Democrats push for ICE accountability

What happened

White House border czar Tom Homan announced that he was pulling 700 immigration agents from Minneapolis and refocusing the enforcement blitz there, as Democratic lawmakers demanded Congress place new restrictions on Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other agencies they say have descended into lawlessness. Homan—whom President Trump put in charge of the operation as outrage swelled over the killings of protesters Renée Good and Alex Pretti—cited “unprecedented collaboration” from local officials, who are allowing ICE to take custody of undocumented inmates before they are released from jails. He said there would be a shift away from broad street sweeps to operations focused on immigrants with criminal records. But Homan stressed that Trump was still committed to mass deportations. “If you are in the country illegally,” he said, “you are not off the table.” Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey called the reduction “a step in the right direction,” but noted that with about 2,000 agents still on the ground, it was “not de-escalation.”

Homan’s announcement came a day after U.S. citizens who have been shot and violently detained by immigration agents testified at a Capitol Hill forum organized by Democrats. “I struggle every day with the pain and the suffering,” said Marimar Martinez, 30, a Chicagoan who was shot five times by a Border Patrol agent after she tailed the officer’s vehicle in her car. Good’s brother Luke Ganger told the forum that federal agents’ aggressive actions “are changing the community, and changing many lives, including ours, forever.” House Democrats released a report slamming agents’ “unlawful” tactics, as lawmakers voted to end a partial government shutdown and negotiated over new accountability measures that would be built into a funding package for the Department of Homeland Security. DHS is “completely out of control,” said Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.). “Congress has a responsibility to step in.”

In Portland, Ore., Mayor Keith Wilson demanded agents leave the city after they lobbed tear gas at demonstrators, including young children, engaging in a peaceful protest outside an ICE facility. In Minnesota, federal Judge Patrick Schiltz decried ICE’s defiance of court orders, saying the agency has ignored at least 96 judicial directives this year. That “should give pause to anyone, no matter his or her political beliefs, who cares about the rule of law,” wrote the George W. Bush appointee.

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What the columnists said

Tensions in the Twin Cities remain high, said Louis Krauss in The Minneapolis Star-Tribune, but residents, protesters, and city officials report “a seeming change in agents’ tactics.” They include fewer ICE caravans, fewer agents on foot rousting pedestrians, and “fewer confrontations with protesters.” But “intense fights still break out daily between agents and protesters following them.” Videos posted on social media this week showed agents pointing guns at observers trailing them in an SUV, forcing them out of the vehicle, and detaining them.

In neighborhoods “once alive with the pulse of immigrant communities,” the crackdown has “fractured families, rattled worried neighbors, and left residents feeling unsafe,” said Alaa Elassar in CNN.com. Ryan Strandjord never imagined he’d see “his tree-lined, lake-dotted hometown” transformed into a “battleground” by what he likens to a military occupation. U.S. citizens and immigrants alike are choosing to stay home and keep their kids out of school, he said. “There’s just overall a feeling of fear and dread.”

Far from de-escalating, ICE is seeking to expand its authority, said Noah Feldman in Bloomberg. The agency has authorized officers to arrest anyone they suspect of being undocumented, even if agents lack a warrant and the person isn’t a flight risk. That license for agents to “grab just about anyone they want” came on the heels of “another legally indefensible memo,” which said officers could enter homes of suspected undocumented migrants without a judicial warrant. It all reveals an agency bent on making its agents “into an all-powerful police force.”

Judge Schiltz flags another alarming trend, said law professor Ryan Goodman in The New Yorker—the growing “lawlessness” of an administration engaged in “flagrant” defiance of court orders. The nearly 100 cases Schiltz cited include repeated instances where the administration has refused orders to release detainees or present them in court, or has transferred them to other jurisdictions against direct orders. Their contempt of court is “truly extraordinary” and may be moving us toward a “constitutional crisis.”

Such actions are unsettling Americans, and not just Democrats, said William A. Galston in The Wall Street Journal. More than a third of 2024 Trump voters said in a Politico poll that while they back the president’s mass deportation campaign, they disapprove of how it’s being done. In a Harvard/Harris poll, majorities said “federal agents have gone too far and are violating civil liberties,” while a Pew poll found that Americans by “wide margins” think it unacceptable for agents to stop and question people based on their appearance or the language they speak.

Time will tell if the administration’s de-escalation talk is sincere or “just a cheap PR dodge,” said Andrew Egger in The Bulwark. But even if it’s the former, “these systems now have a logic of their own.” Homeland Security has systematically built ICE “into something that looks less like a disciplined law enforcement agency than a small paramilitary force,” recruiting bigoted “meatheads” with anti-immigrant “propaganda” and sending them into U.S. cities with minimal training. Once you’ve created the “monster,” it won’t be easily tamed.