Even before Alex Pretti, an intensive care unit nurse at a VA hospital, was killed by U.S. Border Patrol officers in Minneapolis on Saturday, the five congressional Democrats who represent at least a portion of Orange County had voted against a bill funding the U.S. Department of Homeland Security because of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.
But since the fatal shooting — which came a little more than two weeks after Renee Good, another U.S. citizen, was killed by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer in Minneapolis — Senate Democrats have vowed to oppose that Homeland Security spending vehicle, increasing the possibility of a partial government shutdown at the end of the week.
Reps. Lou Correa, D-Santa Ana; Mike Levin, D-San Juan Capistrano; Dave Min, D-Irvine; Linda Sánchez, D-Whittier; and Derek Tran, D-Orange, all said they hoped it would be blocked.
Rep. Young Kim, the lone Republican who represents Orange County communities, said she hoped a government shutdown could be avoided, especially so soon after what was the lengthiest government shutdown in history. (That shutdown, which lasted 43 days, stemmed from an effort to extend federal subsidies to make health care coverage more affordable.)
Hitting pause on the spending bill would give lawmakers the ability, the Democrats said, to implement more safeguards, including independent investigations into not just the shootings of Good and Pretti, but also other allegations of misconduct and wrongdoing.
“I’m hoping that Senate Democrats can pull the Homeland Security funding out of the bill so that we can pass the rest of the appropriations bills and revisit the issue that we’re having with ICE,” Sánchez said in an interview. “Protecting our communities has to be our No. 1 priority, and right now, ICE is just out of control.”
“They’re literally killing people in the streets and violating our civil rights and doing despicable things like using children as bait in their operations,” she said, referencing reports that federal immigration authorities used a 5-year-old to lure his mother out of the home. Homeland Security officials called those reports an “abject lie.”
“That’s not America,” Sánchez said.
Kim is on a congressional trip overseas, and her spokesperson was not able to answer questions about whether she would support reworking the Homeland Security funding bill to include some of those guardrails her Democratic colleagues are requesting.
But in the statement provided, Kim said she voted for the spending bill last week “that would strengthen public safety, secure our borders and equip law enforcement with modern tools to protect our officers and citizens alike.”
Meanwhile, both of California’s U.S. senators, Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff, have said they will oppose the funding bill.
Padilla, who has been advocating amongst his colleagues for rejecting the bill, announced his opposition last week, before the shooting, after conducting an oversight visit with Schiff at a new immigration detention center about 100 miles north of Los Angeles.
But Correa said it wouldn’t take just a “tweak” to the spending bill to get his support. The department, in its entirety, needs to be reviewed, he said Monday.
“Homeland Security has lost its way,” Correa said. “The administration has taken what should have been a department to defend us against foreign and domestic terrorism to going singularly after people, singularly after deportations, and violating American civil rights, human rights and constitutional rights.”
“A tweak,” he added, “is not going to fix this. We have to come back and fundamentally review what Homeland Security is about.”
“I cannot continue to fund an agency that continues to go after our communities, that continues to essentially ignore our civil rights, our constitutional rights,” Correa said.
Orange County’s Democratic lawmakers said they are also concerned with the rhetoric from the federal government, particularly after Pretti’s death.
“We have DHS openly lying, lying with impunity, about things we see with our own eyes and hear with our own ears,” said Levin, adding, “I don’t know how we fix that.”
Min, who was in Minnesota last week as part of a group of more than two dozen Democratic lawmakers who held a field hearing about federal immigration enforcement and the violence that has occurred in the area, called for Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to step down from her position or be removed. He also wants a “real” inspector general installed in the department who could oversee Homeland Security.
“It’s hard to enforce guardrails when the top members will not investigate misconduct,” said Min.
Tran expressed a similar sentiment in a statement provided by a spokesperson.
“An agency that executes a subdued U.S. citizen isn’t upholding the law; it is mocking it,” Tran said. “The inaction by this administration and (Homeland Security) to rein in this rogue agency is a systemic betrayal. We must stop bankrolling (Homeland Security) until ICE is brought under total, transparent control. We demand an independent probe now.”
Tricia McLaughlin, a spokesperson for Homeland Security, pointed to other agencies that would see funding withheld should lawmakers decline to pass the spending bill.
“While politicians in the Senate play games with Americans’ safety, they are blocking vital DHS funding that keeps our country secure and its people safe — from TSA and FEMA to the U.S. Coast Guard and Border Patrol,” McLaughlin said. “This funding supports national security and critical national emergency operations, including FEMA responses to a historic snowstorm that is affecting 250 million Americans. Washington may stall, but the safety of the American people will not wait.”
Six of the annual 12 spending bills for the current budget year have already been passed and signed into law by the president; those dealt with the departments of Justice, Commerce and the Interior, the Environmental Protection Agency, NASA, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The Department of Agriculture was funded from a previous measure.
Levin, a member of the powerful House Appropriations Committee, suggested lawmakers could OK most of the remaining appropriations bills, just hitting pause on the one that deals with Homeland Security.
It’s through the Homeland Security spending bill that Sánchez said lawmakers can effect change with the federal department.
“The quickest way to get the oversight and accountability for that agency is to block their funding,” she said. “When you cut off the spigot of money, people sit up and pay attention. So far, ICE has been completely unwilling to heed the calls of members of Congress to do things in an appropriate manner. My hope is that the Senate pulls out the Homeland Security funding and that we get an opportunity to have that discussion about how not another dime should go to ICE until we have appropriate transparency, oversight and accountability for those officers who are violating people’s civil rights.”
Min and Sánchez, too, struck encouraging tones for people who wish to demonstrate their opposition to the ongoing immigration enforcement tactics.
“I don’t blame people who are afraid to speak up or to protest, but public sentiment is the only way these lawmakers who think they’re in the right understand that Americans don’t want this,” said Sánchez, adding that people could also contact their representative instead of participating in protests.
“Now is the chance,” said Min,” to stand up for our democracy and our rule of law and our society. If we, right now, are scared and stay inside and don’t speak up, that may be more expedient, but it will lead to a society where more and more of our rights are taken away.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.