The Shutdown Is Democrats’ Gift To ICE

If you were told that in the year 2026, elected Democrats in Congress would get away with prolonging the longest partial shutdown in history — all to protect illegal aliens — would you believe it? You should, because it’s happening.

Forty days in, and Democrats are holding the entire Department of Homeland Security hostage over a tiny fraction, 8.5 percent, of the agency. Not the TSA. Not FEMA. Not the Coast Guard. Just ICE — and apparently, that’s worth burning the whole thing down.

Following the Minnesota shootings, Democrats have entered another frenzy to abolish, this time targeting ICE officers instead of police. Because “abolish cops” and demonizing a whole group of people whose job is to protect us went so well the first time. They want masks off —despite forcing them on everyone and their grandmother during Covid. Identification shown — despite their open hostility to requiring ID at the ballot box. And operations paused, unless ICE can navigate numerous legal hurdles to get judicial warrants.

All nonstarters for Republicans. So the shutdown drags on.

Democrats are standing ten toes down on defunding ICE — and by extension, all of DHS — while Republicans and the American people plead with them to at least vote to fund TSA, FEMA, the Coast Guard, and Cyber Security Intelligence. One would think these are reasonable requests, given that we are at war with the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism. But common sense left the building a long time ago.

The consequences are not abstract. Yesterday on Capitol Hill, the directors of FEMA, TSA, and CISA testified about the devastating impacts this shutdown is having on their institutions. TSA: “We are really concerned about our security.” Think about that — the people responsible for keeping bombs off planes are telling Congress they’re scared. CISA: “The threat environment is too dynamic to allow this shutdown to continue.” And FEMA: “We are crippling our disaster response.” Acting TSA Administrator Ha Nguyen McNeill put a number to it: over 480 Transportation Security Officers already gone, with airports running at 40-50% staff capacity, because officers simply cannot afford to show up.

Democrats did that. They own every single minute of it.

Luckily for Republicans, when political leverage fails, public animosity tends to move the needle. And right now, the public is not happy. TSA lines are seeing historic wait times, and Americans are on edge as terrorism threatens to run amok. And little girls are being killed on Chicago streets by the very people Democrats are going to the mat to defend.

To make problems worse for the “party of love and tolerance,” and in direct contradiction to the Democrats’ broken record narrative, Americans are now seeing ICE agents as they shuffle through these historically long airport lines, not arresting and kidnapping! people, but handing out water bottles and shaking hands with the citizens they work to protect.

The flame is burning at both ends for the Left: they’re defending illegal criminals at the expense of Americans, while ICE gets a PR boost for dissolving an airport bottleneck that Democrats created. ICE deployed to Atlanta, Chicago, and Houston has drastically improved security wait times — and more importantly, Americans are meeting these officers in the flesh, share a laugh, and realize that maybe they aren’t the Gestapo after all.

While Democrats are busy mourning the fact that ICE is finally getting good press — press they manufactured —  Sheridan Gorman’s family in Chicago is planning her funeral, a tragedy Democrats manufactured.

If the very agency Democrats have tried to dehumanize, defund, and destroy were simply allowed to do their job, a young girl would still be walking the earth. Last weekend, Sheridan Gorman was shot in the head and killed by an illegal alien who was protected from ICE and released from prison because of Democrat sanctuary policies. This horrific tragedy, and the adjacent horrors like it, never seem to be enough to get Democrats to budge. They will keep the entire Department of Homeland Security defunded despite American loss.

What will bring them to the negotiating table, apparently, is a streak of good PR for ICE. They can’t have that going on.

It’s a sad day when the killing of a teenage girl at the hands of an illegal alien can’t get Democrats to do their jobs — but footage of ICE agents smiling in an airport might.