Ahead Of DHS Funding Battle, Progressives Demand Congress ‘Melt ICE’ | EUROtoday

With Congress passing a authorities spending invoice that intensifies the present battle over the Department of Homeland Security’s future, progressives are concentrating on the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement efforts with new laws.

On Tuesday, Reps. Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.) and Yvette Clarke (D-N.Y.) urged fellow Democrats to assist the Melt ICE Act. Unlike these in her celebration who need to amend Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Ramirez’s proposed laws would primarily finish immigrant detention and monitoring underneath DHS whereas returning taxpayer {dollars} to the communities impacted by ICE.

“For over a year, our communities have witnessed abductions, kidnappings, the unlawful detention of children, the militarization of our cities, the murder of neighbors, the persecution of dissent and the rise of fascism in our nation – all facilitated by the Department of Homeland Security,” Ramirez stated at a press convention. “Yet there are those in Congress who would still, after all that, expand the DHS budget and ICE capacity to keep Trump’s mass deportation agenda and further hurt our communities.”

Joined by activists and Democratic Reps. Rashida Tlaib (Mich.), Chuy Garcia (Ill.) and Summer Lee (Penn.), Ramirez made the demand simply minutes earlier than the House voted 217-214 on a authorities funding invoice that ended the partial shutdown. That laws offers solely 10 extra days of funding to DHS because the Trump administration faces elevated bipartisan strain over its violent immigration enforcement techniques.

“This isn’t new. Many of us had for years fought against the extreme abuses of ICE and other parts of DHS – which happened under both Republican and Democratic administrations, let’s be clear – and now we’re seeing the consequences,” Garcia stated, citing the September killing of Silverio Villegas Gonzalez by federal immigration brokers in Chicago.

“They’re racially profiling people, they’re brutalizing protesters, ripping families apart, dumping them in concentration camps and claiming the authority to override the Constitution and its protections against this lawlessness,” he continued. “So no half measures against authoritarianism.”

Some lawmakers hope the short-term DHS funding in Tuesday’s invoice will purchase sufficient time to barter over immigration reforms that each events can comply with earlier than the company faces a lapse — which might not considerably influence ICE, in contrast to Ramirez’s proposal.

There are greater than 70,000 folks presently in ICE detention, and a file variety of deaths in custody, based on the American Immigration Council. The Melt ICE Act argues that the immigration companies liable for these numbers can’t be reformed, solely utterly dismantled and rebuilt.

“ICE is now the largest police force in the country, operating with never-before-seen funding to maintain and expand the already largest detention system in the world,” Detention Watch Network’s Setareh Ghandehari stated. “ICE has repeatedly proven that no one is safe in its custody.”

According to new polling by Data for Progress, 54% of voters imagine Congress mustn’t fund DHS until the company will increase regulation and oversight of ICE operations. ICE’s favorability with the general public has plummeted — going from +13-point favorability in Jan. 2025 to -19-point favorability on Tuesday.

“Their focus is to make an America that reflects them, their values, their desires. And we need to be very clear about that,” Lee stated of the Trump administration. “But we also need to fight back, and we need to have the exact same energy that they have right now in our destruction, for building what we actually believe is a better world and a better society.

“An America that reflects us and our values, and the best that we could possibly have to offer it – and we have so much to offer it, which means that we have so much to fight for right now.”