Top Democrats decline to say if they would push to rein in ICE funding after Minnesota shooting
The top Democrats in the House and Senate declined to say whether they would slash funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement after an agent in Minneapolis killed 37-year-old Renee Good.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, both of New York, held a press conference on Thursday. The Independent asked about whether Democrats would rein in ICE spending should they win back the majority in November.
“Let me first say that the killing of Renee Nicole Good was an abomination, a disgrace, and blood is clearly on the hands of those individuals within the administration who have been pushing an extreme policy that has nothing to do with immigration enforcement connected to removing violent felons from this country,” Jeffries said.
Jeffries also criticized Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who claimed that ICE agents in Minneapolis opened fire on Good as she drove her SUV because she “engaged in domestic terrorism.”
“There’s no evidence at all that this was a justified shooting, so let’s deal with the tragedy right now, she hasn’t even been buried,” he said. “Her family is grieving.”
Schumer also criticized the shooting.
“Looking at the video, there seemed no justification to what these agents did,” Schumer said. “There needs to be a full investigation at the federal level, although I have little faith in the FBI is doing a fair investigation or DHS, but at the local level as well.”
But both Jeffries and Schumer declined to say whether they would use their authority to rein in ICE. Democrats hope to take back the majority in at least the House of Representatives in November.
Jeffries later clarified that he was focused mostly on extending subsidies for the Affordable Care Act’s health insurance marketplace. Schumer avoided questions on his way out of the press studio.
If Dems take the House, it would give them the ability to control how much money ICE receives in the annual Homeland Security appropriations bill. When Republicans passed the One Big, Beautiful Bill last year, they included $29.9 billion for ICE enforcement operations, including recruiting 10,000 new agents. Altogether, ICE’s budget will balloon to $170 billion.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) said Democrats should push for reducing funding.
“This Congress, this Republican Congress, while they cut a trillion dollars to Americans’ health care, and they exploded the ice budget to $170 billion making it one of the largest paramilitary forces in the United States with zero accountability as they shoot U.S. citizens in the head, absolutely,” Ocasio-Cortez told The Independent.
The House and Senate are currently negotiating the bill that appropriates money to the Department of Homeland Security, which requires 60 votes. But Schumer and Jeffries did not commit to using the appropriations process as leverage.
President Donald Trump had dispatched ICE to Minneapolis last year as part of a crackdown on the city’s Somali-American community. The president has called Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), who is Somali-American, “garbage” and said her friends are as well amid an ongoing fraud scandal in the state.
