US Politics
Democrats target ICE’s ‘Big, Beautiful Bill’ bucks amid Trump’s Minneapolis crackdown
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As Immigration and Customs Enforcement continues its crackdown in Minneapolis and President Donald Trump threatens to invoke the Insurrection Act, Democrats are targeting the money Republicans gave to beef up the agency as a way to slow the agency’s aggressive deportation push.
Some have called on Congress to pull funding for ICE as a way to rein in the agency. The calls have intensified after the shooting of Renee Good in Minnesota by an ICE agent, which sparked protests. The Trump administration has refused ot change tactics and surged even more officers into the area to make deportation arrests.
When Republicans passed their “One Big, Beautiful Bill,” they included massive increases for ICE, including $29.9 billion for enforcement operations and an additional $45 billion to build new detention facilities.
“So the idea that somehow they’re underfunded, everyone knows they’re well-funded because they’re offering $50,000 signing bonuses to the recruits coming out of police forces and coming out of the local population in places like Michigan,” Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.), a moderate, told The Independent this week.
As The Independent reported earlier this week, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the democratic socialist vanguard from New York, has drilled home the point that the money used to pay for ICE funding in the bill came from cuts to health care.
But beyond that, Democrats are split on what exactly to do about ICE and ways to declaw the agency. The Congressional Progressive Caucus got behind Rep. Jimmy Gomez’s bill to move that money toward affordable housing. Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada, a moderate, introduced legislation that would transfer the almost $75 billion toward local law enforcement.
She told The Independent that ICE should be funded at its traditional levels of up to $10 billion annually.
“They don’t need the excess funds of $29 billion that the Republicans afforded,” she said. “That’s why I am saying, let’s transfer those funds to work with police officers who actually work to keep our community safe.”
The government is set to run out of money by the end of the month and it could trigger another government shutdown. But instead of the normal process of passing an “omnibus” bill where all 12 spending bills to keep the government open pass, Republicans in the House pushed to pass individual bills or “mini-bus” spending bills that couple a few bills together.
Ironically, that gives Democrats significant leverage, since they may now want to ensure ICE does not receive any additional money for the annual bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security.
“I won’t go for a penny of funding for ICE until they stop terrorizing Minnesotans,” Rep. Angie Craig, who represents the Minneapolis suburbs, told The Independent on Wednesday.
Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, who earned national headlines last year when he visited El Salvador to visit Kilmar Abrego Garcia after he was mistakenly sent to El Salvador, echoed the sentiment.
“ I will not vote for one more dime for Trump’s lawless ICE operations, and that’s why they’re working to try to rein in those operations,” he told The Independent.
ICE is unlikely to be defunded, let alone abolished like some progressives would want, especially considering Republicans control Congress and when Trump is president and Stephen Miller is at the president’s side.
House Speaker Mike Johnson swatted down the idea of even putting guardrails on the agency and told The Independent that Democrats were playing “political games.”
“I think there’s a lot of Democrats playing games right now with national security and with law enforcement,” Johnson said on Wednesday. The speaker also referenced the killing of Renee Good by ICE agent Jonathan Ross.
“They are enforcing federal law,” Johnson said. “They’re going and getting dangerous criminals, sometimes in sanctuary cities, where they get too much resistance, and I you know, we’ve seen the tragic consequences and effects of that, so I don’t think we need to be cutting funding right now.”
Some Democratic advocacy groups are chilly on using the term “Abolish ICE.” Third Way, a centrist Democratic organization, released a memo called “Democrats: Abolish ICE Abuses—Not ICE.”
“The current moment has opened a rare window to challenge the status quo in immigration enforcement. Democrats can leverage this moment to push for real, structural improvements that improve public safety for all—but only if they avoid playing into abolitionist frames that opponents will weaponize.”
Some Democrats believe the party paid a price in 2024 because of the surge in immigration at the U.S.-Mexico border during the Biden administration.
In response, some Democrats in swing states and districts voted for Trump’s legislation, including the Laken Riley Act, which allowed the Department of Homeland Security to detain immigrants arrested for larceny, burglary, theft and shoplifting – in the first weeks of 2025.
But now that the tide is shifting against ICE, not just among Democrats but among independents, and the liberal party feels an increased need to show it is doing something to control the agency.