Last week's shootings in Minneapolis and Portland has supercharged a push by Democrats in Congress to use an upcoming government funding deadline to try to slash funding to ICE.
Why it matters: Unlike during Trump's first term, it's not just progressives taking up the "defund ICE" banner. The idea is proliferating even among the more moderate and establishment wings of the party.
- "What we've seen in Minneapolis and in Portland is what happens when we militarize against our own people," said Rep. Scott Peters (D-Calif.). "We've got a level of funding that makes ICE bigger than a lot of militaries around the world."
- Peters, a leading member of the center-left New Democrat Coalition, said he is "totally open" to trying to reduce ICE's funding and quipped: "Consider me a progressive."
- Rep. John Mannion (D-N.Y.), a swing-district centrist, noted that the Big, Beautiful Bill nearly tripled ICE's funding: "I would support reducing that funding back to fiscal year 2024 levels if I could."
State of play: Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) is proposing a set of reforms to the agency that he wants to tie to the Jan. 31 fiscal cliff, but some progressives say policy riders are insufficient.
- "We need funding reductions ... policy is not enough," said Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.), who stressed that "'defund' and 'abolish' are two different things."
- "Some of us are at the 'abolish 'place, proudly. And I think moderates can start thinking about what does 'defund' mean," Ramirez told Axios.
Ramirez said she will "have legislation very soon that will have language people can live with" which would "reprioritize funding that should have never have gone to kill people into housing and health care."
- Said Progressive Caucus chair Greg Casar (D-Texas): "There has been a huge increase in money that has provided no increase in safety. ... [Trump] is burning taxpayer money only to make people less safe."
The other side: Some centrist Democrats — while signaling they would support policy changes — drew a clear line in the sand against defunding ICE.
- "I don't know if we need to defund ICE," said Rep. Vicente Gonzalez (D-Texas), who said the agency has been "overly funded" but that "we don't have the votes for that anyway."
- Said Rep. Jared Golden (D-Maine): "I think it is not politically viable and I don't believe in it substantively ... I don't believe in defunding an entire law enforcement agency over the actions of a few of them."
- Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.) said there "are mechanisms in which we should be able to get the administration's attention where our powers can't be ignored," but that he is "not interested in going anywhere near" defunding ICE.
Between the lines: After a week of indicating that extending Affordable Care Act tax credits were his priority in the government funding fight, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) waded into the ICE funding debate during a press conference on Monday.
- "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," he said.
- Beyond that, the Democratic leader was characteristically cryptic, telling reporters: "That's something we will collectively be working on as our discussions continue."
The bottom line: Republicans control Congress, and even progressives on the House Appropriations Committee acknowledged to Axios that any bill funding the Department of Homeland Security likely won't contain cuts for ICE.
- Some lawmakers are also reticent to take up Murphy's threat to oppose a government funding bill if it fails to contain sufficient policy riders to rein in ICE.
- Mannion said he tries "not to let one thing in a budget" keep him from voting for it, telling us, "I've got to be thoughtful about that."
- Said Golden: "It's on Chris Murphy to decide what he wants to do in the Senate, but I'm not for shutting down the government."
