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REPUBLICAN FROSTBITE  
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Robert Kuttner
February 9, 2026
The American Prospect
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_ Defense of ICE has become a political loser, and the deal to trade
reforms for continued funding is off the table. _

Brighton residents, located outside of Rochester, New York, gather at
the Twelve Corners area to demonstrate against ICE and in support of
the people of Minneapolis. , Credit: John Whitney/NurPhoto via AP

 

Trump, his cronies, and his allies in the courts keep undercutting the
likelihood of a budget deal to fund the Department of Homeland
Security when temporary authority expires at the end of this week. The
administration’s threat to use ICE agents at polling places
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to promote voter suppression only intensifies Democrats’
determination to rein in ICE. The larger context is Trump’s delusion
that he lost in 2020 only because of illegal voting by noncitizens.

The proposed SAVE America Act, promoted by far-right Republicans in
Congress as their price for agreeing to a DHS funding deal, is part of
the same grand delusion. It would require government-issued photo ID
to cast a ballot and proof of citizenship to register to vote.

Trump’s post on his Truth Social account depicting Michelle and
Barack Obama as apes is part of the same syndrome. He can’t accept
that Obama won big and he didn’t.

The openly racist post incensed House Democratic Leader Hakeem
Jeffries, who went before the cameras in this clip
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Trump and his vile, racist, and malignant behavior. This guy is an
unhinged bottom-feeder.” He called on GOP leaders to “denounce
this serial fraudster who’s sitting at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
pretending to be the president.”

On Sunday, Jeffries said on CNN’s _State of the Union_ that he is
not willing to compromise on Democrats’ full list of demands and
that he had not heard from the White House, House Speaker Mike
Johnson, or Senate Majority Leader John Thune.

In one more action that makes a DHS budget deal vanishingly unlikely,
a three-judge panel of the Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals late
Friday overturned
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least 3,000 lower-court rulings by some 360 judges and approved the
Trump administration’s rule denying detained immigrants the right to
release on bond. The administration has embarked on a crash program to
build concentration camp–style detention centers. There are now at
least 224 such facilities, more than double the number when Trump took
office, holding at least 70,000 immigrants in violation of basic due
process rights.

The rush to find and convert facilities, in turn, has led to citizen
protests in unlikely places. According to _The New York Times_
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in a heavily Republican part of New York’s Hudson Valley,
administration officials wanted to convert a former Pep Boys
distribution center into a detention facility that could confine as
many as 1,500 migrants.

The community rose up in opposition. The _Times_ quotes Steven M.
Neuhaus, the local Republican Orange County executive: “Everywhere
that this has happened has been kind of a real dumpster fire …
it’s not something that we want in this sleepy county.”

ICE has become toxic. In Oklahoma City, the Republican mayor, David
Holt, commended the owners
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of a property for withdrawing from a deal with ICE.

All of this leaves the DHS funding deal on hold and Republicans
defending tactics that are being repudiated by more and more
Americans. One possibility, according to Democratic sources, is an
interim agreement to fund the rest of DHS, but not ICE and Customs and
Border Protection.

If anything, Democrats are now likely to go beyond their original list
of demands to insist that the administration drop its illegal
detention scheme, and keep ICE far away from polling places. All
Senate Democrats are now on record in support of the Bernie Sanders
amendment to claw back $75 billion in previously appropriated ICE
funds and reprogram the money to Medicaid.

“Abolish ICE” has gone from a fringe demand to a logical
imperative. The more Republicans cling to ICE, the more public support
they will lose.

_ROBERT KUTTNER is co-founder and co-editor of The American Prospect,
and professor at Brandeis University’s Heller School. His latest
book is __Going Big: FDR’s Legacy, Biden’s New Deal, and the
Struggle to Save Democracy_
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* DHS
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* funding
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* Resistence
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* Democratic Party
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