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Democrats in Congress<\/span> have remained largely silent and inactive in the wake of ICE agents\u2019 fatal shootings of two immigrant men in Maine and Texas, displaying lackluster energy compared to the party\u2019s response to the killings of two white U.S. citizens earlier this year.\u00a0<\/p>\n By early March, after federal immigration agents shot and killed Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, 32 Democratic<\/a> members of Congress had called to either abolish or dismantle Immigration and Customs Enforcement, including three members who had previously voted to \u201cexpress gratitude to ICE.\u201d Democrats rapidly introduced legislation to restrict<\/a>, defund<\/a>, or abolish<\/a> the federal immigration agency. And for months, Democrats in the House successfully blocked funding of the Department of Homeland Security with the unrealized goal of obtaining minor restrictions on immigration agents.\u00a0<\/p>\n Although protesters took to the streets<\/a> in Maine and Texas in the ides of summer to object to ICE\u2019s killing of 25-year-old Johan Sebasti\u00e1n Dur\u00e1n Guerrero in Biddeford and 52-year-old Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston, that glimmer of enthusiasm for action appears to have died down in the halls of Congress.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ll be honest. I\u2019m not seeing [anger] to the extent I saw when Alex and Renee were executed by ICE in Minnesota. \u2026 I\u2019ve seen some statements come up, and some conversations, but it has not been elevated to the extent that I would expect from a number of my colleagues,\u201d said Rep. Delia Ramirez, D-Ill. \u201cIt feels like we\u2019re normalizing it.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Democrats caved on DHS funding in April, and with some exceptions, most of the caucus has been silent on the existing bills to restrict the agency. Progressives have criticized their colleagues for not continuing to fight against funding the Department of Homeland Security, and for only acting in a moment of heightened political attention.\u00a0<\/p>\n In January, Ramirez and Rep. Yvette Clarke, D-N.Y., introduced the Melt ICE Act, a bill that would end DHS funding to detain or monitor immigrants. The legislation, which Ramirez says is \u201cnot all things\u201d but represents a meaningful step toward dismantling the entire agency, currently has 12 co-sponsors, including members of the progressive Squad and two retiring members who will leave Congress at the end of the current term.<\/p>\n Ramirez said she had hoped to pick up additional backing in the wake of Dur\u00e1n Guerrero and Salgado Araujo\u2019s killings, but she has yet to hear from any additional co-sponsors \u2014 even from colleagues who were calling to \u201cAbolish ICE\u201d in February and sharing press releases with the words \u201cMelt ICE\u201d in them.<\/p>\n The Chicago congresswoman said she worried that the lack of action had to do in part with the fact that Pretti and Good were white U.S. citizens, and Dur\u00e1n Guerrero and Salgado Araujo were noncitizens from Colombia and Mexico, respectively. She noted that one of the first fatal ICE shootings under the second Trump administration \u2014 of undocumented Mexican immigrant Silverio Villegas Gonz\u00e1lez<\/a> last September in Chicago \u2014 rarely gets mentioned.<\/p>\n \u201cWhy is it that for some, when the person seems to be lighter-skinned, a U.S. citizen, the uproar seems to be deeper?\u201d Ramirez said. \u201cAnd why was it that his name seems to be a name that many people don\u2019t know?\u201d<\/p>\n While political energy remains low, the Department of Homeland Security continues to be a lethal force. On Tuesday morning, a man in Florida running from immigration officers was struck by a semi-truck<\/a>, marking the third time a person had been killed during an encounter with immigration agents within a week.<\/p>\n Violence has surged within detention centers as well. Within the first 500 days of Trump\u2019s second term, 52 people<\/a> have died in ICE custody, the highest mortality rate in over a decade, according to a recent report from Human Rights Watch and Physicians for Human Rights. On Monday, Jes\u00fas Manuel Arenas-Silva, a 45-year-old Venezuelan man died in a private prison used for ICE detention<\/a> in Georgia in an apparent case of medical neglect.\u00a0<\/p>\n Meanwhile, ICE has punished protesters who object to its brutality with more violence. Physicians for Human Rights and the UC Berkeley Law School\u2019s Human Rights Center documented 412 incidents<\/a> between June 2025 and May 2026 where law enforcement agents used excessive force or chemical weapons on ICE protesters, children, journalists, legal observers, and bystanders.<\/p>\n Dr. Rohini Haar, an adjunct professor of epidemiology at UC Berkley\u2019s School of Public Health and lead author of the use-of-force study, said lawmakers should not allow these attacks to be met with \u201cimpunity\u201d just because there is less impending political pressure.<\/p>\n \u201cDo not ignore this just because it\u2019s less newsworthy,\u201d said Haahr, who is also a medical adviser for Physicians for Human Rights. \u201cYou\u2019re going to keep getting [violence] when no one is held accountable.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Progressives, including Ramirez, have criticized their colleagues for not anticipating that the violence would continue once DHS funding was fully restored. In April, House Democrats agreed to fund the Department of Homeland Security under a two-track model that would immediately fund most of the Department and push ICE and Border Patrol funding through a separate process that would not require any Democratic support. <\/a>In June, Republicans voted to fund ICE and Border Patrol to the tune of $70 billion.<\/p>\n \u201cI said this a couple of weeks ago, that I would not be surprised if, when ICE funding started up again, we would start to see more civilian deaths at the hands of ICE,\u201d Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., who did not co-sponsor Melt ICE, told reporters on Monday<\/a>. \u201cAnd that\u2019s exactly what has happened.\u201d<\/p>\n The Intercept asked whether the congresswoman planned to co-sponsor Ramirez\u2019s legislation and was directed to her public statements on the DHS funding measure. The Intercept also reached out to Progressive Caucus Chair Greg Casar, D-Texas., who is also not a co-sponsor of the legislation, to ask if he planned to co-sponsor the bill in the wake of the Texas shooting, but did not receive a response.<\/p>\n