New Bill Would Put Basic Limits on ICE Use of Force After Minneapolis Killing

Rep. Delia Ramirez plans to introduce legislation limiting the use of force by law enforcement agents at the Department of Homeland Security on Thursday, the Illinois congresswoman shared with The Intercept.

“The Department of Homeland Security has demonstrated lawlessness. They're operating unaccountable, they're violating the Constitution, and they are creating chaos and fear and potential death in every single city that they walk into,” said Ramirez, D-Ill., pointing to Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Jonathan Ross’s recent killing of Renee Good in Minneapolis. At that moment, “so many of us knew that a use of force policy needed to be codified from this body as quickly as possible,” she said. 

As it stands, DHS has extremely limited guidelines on the use of force and no public reporting requirements for when a federal agent injures or even kills a civilian. In 2023, the U.S. Government Accountability Office recommended that the department strengthen its use of force data collection and analysis, but those changes were never implemented.

The new “DHS Use of Force Oversight Act” would require all DHS officers to “use only the amount of force that is objectively reasonable,” and “attempt to identify themselves and issue a verbal warning to comply” before using force when possible.

The legislation, which has 11 co-sponsors and is co-led by Rep. Seth Magaziner, D-R.I., would also require DHS to collect and maintain consistent data related to the use of force and to publish a report on its website that includes “data relating to each incident” where force was used by a law enforcement officer or agent with the department. 

If a DHS agent kills or hospitalizes a person, the department would then be required to brief the House Committee on Homeland Security, the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs, and the public within 24 hours.  

The Democrat-led bill has slim odds of passing in the Republican-majority House of Representatives, especially as the Trump administration has wholly endorsed ICE violence and expected the GOP to stay in line. Still, Ramirez said, the bill is “the bare minimum” to curb the department’s violence in the short term, which is why she hopes to get support from both sides of the aisle to act swiftly. 

“We have a moral responsibility to use every single tool at our disposal to defend our constituents,” Ramirez said. “This Use of Force Oversight Act Bill is pretty basic. You can't stop someone and kill them and then get away with it. Here are the proper protocols and how force is used and how you prioritize the escalation — that's not controversial.” 

There have been a few recent Democratic legislative pushes to restrain ICE, including a bill from Rep. Ritchie Torres, D-N.Y., that would require agents to wear scannable QR codes with identifying information (as opposed to the regular badges that most police officers wear), and another from Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass., to restore ICE funding to its pre-2025 levels. But leadership has largely been hesitant to call for abolishing or defunding the agency.

That appears to put the party out of step with voters. Calls for ICE to be abolished and for DHS to be defunded have been gaining support, according to recent polling. One poll released by The Economist and YouGov this week found more Americans in favor of abolishing ICE than keeping it.

“This moment shows us that our constituents are demanding moral courage and moral clarity,” Ramirez said. “It is our responsibility to represent our constituents … to fight for every single resource they need to thrive, and to protect them, and uphold the Constitution.”  

When Ross fatally shot Good, a 37-year-old mother of threeacting as a neighborhood observer in Minneapolis last week, the killing sparked massive outrage nationwide.

While thousands of people in the Minneapolis area take to the streets to demand that the department leave the Twin Cities, the Trump administration has continued to deploy officers to Minnesota and threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act. As of Wednesday, nearly 3,000 federal officers had been deployed to the Minneapolis area, in what the administration is calling the “largest immigration operation ever.” The initial surge last week began after a misleading video from right-wing influencer Nick Shirley alleging child care fraud in Minnesota, which fueled racist, anti-immigrant, and specifically anti-Somali sentiments.

The Intercept has reported extensively on excessive use of force cases by federal agents since the early days of Trump’s enforcement surge, documenting a pattern of agents tear-gassing, beating, and shooting less-lethal munitions at both undocumented immigrants and U.S. citizens who spoke out against the administration’s deportation machine.

Ramirez views her bill as an interim step to limit the violence DHS has unleashed, and she said Democrats should also withhold federal funds from the department with an ultimate goal of dismantling it. 

“I want to use the appropriation process to hold money from DHS,” said Ramirez. “I want to work on dismantling DHS. We need to impeach Kristi Noem, and then we need to hold her accountable as well.” 

On Tuesday, several federal prosecutors quit in protest after the Department of Justice pushed to investigate Good’s widow, who witnessed her violent killing firsthand. 

Ramirez said that blaming victims is par for the course with DHS and with Noem.

“This agency was designed, created intentionally in this particular way, so that it gives them massive latitude to do whatever they want in the name of protecting us from domestic terrorism,” she said, “which is why strategically you hear Kristi Noem, the president, Tricia [McLaughlin] the assistant secretary, all calling victims — victims attacked and harmed by ICE — domestic terrorists. Because as long as they can call them domestic terrorists, they think that they can have impunity.”