A progressive House Democrat has proposed legislation to completely shut down the Department of Homeland Security and replace it with the “Department of Community Safety.”
Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-IL) introduced a bill on Tuesday, just weeks ahead of the midterm election, that would go considerably further than socialists’ calls to get rid of DHS agency U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement but keep the rest of the department.
“DHS was founded out of a profound national trauma, established to violate our rights under the pretense of securing our safety,” Ramirez said in a statement. “But we cannot add new pains to old ones.”
“Every person dead in detention, shot or killed by ICE and [U.S. Customs and Border Protection], every neighbor deported to a third country, every family separated, every community [the Federal Emergency Management Agency] failed, every miscarriage due to substandard care, every dissenter wrongfully branded, targeted, and persecuted as ‘terrorist,’ and every threat against our elections by [President Donald Trump], [DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin], and [White House deputy chief of staff for policy Stephen Miller] is a reason DHS must be dismantled and something new must take its place,” Ramirez said.
Trump‘s focus on deportations put ICE in Democrats’ crosshairs in 2025, prompting progressive Democrats to call for abolishing the agency. But many Democrats have moved away from “abolish ICE” messaging as the midterm elections approach, and as the Trump administration has moved away from featuring its deportation agenda.
Ramirez’s Reimagining Safety Act would do away with the two-decade-old department that was created by Congress in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Several DHS agencies, including the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, FEMA, Transportation Security Administration, and some customs responsibilities would be shifted into a new department called the Department of Community Safety.
ICE and CBP would be outright abolished, according to Ramirez’s proposal. The funding would be redirected “in our communities,” a press release reads.
Congress, which is tasked with managing immigration levels, would be responsible for establishing a civil immigration system outside the DHS. Immigration offenses are civil matters, as opposed to criminal, but because the federal government established immigration law, immigration violations are federal offenses.
Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), Adelita Grijalva (D-AZ), and Jim McGovern (D-MA) signed onto the bill as co-sponsors.
The DHS comprises a total of eight agencies, as well as a dozen other components, including the U.S. Coast Guard and Secret Service.
99,000 ARRESTED AT MEXICAN BORDER IN TRUMP’S FIRST YEAR VERSUS 2 MILLION IN BIDEN’S FIRST YEAR
Sen. Jim Banks (R-IN) called Ramirez’s idea backward and not beneficial to U.S. citizens.
“What about the INNOCENT AMERICANS killed by criminal illegal aliens? What about the AMERICAN FAMILIES separated by criminal illegal aliens? What about the AMERICAN COMMUNITIES terrorized by criminal illegal aliens?” Banks wrote in a post to X. “Democrats will fight for everyone except the American people.”
Continue reading...
[ H/T Washington Examiner ]
