Democrats threaten to withhold funding after ICE killing in Minneapolis

A day after an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer shot and killed a 37-year-old US citizen in Minneapolis, Democrats on Capitol Hill are demanding restraints on the agency Donald Trump has empowered to carry out his mass deportation campaign – and some are threatening to use the next funding deadline to force those changes.

Democrats sharply condemned the Trump administration over the killing of Renee Nicole Good, demanding accountability after the president; JD Vancethe vice-president; and the secretary of homeland security, Kristi Noem repeatedly claimed that the officer acted in “self-defense”.

Videos taken from multiple angles show Good behind the wheel, reversing her car and then attempting to drive away when an agent shoots her multiple times, remaining on his feet and walking away, apparently uninjured.

“Democrats cannot vote for a [Department of Homeland Security] budget that doesn’t restrain the growing lawlessness of this agency,” Chris Murphy, a Democratic senator of Connecticut, wrote on X, sharing a video of the shooting.

Axios reported on Thursday that Murphy was preparing to introduce a sweeping reform package that would require a warrant for arrests, ban agents from wearing masks during enforcement operations and limit border patrol agents from operating in cities far from the border.

Many Democrats are loath to trigger another shutdown fight after a protracted and bruising showdown last year over healthcare subsidies. Some Democrats remain skittish on the issue of immigration, having argued that progressive slogans like “Abolish ICE” helped Trump climb back to power by promising a sweeping crackdown.

But public opinion has shifted as Trump escalates what has become an increasingly violent federal enforcement campaign, and as images circulate of masked agents with rifles arresting immigrants at car washes, courthouses and even residential buildings.

Reports of another federal officer-involved shooting in Portland, Oregon, late on Thursday are likely to only increase tensions. While details of the incident remained unclear, Democratic leaders in the city urgently called for a halt to immigration enforcement activity in the city.

According to the Pew Research Center, 53% of Americans now say the Trump administration is doing “too much” when it comes to deporting immigrants living in the US without authorization, up from 44% in March.

“The killing of Renee Nicole Good was an abomination, a disgrace, and blood is clearly on the hands of those individuals within the administration who’ve been pushing an extreme policy that has nothing to do with immigration enforcement connected to removing violent felons from this country,” House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries told reporters at a joint press conference with the Senate Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer, on Thursday.

Watching the video felt like “being punched” in the stomach, Schumer said, and called for a “full investigation at the federal level”.

Asked whether Democrats were prepared to use the appropriations process as a point of leverage, Schumer declined to say. Spending bills require bipartisan support for passage, with 60 votes needed to overcome the filibuster.

The House on Thursday passed a handful of government spending bills, before a 30 January deadline. But lawmakers are still racing to finalize a half-dozen more spending bills before then, including funding the Department of Homeland Security.

The Republican representative Mark Amodei of Nevada, who chairs the DHS funding panel, told Politico the ICE shooting would “probably complicate the bill”.

“We’re going to see where it turns out. I’m not going to speculate on where we’re going at the moment,” said Rosa DeLauro, the top Democrat on the House appropriations committee, when asked whether the DHS bill should be held up over the Minneapolis shooting.

Last year, Republicans passed Trump’s signature domestic policy bill, known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which allocated a staggering $170bn over four years for border and interior enforcement - more than the yearly budget for all local and state law enforcement agencies across the US combined. The largest share of the funding was directed toward ICE to arrest, detain and deport immigrants, as well as money to recruit as many as 10,000 new officers.

Republicans have forcefully defended the agent’s actions in Minneapolis, where the administration had said it was carrying out the agency’s “largest operation to date”. Speaking at the White House on Thursday, Vance accused Good, without evidence, of being a part of a “leftwing network” of agitators trying to incite violence against federal law enforcement officers. At a press conference in New York, Noem said her agency would not be deterred and that she was “not opposed” to sending in more federal immigration agents to Minneapolis, where protests have swelled in response to the shooting and the city’s mayor, Democrat Jacob Frey, has implored the agency to “get the fuck out”.

Congressional Democrats, hopeful they will take back the House or Senate in next year’s midterm elections, are pushing other avenues for accountability.

The Democratic representative Robin Kelly of Illinois said that she was filing three articles of impeachment against Noem following the deadly ICE shooting.

“Secretary Kristi Noem is an incompetent leader, a disgrace to our democracy, and I am impeaching her for obstruction of justice, violation of public trust, and self-dealing,” Kelly said in a statement Wednesday.

The representative Ro Khanna, a progressive of California, said the agent who fatally shot Good, identified as Jonathan Ross, “should be arrested and put on trial”.

“What is seen in this video is a reckless use of power,” he wrote on X.

Fury over the killing has led some progressive Democrats to renew calls for the agency to be overhauled or eliminated entirely. “Abolish ICE now,” Representative Rashida Tlaib, a Michigan Democrat, wrote on X.

In a floor speech on Thursday, the Democratic representative Yassamin Ansari of Arizona said she was joining Kelly’s impeachment effort and separately introducing legislation to “rein in ICE”. She accused the administration of lying as it “rushed to smear a dead woman as a ‘domestic terrorist’”.

“This is what authoritarianism looks like,” she said. “This is what happens when the leader of a nation turns a federal agency into his personal paramilitary force against the civilian population of the United States.”

Chris Stein in Washington contributed to this report