Politics

Ilhan Omar, Nearly 100 Democrats Say They Won’t Fund Immigration Enforcement

Fibonacci Blue from Minnesota, USA, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Democratic Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar and nearly 100 of her House colleagues are vowing to defund Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Patrol following the fatal shooting of Renee Good by an ICE agent on Jan. 7.

Funding for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) — which includes ICE and Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) — expires on Jan. 30. The group of Democrats, members of the left-wing Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC), is pledging to vote against all future funding for immigration enforcement, citing a laundry list of alleged abuses by the agency.

“We cannot and we should not continue to fund agencies that operate with impunity, that escalate violence and that undermine the very freedoms this country claims to uphold,” Omar told reporters Tuesday. “ICE has no place in terrorizing Minneapolis or any American community. Together we will stand united to ensure we put a check on the pattern of violence and lawlessness from this administration.”

Democratic Illinois Rep. Delia Ramirez described ICE agents as “criminals in masks” while supporting her colleagues’ efforts to defund the agency.

“We need to prosecute the criminals in masks and to cut and claw back ICE’s funding,” Ramirez told reporters, adding that she believes DHS Secretary Kristi Noem should be impeached.

Democratic lawmakers did not provide details about how the federal government should handle criminal illegal immigrants if ICE is defunded, when pressed by the Daily Caller News Foundation.

“The law is clear on the removal of such immigrants who may have criminal records. We’re not opposed to that,” retiringDemocratic Illinois Rep. Chuy García, a member of the CPC’s leadership, told the DCNF.

“What we’re opposed to is the trampling of constitutional rights, the racial profiling, the use of masks, the deadly use of force,” García added. “The disrespect that agents show in our communities has never been inflicted on any community in recent history, and that’s what really is at the heart of all of this.”

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has not taken a position on funding immigration enforcement past the January deadline. On Monday, he sharply criticized the $75 billion infusion allocated to ICE in President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act. No Democrats voted for the tax and spending cut package, which Trump signed into law in July 2025.

“It’s important to understand that a lot of the funding for ICE that is currently being unleashed on the American people … was provided not through the traditional appropriations process, but in connection with the one big, ugly bill,” Jeffries told reporters using his preferred name for Republicans’ budget bill.

The effort to defund ICE is likely to encounter opposition from moderate Democrats and party strategists worried about the political consequences.

Third Way, a center-left think tank that has previously called on Democrats to ditch politically-toxic slogans and “woke” jargon, called on Democrats to distance themselves from the “abolish ICE” talking point in a memo circulated to the party Tuesday.

“The impulse is emotional. The slogan is simple. But politically, it is lethal,” Sarah Pierce and Lanae Erickson, senior analysts for Third Way, said in a statement first reported by NBC News. “Every call to abolish ICE risks squandering one of the clearest opportunities in years to secure meaningful reform of immigration enforcement—while handing Republicans exactly the fight they want.”

Former Democratic strategist Dan Turrentine warned Democrats on Tuesday against taking up the “defund ICE” mantle, deeming it “political insanity.”