Ahead of DHS funding battle, progressives demand Congress
As Congress passes a government spending bill that intensifies the existing battle over the future of the Department of Homeland Security, progressives are taking aim at the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement efforts with new legislation.
On Tuesday, Reps. Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.) and Yvette Clarke (D-NY) urged their fellow Democrats to support the Melt ICE Act. Unlike those in his party who want to amend Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Ramirez’s proposed legislation would essentially end immigration detention and monitoring under DHS while returning taxpayer money to communities impacted by ICE.
“For more than a year, our communities have witnessed abductions, kidnappings, illegal 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,” Ramírez said at a press conference. “Yet there are those in Congress who would still, after all that, expand the DHS budget and ICE’s ability to maintain Trump’s mass deportation agenda and further harm our communities.”
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Along with Democratic activists and representatives Rashida Tlaib (Michigan), Chuy García (Illinois) and Summer Lee (Pennsylvania), 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 just 10 more days of funding to DHS as the Trump administration faces increased bipartisan pressure over its violent immigration enforcement tactics.
“This is not new. Many of us have fought for years against the extreme abuses of ICE and other parts of DHS (which occurred under Republican and Democratic administrations, let’s be clear) and now we are seeing the consequences,” García said, mentioning the murder of Silverio Villegas González in September by federal immigration agents in Chicago.
“They are racially profiling people, they are brutalizing protesters, tearing apart families, throwing them into concentration camps, and claiming the authority to overturn the Constitution and its protections against this lawlessness,” he continued. “So there are no half measures against authoritarianism.”
Some lawmakers hope that the temporary funding of DHS in Tuesday’s bill will allow enough time to negotiate immigration reforms that both parties can agree to before the agency faces a failure, which would not significantly affect ICE, unlike Ramirez’s proposal.
According to the American Immigration Council, there are currently more than 70,000 people in ICE detention and a record number of deaths in custody. The Melt ICE Act maintains that the immigration agencies responsible for those numbers cannot be reformed, only completely dismantled and rebuilt.
“ICE is now the largest police force in the country, operating with never-before-seen funding to maintain and expand the detention system that is already the largest in the world,” said Setareh Ghandehari of Detention Watch Network. “ICE has repeatedly demonstrated that no one is safe in its custody.”
According to a new Data for Progress poll, 54% of voters believe Congress should not fund DHS unless the agency increases regulation and oversight of ICE operations. ICE’s favorability among the public has plummeted, going from +13 points favorability in January 2025 to -19 points favorability on Tuesday.
“Their goal is to create an America that reflects them, their values and their desires. And we need to be very clear about that,” Lee said of the Trump administration. “But we also need to fight back, and we need to have exactly the same energy that they have now in our destruction, to build what we truly believe is a better world and a better society.
“An America that reflects us and our values, and the best we have to offer you, and we have a lot to offer you, which means we have a lot to fight for right now.”