As the partial shutdown of the federal government continues, we are faced with further evidence of an administration and Department of Homeland Security that would rather cease its operations than obey the law.
Senators are asking the bare minimum in exchange for DHS funding. They are asking federal immigration agents to obey the Constitution, including the requirement to obtain judicial warrants for searches and arrests on private property and halting their targeted attacks on journalists and protesters. They are asking them to comply with industry standard policing practices at all levels of government, such as requiring officers to use body-worn cameras and clearly identify themselves.
The conditions being placed on the continued funding of DHS are nothing new or radical. They are the same practices required by previous administrations, including those outlined just a few years ago in President Biden’s Federal Policing Executive Order 14074.
DHS and the Trump administration are not above the law. We cannot continue to fund a federal immigration apparatus that terrorizes our communities and kills innocent people in broad daylight.
At the National Police Accountability Project, we stand with the lawmakers who are refusing to allow DHS’s violent abuses to continue and demand Congress hold the agency to the same standards expected of police nationwide.