Democrats announce three key demands to stop ICE

WASHINGTON – Senate Democrats on Wednesday unveiled their official list of demands to stop Immigration and Customs Enforcement and President Donald Trump’s crackdown on immigrants, 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 set to expire after midnight Friday, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Congress should end roving immigration patrols like those that killed two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis this month, institute a uniform code of conduct for federal agents and require them to wear body cameras while banning masks.

“This is not border security,” Schumer said Wednesday of Trump’s immigration raids, which have targeted both U.S. citizens and noncitizens. “This is not law and order. This is chaos created from the top and felt in many of our neighborhoods.”

“What ICE is doing is state-sanctioned thuggery,” he added.

Notably, their list of demands does not go so far as to include the complete withdrawal of ICE agents from American cities, as many Democrats have called for, nor does it call for Trump to fire his embattled Homeland Security Secretary, Kristi Noem. It is a smaller set of policy proposals designed to unify Democrats and appeal to a handful of Republican senators who have expressed concerns about the often violent tactics deployed by federal immigration agents.

The problem for lawmakers is that funding for DHS and several other federal departments expires on Friday, leaving them very little time to avoid a partial government shutdown. ICE would continue to operate during a shutdown thanks to money from Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill, while other agencies like FEMA and the Coast Guard would experience a lack of funding.

Democrats are calling on Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) to decouple funding for DHS from five other funding bills passed by the House last week. Thune did not reveal his plans Wednesday, but suggested he was open to that scenario.

“These are all hypotheses at this point, and I will reserve the option to consider them,” Thune told reporters.

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Separating DHS funding from the package could pose its own problems. That bill would require another vote in the House, where Republicans barely control the floor with a very narrow majority, and where conservatives are already threatening make your own list of demands that would make Democrats balk.

A big question is how aggressive Democrats are willing to be to get what they want. Even a DHS-only shutdown would have significant impacts, as funding for the Transportation Security Administration and the Federal Emergency Management Agency would expire, while ICE would continue to receive funding.

The last shutdown ended in late November, when a cabal of centrist Democrats essentially collapsed, but not before Trump’s behavior during the shutdown (including tearing down the East Wing of the White House and attempting to freeze food benefits for the poor) caused significant drops in his approval rating and potentially hurt the Republican Party in the November elections.

Congress already approved specific funding for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, meaning there would be no threat to federal food benefits, and also for the Department of the Interior, which oversees national parks. But the Department of Labor, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Treasury Department, the State Department, the Department of Transportation, the Department of Defense and the Department of Housing and Urban Development would see their funding drop, which would mean furloughs for thousands of American workers and troops who would go without pay.

The possibility of another Democratic fold, further alienating party leaders from their base, and of Trump taking another hit to his already weak approval ratings, has members of both parties nervous about the possibility of another shutdown. Trump attempted to invite a handful of Democratic senators to the White House on Wednesday to negotiate. CNN reportedbut the senators rejected the meeting.

Democratic leaders maintain that compared to past spending fights with the Trump administration, where some senators finally retiredthis time it’s different. The national outcry over the fatal shootings by masked federal agents in Minneapolis has given them a renewed sense of purpose, which they said they will not back down from.

“It’s been a long time since we were this united,” Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), a member of Schumer’s leadership team, said after a group meeting Wednesday. “No one should confuse our willingness to negotiate with a lack of moral or political clarity.”

Some centrists in the caucus, however, said they would be willing to consider a short-term funding patch to keep DHS funding at its current levels while negotiations unfold. Funding the agency without imposing restrictions on ICE could diminish Democrats’ influence, risking another backlash from the party’s base.

“That’s a reasonable approach, because what we need are reforms to how ICE and obviously some of the other agencies within DHS operate,” Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), one of eight Senate Democrats who voted to end the latest government shutdown, told News themezone. “So that would give us an opportunity to address that.”

But other Democrats said it made no sense to accept a short-term extension of DHS funding without codifying restrictions on ICE.

“I don’t think there’s much appetite for promises, given the past behavior of this administration,” said Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.).

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) also dismissed the idea of ​​conditioning DHS funding on Noem’s ouster, as he did not believe doing so would result in reform while Stephen Miller, the architect of Trump’s draconian immigration policy, remains White House deputy chief of staff.

“The name on the door doesn’t seem to have anything to do with politics,” Murphy told News themezone. “She’s not qualified, she’s lying to the American people, but I don’t think that’s the problem. The problem is the president’s closest advisors in the White House.”

Clarification: An earlier version of this article implied that air traffic controllers could be affected by a DHS shutdown. They are part of the Federal Aviation Administration, which reports to the Department of Transportation.