Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, D-Wash., questions Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent during the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government hearing on May 6, 2025. Photo: Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call via Getty Images

With two U.S. citizens shot to death in the streets of Minneapolis in just over two weeks, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents abducting and detaining children as young as 2 years old, Americans might be forgiven for expecting a forceful response from the country’s nominal opposition party.

Unfortunately, in the United States, that party is the Democrats. Their refusal to react proportionally to the threat of President Donald Trump and his army of secret police with “absolute immunity” is only making things worse.

Even before Alex Pretti was shot dead on Saturday — in the back, seconds after his concealed and holstered gun was disarmed by federal agents — the brutality of ICE and Custom and Border Protection’s occupation of Minneapolis demanded definitive action.

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When they had the chance, that’s not what Democrats delivered. At the federal level, seven House Democrats — including mainstream media darling Washington Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez and outgoing Maine Rep. Jared Golden — voted with their GOP counterparts last week to pass a bill giving even more money to ICE. That vote came after House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries declined to whip his caucus into opposing the legislation, instead simply “recommending” a no vote.

Senate Democrats reportedly plan to kill the bill — knowing it would force a government shutdown — but their commitment to holding the line must be treated with suspicion. One notable exception is Rep. Delia Ramirez, D-Ill., who introduced legislation to restrict ICE’s use of force, a bill she’s characterized as “the bare minimum.” Even that bill is unlikely to pass through the GOP-controlled House.

Meanwhile, on the ground in Minnesota, Democratic Gov. Tim Walz was unable to meet the moment as early as January 7, when Renee Good was killed. Rather than forcefully show up for his constituents, Walz prioritized preemptively scolding protesters, posting: “Trump wants a show. Don’t give it to him.”

While Walz has been clear that he is angry over ICE’s presence in the state and has asked that they leave, he’s failed to provide any clear directives or policy proposals for expelling the agency from his state. Attorney General Keith Ellison has yet to bring any charges against Jonathan Ross, Good’s killer, something Walz could order him to do under state law.

Minnesotans are out in the streets calling for action, but beyond public statements, they’re not getting much material support from their leaders.

What Walz did do on January 20, days before Pretti’s killing, was to invite the president to “join me, and others in our community, to help restore calm and order and reaffirm that true public safety comes from shared purpose, trust, and respect.”

Mere hours after Pretti’s killing — and, importantly, drawing on the same playbook used with Good’s killing — the administration made clear there was no “shared purpose, trust, and respect” to “reaffirm” with Minnesota. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Border Patrol official Gregory Bovino both held press conferences in which they blatantly lied about the events of Pretti’s death, which was caught on video from multiple angles. Walz’s demand that “the state must lead the investigation” into Pretti’s death is falling on deaf ears, just as it did with Good’s killing.

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Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey has been angrier, dropping “fuck” in his press conferences — something Democratic Minnesota Sen. Tina Smith has done as well. But this deployment of profanity only serves to remind the public that sound and fury often signifies nothing. Minnesotans are out in the streets calling for action, but beyond public statements, they’re not getting much material support from their leaders, least of all Frey, who earlier this month wouldn’t even entertain abolishing ICE, even after the agency killed one of his constituents.

Meanwhile, the Democratic base has been demanding action on ICE for months. Eager to make political hay, Rep. Seth Moulton, a Massachusetts Democrat with his sights set on the Senate seat held by Ed Markey, called ICE “cowards” and threatened to defund the agency and prosecute its officers. But Moulton and most elected Democrats fall short of calling to abolish the institution outright — a position now held by a plurality of voters.

Leaders like Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, chair and vice chair, respectively, of the Democratic Governors Association, vaguely called on Saturday for “transparency and accountability” after “what happened today in Minneapolis,” without specifying what concrete steps might be taken to deliver either. Former President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle issued a statement in the wake of Pretti’s death that was heavy on the concern but light on substance. Former President Bill Clinton was more forceful, calling this a moment “where the decisions we make and the actions we take will shape our history for years to come” but declining to suggest what, exactly, people should do.

Setting aside the morality of suppressing anger over state killings of civilians, it’s politically shortsighted on the part of Democrats and their allies. But the party is trapped in a world of its own creation, where committing to anything that might alienate mythical moderate conservative voters or, more importantly, donors, is anathema.

The party is trapped in a world of its own creation, where committing to anything that might alienate mythical moderate conservative voters or, more importantly, donors, is anathema.

One specific idea gaining traction is impeaching Noem, a plan all but guaranteed to fail. So are demands from border hawks like Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy that ICE agents stop wearing masks, end quotas, or give in to other “reforms.” ICE and DHS have shown no willingness to bend to any constraints, and when the White House tells them they’re shielded by “absolute immunity” for their actions, any efforts to reform a malignant agency are dead on arrival.

A strong opposition party would take the initiative and, even if done cynically, attach itself to the growing public anger for political gain. Steering the popular upswell into some form of action would allow Democrats to gain power and perhaps even win elections. Instead, they appear to understand their role as tamping down the energy and enthusiasm for change and ensuring whatever comes out of the Pretti outrage is defanged and does not challenge entrenched power structures.

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Fear of making an actual stand is so widespread there’s a cottage industry of advisers and think tanks devoted to encouraging elected Democrats to moderate at every turn. There’s something amoral to the whole project, exemplified by how the popularists — a group of centrist think tankers who endorse triangulation on issues based on polling results, as long as those issues aren’t Israel or Abolish ICE — have reacted to the occupation of Minneapolis.

Even after Good’s killing, Adam Jentleson, founder and president of the think tank Searchlight Institute, was smearing left organizing around “Abolish ICE” as a “political albatross” that’s unrealistic and damaging to the movement; now he’s seizing on Pretti’s death as a moment to course-correct. Paul E. Williams, who’s supposed to be the left-whisperer of the popularist cohort, said hours after Pretti’s killing (and reams of other evidence of abuse and torture at the country’s largest detention center) that he still didn’t have a problem with Democrats like Gluesenkamp Perez voting to fund ICE, only that she was criticizing Frey and Walz for their reaction to the shooting.

It shouldn’t be this difficult to oppose funding the agency on moral grounds after it kidnapped two children, aged 5 and 2, in a week, let alone the killing of American civilians. Much like the politicians they flatter, these groups have nothing of substance to offer — only empty gestures and grating platitudes.

But for the rest of us, they’re what we have. You don’t have to be a Democrat to understand that the party is an important part of organized opposition at the federal level. They need to wake up to the role we sorely need them to play and take action, before it’s too late.

The post It’s Time for Concrete Action on ICE. Sadly, We Have the Democrats. appeared first on The Intercept.

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