Congresswoman Discusses Proposal Over ICE
The Democratic Party’s war with immigration enforcement has officially spilled into the open. On CNN International this week, freshman Rep. Yassamin Ansari (D-AZ) declared that Immigration and Customs Enforcement — ICE — is nothing less than a “rogue agency,” and went so far as to say she would oppose the federal budget unless funding for ICE is slashed.
Her comments came in the wake of the Supreme Court’s ruling that allowed the Trump administration to resume enforcement operations in Los Angeles, temporarily overturning lower court restrictions. Ansari’s response was not to accept the Court’s decision but to attack ICE itself, claiming the agency was “in lockstep with Donald Trump and Stephen Miller’s racist mass deportation policy.” She warned that ICE agents now feel “extremely emboldened” and that their work was tantamount to “legalizing Trump and Miller’s racist agenda.”
Her solution? Strip ICE of funding, even if it risks a government shutdown.
Host Jim Sciutto pressed her on the matter, asking whether Democrats should block budget negotiations to fight ICE funding. Ansari didn’t hesitate: “Unless they’re going to take away funding from ICE, which they quadrupled in the last budget, then I do not intend to vote for this budget.”
This position is remarkable not just for its substance, but for its timing. At the very moment when the Supreme Court affirms the federal government’s authority to enforce immigration law — in Los Angeles, no less — a sitting member of Congress suggests that the solution is to defund the very agency charged with carrying it out.
What Ansari calls “rogue,” others call law enforcement. ICE’s mandate is not a Trump-era invention, nor is it the creation of Stephen Miller.
The agency exists to enforce immigration law, arrest criminal aliens, and maintain border integrity. To attack ICE as illegitimate is to undermine the very concept of a sovereign nation having the right to police its borders.
Her broader framing — that America is too “diverse” to enforce immigration laws — is telling. By her logic, communities with many languages spoken should be insulated from federal law altogether. It’s an argument that would make sanctuary cities the rule, not the exception.
The political gamble is clear: House progressives are willing to weaponize the budget to strip funding from an agency whose sole job is immigration enforcement. But in doing so, they pit themselves directly against a public increasingly alarmed by lawlessness at the border and rising crime in sanctuary jurisdictions.