The U.S. government is currently in a partial shutdown as Democrats in Congress refuse to authorise funding for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), citing what they describe as “the brazen lawlessness of ICE’s conduct.”
Sensing a surge in public sentiment against ICE across the country—following the video-recorded killings of two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis by ICE and Customs and Border Protection agents—Democrats have so far refused to relent in their demands for ICE reform before offering any cooperation on passing a bill that would approve funding for DHS.
The reform measures demanded by Democrats include:
- That ICE agents refrain from hurling the foulest obscenities at civilians just before shooting them to death. Democrats have prepared a detailed catalogue of all obscenities currently known to humankind to identify which ones would be prohibited under the proposed measure.
- That ICE agents no longer publicly announce their killing tallies or high-five each other after they kill a civilian.
- That ICE agents stop menacingly staring at witnesses to their killings of civilians, charging at them, or shouting, “What you gonna do, m*therf*cker?” after killing a civilian in broad daylight.
- That, following the killing of a civilian, ICE agents must endeavour to come up with at least a remotely justifiable excuse for the killing, rather than stating, “This is what happens when you f*ck with ICE,” as the justification for the lethal use of force in their incident reports.
These measures—which many in the country have called “weak,” “pathetic,” and “symptomatic of a party that lacks conviction or dignity”—have all been rejected outright by Republicans, who say that mitigating “the gratuitous cruelty or violence” of ICE’s methods would compromise the GOP’s plans to desensitize the American public to human suffering and loss of life, which they deem critical to U.S. President Donald Trump’s strategy for the upcoming midterm elections.
The budgetary standoff in Congress, however, isn’t expected to last much longer. Cracks have begun to appear in the Democratic wall of resistance, as some members are now wondering whether they should let Republicans choose any two of the four proposals to avoid being blamed for additional airport delays caused by a shortage of security staff—a scenario they fear could prove more combustible than anything yet seen during the anti-ICE protests.
