WASHINGTON — Senate Democrats unveiled their official list of demands for reining in Immigration and Customs Enforcement and President Donald Trump’s crackdown on immigrants on Wednesday, using a potential government shutdown as leverage to force Republicans to agree to major reforms before a key deadline this week.
With funding for about half of federal agencies to expire after midnight on Friday, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Congress needs to end roving immigration patrols like the ones that have killed two American citizens in Minneapolis this month, institute a uniform code of conduct for federal agents, and require that they wear body cameras while banning masks.
“This is not border security,” Schumer said Wednesday of Trump’s immigration raids, which have targeted U.S. citizens and noncitizens alike. “This is not law and order. This is chaos created at the top, and felt in so many of our neighborhoods.”
“What ICE is doing state-sanctioned thuggery,” he added.
Their list of demands notably does not go so far as to include pulling ICE agents out of U.S. cities entirely, as many Democrats have called for, nor does it ask for Trump to fire his embattled secretary of homeland security, Kristi Noem. It is a narrower set of policy proposals designed to unify Democrats and appeal to a handful of Republican senators who have expressed concerns with the often-violent tactics deployed by federal immigration agents.
