ICE Out

Congress must awaken and respond to the overreaching, unlawful, and cruel tactics used by ICE in Minneapolis and around the country. ICE should step back and deescalate, which is the will of the American people as reflected in numerous polls and the massive protests in Minneapolis — included hundreds of clergy from around the country.

Individual members of Congress should speak out and Congressional committees should hold hearings. Legislatively, Congress should cut ICE’s funding. With a FY26 budget more than CBP’s and the FBI’s, ICE is creating an unaccountable secret police where so many of its public justifications are provably false and racist. Unconscionable and un-American.

It’s long past the time for Congress to develop a rational immigration policy:

• ICE agents should not be allowed to wear masks.
• Per the Due Process clause of the Fifth Amendment, people must be presumed innocent until proven guilty, given due process rather than immediately “disappeared” to a detention facility for deportation. Anyone detained must be afforded full due process before being deported.
• Detention facilities must provide respectful treatment, with adequate food, water, and medical care. Agents who abuse detainees should be prosecuted.
• Immigrants who have applied for asylum or otherwise have their cases being reviewed by the courts should remain in the U.S. without detention until their cases are adjudicated. To speed adjudication, hire more judges to evaluate cases, not more ICE police.
• Immigrants who have established lives in the U.S. and have been here for — say 5, 10, or 15 years — should be eligible to legally remain in the country with a path to citizenship.
• Those who are registered under the DACA program should have a path to citizenship.
• So-called “dangerous criminals” should be deported. However, that does not mean someone in the U.S. simply without proper authorization, or with a traffic violation, or exercising their free speech rights. Truly, someone convicted of a serious crime.

As Jamelle Bouie recently wrote in The New York Times:

It is worth remembering that immigration enforcement is a civil procedure and that most people detained by ICE do not have criminal records. In the main, these are not violent people threatening the safety and integrity of the nation; they are ordinary men, women and children who have been caught in an authoritarian dragnet. Their treatment is less a necessary part of immigration detention than it is a punishment — deliberate pain inflicted on migrants in order to force them out of the country, whether or not they have a legal right to be here.

Masked ICE agents swarming cities, haunting neighborhoods, going door to door, separating young children from their parents, and attacking peaceful protesters are desecrating our American values, much like the imprisonment of Japanese Americans during World War II. ICE is creating a travesty eerily similar to the horrors of the secret police rounding up the Jews in Nazi Germany.

Will you be complicit in this tyranny or raise your voice for “the least of these brothers and sisters of mine?”

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Sent to my Congressional representatives on Saturday, January 24, 2026: Rep. Mike Rogers, Sen. Katie Britt, and Sen. Tommy Tubberville.

Government Shutdown: Pushing Back On The Republican Narrative

On the first day of the government shutdown, I received an email from Alabama Senator Katie Britt. The subject line read, “SHUTDOWN DAY 1: Democrats Hold Nation Hostage for Transgender Surgeries & Illegal Aliens.” The email blames Chuck Schumer and Senate Democrats for shutting down the government. At the end, the email asks for feedback, offering a three-choice survey. The last option: “Democrats are justified in shutting down the government until Republicans agree to fund their leftwing priorities regardless of the cost to taxpayers.” The italics are mine.

Seven days in, still rankled by the email, I started typing and sent the following reply to her office.

Senator Britt,

I am responding to your recent email about the government shutdown. While I do not support the adverse financial impact on government employees, I feel equally that the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress are not negotiating with Democrats in good faith. Not passing the Continuing Resolution enables the Democrats to alert Americans to the Republican no-negotiation governing strategy.

President Trump's inflammatory rhetoric about Democrats — a recent Truth Social post calling Democrats “the party of hate, evil, and Satan” — his cuts targeting programs that disproportionately affect Democrat constituencies, and plans to lay off rather than furlough Federal workers scream that Republican claims of respectful negotiation are false.

Also, I find the subject line of your email, “Democrats Hold Nation Hostage for Transgender Surgeries & Illegal Aliens,” deeply offensive because it is both false and inflammatory.

I wonder if you know anyone who is transgender and whether you have heard their life experience and the challenges of gender dysphoria. If not, I suggest you have some heartfelt and open-minded conversations. Transgender folks are equally part of the creation of God and, as such, worthy of dignity and respect — not the hateful rhetoric and punitive actions employed by the Trump administration.

Whether transgender athletes should compete on school teams and what rights parents have to determine the medical care for their children are topics for thoughtful policy discussions. Any policies must begin with acceptance of the humanity of transgender people, who are endowed by their Creator with the same rights outlined in the Declaration of Independence, including the right to self-identify.

The second topic in the subject line of your email, “illegal aliens,” is equally inflammatory. During the presidential campaign, Trump claimed his administration would focus on “murderers, killers, gang members, and rapists” in the country illegally. In practice, masked ICE agents have targeted anyone appearing Hispanic, often brutally capturing and detaining American citizens. The recent raid of a Chicago apartment building in the middle of the night, terrorizing the inhabitants and ransacking apartments, is one of the daily examples of a terror campaign that is writing another dark chapter of the American story.

In a recent ruling addressing ICE overreach, U.S. District Judge William Young, who was appointed by Ronald Reagan, wrote, “To us, masks are associated with cowardly desperados and the despised Ku Klux Klan. In all our history, we have never tolerated an armed masked secret police.”

Despite all these attacks on American democracy, you and your Republican colleagues in Congress remain silent. Something needs to break the Republican fever dream of an all-powerful unitary executive — dare I say king — with a subservient single-party legislature. Perhaps this government shutdown will force you and your colleagues to consider country before party.

Respectfully, (always respectful)

Time to Eliminate DACA

On Thursday, the Supreme Court stopped President Trump’s move to rescind DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals), a policy announced by President Obama on June 15, 2012. Reflecting a 5–4 vote, the Supreme Court ruling only said the Trump administration acted improperly when it terminated the program, by not adhering to the requirements of the Administrative Procedures Act.

Writing the majority opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts said the court considered “only whether the agency complied with the procedural requirement that it provide a reasoned explanation for its action” and concluded it failed to do so. This ruling, while positive, leaves the door open for the Department of Homeland Security to resume its effort by beefing up the argument for rescinding DACA.

A permanent resolution to the DACA limbo lies with Congress passing legislation — assuming the president signs it or Congress overrides a veto — providing permanent legal residence and a path to citizenship for those in the DACA program. As the House passed legislation last June (the American Dream and Promise Act of 2019), the responsibility falls to the Senate.

To encourage Senate action, I sent the following letter to Mitch McConnell, the Senate Majority Leader, and a slightly modified version to Republican senators Susan Collins (Maine), Lindsey Graham (South Carolina), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), and Mitt Romney (Utah).

Subject: Legal Status and Path to Citizenship for DACA Participants

While the Supreme Court’s ruling this week provides a reprieve for those who have enrolled in the DACA program, the decision does not provide a permanent solution for the children who were brought to the U.S. by their parents and grew up here —most now strengthening American society.

It’s time for Congress to pass legislation to provide those participating in DACA with legal residency and a path to U.S. citizenship, ending their Kafkaesque limbo.

As you know, the House of Representatives passed the Dream and Promise Act last June, one year ago. The Senate must now act — and do so before President Trump marshals a renewed effort to address the Supreme Court’s concerns and rescind DACA. In your role as Majority Leader, you have the responsibility to put this on the Senate’s agenda.