Why Congress’s ICE “Reform” Proposals Won’t Work
Right now, Congress is offering hollow gestures and symbolic reforms.
As ICE terrorizes American cities, Congress is only offering hollow gestures and symbolic reforms.
Public support for dismantling ICE has never been higher—46% of Americans support abolition. Yet Congress is offering symbolic gestures designed to calm outrage while leaving ICE’s power intact.
On February 4, House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer sent a joint letter to Republican leadership outlining ten “common sense reforms” for ICE. They’re threatening to block Homeland Security funding unless these reforms pass.
The letter came after ICE and CBP killed Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis last month—deaths that sparked nationwide protests and demands for accountability.
But it’s clear the Democratic Party is not yet listening to the public outrage. The New York Times featured Campaign Zero’s critique of Democratic proposals, which recycled policies that are more symbolic than impactful and designed merely to quell public outrage.
We evaluated each proposal against what we’re calling the “5 A’s,” our framework for assessing whether reforms genuinely constrain ICE’s power or are largely symbolic.
While the package addresses real harms and reflects legitimate public concern, there’s a fundamental problem: all of the proposals fail to do the one thing that actually matters—reduce ICE’s power.
The Framework: The 5 A’s
When assessing any proposal related to ICE, we ask five questions:
Does it reduce (and not increase) the number of ICE agents?
Does it reduce (and not increase) ICE’s authority and funding?
Does it create actual accountability for ICE without depending on the DOJ or US Attorney’s Office?
Does it advance a new law or policy that is not already in place?
Is it actionable and not merely symbolic?
Here’s the critical part: any proposed policy package must answer YES to questions 1 and 2. If a package fails either, it should not be supported.
For individual policy demands, if the answer to 3, 4, or 5 is NO, the recommendation is not an effective proposal.
Based on this framework, none of Congress’s proposals are effective.
Based on this framework, none of Congress’s proposals are effective.
Proposal 1: Targeted Enforcement (Warrant Requirements)
The Pitch: DHS officers cannot enter private property without a judicial warrant. End indiscriminate arrests and improve warrant procedures and standards. Require verification that a person is not a U.S. citizen before holding them in immigration detention.
The Problem: ICE has used administrative warrants for decades. A 2025 memo expanded their use to justify forcible home entry in ways that depart from past guidance, a move constitutional scholars and members of Congress say violates the Fourth Amendment. Federal legislation could close this loophole, but only with strong enforcement mechanisms that actually constrain day-to-day practice.
The Democratic proposal bars DHS officers from entering private property without a judicial warrant and requires verification of non-citizenship before detention. But the language is too vague to guarantee change. Under 8 U.S. Code § 1357, DHS can still arrest people suspected of violating immigration law. A new verification requirement raises more questions than it answers: What would verification entail? Could ICE use facial recognition tools that already misidentify people? How long can someone be temporarily held in detention awaiting “verification” of their immigration status?
The proposal attempts to clarify federal limits on DHS search, arrest, and detention powers. With precise standards, meaningful remedies, and clear accountability mechanisms, it could prevent abuses. As drafted, however, its vague language and lack of defined safeguards make it unlikely to change how immigration enforcement actually operates.
Our Assessment:
Reduces ICE agents? No.
Reduces ICE authority/funding? No.
Creates actual accountability? No. Lacks enforcement tools.
Advances a new law? Unclear. Mostly reiterates existing standards ICE already violates.
Actionable? No. Vague language, no implementation plan.
Proposal 2: No Masks
The Pitch: Prohibit ICE and immigration enforcement agents from wearing face coverings.
The Problem: Without enforcement mechanisms, this policy is unenforceable. Internal accountability initiatives, which involve ICE investigating itself, have a track record of clearing agents despite their documented patterns of abuse. As long as the agency tasked with enforcing the policy is the same agency breaking it, the policy exists only on paper.
This is a symbolic policy.
Our Assessment:
Reduces ICE agents? No.
Reduces ICE authority/funding? No.
Creates actual accountability? No. No enforceable standards.
Advances a new law? Yes.
Actionable? No. No consequences outlined for violations.
Proposal 3: Require ID
The Pitch: Require DHS officers to display their agency, ID number, and last name. Require them to verbalize this information if asked.
The Problem: This proposal sounds tough but lacks enforcement mechanisms.
Federal regulations already require immigration officers to identify themselves during arrests “as soon as it is practical and safe to do so.” Legal experts note that an officer who refuses to identify themselves during an arrest would almost certainly flunk the Fourth Amendment’s reasonableness test, and many argue that current stop‑and‑seize practices already push beyond what Terry‑style brief stops were supposed to allow.
In other words, the real problem isn’t a gap in the law; it’s DHS and ICE failing to enforce their own rules. This proposal doesn’t create a clear, enforceable new duty—it mostly re‑packages obligations that already exist on paper.
Our Assessment:
Reduces ICE agents? No.
Reduces ICE authority/funding? No.
Creates actual accountability? No.
Advances a new law? No. Mostly restates existing requirements.
Actionable? No. No new enforcement mechanism.
