Gallego wants to block ICE funding after agents ‘executed’ citizen

This past weekend, federal immigration agents shot and killed another U.S. citizen in Minneapolis, sparking widespread outrage from Democrats and even some prominent Republicans. Arizona Sen. Ruben Gallego has been among the fiercest critics, calling for Senate Democrats to deny further funding to Trump’s Department of Homeland Security unless significant reforms are made.

“I will not be voting for the upcoming funding bill,” Gallego told reporters on a press call. “We can’t just continue to vote for this funding after two U.S. citizens were gunned down by federal agents in the streets.”

On Monday, Gallego told reporters on a press call that he’s “confident” that Democrats will be able to “stay united” to enact guardrails on DHS and its subdivision, Immigration and Customs Enforcement. 

Gallego said immigration agents “executed” 37-year-old ICU nurse Alex Pretti on Saturday. Pretti had been legally observing immigration agents and helping a protester who was pushed to the ground when agents tackled him and seemingly shot him multiple times in the back. Though the administration rushed to claim he was armed and had intent to kill federal agents, videos showed Pretti had only a cell phone in his hand. It also appeared to show an agent unholstering and removing Pretti’s pistol — which he reportedly had a legal permit to carry in public — before the shots rang out.

Now, Gallego and other Democrats want to see big changes to ICE. (Though many, including Gallego, have stopped short of calling for ICE to be abolished altogether.) Gallego said he wants a strong border but blasted ICE as Trump’s “private army of the White House.” He said ICE is violating the First, Second and Fourth Amendment rights — those are, respectively, the rights to free speech, the right to bear arms and the protection against unreasonable search and seizure — for citizens and non-citizens. The Trump administration is “outright using state violence to suppress freedom of speech,” he said.

Gallego wants to bar ICE from racially profiling — a practice that the U.S. Supreme Court allowed in a ruling last year — as well as require agents to have their body cameras on and “stick with warrants” rather than grabbing random people off the streets.

“You don’t have to racially profile in order to have good immigration enforcement. You don’t have the right to search people’s homes without a warrant,” Gallego said. “It’s not my responsibility to make their jobs any easier, especially when they’re killing U.S. citizens on the streets of this country.”

Gallego also said ICE agents should stop going to “sensitive sites” such as churches and schools to conduct immigration activity. Under the Biden administration, ICE was prohibited from going to such places, but the Trump administration revoked that guidance. Once detained, the senator said, individuals should have “access to communicate” with “loved ones and people that are concerned.” There have been many reports of ICE detaining people and dropping them in a cell somewhere without informing their family members.

“We need to at least be able to bring some level of pressure, either on DHS or on Republican colleagues, to explain to the American public why we are continuing to fund this without any changes,” Gallego said.

To get those changes, Gallego plans to leverage Congress’s power of the purse. A $1.3 trillion spending bill currently sits before the Senate that includes additional funding to DHS, as well as other cabinet departments like the Department of Defense. If not passed by Friday, there could be a partial government shutdown.

The bill has already passed the House of Representatives, with all but seven Democrats voting against it. In the Senate, however, the bill needs 60 votes to overcome a filibuster and pass. There are 47 Democrats in the Senate, meaning seven would have to vote with Republicans to pass the funding. Gallego, fellow Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly and many others have signaled their intent to vote against the package. So has Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, though Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman said he opposed shutting the government down, pointing out that ICE is already sitting on a mound of cash appropriated by Congress last year.

Gallego urged Republicans to separate the DHS funding from the rest of the bill package to avoid a shutdown.

“We will let everything else pass,” Gallego said. “So we can negotiate a good funding package and make sure that we are guarding people’s civil liberties, that we’re treating immigrants humanely, and our streets do not have that chaos that Americans are seeing right now.”

To win those concessions means playing hardball and withholding the necessary votes. The Democrats may have the backbone now, but how long can they hold out?

That’s “a totally different question,” Gallego said.

Last fall, Democrats withheld their votes on a short-term funding deal because Republicans wouldn’t renew health care subsidies that allow millions of Americans to afford health insurance under the Affordable Care Act. That led to a record-breaking 43-day government shutdown, though it didn’t accomplish much. In the end, a handful of Democrats caved and reopened the government without a deal with Republicans. Kelly and Gallego were not among them.

The health care subsidies have not returned. Gallego wants to avoid a repeat of that fate when it comes to pushing for ICE reforms. 

“We can’t just let this keep going the way it is,” Gallego said of ICE’s activity. “It would be irresponsible.”