The horrible killing of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis and the resulting national outrage have given congressional Democrats perhaps their best chance so far to rein in President Trump’s misuse of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other federal law enforcement agencies. But they are totally squandering this opportunity. They have coalesced around a lackluster list of reforms that fully addresses neither the current situation in Minneapolis nor the broader problem of Trump essentially creating a fascist national police force.
Congressional Democrats and Republicans are on the verge of a temporary agreement to provide funding for the Department of Homeland Security and several other federal agencies to prevent a government shutdown. But Senate Democrats say they won’t agree to long-term funding for ICE and the broader DHS unless three core Democratic demands are met: a requirement that ICE agents wear body cameras and proper identification and not masks; a new code of conduct for how agents use force and independent investigations if they are accused of violating those rules; and the end of roving patrols by ICE officers and requirements that they have warrants and work with state and local police.
That’s not nearly enough.
Body cameras are just not useful. As we’ve seen across the country, as local police officers increasingly wear them, law enforcement agencies are able to put up all kinds of barriers to the release of the footage. It’s not an accident that the police violence Americans see often comes from videos taken by citizens. And there is no evidence that officers behave better because they fear abuse being caught on tape. After all, police killings of civilians are at almost the exact same level as they were in 2014, before the Black Lives Matter movement and the resulting widespread adoption of body cameras. ICE agents wearing body cameras isn’t necessarily bad. But it’s the kind of toothless reform that Republicans and the Trump administration should be offering to calm anger from Pretti’s killing, not one of the core demands from Democrats.
“Cameras are only worthwhile if they are consistently used, and if the footage is reliably accessible and used to hold officers to account. Officers can, and frequently do, turn their cameras on late, off early, or not on at all,” the liberal group FWD.us concluded in a recent report.
Similarly, while I hate the image of masked agents on American streets, many ICE agents seem quite comfortable showing their faces and making threatening comments to people protesting them. There is no evidence that unmasked ICE agents will be less abusive.
In terms of codes of conduct, ICE already has restrictions and guidelines on use of force. So do local police departments. These policies always include exceptions if officers feel threatened or unsafe—and officers always plead self-defense after they kill or injure civilians. Law enforcement officers are rarely prosecuted and almost never convicted. So again, this should have been in the Republicans’ counterproposal, not one of three ideas from Democrats.
Trying to end roving ICE patrols is a solid idea that actually gets at the abuses of the last year. ICE agents, instead of targeting specific sites or individuals accused of immigration crimes, seem to be essentially driving around cities looking for Latino-looking people.
That proposal should have been joined by a long list of substantive demands. Most immediately, there is no way that Democrats should sign onto DHS funding until Customs and Border Protection and ICE personnel are completely gone from Minneapolis. The killings of Renee Nicole Good and Pretti and the siege of Minneapolis are the immediate cause of this crisis. Trump fully withdrawing forces from the city would be an important acknowledgment that his administration’s policies in the Twin Cities have been autocratic and deadly. The Senate Democrats’ demands are so meager that ICE and CBP could likely remain in Minneapolis even if the party’s conditions are met.
Second, Democrats should be doing much more to stop ICE from terrorizing communities and creating a climate of fear for not only illegal immigrants but legal ones too. Banning ICE from enforcement actions at houses of worship, day cares, courts, and hospitals is essential. A proposal from House Democrats to bar ICE from detaining American citizens should have been included in the Senate proposal too.
Third, Democrats should use this funding fight to limit Trump from using CBP and ICE as a national police force and, really, a standing army. Democrats should insist that Customs and Border Protection agents, whose job is to defend the border, are never be sent to nonborder areas like Chicago and Minneapolis. After all, it was CBP agents, not ICE, who killed Pretti. As law enforcement journalist Jessica Pishko explained in a recent episode of TNR’s show Right Now, CBP agents are even less trained in policing in urban settings than ICE agents and are more violent toward civilians. And combining CBP personnel with ICE gives the Trump administration the ability to send hundreds or even thousands of law enforcement personnel to a city without involving the National Guard, which usually requires the sign-off of a governor.
Finally, as long as ICE and CBP exist and Trump is in office, he will use them in dictatorial ways. So while Democrats can’t abolish these agencies, they can try to shrink them. Democrats must demand substantial cuts to the ICE and CBP budgets, at least 10 percent. The Republican-controlled Congress approved a massive increase to ICE and the broader DHS budget last year. The administration is using that money to go on a hiring spree, offering signing bonuses and loan forgiveness for people who sign up to work for ICE. And since immigration levels are low right now, the odds that these officers will show up in blue cities are high. Democrats need to claw back whatever money from ICE they can.
This isn’t an exhaustive list. Groups such as FWD.us and Indivisible are also pushing aggressive proposals. But the point is that the Democrats’ opening bid should have been much bolder.
“By starting negotiations without challenging the premise that ICE should be the 13th largest army in the world, by refusing to go after the source of their power—their obscene budgets—congressional Democrats begin ‘negotiations’ in an already right-wing, weakened framework,” says left-leaning writer and podcast host Adam Johnson. “Their unwillingness to meaningfully and substantively rein in the power of Trump’s DHS by seeking to slash their $170 billion-plus budget shows they are unable, or unwilling, to meet the moment.”
Trump is in a very weak position right now. His administration has killed two people, in videos seen by people across the country. Americans are outraged at ICE. I doubt Trump and congressional Republicans would go along with most of the changes I proposed. But the Democrats’ starting point should have been eight or 10 serious proposals for real change, both to have a strong place to negotiate from and to inform the public what really needs to happen at ICE. Instead, the GOP is likely to adopt trimmed-down versions of one or two of the Dems’ small-bore ideas, Dems will fold, and there will be little change with ICE or CBP’s actions on the ground.
We are seeing the usual Democratic fear and reflexive centrism. Party leaders think talking about affordability is their salvation and crime, and immigration their Kryptonite. There is little evidence for that second view. There is a moral case for forcing major changes to Trump’s immigration policies and increasingly an electoral one too.
If a newly hired ICE agent kills someone in Chicago or Denver, a body camera will not keep that person alive and almost certainly won’t ensure that their killer faces any jail time. The Democrats are pushing reforms that they know won’t work because they are doing performative, perfunctory opposition to try to quiet their base, instead of real legislating and fighting to dismantle Trump’s ICE and CBP. It’s a huge whiff on one of the defining issues of this era. The time to end invasions of American cities and monstrous raids was yesterday, not 2029.
