Rep. Delia Ramirez is expected to introduce a bill to abolish the Department of Homeland Security and eliminate all immigrant detention in the United States on Tuesday, the Illinois Democrat shared exclusively with The Intercept.
The Reimagining Safety Act would repeal “duplicative and overreaching terrorism laws,” according to the bill summary and text, and curtail the widespread surveillance state that emerged in the wake of 9/11 terror attacks.
It comes the day after agents from Homeland Security Investigations searched the home of Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., in what the Department of Justice has described as an opaque “federal criminal investigation.” HSI is a component of Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, the agency at the center of mounting concerns about the violent weaponization of DHS against immigrants and the Trump administration’s perceived political enemies.
The sweeping legislation faces long odds in Congress, but Ramirez argues that strictly limiting the government’s immigration enforcement apparatus is critical for public safety in the wake of yet another shooting by federal immigration agents.
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Defund the police was a popular slogan in 2020, the year that Trump lost. Also, 65% of Americans polled thought burning down the Minneapolis East Precinct was justified.
Also, DHS is much smaller & newer than the idea of police departments. America existed for a long time without DHS, so I don’t even think these are equivalent things at all.
Most of the country still thinks the Dems want to defund the police, and most don’t want it. They also aren’t going to be too well informed about how DHS fits into the country: it sounds like it’s protecting them, and taking it away is being “soft on crime” or “open borders”. That turns the conservatives out, too.