WASHINGTON — A small but pivotal bloc of House Democrats broke with Hakeem Jeffries on Thursday and joined Republicans to pass a DHS funding bill that keeps ICE fully funded — even as many Democrats demanded tighter controls on the agency after the fatal shooting of Renée Good in Minneapolis and a wave of viral arrest footage.
The vote sends the broader government funding package to the Senate as Washington scrambles to avoid a shutdown.
The seven Democrats who sided with Republicans
- Henry Cuellar (Texas)
- Don Davis (North Carolina)
- Laura Gillen (New York)
- Vicente Gonzalez (Texas)
- Jared Golden (Maine)
- Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (Washington)
- Tom Suozzi (New York)
Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) was the only Republican to oppose the measure.
What’s in the bill
The DHS measure totals about $64.4 billion, including roughly $10 billion for ICE — close to current funding levels, despite pressure from progressives to cut the agency’s budget or tie funding to major reforms.
Jeffries and Democratic leaders argued the bill lacked basic guardrails to ensure ICE conducts itself “in a manner consistent with every other law enforcement agency in the country” and pushed for requirements such as warrants for certain arrests, body cameras, and clear limits on the use of force.
Why it matters
Progressives and immigration-rights groups are furious, arguing Democrats had a rare chance to use funding leverage to force accountability — and failed.
As Time magazine reports:
“ICE is out of control, and operating in far too many ways in a lawless fashion, and the American people know it,” Jeffries said at a news conference. He argued that Americans deserved an ICE agency that conducted itself “in a manner consistent with every other law enforcement agency in the country,” adding that it was “using taxpayer dollars to brutalize American citizens and law-abiding immigrant families.”
Jeffries laid out a series of changes Democrats said they had pushed for in the legislation but failed to secure: judicial warrant requirements before agents could seize American citizens, mandates for body cameras, explicit limits on the use of force by agents, and a ban on ICE agents wearing masks during operations. He also called for prohibiting agents from entering houses of worship, hospitals and schools and for barring the detention or deportation of U.S. citizens.
“These are the things that we will continue to push for,” Jeffries said. “Today, tomorrow, this week, next week, this month, next month until ICE is brought under control.”
Some of those ideas failed to make it into the final bill. While the measure would fund body cameras for agents, reduce ICE enforcement and removal operations by $115 million, and cut detention beds by 5,500, it does not include outright bans on detaining U.S. citizens or using certain forms of force—omissions that critics said rendered the changes inadequate. Further complicating the debate: the Big, Beautiful Bill Trump signed last summer included an additional $75 billion for ICE, funding that is not affected by the funding bill that passed Thursday.
“These reforms aren’t enough,” one lawmaker told Time. “Their lawlessness has to stop.”
But moderates backing the bill say it’s not just about ICE: DHS also includes FEMA disaster response, Coast Guard operations, and TSA security — and they weren’t willing to risk shutting the whole department down in a high-stakes funding fight.
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