Splinter: Democrats, Shut Down DHS This Week. You Won’t Get This Chance Again.

Here’s something that Congressional members of the Democratic Party would be well served to get through their heads: Immigration and Customs Enforcement is unpopular in this country. Deeply unpopular. According to new opinion polling from Marist, only 33% of Americans—including all political alignments—say they outright approve of the job that ICE is doing. Only 33%! A full 65% of Americans, meanwhile, say that the actions of ICE have “gone too far” in enforcing immigration laws, a figure that has risen from 54% this past June. Considering the world of absolute and unyielding political polarization within which we exist, finding an agency of the Donald Trump administration that only 33% of Americans approve of is frankly shocking—an indication of Trump’s own weakness on the slipping approval for his immigration policies. And that’s why Congressional Democrats shouldn’t even entertain the thought of backing down on their demands for the wide-ranging reform of ICE, despite the consequence of the Department of Homeland Security shutting down when its funding runs out this Friday, Feb. 13. For once in your lives, Congressional Democrats, take advantage of an opportunity to be on the side of objective popularity: Shut down DHS in pursuit of reforms to provide some small new layers of protection for American citizens. Americans will thank you!

Lord knows, it’s not as if the left side of the aisle in Congress is asking for unrealistic concessions here. The grand scope of the Democrat demand list, which GOP congressional leaders immediately labeled “impossible” and “totally unrealistic,” is to simply require federal immigration agents of ICE or Border Control to display similar layers of accountability and overview as Americans would expect from other rank and file police officers. That involves the most basic elements of public accountability, such as agents not being able to hide behind masks or deny their names or identification to members of the public. It also includes demands to codify the use of force against American citizens, following the ICE and Border Patrol shooting deaths of U.S. citizens Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minnesota, and language to keep agents from relying entirely on racial discrimination in their decisions of who to target for harassment. In short, Congressional Democrats want to implement basic, common-sense checks upon the power and anonymous indifference of an agency that has increasingly gone out of its way to target Americans for intimidation and retribution, all while slashing the training necessary to become one of those federal agents.

Congresswoman @ramirez.house.gov: “ Congress designed DHS [Department of Homeland Security] to violate our rights under the pretense of securing our safety.”

“ DHS cannot be reformed. It must be dismantled, and something new must take its place”

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— Ken Klippenstein (@kenklippenstein.bsky.social) Feb 10, 2026 at 3:58 PM

Make no mistake: The reforms are desperately needed, and public opinion in favor of making those reforms has never been more vocal. Despite the insinuation of a kinder, gentler immigration enforcement apparatus coming from the likes of Kristi Noem, who babbled about the elective use of body cameras (which were already DHS policy to use, but largely ignored), or the Trump admin claiming it would “lower the temperature” in Minnesota to avoid more bad press, the actual actions of federal agents in the field have remained just as violent and confrontational toward Americans as ever. Increasingly, the federal government is charging American citizens with crimes it characterizes as “impeding” or “interfering” with federal agents, even when the interference in question amounts only to following those agents around and documenting their activities on video. According to two anonymous ICE officials, speaking to Reuters, in fact: “ICE has been tracking the names of protestors in an internal database for several months. The government database contains names, photos, actions that provoked suspicion, locations and license plates.”

These are not the actions of an agency “bringing down the temperature” on anything—they’re the actions of an agency laying ever more robust foundations for fully militarized fascism and repression of anyone who speaks out or protests, under the guise of “immigration enforcement,” answering solely to an autocratic leader. And the American public, much as we tend to criticize its inability to break free of partisan devotion, can increasingly see what is happening. In the same Marist polling, 62% of Americans now say that the actions of ICE are “making Americans less safe.” Even 27% of self-identified Republicans agreed that the actions of ICE have “gone too far”—certainly not a majority, but having more than a quarter of the GOP electorate say that ICE is fucking up is no small thing, either.

