Conor here: I’m not sure why anyone would expect anything else.
The Democrats are just as responsible for the masked agents terrorizing American streets as the other side. To briefly recap.
Obama
Always worth a reminder that Obama inherited ICE as a fledgling agency, increased its budget 300%, established a nationwide network of detention centres and expanded the ‘secure communities’ enforcement program from 14 counties under Bush Jr to all 3,181 jurisdictions in America https://t.co/eHEJy7UlH0
— Nate Bear (@NateB_Panic) March 16, 2025
Biden
As always, Team Blue positions itself as just a little less bad. In this case, five percent annual increases instead of seven percent under Trump I. Funding under Trump 2.0 has gone through the roof with at least a tripling of the ICE budget.
Democrats like House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), while always voting to increase ICE’s budget, have in the past released strongly worded statements criticizing the agency. Oddly enough, those stern performative letters didn’t work. Aside from gunning people down, here’s a report from the ground in Minneapolis showing the level of dystopia:
Someone I personally know in Minneapolis posted this to Facebook a few hours ago.
This isnt what orderly law enforcement looks like. No charge, no location info? How do you even know citizens are getting due process here? pic.twitter.com/y2pzvPq7iQ
— Liminal Warmth ❤️🔥 (@liminal_warmth) January 10, 2026
And as more evidence of the absurdity of the moment, ICE used to have a “Human Rights Violators and War Crimes” page that promised to “prevent the admission of known or suspected war criminals, persecutors and human rights violators into the United States.”
Funny the masked agents are nowhere to be found when genocidaires like Bibi and the head chopper Al-Sharaa come to town.Alas, the human rights page is now outdated with a note at the top that reads:
In an effort to keep ICE.gov current, the archive contains content from a previous administration or is otherwise outdated. This information is archived and not reflective of current practice.
No doubt.
By Julia Conley, a staff writer at Common Dreams. Cross posted from Common Dreams.
The killing of Renee Good by a federal immigration officer in Minneapolis this week came as Republicans in Congress were planning to bring a homeland security spending bill to the House floor, deciding on whether the agency that’s surged thousands of armed agents into communities across the country should have increased funding—and progressive lawmakers are demanding that the Democrats use the upcoming government funding deadline to hopefully reduce the department’s ability to wreak further havoc.
“I just don’t understand how we provide votes for a bill that funds the extent of the depravity,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) told CNN Thursday. “I know we can’t fix everything in the appropriations bill but we should be looking at ways we can put some commonsense limitations on their ability to bring violence to our cities.”
But the top Democratic leaders, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (NY) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (NY) both appeared to have little interest in discussing how their party can use the appropriations process as leverage to rein in US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agencies that have taken part in President Donald Trump’s mass deportation operation.
Both Schumer and Jeffries sharply criticized Wednesday’s shooting and the Trump administration’s insistence that, contrary to mounting video evidence, the ICE agent who shot Good was acting in self-defense.
But Jeffries said Thursday that he was focused on passing other appropriations bills that were ultimately approved by the House.
“We’ll figure out the accountability mechanisms at the appropriate time,” Jeffries told reporters.
Democrats refuse to use their power in the appropriations fight to rein in ICE. They don’t care if you live or die. https://t.co/gFXhyfzA12
— Prof Zenkus (@anthonyzenkus) January 9, 2026
With Congress facing a January 30 deadline for approving government spending packages—and with public disapproval of ICE at an all-time high—several lawmakers have said this week that right now is the “appropriate time” to rein in the agency in any way the Democrats can.
“Statements and letters are not enough, and the appropriations process and the [continuing resolution] expiring January 31 is our opportunity,” Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.) told Axios.
Schumer also refused to say whether the Democrats would use the appropriations process as leverage to cut funding to ICE, whose budget is set to balloon to $170 billion following the passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act last year. Republicans will need Democratic support to pass a spending bill in the Senate, where 60 votes are required.
oh cool the guy responsible for failing to protect our healthcare by orchestrating a total cave-in to Republicans is also caving in on the murder of americans by gestapo death squads LOVE IT https://t.co/q0xEWNsTOX
— Jules Suzdaltsev (@jules_su) January 9, 2026
The Senate leader said only that he has “lots of problems with ICE” when asked whether he would support abolishing the agency—a proposal whose support has gone by 20 percentage points among voters in just one year, according to a recent survey. Both leaders also would not commit to slashing the homeland security budget should the Democrats win back majorities in Congress this year.
“It’s hard to be an opposition party when you refuse to oppose the blatantly illegal and immoral things being done by the opposition,” said Melanie D’Arrigo, executive director of the Campaign for New York Health.
Sharing a clip of Jeffries’ remarks to reporters about the agency’s funding, historian Moshik Temkin said that “people need to understand that at its core ICE is a bipartisan project, increasingly funded and normalized over multiple Democratic administrations and congressional majorities, and a few of them (not this guy) are starting to realize how foolish, weak, and misguided they were.”
Reps. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) are among the progressive lawmakers calling on the Democrats to demand reduced funding for ICE—even if it means another government shutdown months after the longest one in US history late last year, which began when the Democrats refused to join the GOP in passing a spending bill that would have allowed Affordable Care Act tax credits to expire. Ultimately, some Senate Democrats caved, and the subsidies lapsed.
“We can’t just keep authorizing money for these illegal killers,” Jayapal told Axios. “That’s what they are, this rogue force.”
Ocasio-Cortez told the Independent that Democrats should “absolutely” push to cut funding.
“This Congress, this Republican Congress, while they cut a trillion dollars to Americans’ healthcare, and they exploded the ICE budget to $170 billion making it one of the largest paramilitary forces in the United States with zero accountability as they shoot US citizens in the head—absolutely,” she said.
