A small crowd pushed Michigan’s U.S. Senators to defund Immigration and Customs Enforcement during a protest outside their Detroit offices Wednesday.
Calls to take away ICE and Border Patrol’s funding increased after immigration agents killed two citizens, poet Renee Good and Veterans Administration nurse Alex Pretti, in Minneapolis this month.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has said the agents shot Good and Pretti in self-defense. Both incidents are under federal investigation -- though state and local law enforcement officials have said they don't trust the federal government to investigate thoroughly.
The federal government could partially shut down this weekend if the Senate doesn’t pass a spending package that includes a bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security, the agency in charge of ICE and Customs and Border Protection.
Michigan Senators Gary Peters and Elissa Slotkin, both Democrats, have said they wouldn’t support the package as-is, though they did join fellow Senate Democrats in calling for a list of reforms before they'd consider voting for it.
Speaking outside Peters’ downtown Detroit office Wednesday, retired teacher Sherri Masson said she wants Slotkin and Peters to keep their word.
“Even if it means a government shutdown because we are not interested in just retraining ICE or restrictions you might put on ICE. We believe that ICE should not be funded at all,” Masson said.
The immigration enforcement reforms that Peters, Slotkin, and other Senate Democrats demand include a ban on immigration agents wearing masks, and requirements that they visibly identify themselves and only enter homes with valid judicial warrants.
A reported ICE policy memo lowered the standard for agents to enter a home, despite concerns about the Fourth Amendment’s protection from “unreasonable searches and seizures.”
Speaking from the Senate floor Wednesday, Slotkin listed reports from Minneapolis of agents detaining a citizen in his underwear after waking him up in a raid, arresting clergy during an airport protest, and tear gassing crowds.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has consistently defended immigration tactics as necessary to keep the country safe, highlighting the criminal records of some arrestees in press releases and on social media. "ICE officers are sworn federal law enforcement officers who operate within the confines of the law," the agency has said. "It is unconscionable when those who have ideological or political beliefs that differ from the law, misdirect their attacks on ICE officers who are charged with upholding laws Congress has passed."
A federal judge in Minnesota said Wednesday that ICE has violated close to 100 court orders connected to its immigration crackdown in the state in the last month.
Slotkin, who voted alongside Peters to confirm Noem last year, said Wednesday that she should resign. Slotkin echoed Senate Democratic leadership’s position on the funding vote.
“We don’t trust that the president is just going to learn his lesson, slink out of Minneapolis, and not do this to another city,” Slotkin said. “We need prevention, we need reform, we need to separate out the DHS budget from the others so we can get to work and not shut down the government.”
Organizers of the protesters outside her and Peters’ offices, however, wanted the senators to go further and support the claw back of $170 million DHS received through One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
Alyssa Moore with the group End Gun Violence Michigan said that money gives the agency the means to violate people's rights.
“That funding is ultimately what is enabling the mass occupation and violence that we are currently seeing in the U.S. So, if our senators are willing to take a stand and say ‘No, we’re not voting on this and we are going to all come together to make sure that we are able to remove some of that funding from ICE, to defund ICE,’ then we have the opportunity to save a lot of lives in the process.”
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