A Democratic congresswoman declared in Spanish her plan to "completely defund and strip authority from ICE and CBP" and replace them with a so-called Department of Community Safety, drawing sharp rebukes from Republican lawmakers.
Rep. Delia Ramirez of Illinois, the daughter of two Guatemalan immigrants who entered the country illegally, held a public event where she laid out a sweeping proposal to dismantle the federal government's immigration enforcement apparatus. She called for redirecting $150 billion in funding currently allocated to U.S. Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement toward services for illegal immigrants, Breitbart News reported.
Ramirez delivered her remarks in Spanish. As translated and rendered in the report, she told the audience that ICE and CBP "keep lists of you" and that her proposed Department of Community Safety would ensure "immigration will no longer be handled by the department which likes to call immigrants terrorists when it wants to attack them."
She added that under her vision, "our people will no longer have to live with the fear of this system."
The event drew allies from the progressive left, including an organizer of Latino warehouse workers in the Chicago area, an unnamed Chicago politician, and other far-left Democratic figures. The gathering reportedly had little representation from African Americans. No date or specific venue for the event was identified in reporting.
Ramirez's latest remarks build on a statement she made in August 2025, when she publicly declared, "I'm a proud Guatemalan before I'm an American." That comment became a flashpoint in the social media exchange that followed her defund-ICE event, with Republican legislators seizing on it as evidence that her loyalties lie outside the country she was elected to serve.
Rep. Brandon Gill, a Republican from Texas, responded on social media with a pointed critique. He posted:
"@RepDeliaRamirez shows exactly why it's time to end birthright citizenship for the children of illegal aliens: it can empower those with no loyalty to America to dismantle it from within."
Ramirez fired back: "It's called Latina Power, Brandon!"
Gill did not let it drop. In a follow-up post, he wrote:
"Your parents were illegal aliens who showed no regard for our nation or its laws when they came here. You should be beyond grateful that a legal loophole allowed you to enjoy the fruits of a first world nation. Instead, you're working to end immigration enforcement, telling actual Americans that their birthright doesn't belong to them and that our nation and its culture has no meaning or value to you. You have no love or appreciation for America because, at the end of the day, you still proudly consider yourself a Guatemalan before you are a citizen of America."
Gill also stated plainly: "I believe in American Power."
Ramirez's proposal to gut immigration enforcement is not an isolated stance on the progressive left. Rep. Rashida Tlaib has separately introduced legislation to block ICE from using TSA passenger data for airport arrests, part of a broader pattern of Democratic members working to hamstring enforcement agencies from the inside.
Sen. Jim Banks, a Republican from Indiana, weighed in with his own social media response, breaking his objections into five numbered points:
"A few things here... 1. Illegal aliens invaded our country. 2. The children of invaders don't get birthright citizenship, it's always been that way. 3. Our nation has a constitutional right to protect its borders. 4. You said: 'I'm a proud Guatemalan before I'm an American.' 5. Don't run for Congress if you're going to put another country first."
Banks's blunt message captured a frustration shared by many conservative voters: that a sitting member of Congress would openly declare allegiance to a foreign nation while simultaneously working to dismantle the agencies tasked with enforcing American immigration law.
The tension over where Democratic officeholders place their loyalties is not limited to Ramirez. A DSA-backed congressional candidate in New York has pledged to bring Mexico's independence fight to Capitol Hill, and Sen. John Fetterman has publicly questioned whether the Democratic Party still has room for members who hold mainstream positions on issues like support for Israel.
Ramirez's proposed Department of Community Safety echoes a model already underway in New York City, where Mayor Zohran Mamdani created an Office of Community Safety. That office has been described as an effort to shield the city's large immigrant population from deportation under President Donald Trump's enforcement mandate. Mamdani has also sued the White House over the denial of visas to immigrants on welfare, though no case name, court, or docket number has been publicly identified in available reporting.
The "community safety" framing replaces law enforcement language with social services language, a rebranding that does nothing to change the underlying policy goal: preventing federal authorities from removing people who are in the country illegally.
Abolishing ICE and CBP is a position that even some Democrats have distanced themselves from. Sen. Ruben Gallego of Arizona offered a more moderate take on Wednesday, stating that the country needs to "actually look at DHS and actually turn it into a real immigration force that we want, that's getting rid of the bad migrants, and it's helping keep the good migrants in." Gallego's framing still accepts the premise of enforcement, a position that puts him at odds with Ramirez's call to gut the agencies entirely.
That split matters. The gap between Gallego's position and Ramirez's position is the gap between a party that at least acknowledges the need for immigration enforcement and a faction that wants to eliminate it altogether. Ramirez sits firmly in the latter camp. The DSA co-chair has confirmed on national television a push to abolish not just ICE but borders and prisons, a vision that Ramirez's proposal moves closer to reality, one appropriations fight at a time.
The $150 billion figure Ramirez wants redirected from CBP and ICE represents a massive transfer of resources, away from border security and immigration enforcement and toward services for people who entered the country without legal authorization. The reporting does not specify whether Ramirez cited that figure herself or whether it represents an estimate of the agencies' combined budgets, but the scale of the demand is clear: she wants the enforcement infrastructure dismantled and the money spent on the population it was designed to police.
Since 1990, both parties have maintained a level of roughly one million legalized migrants entering the country per year, approximately one migrant for every four births. That sustained flow has reshaped communities, labor markets, and public services across the country. Ramirez's proposal would accelerate that transformation by removing the enforcement mechanism entirely while pouring federal dollars into supporting those who arrived outside the legal process.
Courts have continued to uphold the federal government's authority to enforce immigration law. The Fifth Circuit recently ruled that illegal immigrants have no constitutional right to remain free during deportation proceedings, a decision that undercuts the legal foundation Ramirez and her allies would need to build their alternative system.
Ramirez's own words remain the most damaging element of this episode. "I'm a proud Guatemalan before I'm an American" is not a line taken out of context or twisted by opponents. She said it. She meant it. And she followed it with a policy agenda that matches the sentiment, strip American enforcement agencies of their funding and authority, and redirect the money to people who broke American law to get here.
Every member of Congress swears an oath to the Constitution. Ramirez swore that oath, then told the public she considers herself Guatemalan first. Now she wants to abolish the agencies that enforce the nation's borders.
Voters in her Illinois district will have to decide whether that combination, foreign loyalty declared out loud, paired with a $150 billion plan to defund border enforcement, is what they signed up for. The rest of the country already knows the answer.