Fury Grows Over Democrats Who Won't Back ICE Funding Freeze

Americans across the country are protesting federal agents' violent crackdown on immigrant communities and on dissent, support for doing away with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement entirely is at an all-time high in the wake of an officer's killing of a legal observer, and the outrage is intensifying just as the Democratic Party has negotiating power ahead of a January 30 deadline for funding the government.

A number of Democrats, however, are hesitant to leverage their position in the appropriations fight to rein in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the agencies it controls, including ICE and Customs and Border Protection (CBP), which oversees Border Patrol.

That reluctance, said journalist Mehdi Hasan of Zeteo, should result in primary challenges for "every Democrat who wants to fund and still support ICE."

As Common Dreams reported Wednesday, the Congressional Progressive Caucus, which includes nearly 100 Democratic members of the US House of Representatives, said clearly that it would "oppose all funding" for federal immigration enforcement agencies in the upcoming appropriations bills unless, as Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) said, "meaningful reforms are enacted to end militarized policing practices.”

The House and Senate are currently negotiating a dozen spending bills to keep the government running past the January 30 deadline, and each bill must garner at least 60 votes to pass in the Senate.

A DHS funding bill was already excluded from a spending package earlier this week amid outcry over the killing of Renee Good by an ICE agent in Minneapolis and the agency's violent treatment of demonstrators, bystanders, and even residents who are not involved in protests against President Donald Trump's mass deportation campaign.

But at the Bulwark, Joe Perticone reported Tuesday that a number of Democrats in the Senate expressed doubt that they would treat ICE funding in appropriations bills as a red line to force the administration to drastically change its approach to immigration enforcement.

“I certainly don’t want see funding increases,” Sen. Andy Kim (D-NJ) told the Bulwark. “We’re going through these negotiations right now. I don’t want see that funding... I don’t ever make predictions about where my vote’s coming down on, but what I will say is that I’m certainly gonna fight to stop it.”

Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) told the Bulwark that she would not want to increase ICE's budget, which includes $75 billion it was given in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) last year, but said Republicans were "taking the lead on these [appropriation bills]."

“Is this what they want to rubber-stamp for residential neighborhoods across this country?" she asked. "Thousands of masked, armed agents coming into their communities?”

But while criticizing the agency's practices, she told the Bulwark that discussions about reforming ICE's enforcement should be separate from the appropriations debate.

“That’s obviously—I don’t wanna get in the weeds—that’s obviously an authorizing committee issue,” she said. “When we’re talking about appropriations, I call on my Republicans... Do they wanna rubber-stamp this or what?”

Organizer and attorney Aaron Regunberg compared the comments—which echoed earlier remarks from House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY)—to saying: "We are the resistance. We are also negotiating furiously to figure out how to fully fund the Gestapo."

Sens. Jacky Rosen and Catherine Cortez Masto, both Democrats from Nevada, announced their own proposal on Thursday to redirect some of the OBBBA funding to local law enforcement agencies—many of which work with ICE.

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), the ranking member of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security, did not make any specific policy commitments regarding what changes ICE and DHS would need to make to ensure funding for immigration enforcement continues, but has suggested that Border Patrol agents should return to the border instead of being unleashed in communities with ICE, agents should be banned from wearing masks and required to wear identification, and federal officers must obtain warrants for immigration arrests.

“You should demand that we make sure that this appropriations process is used to make ICE comply with the law,” Murphy told Time magazine. “And I see a lot of signs out there—not one additional dime for ICE in this budget.”

Murphy also told NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday that Republicans must decide if they are "willing to shut down the government simply to endorse the most lawless Department of Homeland Security in the history of the country."

Last fall, the federal government saw its longest shutdown in US history, with funding lapsing for 43 days after Democrats refused to approve a spending package that would have allowed Affordable Care Act subsidies to expire and threatened healthcare for millions. Ultimately, some Democrats caved, and the subsidies lapsed.

Journalist Aaron Rupar said that ahead of the January 30 deadline, "Senate Democrats absolutely have to shut the government down to stop this ICE insanity in the Twin Cities."

"This is not sustainable and cannot be normalized," said Rupar. "Any Democratic vote to provide money to the thugs who are brutalizing this community is a grave betrayal to the people here. Accountability can't wait."