California Democrats help lead fight vs. Trump immigration crackdown

California Democrats have taken a leading role in their party’s counterattack against the Trump administration’s massive immigration crackdown; They tapped into a growing sense, shared by some Republicans, that the campaign was out of control and that the political winds were swinging heavily in their favor.

They halted funding for the Department of Homeland Security in the Senate and impeached Secretary Kristi Noem in the House. They strategized against President Trump’s threat to invoke the Insurrection Act and challenged administration policies and street tactics in federal court. They came to Minneapolis to express their outrage and demand records from the Department of Justice following two deadly shootings there against U.S. citizens.

This move comes at an extremely tense time; Minneapolis and the country were reeling from the deadly weekend shooting of Alex Pretti, which served as the impetus for a spending deal reached late Thursday between Senate Democrats and the White House to avert another partial government shutdown. The compromise would allow lawmakers to fund a larger portion of the federal government and give them more time to negotiate new restrictions on immigration agents.

“This is probably one of the few windows where Democrats in particular find themselves on offense on immigration,” said California Republican political consultant Mike Madrid. “This is a rare and extraordinary moment.”

The state’s Democratic senators, Adam Schiff and Alex Padilla, came out in staunch opposition to the latest Homeland Security funding measure in Congress, vowing to block it unless the administration scales back street operations and rein in masked agents who have killed Americans in multiple shootings, clashed with protesters and incited communities with aggressive tactics.

Under the agreement reached Thursday, the Department of Homeland Security will be funded for two weeks; That period would theoretically allow lawmakers to negotiate guardrails for the federal agency. The measure would still need to be approved by the House, but it’s unclear when they’ll vote on it; This means that even if the Senate agreement is accepted, a short-term closure may occur.

Padilla negotiated with the White House to separate those controversial measures — to provide $64.4 billion for Homeland Security and $10 billion specifically for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement — from a broader spending package that also funds the Pentagon, State Department and health, education and transportation agencies.

Senate Democrats have vowed not to give more money to federal immigration agencies, including ICE and Customs and Border Protection, unless Republicans agree to require agents to wear body cameras, remove masks during operations and stop making arrests and searching homes without warrants. All Senate Democrats and seven Senate Republicans blocked passage The wider spending package was announced early on Thursday.

“Anything short of meaningful and actionable reforms to Trump’s out-of-control ICE and CBP is a non-starter,” Padilla said in a statement after the earlier vote. “We need real oversight, accountability, and enforcement for both the agents in the field and the leaders who give them orders. I won’t vote for anything less.”

Neither Padilla nor Schiff immediately responded to requests for comment on the deal late Thursday.

Immigration operations won’t stop even if Democrats block Homeland Security funding after the two-week deal expires. That’s because ICE received $75 billion under the One Big Good Bill Act last year; This was a portion of the unprecedented $178 billion provided to Homeland Security through the megabill.

Trump said Thursday he was working “in a bipartisan manner” to reach agreement on the funding package. “I hope we don’t have a shutdown, we’re working on that right now,” he said. “I think we’re getting close. I don’t think the Democrats want to see that either.”

The administration has softened its tone since Pretti’s killing and acknowledged mistakes in its immigration enforcement campaign, but has not fully backed down or paused operations in Minneapolis as critics demanded.

This week, Padilla and Schiff, along with other Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee, called for the Justice Department to launch a civil rights investigation into the fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good by immigration agents in Minneapolis. In a letter to the Deputy Solicitor. Civil Rights Gen. Harmeet Dhillon questioned her office’s decision to drop the investigation, saying it reflected a tendency “to ignore enforcement of civil rights laws in favor of furthering President Trump’s political agenda.”

Dhillon did not respond to a request for comment. Deputy Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche said “there is no basis at this time” for such an investigation.

Schiff is also busy preparing his party for any move by Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act, which would give the president broad authority to deploy military troops to American cities. Trump has threatened to take this step, which would mark a dramatic escalation in his immigration campaign.

A spokesman confirmed to The Times that Schiff briefed fellow Democrats at Wednesday’s caucus luncheon on potential strategies to combat such a move.

“President Trump and his allies have been clear and deliberate in laying the groundwork to invoke the Insurrection Act without justification, and they can use the chaos he has fomented in places like Minneapolis as an excuse,” Schiff said in a statement. “Whether he is doing this in connection with immigration enforcement or to intimidate voters during the midterm elections, we should not be caught off guard if he takes the extreme step of deploying troops to police our streets.”

Meanwhile, Rep. Robert Garcia of Long Beach, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, announced he will serve as one of three Democrats leading the impeachment inquiry into Noem, whom Democrats have criticized for allowing and condoning violence by agents in Minneapolis and other cities.

Garcia called the shootings of Good and Pretti so “horrific and shocking” that even some Republicans acknowledge the “seriousness of what happened”; This creates an opportunity for Noem to be impeached.

“What’s going on right now is unacceptable and Noem is in charge of this agency and is completely deceitful,” he said Thursday. “People are being killed on the streets”

Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Fremont) traveled to Minneapolis this week to meet with residents and protesters denouncing the administration’s presence in their city as unconstitutional and violent.

California Adv. Gen. Rob Bonta went after a number of Trump’s immigration policies, both in California and across the country; this includes supporting a lawsuit challenging immigrant deployments in the Twin Cities and participating in a letter to the U.S. Attorney. Gen. Pam Bondi condemned the administration’s attempts to “exploit the situation in Minnesota” by demanding local leaders turn over state voter data in exchange for the departure of federal agents.

California’s leaders are not alone in pushing for big changes.

Cardinal Joseph Tobin, president of the Archdiocese of Newark (NJ) and a leading ally of Pope Leo XIV, this week harshly criticized immigration enforcement, called ICE a “lawless organization” and supported cuts to funding for the agency. On Thursday, the NAACP and other prominent civil rights organizations sent a letter to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (DY) arguing that ICE should be “completely dissolved” and Homeland Security funding blocked until “immediate and enforceable restrictions” are placed on its operations.

Madrid, the Republican consultant, said California leaders have a clear reason to push policies that protect immigrants, given that the state is home to 1 in 4 foreign-born Americans and immigration is “woven into the fabric of California.”

And at a moment when Trump and other administration officials are clearly realizing “how politically disjointed and how damaging” immigration policies have become, he said, California leaders have a real opportunity to advance their own agenda — especially if it includes clear, concrete solutions to end the “horrible, unconstitutional rights violations” that many Americans find deeply objectionable.

But Madrid warned that Democrats wasted a similar opportunity in the wake of unrest over the killing of George Floyd by calling for “defunding the police,” which is politically unpopular and could fall into a similar trap if they push to abolish ICE.

“Here you have a moment you can fix [ICE]”Or lean into the political moment and say ‘get this out of the way,'” he said. “The question becomes: Can Democrats go on the offensive? Or will they do what they often do in this regard: wrest defeat from the jaws of victory?