Democrats demand that ICE agents behave as if they might ever have to face consequences for breaking the law. Republicans say 'impossible.'
They mostly break down to"force ICE agents to follow the law and be the tiniest bit accountable for their failings."It is beyond tragic that it took the shooting deaths of two American citizens in Minnesota at the hands of ICE and Border Patrol to freshly mobilize American sentiment against the Department of Homeland Security’s ongoing immigrant purge, but now that it has finally happened, Democratic members of Congress need to be taking advantage of this moment as strongly as they possibly can, in order to pass legislation reining in the power of these DHS agencies to infringe upon the civil liberties of Americans.
This is a rare opportunity indeed: The typically feckless Congressional Democrats have already managed the difficult work of separating the funding of DHS from other bills that passed this week towhich gives them a purity of purpose that they don’t usually have. They can stick to their demands for the reform of ICE, secure in the knowledge that shutting down DHS will affectDHS. Will some government workers in departments such as FEMA or the Transportation Security Administration also get swept up into the shutdown of DHS, being forced to work without pay? This is unfortunately the case, but this is also likely the best chance that Capitol Hill Democrats willin exchange for fake promises, as they did on expiring healthcare subsidies, but this would be a perfect moment for them to show some courage. So then, what are the Dems demanding of ICE? What is their laundry list of necessary reforms that GOP Congressional leaders are already calling “impossible” and “totally unrealistic”? DHS funding is set to expire on Feb. 13, with no compromise in sight, butfrom House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer illustrate how the Congressional Democrats view the strength of their position. They know that these demands for basic law enforcement accountabilityand are effectively defying Congressional GOP leaders, and ultimately Donald Trump himself, to loudly state their objection to demands like “make ICE agents show their faces while they’re shooting Americans.” there’s certainly plenty to criticize in the Dems’ asks but this is why splitting off the DHS funding from everything else was such a big win – there’s going to be far less pressure on Dems to end a DHS-only shutdown than there was when “food stamps run out” was on the tableare a laundry list of Democratic priorities that range from primarily symbolic to those that are critical to immigration enforcement operations. They would require, for instance, ICE and immigration agents to not wear masks or face coverings and to wear legible ID, being required to verbalize their ID number and name if asked. Importantly, the demands seek to codify that ICE would need to get judicial warrants to enter private residences in search of an arrest, rather than claimingthat it could burst into any home with only an administrative warrant giving the power to make an arrest. Other demands on the list would require ICE to verify whether a person was a U.S. citizen before taking them into custody, bar them from operating near locations such as schools or polling places, bar them from relying purely on racial discrimination to justify traffic stops or searches, and establish universal use-of-force standards via expanded training. Under the second Trump administration, training time for ICE agents hasalthough the problems clearly go far deeper, considering that the killers of both Renee Good and Alex Pretti were both agents of ICE and Border Control who had been with their agencies for years.while trying to simultaneously ignore that no universal standard or enshrined federal law will actually hold them to this in the long run. Indeed, DHS policystated that agents should be wearing body cameras, and a program to equip those agents with cameras already existed within the agency … until the Trump administrationwhile also slashing the 22-person staff involved in distribution and review of body camera footage to only three people. The cameras have only ever been physically distributed to a small fraction of ICE’s overall agents. GOP leaders in Congress immediately got to whining about the thought that agents of ICE should be expected to operate with the smallest degree of accountability, saying that an agent who is made to reveal his identity while arresting and shooting Americans is inherently being “doxxed.” Senate Majority Leader John Thune called the prospect of reaching a compromise “an impossibility,” while notably refusing to actually engage with the media on specificallythis week. “Their demand list went from three items to 10 items. It just shows you they’re not, they’re not serious yet. There’s just a bunch of stuff in there that’s a nonstarter, and they know it. There are a few things that, actually, there’s probably some room to maneuver on there, to negotiate on. But a lot of that stuff, obviously, just wasn’t serious.” The Democratic rhetoric, meanwhile, has been notably firmer: For once, you get a projection of strength here rather than the vague backpedaling coming out of Thune’s mouth. It’s nice to see at least some Democratic Senators acting unafraid about the prospect of having to shut down DHS entirely in order to wring these concessions out of Republicans on Capitol Hill.. “In my view, they are the minimum that ought to be required of the Department of Homeland Security. Shutting down the Department of Homeland Security is minor compared to losing our freedoms.” With all this said, even a DHS shutdown directly caused by the two sides failing to come to a consensus wouldn’t result in ICE suddenly ceasing its operations due to lack of funding, as one might hope. Itin Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” passed last July, but even that outcome is more desirable than Congress simply ponying up yet more additional funds without extracting legal guardrails for ICE’s operation. Congressional Democrats might as well force the agency to dip into this war chest, which it was presumably saving for just such an instance. Let them deplete some of their other BBB funds while the threat of other DHS operations grinding to a halt forces Republicans to come to the bargaining table. Dems need to demand a ban on ICE at polling places and no ICE operations in run up to election before agreeing to any DHS fundingOne person who might well need to get involved for any forward momentum to exist is Donald Trump himself, given that Congressional GOP seem to be divided on the topic of ICE reform, and need clear marching orders so they can pretend to have opinions of their own. Trump, meanwhile, is clearly assessing just how politically damaging the continued fallout of ICE’s reign of terror has been in deciding how many concessions to make. House Republicans like Speaker Mike Johnson have likewise been threatening to attach poison pills to any legislation, such as the SAVE Act, a Trump-backed bill requiring stricter proof of citizenship to vote, but Democrats will have little reason to humor any such attempts. They will be better off sticking to their guns, continuously trumpeting that the ICE reforms they’re demanding are widely popular, with nearly two-thirds of Americans“Federal immigration agents cannot continue to cause chaos in our cities while using taxpayer money that should be used to make life more affordable for working families,” reads the combined statement from Jeffries and Schumer. “The American people rightfully expect their elected representatives to take action to rein in ICE and ensure no more lives are lost. It is critical that we come together to impose common sense reforms and accountability measures that the American people are demanding.”
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