House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) said on Wednesday that he would reject a bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security for the rest of the fiscal year over concerns that it did not sufficiently curb Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations.
The announcement came in a closed-door meeting with Democratic caucus members, following continued ICE violence in Minnesota as part of Operation Metro Surge.
“We’ve heard our members speak loudly that ICE isn’t doing enough, these reforms aren’t doing enough. This lawlessness has to stop,” Democratic Caucus Chairman Pete Aguilar (D-CA) told reporters after the meeting on Wednesday. “They are only doing this because they can. They are only doing this because the president of the United States wants to use them to terrorize communities, to terrorize U.S. citizens.”
But, according to NBC News, Democratic leaders did not state they would whip a vote to push all members to follow their “no” vote. This leaves the door open for Democrats, many of whom are facing close elections this year, to vote in favor of the appropriation bill.
To preface, i want ICE fully defunded.
That being said, this is a damned if you do, damned if you don’t. ICE already received that $75 billion which will allow them to operate for years. This $10 billion comes with some “restrictions” like body cameras, and reallocates some money towards oversight of holding facilities. Another chunk will need to go to other underfunded agencies like the Coast Guard, FEMA, and CIS.
Democratic leadership hasn’t indicated if they will whip house Dems into voting no, because it will depend on those running in tight districts.
The message needs to be sent via primaries. They should have never received that $75 billion in the first place.
They can do everything you say they need to do without funding ICE. None of it requires giving them more money. Or more accurately, they can stand for all of those things. They don’t control anything, but they can refuse to cooperate with the regime that is attacking their voters, the only segment that has majority support for ICE are Republicans.
The time to do that and have significant public support behind them, has passed. Like I said, they shouldn’t have passed that $75 billion in the first place and kept the government shut down until every item they wanted was included, AND they had the public support to do so!
Now? Republicans will hammer them for not funding FEMA when there’s a massive snow storm getting ready to hit 3/4 of the country, or whatever bullshit they’re scheming up this round. When other crap is loaded into a bill, their public support for not supporting it faulters, i wish this wasn’t the case.
I want Democrats to win, and i don’t think this is the battle to do so. Safe Dems can vocally opposed this all they want, but until we start seeing immigration polls swinging 20-30+ instead of 5-10, Southern Dems in tight races will continue playing that “Middle”.