MINNEAPOLIS, Minn. — Democrats are channeling grassroots anger at Immigration and Customs Enforcement with a series of condemnations that stop short of the calls to “abolish ICE” that defined the early anti-Trump resistance.
At their summer gathering in Minnesota this week, members of the Democratic National Committee signaled the strategy they will take to oppose Trump’s immigration agenda — denouncing the administration’s deportation tactics while steering clear of the Left’s desire to dismantle the agency Republicans have expanded with their megabill.
The idea of abolishing ICE gained currency in the first Trump White House, when his enforcement priorities became one pillar of what galvanized the Left against his administration. Democratic leaders flirted with the movement by supporting ICE’s dismantlement or calling for its restructuring.
But the calls lost currency as Republicans branded Democrats as beholden to the fringe of their party. The decades-high inflow of illegal immigrants under President Joe Biden sparked another step to the right as Democrats sought to distance themselves from the influx.
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There are still Democrats who want to see ICE, responsible for removing illegal immigrants from the interior of the country, disbanded, including attendees at the Minneapolis summer meeting.
“Do I think the Democrats need to double down on abolishing ICE? Oh, most definitely,” said Juanita Martinez, an Eagle Pass, Texas, Democrat who serves as the Maverick County Democratic Party chairwoman. “It is the most inhumane policy that any president has ever set forth.”
But the DNC writ large is using its platform to send symbolic gestures that register disapproval of the agency, not its existence. The Resolutions Committee passed two measures on Tuesday denouncing the administration’s deportation tactics and calling for the shutdown of “Alligator Alcatraz,” the Florida detention center being shuttered under court order.
Outside of the DNC meeting, progressive Democrats who once embraced the “abolish ICE” movement, including Rep. Greg Casar (D-TX), chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, are now moderating their language to focus on how the agency has gone “rogue” under Trump.
Most Democrats have denounced the aggressive steps ICE has taken since Trump returned to the White House, including visits to places of worship or courthouses. Party officials have also called for agents to stop using unmarked vehicles and masked employees.
Sen. Alex Padilla (D-CA) was forcibly removed from a Homeland Security press conference in Los Angeles in June as he questioned Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem about the crackdown on illegal immigration. Earlier this month, the Democratic Women’s Caucus sent a letter to the Department of Homeland Security and ICE, registering concern that the agency’s use of masks was leaving women susceptible to assault by ICE impersonators.
“We have ICE sweeps by unidentified agents, terrorizing our immigrant communities, harassing people at court hearings where they’re lawfully showing up in good faith to comply with their immigration proceedings,” said Analisa Swan, a DNC member from California, in support of the resolution to condemn ICE.
“Also, we see [the] National Guard. This is extending to unidentified vigilantes and just the terror, and also the economic devastation to our workforce and to states like California,” Swan continued.
“I think we’re living worse times than the times of … the pandemic,” added Ada Briceño, a California DNC member, during the committee meeting. “It is just grueling. Many families, whether documented or undocumented, have gone without working.”
At the same time, Democrats are reluctant to be perceived as supporting lawlessness or the “open borders” policies Republicans say existed under Biden. Toward the end of his term, Biden clamped down on the southern border, while congressional Democrats negotiated a border security and immigration bill that Trump eventually pushed Republicans to block last year, reasoning that legislation was not needed to secure the border.
“What our party pushed for and what congressional Democrats pushed for was a sound, practical, fair, and balanced immigration bill,” said Roxanne Brown, a Pennsylvania DNC member.
“This president did everything that he possibly could to defeat that bill that really would have gotten at a lot of the concerns, the bipartisan concerns, around immigration challenges that we have in this country,” Brown continued. “We’re about sound practical policies, not a bludgeon.”
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Judy Mount, a Florida DNC member on the Credentials Committee, argued that the conversation about ICE’s footprint is moot, given Republicans have unified control of Washington.
“Here’s the thing … there is one person that controls ICE, and he’s not going to stop supporting ICE. We will be facing this for a very long time,” Mount said of Trump.
The public is highly polarized over how ICE is enforcing immigration law. A July Quinnipiac University poll showed 39% of registered voters approved of its operations compared to the 57% who disapproved. Another July poll from Gallup showed that the percentage of people who want immigration to be reduced dropped by nearly half to 30%.
Yet immigration has proven to be a potent electoral issue for Trump, and he won a second term in the White House, in part, by branding Democrats as weak on the border. Republicans used their newfound power in Washington to allocate $75 billion to ICE through 2029, making it the federal law enforcement agency with the highest funding. The money will help the agency add more than 10,000 new agents.
Celina Vasquez, a DNC member from Texas, said she did not want to dismantle ICE. “We need law enforcement,” she added. Yet she believes the administration should focus its deportation priorities more narrowly on illegal immigrants who have not committed crimes.
“It’s just crazy and scary that Latino families are being ripped apart, that ICE is showing up waiting outside of schools,” said Vasquez. “We have to make sure that the federal enforcement organizations [and] agencies go after people with a criminal record.”