Proposal 4: Protect Sensitive Locations
The Pitch: Prohibit funds from being used to conduct enforcement near medical facilities, schools, churches, polling places, courts, etc.
The Problem: This proposal restricts immigration enforcement at certain locations but lacks the specificity required for enforcement. “Near” remains undefined, as does “enforcement” itself—leaving unclear whether agents can conduct surveillance, invoke exigent circumstances, or exploit other loopholes. Without clear definitions, the geographic limitations are unenforceable. There is no mechanism to prevent ICE from using funds to conduct enforcement at these restricted locations anyway.
The proposal also fails to reduce ICE’s operational capacity (staffing and budget). It creates a patchwork of restricted locations that agents can circumvent rather than constraining the agency’s ability to conduct enforcement overall.
Our Assessment:
Reduces ICE agents? No.
Reduces ICE authority/funding? No.
Creates actual accountability? No.
Advances a new law? Yes. Though weakly defined.
Actionable? No. Vague terms, no enforcement mechanism.
Proposal 5: Stop Racial Profiling
The Pitch: Prohibit stops, questioning, and searches based on race, ethnicity, spoken language, accent, or presence at certain locations.
The Problem: This policy is aimed at responding to Noem v. Vazquez Perdomo, a 2025 Supreme Court order that lifted limits on immigration stops based on factors including apparent race or ethnicity, language, location, and type of work, allowing DHS to resume these practices while litigation continues.
Although ICE is formally prohibited from relying on race alone, officers can cite pretextual violations—a broken taillight, improper lane change, “suspicious behaviour”—while race functions as the actual basis for the stop. Scholars and advocates note that this makes racial profiling difficult to detect and even harder to prove under existing Fourth Amendment and Equal Protection doctrine. As a result, such policies are largely symbolic and unlikely to meaningfully curtail race-based targeting in immigration enforcement.
Our Assessment:
Reduces ICE agents? No.
Reduces ICE authority/funding? No.
Creates actual accountability? No.
Advances a new law? No. Doesn’t create new enforceable standards.
Actionable? No. Racial profiling can continue with artful justification.
Proposal 6: Uphold Use of Force Standards
The Pitch: Place into law a reasonable use of force policy, expand training, require officer certification, and remove officers from the field during investigations.
The Problem: Internal use-of-force rules already prohibit much of what this proposal addresses. DOJ and DHS policies on paper restrict firing at moving vehicles and are designed to prevent excessive force, yet incidents like the shooting of Renee Good occurred despite these existing rules, not because they were absent. Many of the worst incidents happened in violation of policy that was already in place.
Simply issuing another set of standards will not address the underlying problem. Rules only matter if enforcement and accountability mechanisms exist to ensure compliance. Without them, policy becomes cover for the same practices it purports to prohibit.
This proposal assumes that more training will produce better behavior and less violence, but research on standard law‑enforcement training shows weak and mixed results on reducing excessive force or misconduct. Other researchers have argued that extensive training programs actually produce a culture of violence among law enforcement. Simply adding training hours or modules has not been shown to reliably change officer behavior, especially in the absence of real oversight.
Shortening ICE’s academy training from months to 47 days is alarming, but veteran officers—not just rookies—were involved in recent killings, despite their extensive experience. Expanding training without restructuring its content risks hardening the paramilitary mindset that produced these abuses.
Meaningful reform requires enforcement and accountability, not additional hours in a classroom.
Our Assessment:
Reduces ICE agents? No.
Reduces ICE authority/funding? No.
Creates actual accountability? No.
Advances a new law? Yes. Updates internal policies.
Actionable? No. ICE already has use of force standards it ignores.
Proposal 7: State and Local Coordination
The Pitch: Preserve the ability of states and localities to investigate excessive force incidents. Require evidence sharing. Require state/local consent for large-scale operations.
The Problem: State “consent” sounds powerful here, but it’s mostly theater. The policy’s promise to “preserve the ability” of state and local governments to investigate federal officers admits that such power already exists; it doesn’t create new tools or remedies. In Minneapolis, federal officials actually did the opposite of what their policy required: they pushed the state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension off the ICE shooting case, walled off evidence, and claimed Minnesota had no jurisdiction in the case, even as an FBI agent reportedly resigned after being pressured to stop investigating the ICE shooter and focus on investigating the victim instead. Without mandatory evidence‑sharing, penalties for noncooperation, a private right of action, or any real path to court enforcement, “consent” from states is just a talking point, not a binding constraint on federal raids.
Our Assessment:
Reduces ICE agents? No.
Reduces ICE authority/funding? No.
Creates actual accountability? No.
Advances a new law? No. Mostly restates existing state authority.
Actionable? No. No concrete enforcement tools.
Proposal 8: Detention Standards and Congressional Visits
The Pitch: Make clear that all detained people have access to attorneys. Allow states to sue DHS for violations. Prohibit limitations on Congressional visits to ICE facilities.
The Problem: These rights already exist. DHS facilities are already subject to constitutional protections and binding detention standards. States already have paths to sue. Members of Congress already have broad oversight authority.
