With Congress passing a government spending bill that intensifies the existing battle over the Department of Homeland Security’s future, progressives are targeting the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement efforts with new legislation.
On Tuesday, Reps. Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.) and Yvette Clarke (D-N.Y.) urged fellow Democrats to support the Melt ICE Act. Unlike those in her party who want to amend Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Ramirez’s proposed legislation would essentially end immigrant detention and monitoring under DHS while 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 said at a press conference. “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 just minutes before the House voted 217-214 on a government funding bill that ended the partial shutdown. That legislation gives only 10 more days of funding to DHS as the Trump administration faces increased bipartisan pressure over its violent immigration enforcement tactics.
