OPINION:
Remember the politicians who joined the “defund the police” mobs in 2020? When it came to putting their money where their mouths were, most of the rhetoric turned out to be posturing. Nobody with a political future wanted to be responsible for leaving the public at the mercy of criminals.
Something similar is happening now.
Congressional Democrats are playing hardball with funding for the Department of Homeland Security. If they get everything they want, then U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents will be put in more danger while doing their jobs, sanctuary cities will have an operational veto on federal immigration enforcement, and illegal aliens will once again roam free within U.S. borders.
Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries sent a letter to Republican leadership in Congress earlier this month demanding that ICE and U.S. Customs and Border Protection adopt certain “reforms.” If they didn’t, then Democrats wouldn’t vote to fund the Homeland Security Department in the 2026 fiscal year.
Although some may find their requests reasonable, there’s always a catch. Making every ICE and CBP agent use a body camera is reasonable and would make both the feds and civilians more accountable for their actions. Still, these demands include “poison pills,” such as requirements that federal agents can’t wear masks, that agents display their agencies and ID numbers, and that local governments sign off on large-scale federal immigration enforcement operations in their jurisdictions.
Unmasking agents should be a nonstarter for Republican leaders, considering that multiple left-wing agitator groups have doxed ICE agents, finding out where they live and who their family members are and threatening them. This is the major reason agents cover their faces.
In Minneapolis, Los Angeles and other jurisdictions, agents are already operating in hostile and even violent environments. Irresponsible local leaders have convinced a small but brazen portion of the public that agents are secret police, racially profiling and kidnapping people. (Messrs. Jeffries and Schumer have adopted this rhetoric. Their letter claimed that ICE had “terrorized communities across the country.”)
Attacks on ICE agents are up 13,000%, vehicle attacks against ICE have risen 3,300%, and death threats against them are up 8,000%, according to recent Homeland Security Department data. If these men and women showed their faces and badge numbers, then this hostility would no doubt follow them into their personal lives and threaten their loved ones.
The other nonstarter is mandated approval from local governments on “large-scale operations outside of targeted immigration enforcement.” The federal government cannot cede control over an issue squarely within its constitutional mission to localities. Ironically, the department has been requesting that local governments cooperate with its immigration enforcement operations all along.
The answer to the Trump administration from these “sanctuary cities” can be summarized neatly: “Get the f—- out.”
The entire Minneapolis-St. Paul mess was caused by “sanctuary” policies and leaders who flatly refused to provide resources to ICE and CBP officers, even police protection from agitators impeding and obstructing operations. It sure is rich of Messrs. Schumer and Jeffries to demand federal and local cooperation after all that.
Another Democratic demand was that federal agencies “prohibit tracking, creating or maintaining databases of individuals participating in First Amendment activities.” In other words, do nothing to punish people who purposefully plan and engage in the obstruction of federal immigration enforcement, including those who use violence.
Federal officers are successfully doing the tough job of deporting criminal illegal aliens. Under the last administration, border enforcement was nonexistent. ICE was turned into a social services agency tasked with facilitating illegal entry into the country. The result is that millions of illegal aliens, some dangerous, are in the U.S. No more.
ICE must continue the job. Deportations will go on. It is clear that Messrs. Schumer’s and Jeffries’ plans would not only prevent ICE agents from doing their work but also would further endanger their physical safety, just as the “defund the police” movement wanted. These ideas need to be rejected once again.
• James Fitzpatrick is a U.S. Army veteran, a former appointee in the Trump 45 administration and director of the Center to Advance Security in America.
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