federal level,” Jeffries told reporters. “That’s not too much to ask. Conduct yourself like every other law enforcement agency in the country.”
But not every Democrat is on board with reining in ICE through government funding. Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, a moderate Democrat, has said
“We can’t get back into their stupid defund ICE,” Fetterman told The Independent.