This proposal reiterates existing rights without adding strong enforcement tools. It won’t change federal compliance.
Our Assessment:
Reduces ICE agents? No.
Reduces ICE authority/funding? No.
Creates actual accountability? No.
Advances a new law? No. Restates existing protections.
Actionable? No. No new enforcement mechanisms.
Proposal 9: Body Cameras
The Pitch: Require body-worn cameras during public interactions. Mandate storage and access requirements. Prohibit tracking First Amendment activity, such as freedom of speech and assembly.
The Problem: Body cameras are a popular but weak accountability mechanism—especially without guaranteed public access to footage or clear consequences for misconduct.
More importantly: DHS already adopted a department-wide body camera policy in 2023. ICE followed with Directive 19010.3 in 2025. Secretary Noem has already pledged to issue cameras to every DHS officer and expand the program nationwide.
The congressional proposal largely mirrors what’s already happening. It’s not clearly a new, enforceable statutory regime. And even if it were, it misunderstands the real threat: ICE and CBP’s surveillance and data exploitation systems, which have expanded rapidly in recent years. Cameras won’t address that.
Our Assessment:
Reduces ICE agents? No.
Reduces ICE authority/funding? No. It likely requires additional funding.
Creates actual accountability? No. No clarity on footage access or enforcement.
Advances a new law? Unclear. Mostly mirrors current DHS policy.
Actionable? No. Relies on proactive DHS cooperation.
Proposal 10: No Paramilitary Police
The Pitch: Regulate and standardize uniforms and equipment to bring DHS in line with civil law enforcement.
The Problem: DHS’s promise to dress “like civilian police” sets a low bar when local police forces are already heavily militarized. The policy establishes no concrete limits and lacks enforcement mechanisms. It also prioritizes uniform standards while ignoring ICE and CBP’s actual sources of power: surveillance tools, databases, and software. CBP already wears uniforms; uniform standards have not constrained their operational practices. This proposal amounts to branding rather than meaningful restraint, and it does not address the most consequential tools these agencies employ.
Our Assessment:
Reduces ICE agents? No.
Reduces ICE authority/funding? No.
Creates actual accountability? No.
Advances a new law? Unclear. The standard is vague, CBP is already required to wear uniforms.
Actionable? No. Vague language that ignores ICE/CBP’s core power—surveillance systems.
The Pattern
The proposals fail on core measures: none reduce ICE agents or budget, none strip away ICE’s authority, and none create meaningful accountability mechanisms independent of the executive branch.
While some proposals, like requiring a judicial warrant to enter private property, could amount to meaningful change, they restate existing rights that ICE already violates and are vague enough that enforcement would be largely impossible.
We have a real political moment.
Democratic leadership must match public demand with actual solutions—not half-measured proposals that leave ICE’s dangerous impunity unchanged.
Our Roadmap: 10 to End ICE
We need demands that actually dismantle ICE. These are the 10 to End ICE:
Reduce ICE staffing to 1,100 officers (a 95% reduction) and cut the budget to match
Shrink CBP’s jurisdiction to 10 air miles from any external boundary and end warrantless searches
Cancel ICE surveillance contracts with companies like Palantir and Clearview AI
Create independent immigration courts insulated from political interference
Guarantee the right to a lawyer in immigration court for all people facing immigration proceedings
Prohibit ICE from buying or renting property to stop detention warehouses
End all federal contracts with any private entity that owns, manages, provides, or supplies detention facilities
Make any arrest made by a masked ICE officer unlawful
End harmful hiring protocols: prohibit accelerated training programs, require comprehensive background checks, ban hiring of individuals affiliated with hate groups, and require all current officers to meet these standards retroactively
Allow civil lawsuits against federal law enforcement by ending qualified immunity for ICE officers and passing the Bivens Act
These demands actually reduce ICE’s power and scope. They’re concrete, measurable, and enforceable, and they shift resources away from mass detention and deportation toward due process and legal representation.
What We Need
Real reform means reducing ICE’s power. Proposals that sound good but leave the system intact are not enough.
Right now, Democrats have a real bargaining chip: DHS funding expires in mid-February, and party leaders are openly conditioning their votes for a full-year Homeland Security bill on ICE reforms and tighter guardrails on enforcement. We recognize these are 10 ambitious demands, but anything else leaves ICE fundamentally intact.
Congress will not adopt these changes willingly—only sustained pressure can force lawmakers to choose between dismantling ICE’s worst abuses or paying a growing political price for defending the status quo.
The choice is Congress’s. The power belongs to us.
Learn more and take action at 10toendICE.org.
Thanks for laying this out. I would love to understand better how you developed the 5 A's framework and if you have a case statement for why that's the framework that should be used. That would be helpful for people to put forward as they do advocacy.
Thanks for putting this together.
I know ICE is focus right now but I'd be interested in your thoughts on police reform blue states can demand right now. A lot of Dems talking a lot right now and could be better revealed in a put up or shut up moment on police reform. For example LA seems to have a lot of talk about arresting ICE for breaking the law with not one arrest, seeming assistance and LA Sheriff Deputy Gangs seem to still be active.