SEN RUBEN GALLEGO: I won't fund a rogue ICE that shoots first and calls it law enforcement
On Saturday, I saw the video that millions of Americans have now seen. In Minnesota, federal immigration officers shot and killed another civilian point-blank. From the start, the officers immediately escalated the situation. Before they fired, the man was lying on the ground, unarmed, and posed no threat. The officers shot over 10 times in five seconds.
I was in high-pressure combat situations in Iraq, where I didn’t always know if civilians were a threat or not. But I was trained to de-escalate situations first — not to get drunk on power and shoot first. What the agents in Minnesota did was murder.
Violent officers have no place in our law enforcement agencies. When the people who are supposed to keep us safe are shooting Americans in cold blood, something is deeply wrong.
This isn’t the first killing we’ve seen since Bovino’s forces and other federal agents descended on Minnesota.
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On Jan. 7, in Minneapolis, an ICE officer shot and killed Renee Good, a mother of three. She was shot point blank in the face three times. It was a disgusting, pointless killing that has horrified Americans across the country. What’s so disturbing is if this: if this is how ICE treats people when the cameras are on, you can imagine how they behave when no one’s watching.
There is a clear pattern: when government treats whole communities as suspects and measures success by arrest totals, innocent people get caught in the crossfire.
These are not the only cases of abuse. Stephen Miller’s agents are stopping anyone who looks Hispanic or speaks Spanish, including U.S. citizens. In Arizona, ICE picked up a Navajo man, who had identification, just because of the color of his skin. In Minnesota, federal immigration agents forced entry and detained a U.S. citizen at gunpoint, then led him outside in freezing conditions in his underwear. And a Minnesota resident and U.S. passport holder was detained after an agent said it was "because of his accent."
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Trump and Stephen Miller have turned ICE into what once was an agency designed to keep Americans safe into his own private army. Instead of protecting us, Trump's ICE agents are actively harming Americans. By removing guardrails and rewarding aggression, the administration has created a climate where reckless force is more likely and where accountability is treated as an obstacle.
I cannot vote to give this rogue agency a single penny while they continue these abuses.
This is not what people voted for.
When I talked to Arizonans on the campaign trail — Democrats, moderates, and Republicans — the message was consistent: secure the border, enforce the law, and do it in a way that protects families. They wanted people with criminal records deported. So, when Trump ran on going after "the worst of the worst," people voted for him. It turns out, that was a lie.
I supported Trump’s decision to designate cartels as foreign terrorist organizations. I applauded him when border crossings fell. But instead of doing what he said — targeting criminals who pose real threats —he has deployed masked agents into our communities to sweep up any immigrants they can find, including people without criminal records who have been here for decades.
This comes after Republican-appointed justices on the Supreme Court ruled to effectively green light ICE’s racial profiling in day-to-day enforcement.
To make matters worse, the Trump administration’s obsession with meeting arbitrary quotas is making Americans less safe.
Thousands of federal law enforcement agents have been pulled away from their work fighting violent crime, drug trafficking, and child exploitation and reassigned to arrest, detain, and deport immigrants. Every day an agent spends going after our neighbors—students, families, and construction workers—is another day when fentanyl traffickers, fraudsters, and child predators have more room to operate.
The economic fallout is real, too. When workers vanish from job sites overnight, local businesses lose employees, projects stall, and costs rise. When families fear driving to school, showing up to a clinic, or reporting a crime, the whole community pays the price. That is not "order." That is chaos, manufactured by Washington and absorbed by working Americans.
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People should not live in fear of the very people who are supposed to protect them. First and foremost, ICE cannot exist as we know it now.
We need to refocus ICE’s resources away from Trump’s PR stunts and back toward actually keeping communities safe.
The Homeland Security funding bill heading to the Senate does not go far enough to restrain the agency’s unchecked authority. I will not vote to give ICE more taxpayer money to terrorize our communities.
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Instead, we need reform that makes ICE targeted, professional, and focused on actual security threats — not political quotas and news soundbites. That means clear use-of-force standards that prioritize de-escalation, limits on dangerous tactics, mandatory body cameras, and meaningful reporting and oversight.
That’s why Senator Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., and I introduced the Stop Excessive Force in Immigration Act of 2026, which would bring much-needed accountability and restraint to Trump’s ICE. It establishes new accountability, professionalism, and conduct requirements, like use-of-force standards and other common-sense measures. It’s a simple principle: enforce the law, but do it lawfully — and do it in a way that makes America safer, not angrier.
The truth is, it does not have to be this way. We can secure the border without treating entire communities like suspects. We can enforce immigration laws without terrorizing communities or putting innocent people in danger. Back in May, I laid out a plan to fix our broken immigration system. We can finally modernize a system that has been broken for too long — strengthening border security, speeding up legal processing, and building workable, legal pathways that support American businesses and workers.
America’s immigration system is broken. But Trump’s heavy-handed immigration tactics are not the answer. They will only make things worse: less trust, less safety, and more chaos. We can do better, and we must.