On the podcast The Majority Report, Emma Vigeland and Sam Seder called on progressive Democrats to demand Schumer’s ouster in light of his refusal to take action to rein in ICE as its violence in American communities escalates.
It’s time for Democrats to oust Chuck Schumer from leadership pic.twitter.com/ByWMJ495zb
— Majority Report (@majorityfm) January 9, 2026
“Change the news cycle and show that you’ll be an opposition party,” said Vigeland. “Call for his ouster.”
Seder added that Schumer “has the ability to wage a fight to prevent the funding of DHS. He has the ability to do that and he doesn’t want it. He’s running away from any leverage he has, deliberately.”
The first tweet for the on the ground report seems to have disappeared? I couldn’t find it, but i’m no X-pert.
Read Jenn Budd
https://jennbudd.substack.com/p/renee-goods-murder-feels-like-deja
Here on the border this kind of thing happens with regularity usually to people who are afraid or unable to bring any kind of attention to to it.
Rumor has it that there are many unexplained gunshot victims found along the border buried in the unknown person section of the potters field next to my mothers graveyard.
This is Bovino territory (Imperial B.P. district) so not many questions are asked.
The Border Patrol has never been careful about about who they kill whether in a car chase or with a gun.
This only makes the news when it happens outside of the constitution free zone where we live.
Whoever said that the Democrats were the “opposition party?” LOL
Albert Einstein told us in 1949 that “we were an oligarchy that controlled the media and both political parties.”
Nothing has changed except that it has gotten much worse. Corporatism rules now that our corrupt SCOTUS equated money with free speech and democracy. Since they are all owned by the oligarchy, why would they vote to turn off the $$$ spigot?
Look how the DNC treated Zhoran Mamdani. They endorsed a criminal and sexual offender rather than supporting a moral man who wouldn’t sell out. That’s all you need to know.
How much more proof do Democrats need to prove that their leadership are not only a bunch of sell-outs but will always betray them.Three people killed by ICE the past week and the Democrats vote to give them more money.
The motto of the Democrat party is, and has been in my 50-some years of existence:
Now Is Not The Time
The Vichy left.
Just another well armed, well funded three letter agency that’s out of control. America seems to have real thing for turning common or garden paranoid nightmares into common or garden reality.
There’s no need to defund . Just disarm them. If they meet violent resistance they can back off and call local police for defense.
These are poorly trained, overpaid thugs who need to be taught proper behavior and held accountable for their actions. Granted, that won’t happen under our fascist government, but someday….
I firmly believe that most ICE agents took this job not to serve others, but to flaunt their authority and intimidate people.
Perhaps one of those cases where people that really want a specific job for the wrong reasons should not have it.
That’s exactly the type of recruit your local and state police attempt to NOT hire. It’s precisely the type of recruit the job attracts. Unfortunately, screening isn’t uniform and quite a few slip through.
Someday… I hope I live to see that day:
It′s coming through a hole in the air,
From those nights in Tiananmen Square.
It’s coming from the feel
That this ain′t exactly real
Or it’s real, but it ain’t exactly there
From the wars against disorder
From the sirens night and day
From the fires of the homeless
From the ashes of the gay
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.
The University of Florida Election Lab recently confirmed that of eligible voters (citizens 18 and over not under an disqualifying felony) the vote went 31 percent Trump, 30 percent Harris, 5 percent third-party, and 34 percent didn’t participate. Each legacy party’s plurality was so laughable that over two thirds of eligible voters didn’t cast votes for one or both of them. It’s unclear how many of those Trump votes were “protest votes” against the horrible lack of honesty and open process displayed for all to see by the Democrats, but it had to be more than a few.
It’s high time for a third party, although forming it will be a monumental struggle thanks to laws allowing the duopoly to tightly control ballot access in most states. Perhaps impossible.
Regardless, the irony is that people have shown repeatedly they won’t vote for parties they say “can’t win” or “are not viable”. Well, of course not, if people don’t vote for them.
It’s like people don’t understand voting…
For a lot of independents, its not about voting for parties that “can’t win”, its about refusing to continue voting for the lesser of two evils and instead choosing not to participate in a corrupted dupoly which has disenfranchised them.
Forget the duopoly. They can refuse to continue to vote for the lesser of two evils and vote third-party at the same time. If only half of them did, that would send one hell of a message.
This thread is an excellent argument for ranked choice voting. This assuming there is an election in ‘26.
The thing about elections in US over past three quarters of a century, more or less, is that 1/3 to 1/2 of the eligible voters don’t vote no matter what. If that’s the measure of a “high time for a third party,” then it’s always been the time for a third party. (I actually believe this is true, btw). The problem with a third party movement is that getting an organization with sufficient credibility is hard: people don’t want to waste time voting for “unserious” people. Granted, the existing parties are increasingly full of unserious people not worth voting for, but they at least have institutionsl inertia and social networks. A “serious” third party movement needs a whole cast of serious people.
Schumer, Jeffries Refuse to Join Democrats’ Growing Calls to Slash ICE Spending
… surprising absolutely no one (who truly knows #teamPaidToLose)
Does it make a difference in Trump word anyway? Miriam Adelson could easily drop another quarter-bil to fund ICE for the rest of 2026.
Seriously. Who expected anything else? They’d rather fundraise off the tragedy than lift a finger to stop it. Same as it ever was.
It looks like Real Democrats or Rebel Democrats or whatever they would like to call themselves have a real opportunity to primary Schumer and Jeffries on the issue of downfunding ICE.
” Defund ICE!”
” Put them on trial!”
To paraphrase Schumer . .. ” For every Klan Maganazi vote we lose in Upstate New York, we will gain two or maybe three votes in the City and in Buffalo and in Rochester and maybe even in Binghamton”.