Omar Introduces Bill to 'Make ICE Pay' for Destruction to US Cities

On January 10, days after US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents fatally shot US citizen and mother of three Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis, US Rep. Ilhan Omar stood in the bitter cold of her home city, surrounded by a crowd of angry residents who'd taken to the streets.

It was just over a month into the Trump administration's "Operation Metro Surge"—a campaign that would come to be marked by the staggering scale of racial profiling that led to the arrests of US citizens, brazen defiance of court orders, and stunning displays of force, including two more shootings, one of them fatal.

Of the thousands of armed and masked agents who'd arrived to inflict terror upon the Twin Cities, Omar (D-Minn.) declared, "We are going to make sure that these people pay for what they have done to us." A cheer erupted from the crowd.

On Thursday, Omar introduced a piece of legislation aimed at fulfilling that promise. Titled the Make ICE Pay Act, the bill would block the roughly $140 billion allocated to immigration enforcement in last year's massive Republican budget law and redirect it to recovery efforts in communities reeling from ICE sieges.

"For over a year, ICE has been tearing through our nation, leading racist terror campaigns that have caused devastating damage to our cities, to our businesses, and to the lives of our constituents," Omar said.

"In Minneapolis, Operation Metro Surge cost our community nearly $700 million," she said, citing an estimate by the city of Minneapolis. "We have a moral responsibility to end this abuse of power. Our bill will force ICE to pay the price for the damage they’ve left in their wake and ensure that these devastating operations can never be repeated."

The Trump administration has used this funding to construct an enormous network of detention camps that have often held people in squalid conditions without contact with their loved ones or lawyers and to launch a hiring blitz that has swelled the agency's ranks with poorly vetted recruits, some of whom have gone on to commit deadly abuses of their newfound power.

It has also been used to supercharge ICE's footprint nationwide. With 51,000 arrests, August was the third consecutive month in which the agency set detention records.

And more than ever, the agency has gone after immigrants without criminal records, as well as asylum seekers, green card and visa holders, and Haitian and Syrian immigrants the administration abruptly stripped of Temporary Protected Status.

Through the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, Omar's bill would redirect this funding to states and cities on the receiving end of ICE abuses.

It would be used to provide them with economic relief, reimburse them for extra costs and lost economic activity resulting from raids, support schools and colleges that were disrupted, and provide mental health and social support to those affected.

Funds could also be allocated to support record-keeping and investigations into immigration agencies' conduct and to commissions that allow members of the public to testify about their experiences.

In addition to Minnesota, Omar's bill identifies several other localities that would be eligible for funding after being besieged by ICE, including California, Illinois, Louisiana, Maine, North Carolina, and Oregon, where numerous incidents of misconduct have also been documented.

The legislation is co-sponsored by Rep. Jesús "Chuy" García (D-Ill.), Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-Maine), Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove (D-Calif.), Rep. Janelle Bynum (D-Ore.), and Rep. Angie Craig (D-Minn.).