It bears mentioning that even if no compromise is reached and DHS does shut down after Friday, ICE’s operations wouldn’t somehow immediately cease—that is too good an outcome for any of us to deserve or attain. Rather, ICE would remain operating through a $75 billion provision in the already passed One Big Beautiful Bill from last year. The immediate brunt of the effect would fall on DHS agencies such as the Transportation Security Administration, FEMA and U.S. Coast Guard, some employees of whom would be deemed essential and need to continue working without pay until the shutdown ended. Suffice to say, this is a relatively minor political cost that the Democratic Party in Congress should be fully prepared to pay. Yes, shutting down DHS won’t result in the threat posed by ICE suddenly disappearing. Yes, they have funds set aside for this eventuality. But Democrats should make them use those funds. Don’t give ICE a thing for free, when you have a public mandate to hold their feet to the fire. Senator Richard Blumenthal (CT) had it right, when he recently said the following:

“These demands are demands, not requests, not proposals. In my view, they are the minimum that ought to be required of the Department of Homeland Security. Shutting down the Department of Homeland Security is minor compared to losing our freedoms.”

That is the message to be hitting. Democrats shouldn’t be acting like there’s some kind of dire political damage to being associated with the shutdown of DHS, when Americans are telling them to do exactly that. Rather, they should be laying out the demands of Americans for greater accountability from federal agents on a daily basis, and making the GOP flatly state that they’re against granting American citizens greater protection. Speaking with reporters on Tuesday on Capitol Hill, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries struck a decent tone, saying that the White House’s counterproposal to the Democrat list of demands was “woefully inadequate” and nowhere near what would be needed to strike a deal before the Friday shutdown of DHS.

“What I can say is that the White House is clearly not open to judicial warrants,” Jeffies said. “They’re not open to detention center reform. They’re not open to independent investigations. They’re not open to prohibiting the use of excessive force. And they’re not open to the type of training that is needed in order to ensure that taxpayer dollars are not being used to brutalize American citizens or in some cases kill them.”

Democratic leaders rejected a White House counteroffer on DHS reforms in a late-night statement on Monday, complaining that the GOP proposal “included neither details nor legislative text.”

Three days until a shutdown.

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— Amee Vanderpool (@girlsreallyrule.bsky.social) Feb 10, 2026 at 11:48 AM

What causes some concern, is that even as Democrats were grandstanding during the House Homeland Security Committee’s Tuesday hearings with ICE and CBP leaders, with lawmakers like Rep. Shri Thanedar (MI) asking ICE director Todd Lyons if Renee Good and Alex Pretti deserved to die (and Lyons replying “I cannot comment on ongoing investigations”), some were, according to CNN, “privately saying it doesn’t make sense to oppose a continuing resolution and let parts of the government shut down, since ICE would still have plenty of funds from the president’s domestic policy bill last year.” They would instead pass a CR to fund DHS for some additional short period while negotiations continue, but this would be a classic Democrat blunder: The immigration equivalent of ending the last government shutdown in exchange for a “future vote” on extending healthcare subsidies that never resulted in anything. It’s only been a few month since spineless Congressional Democrats showed us how they could cave on a popular issue, betraying the wishes of their own constituency.

But the Department of Homeland Security is not the entire federal government, and it shouldn’t be treated as a situation that is in any way similar. They have been handed an incredible opportunity, in having the act of funding DHS stripped from all other bills–for once, Democrats don’t need to hurt vast numbers of their own base in order to do something demonstrably popular for that same base. We can only hope that Jeffries’ stated opposition to a stopgap measure speaks for the Democratic caucus when he says the following:

“I’m a hard no on a continuing resolution. The Republicans are trying to stall for time. ICE needs to be dramatically reformed. Immigration enforcement in this country should be fair, just, and humane. That’s not what’s taking place right now, and the time for dramatic change is upon us. No more delay.”

He’s right, and we don’t really need any more polls to tell us that Americans agree that he’s right. So for once, Congressional Democrats, please stick to your guns. If Republicans won’t cave to American demands to reform ICE and dismantle some of the palpable threat it represents, shut down DHS. Do it proudly, in the name of the public you purport to serve. You won’t get another chance like this.