House Progressives To Oppose Any New DHS Funding Without Reforms

WASHINGTON — The Congressional Progressive Caucus, a group of nearly 100 House Democrats, announced Tuesday its members will oppose any new funding for immigration enforcement until “meaningful reforms” are put in place.

The caucus’ official new position reads: “The CPC opposes any appropriations bill that provides any funding to immigration enforcement agencies within the Department of Homeland Security unless there are meaningful and significant reforms to immigration enforcement practices.”

“The vote was overwhelming, nearly unanimous,” Rep. Jesus “Chuy” García (D-Ill.), one of the caucus’ leaders, told reporters.

The lawmakers adopted the stance amid outcry over President Donald Trump’s aggressive efforts to carry out mass deportations. Last week, ICE officers fatally shot Renee Nicole Good, an unarmed American citizen in Minneapolis. A day later, Customs and Border Protection agents shot and wounded two people in Portland, Oregon.

They are the latest in a series of violent incidents carried out by ICE agents in Democrat-led cities. Anti-ICE protesters assembled nationwide over the weekend, spurred by the Minneapolis and Portland shootings.

During a Tuesday press event with progressives, Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.) told reporters it’s time for Congress to “assert itself” in the wake of Trump’s recklessness. He condemned the “callousness” of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem claiming that Good had tried to run over an ICE agent and was “a domestic terrorist.”

“No matter what your political beliefs are … an American died,” Frost fumed. “She was murdered – need I say, executed – by a federal agent who looked her in the face, looked her in the eyes, and then shot her in the face. And as her car turned into a casket and rolled away uncontrollably and hit a pole, he called her a ‘fucking bitch.’”

“It is a very dark moment,” he added. “I’m proud of the Congressional Progressive Caucus for taking a very principled stand to say that we are not going to be complicit in the killing of our people, in the terrorizing of our communities, and we’re going to do something about it.”

"We are not going to be complicit in the killing of our people, in the terrorizing of our communities," said Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.).

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Democrats could cause real problems for Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), who can only afford to lose one GOP vote on the House floor, given his party’s painfully thin vote margin.

The speaker is trying to usher through half a dozen appropriations bills by Jan. 30 to avoid a partial government shutdown. Funding for DHS, which includes ICE, was not included in the batch of spending bills released Sunday by the House Appropriations Committee.

Johnson could try to attach DHS funding to another spending package, but the prospect of funding ICE is becoming so toxic for some Democrats that the speaker could end up tanking whatever other issues he tries to attach to immigration enforcement money.

Progressive Caucus leaders signaled they’re not angling to shut the government down in their fight over ICE funding.

“We’re not ready to talk about a government shutdown,” García said. “We’re talking about ... the need for reform of an agency that’s received so much money that they don’t know what to do with it, and the more that they have, the more that they’ll spend, the more the abuses that will occur on American citizens and other individuals.”

Some Democrats, like Congressional Hispanic Caucus chairman Adriano Espaillat (D-N.Y.), have previously called for overhauling ICE and restructuring it from the bottom up. Asked if he agrees with that sentiment, Garcia signaled that he does.

“I have never used the term ‘abolish ICE’ until the last round of pounding that my neighborhood took when [top Border Patrol official] Greg Bovino and company showed up to terrorize our community,” said the Illinois Democrat. “That’s when I said, ‘We can never go back to normal.’”

“People will never understand that ICE is an agency of the government, that it has legitimacy, because of all the violence that they have perpetrated,” he said.

Progressive leaders didn’t give specifics on what reforms they’re demanding in order to support funding for DHS. But Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), the caucus’ past leader, said Democrats on the House Judiciary subcommittee on immigration have already been working on a list of “meaningful” DHS reforms they want.

They include things like banning ICE agents from wearing masks, requiring warrants for arrests and requiring the federal government to share information with state law enforcement officials on independent investigations.

Democrats on the judiciary panel “will not vote for these appropriations bills that do not include that kind of significant reform and accountability,” said Jayapal.

In the Senate, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) has been similarly demanding reforms at DHS before approving new money for the agency.

“Democrats cannot vote for a DHS budget that doesn’t restrain the growing lawlessness of this agency,” he posted on social media last week, along with footage of Good’s fatal shooting.

Murphy, the top Democrat on the Senate appropriations panel that oversees DHS, is working on his own legislation to rein in ICE. His proposed reforms are similar to what Democrats described Tuesday, with provisions like banning masks on ICE officers and requiring Border Patrol agents to remain at the border.

The Connecticut senator may be looking at another proposed reform after sounding off on Noem on Monday for barring lawmakers from entering ICE detention centers.

“Members of Congress have a clear, spelled out legal right under the existing DHS funding bill to be allowed into these facilities without this notice,” Murphy posted on social media. “So if Congress is going to keep funding DHS, there must be meaningful restraints to rein in this brazen lawlessness.”