Senate Dems demand guardrails for immigration enforcement — but abolishing ICE remains off the table

WASHINGTON (CN) — Senate Democrats were skeptical Wednesday about the prospect of abolishing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, even as new data shows public opinion has drastically shifted in favor of eliminating the agency amid President Donald Trump’s deadly crackdown on Minneapolis and other cities across the country.

And even as Democrats look ahead to November’s midterm elections and the possibility of retaking both the House and the Senate from Republicans, lawmakers said they preferred legislative action to rein in ICE and the Homeland Security Department — rather than undertaking what they framed as a “political” effort to abolish one of the country’s most controversial law enforcement agencies.

The Trump administration and its Homeland Security Department found themselves under unprecedented congressional scrutiny this week after U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents shot and killed 37-year-old Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, an incident that even some White House officials have now acknowledged may have breached agency protocol.

And the weekend shooting came just weeks after another Minneapolis resident, 37-year-old Renee Good, was killed in her car by an ICE agent who the Trump administration has maintained was acting in self-defense.

The deaths of Pretti and Good, coupled with the Trump administration’s national deportation campaign that has seen federal agents in several U.S. cities tear gas protesters and target members of the media, appear to have predicated a major shift in Americans’ view of ICE, established in 2003 following the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

According to polling data released Tuesday by YouGov, 55% of Americans said they have “very little confidence in ICE,” and half of respondents said the government should slash the agency’s funding. In a separate YouGov poll, a majority of Americans said for the first time that they supported abolishing ICE. That figure represents a major swing from a similar survey conducted in June 2025, when just 27% of respondents said the agency should be eliminated.

But Senate Democrats, who have been harshly critical of ICE and the Trump administration’s approach to immigration enforcement in Minnesota and elsewhere, have so far stopped short of saying the federal immigration enforcement bureau should be abolished.

“I think we need to be careful in our message,” Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin told Courthouse News. “We’re ultimately going to need to have an agency of government with some of their functions, in terms of enforcement of immigration law.”

The Illinois Democrat said he instead thought Congress needed to “put an end to ICE as we know it” with substantial changes to the agency’s operations, arguing the conduct of federal law enforcement had been “totally unacceptable.”

Vermont Senator Peter Welch concurred. “We support immigration enforcement, not these widespread roundups,” he told Courthouse News.

Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey said he thought lawmakers needed to have a “historic debate” about what he said were common-sense guardrails for ICE and that, “at this point,” he supported legislative solutions over a push to abolish the agency entirely.

Markey pointed to this week’s ongoing negotiations over Homeland Security Department funding as an opportunity for such a conversation with Senate Republicans.

“What we need to do here is have this debate this week on what those safeguards are, what those guardrails are, to rein them in, because otherwise it’s just secret police being run by Stephen Miller out of the White House,” the Bay State Democrat told Courthouse News. “We have to take this first moment, then we’ll move on in terms of other reforms.”

Markey argued Republicans would need to accept legislation forcing federal agents to remove face masks and wear identification and body cameras, as well as language slapping guardrails on federal agents’ ability to enter homes without judicial warrants, among other things.

Oregon Senator Ron Wyden argued Democrats also needed to point out that the Trump administration was “stomping all over” the Constitution.

“It’s time to protect the rights of the American people,” he said. “It’s time to start laying out specific sections of the Constitution that the Trump administration is trying to stomp on.”

In remarks on the Senate floor, Wyden argued the White House’s immigration policy had run roughshod over the First, Second, Fourth, Fifth and 10th Amendments. He urged ICE and Border Patrol to “disarm and get out of communities” and said a Democratic majority in Congress would “investigate and publicly prosecute” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, Border Patrol Commander Gregory Bovino and the federal agents who shot Pretti and Good.

Other Democrats, meanwhile, expressed a feeling that conversations about abolishing ICE or whether the party might consider such action if it retook the House or Senate in November were more of a political debate rather than a policy discussion.

“This is about reforming gross abuses that Americans and Virginians are sickened by,” said Virginia Senator Tim Kaine.

New Jersey Senator Cory Booker told Courthouse News that he was not concerned about the “politics” of abolishing ICE. “I’m concerned about the abject violation of people’s civil rights and, literally, their physical safety,” he said.

And Arizona Senator Mark Kelly cautioned that his focus was more on reigning in a federal agency that he said was “out of control.”

“For me, this is about fixing an agency that is operating outside of the rule of law at this point — that’s what we need to focus on,” said the Arizona Democrat. “This isn’t about winning elections; this is about protecting the American people.”

Kelly added that he thought Senate Republicans were beginning to come around to the idea that ICE “needs some serious amount of attention and overhaul.”

Though abolishing ICE seems to be off the table for Senate Democrats, at least for now, lawmakers are still sparring this week over funding for the agency and the Homeland Security Department that makes up part of a must-pass budget package slated for a vote this week.

Democrats have demanded that Republicans strip Homeland Security spending from the appropriations package, but GOP leadership has so far resisted those calls — threatening a partial government shutdown if the budget bills do not pass by the end of the month.

Senate Democrats on Wednesday afternoon released their latest set of demands for Republicans to avert a shutdown, pushing for legislation to end “roving patrols” by federal agents, force law enforcement to remove masks and wear body cameras and enforce a uniform code of conduct. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has said any lapse in funding would be the GOP’s fault, claiming Republicans need only peel off Homeland Security spending from the remaining package of five appropriations bills.

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