Sen. Elizabeth Warren is pushing her colleagues to block government funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement unless Republicans put limits on the agency following the shooting death of Alex Pretti by a federal immigration agent this weekend.
If a deal isn’t reached, the government will partially shut down later this week.
In an interview with Here & Now’s Robin Young, Warren acknowledged that the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, passed last summer, left ICE “rolling in the dough” for the next three years, but said Congress does have the power to take back the money.
“We can pull it back,” Warren said. “What we need to make clear is there have to be restraints on ICE, that [they] can’t just come into our communities, terrorize people and make people less safe because they are there. It’s time for some real constraints and time for some real accountability.”
5 questions with Sen. Elizabeth Warren
What do you think of the videos that have surfaced of Alex Pretti being shot by immigration agents?
“What [Department of Homeland Security Secretary] Kristi Noem and others in the Trump administration are trying to do is to get us to believe some tale they want to tell rather than our own eyes.
“We take a look and sure, there are a lot of different angles, but we saw someone who was lying on the ground who was shot by a federal officer. And that means, at the barest minimum, that ICE is out of control. They are putting people at risk. They think they act with impunity. And it is absolutely essential that the people involved in this shooting are held accountable and that there be a full, independent, fair investigation of what has happened. Right now, the United States Senate has a chance to weigh in on that and make sure that that happens. And that’s what we’ll start doing tomorrow.”
Do you believe that there will possibly be a congressional investigation? We hear people in the state of Minnesota saying they can’t even do a state investigation process.
“I just want to be clear, for every Republican who says that they are disturbed, disturbed doesn’t get the job done. It is time for Congress to step up. And right now, the United States Senate has the power to say that ICE funding will be limited, it will be stopped until we get some constraints on ICE, and until we get, if we have to, get it written into law that there will be an independent investigation in which the federal government is required to fully participate and make all of the evidence and all of the information that it’s got available to the investigators.”
If you block ICE funding, isn’t it true that a lot of this money has already been dispersed, and the operations will continue?
“One problem we’ve got with ICE and one reason that ICE feels like it can act with complete impunity and that there’s nothing Congress can do to it is that all of the Republicans and Donald Trump back in the summer in that One Big Beautiful Bill, basically pre-funded ICE for about three years. So right now, it’s true, ICE is rolling in the dough and, you know, they can just flip off Congress.
“But the reality is, Congress has the power to say we’re taking that money back. We can pull it back. What we need to make clear is there have to be restraints on ICE that can’t just come into our communities, terrorize people and make people less safe because they are there. It’s time for some real constraints and time for some real accountability.”
Do you have concerns that this will become the rallying cry to defund ICE? The rallying cry after the George Floyd killing to defund the police had real blowback for Democrats.
“The way I see it right now is in the short run, we’ve got to keep the focus on the violence and on accountability, because we’ve got to focus on making our communities safer. In the long run, what I think we need to do is tear ICE down to the studs. It is time to get an organization that does our customs and border control and does our immigration enforcement, that has some meaningful accountability in place, that has clear rules, that they do things like follow the Constitution of the United States, that they are an accountable agency, accountable to the people of the United States.”
Do you think there will be a shutdown at the end of the week?
“That’s up to the Republicans. Right now, what the Democrats are saying is, look, there are 12 funding bills in total. Six have already passed. So that part of the government stays open no matter what. We are, Democrats, willing to give the votes to pass five more of those bills. But the one bill, Homeland Security, that contains ICE is one that we’ve got to sit down and agree to put some constraints on ICE before this goes through. And it has to be meaningful constraints with real accountability.”
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Lynn Menegon produced and edited this interview for broadcast with Michael Scotto. Scotto also adapted it for the web.
This article was originally published on WBUR.org.
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