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In the ongoing discussions aimed at resolving this week’s partial government shutdown, Congressional Democrats are advocating for legislative reforms targeting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
However, several of their proposals have raised eyebrows, appearing to align with a broader agenda to dismantle ICE altogether. This move could effectively lead to the “Defund ICE” initiative, paving the way for an open-border policy that American voters rejected in the previous presidential election.
This approach seems to be a strategic maneuver by the progressive socialist left.
The strategy appears to involve allowing a significant influx of primarily economic migrants during Democratic leadership, followed by resisting federal enforcement through street protests. This tactic aims to generate sufficient political pressure to legislate the dismantling of rigorous immigration enforcement, reflecting what voters had previously opposed.
Among the proposals from Democrats are measures such as mandating judicial warrants for the arrest and detention of undocumented immigrants, enforcing a “no-mask” policy for ICE agents amidst rising threats against them, and granting local politicians and officials oversight over ICE operations.
All three could help keep mass amnesty in place — a central goal of the open-borders ideologues.
Consider the demand for judicial warrants.
In 2025, ICE arrested and deported approximately 600,000 illegal immigrants — most of whom, as former Department of Justice official and scholar John Lott has pointed out, were detained with administrative warrants issued by immigration judges under DOJ or the Department of Homeland Security.
Immigration judges aren’t federal judges governed by Article III of the Constitution; they work in a separate, parallel system.
The nation’s 94 federal district courts and approximately 677 federal judgeships (41 of which stand vacant) are already overwhelmed with cases.
The Democrats’ legislation would saddle each federal district court with an average of 6,000 or more warrant applications a year, if ICE kept up its 2025 pace — an impossible load for an already overburdened system.
Some former DHS officials have argued that Article III Court judicial warrants are required under the Constitution, at least for in-home arrests — but this is hardly clear.
In 1960, the US Supreme Court validated administrative warrants for at least some immigration enforcement actions, and in 2007 the US Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit upheld their use for an in-home search for an escaped prisoner.
The Democrats’ face-mask proposal also appears to be part of a larger Open Borders 2.0 approach intended to kneecap ICE.
No American would choose a world of masked law enforcement agents — it certainly feels creepy.
But the rioters in the streets have made clear their plans to shut down ICE through doxxing and mob violence.
Death threats against ICE have increased by 8,000% in the last year, as physical assaults on agents increased by 1,300%.
Cartels have even reportedly issued bounties of up to $50,000 for attacks on ICE agents.
In such circumstances, masks are necessary for federal officers to do their jobs, and perhaps for their very survival.
Finally, Democrats in Congress want to give state and local officials — the same ones who slander ICE as the “Gestapo” — the ability to effectively veto ICE enforcement by requiring local approval of ICE actions, or permitting state courts to issue civil and criminal enforcement actions against these federal agents.
But in 2012, the US Supreme Court made clear in Arizona v. US that the federal government has sole jurisdiction on immigration enforcement — making the Democrats’ demand constitutionally dubious at best.
To be sure, there are areas for reasonable bipartisan reform, including requiring agents to wear body cameras and issuing clearer standards on agents’ use of force.
But reasonableness must go both ways.
Much of the violence we’ve seen in Minnesota came after local officials stood down local law enforcement as mobs attacked federal officials.
Sanctuary laws have become nullification policies, as state and local officials effectively reject federal laws mandated by voters and our democratic process.
State and local officials, and their followers, should no more be able to nullify federal immigration laws than federal civil rights laws.
If local nullification is allowed to stand based on local and regional ideologies, then we no longer stand as a Union.
We can achieve bipartisan common sense here: We can adopt necessary and reasonable oversight of ICE without hamstringing enforcement.
But in return, Republicans would be well within their rights to withdraw federal funding from sanctuary jurisdictions — unless they end the nullification practices that make our streets more dangerous and countermand the will of American voters.
Julian Epstein is the former chief counsel for the House Judiciary Democrats and the former staff director of the House Oversight Committee.