The Department of Homeland Security is in a partial shutdown over a funding standoff in Congress, and Democrats say they won’t approve more money for the agency without reforms to ICE along with it.
But Rep. Glenn Ivey, a Democrat from Prince George’s County, might go one step further.
“It may be that you just have to strip out this law enforcement function from ICE entirely,” he said in an interview with Capital News Service on Friday.
One reform sought by Democrats would prohibit DHS officers from entering private property without a judicial warrant. But that wouldn’t stop them from carrying out enforcement altogether.
“If they can’t handle that level of responsibility, and it’s clear that they [can’t],” said Ivey, “it needs to be taken away.”
Earlier this month, he wrote a letter to federal agencies — cosigned by 57 Democrats — demanding the release of evidence on the lethal January shootings of Alex Pretti and Renée Good by ICE and Customs and Border Protection agents.
According to Ivey, there’s been no response to the letter, which was addressed to FBI Director Kash Patel, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem and Attorney General Pam Bondi.
“The key thing from my perspective is that the state, local prosecutors get the evidence they need,” Ivey said. “If they don’t contact me, but they send them the evidence, that’s fine.”
That hasn’t happened either, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison said at a Senate homeland security committee hearing Thursday.
The same day, White House border czar Tom Homan announced the conclusion of the immigration enforcement surge that saw the deployment of agents like those who killed Good and Pretti.
Despite the lack of federal cooperation, Ivey is confident that efforts to get justice for the victims will be “ultimately effective.”
“Something’s gonna happen,” he said. “One of these cases is gonna get taken before a grand jury — somebody’s probably gonna get indicted.”
On Friday, Ivey and fellow Maryland Democrats in Congress wrote to Noem as well as to Acting Director of ICE Todd Lyons asking for transparency and information regarding ICE’s Baltimore field office. Detainees there have suffered “deeply disturbing” conditions, the letter said.
That office is “being run worse than a pet shelter,” Ivey told CNS.
In 2025, at least 30 people died in ICE custody, the most in over two decades, according to Statista. January alone saw the deaths of six detainees, according to the American Immigration Council, putting 2026 on track to break last year’s record.