Congressional Democratic leaders are asking ICE to agree to reforms, promising to vote for $11 billion in funding for the agency if it does so. ICE has every reason to concede to the demands — then ignore them once the funding bill passes.
The House ended the partial government shutdown last week by passing legislation containing five full-year spending bills for 2026 — Pentagon ($839 billion); Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education ($195 billion); Transportation and Housing and Urban Development ($103 billion); Financial Services and General Government ($26 billion); State Department ($50 billion) — and a temporary funding extension for the Department of Homeland Security (prorated based on its $89 billion 2025 budget).
The spending package originally contained a full-year Department of Homeland Security (DHS) funding bill, but the Senate replaced it with a two-week funding measure after Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents summarily executed legal observer Alex Pretti, RN. The Senate approved the amended legislation on January 30, sending it back to the House. Democratic leaders said they would use those two weeks to negotiate Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) reforms as a condition for approving the full-year DHS funding bill.
Assessing Democratic Leadership’s Proposed ICE Reforms
On Wednesday, House and Senate minority leaders Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) and Chuck Schumer (D-NY) proposed ten reforms for ICE, which you can read here. None of them involve reducing ICE funding.
The question isn’t whether these proposed reforms are any good. The question is whether they’re worth $11 billion. Why? Because there’s $11 billion for ICE in the pending 2026 DHS bill, and agreeing to the reforms unlocks the Democratic votes needed to pass it.
If you’re ICE, it’s an easy choice: take the money. First, concede some of Jeffries and Schumer’s ten demands, then ignore the rest once the DHS bill passes. You’ll eventually get a strongly worded letter from Jeffries and Schumer for disregarding the agreed-upon reforms, but it’s not like your livelihood (budget) will be in danger. If Democratic leaders won’t try to cut ICE’s funding after it murders several people, they’re not going to block funding over masks and military apparel.
Trump administration goals — including deporting one million people per year and producing media content that shows the use of overwhelming force against immigrants — require ICE to function as a paramilitary force and occupy major metropolitan areas.
Based on their proposal, Jeffries and Schumer are saying they can stop ICE’s warrantless arrests, arbitrary detention, and summary executions without ending its occupation of US cities, even though those illegal actions are part and parcel of military occupations. Money is policy: you can’t give ICE a budget larger than all but fifteen militaries worldwide and expect the agency to demilitarize its behavior. Jeffries and Schumer know this.
The Limits of Democratic Opposition to State Violence
The Jeffries–Schumer proposal speaks to a broader theme: Even when Democrats object to state violence, they’re still willing to fund it. This applies to both paramilitary (ICE) and military spending.
On January 29, Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) introduced a war powers resolution prohibiting US forces from attacking Iran without congressional approval. A smart move, considering recent reports warning of an imminent US attack and Donald Trump himself setting the precedent in June for the US bombing Iran — something of a red line for past administrations. This time around, the goal appears to be regime change.
The next day, Kaine voted to hand Trump a record military budget. The $839 billion Pentagon funding bill, when combined with the military spending in the reconciliation bill and other 2026 funding bills, totals $1.02 trillion.
Within forty-eight hours, Kaine objected to a unilateral war with Iran and approved the funding needed to fight one. He’s willing to take action reasserting Congress’s war-making powers, but checking executive overreach using Congress’s power of the purse is apparently too much to ask.
Kaine’s position represents the extent to which Democratic leaders want the party to be antiwar. For party leadership, it’s OK to be pro-war and it’s OK to introduce nonbinding resolutions against war, but funding war is nonnegotiable. Increasing military spending is acceptable if not encouraged; cutting it is anathema.
To illustrate this point, when the GOP reconciliation bill was being considered in the House last summer, Democratic leadership discouraged its members from proposing amendments striking the bill’s more than $150 billion in military spending. (I heard this directly from Hill staff.) Keep in mind that most amendments Democrats submitted to the Big Beautiful Bill weren’t given a vote; they were symbolic. But House Democratic leaders didn’t even want to give the faintest suggestion that the party opposed a massive increase in military spending.
Democratic leadership has apparently decided that the party will not constrain war abroad or at home by reducing military or paramilitary spending, regardless of who’s president.
Reining in the US Paramilitary Budget
An alternative to the Jeffries–Schumer ICE proposal: Refuse to pass a DHS bill with ICE funding.
Some argue that such a demand would be pointless because ICE already has funding from the GOP reconciliation bill ($19 billion annually over the next four years, on average). Republicans, they say, would scoff at Democrats’ demand, let temporary DHS funding lapse, and allow other DHS agencies to shut down indefinitely. Democrats’ hands are tied.
I don’t find this argument convincing. First, I don’t think the GOP would be fine leaving the rest of DHS unfunded. Take the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), for example. How long would congressional Republicans be willing to deny a Republican administration the ability to respond to hurricanes, floods, and the like over extra ICE funding? Or take the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) — how much patience does the Trump administration have for an extended airport security staffing shortage? Republicans’ hands are tied.
Second, the fact that ICE already has funding is not an excuse to give them more. The $11 billion in the pending DHS bill would be on top of the projected $19 billion from the reconciliation bill for 2026. Giving ICE that extra $11 billion would nearly triple its 2025 budget, which was already a record high.
The table below ranks the pending $30 billion ICE budget among the highest funded militaries. It comes in at sixteenth, exceeding the military spending of countries like Canada, Spain, Brazil, Mexico, Sweden, Iran, and Switzerland. (Combined funding for ICE and the adjacent CBP stands at $66 billion, which would rank eighth.)
