Ramirez introduces bill to dismantle DHS and replace ICE and CBP

Rep. Delia Ramirez, a Democrat who represents Illinois's 3rd District, has introduced legislation that would abolish the Department of Homeland Security and remake how the federal government handles immigration and enforcement. The measure, called the Reimagining Safety Act, would also dismantle Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection.

In their place the bill would create a new agency, the Department of Community Safety. Ramirez's office says the department would move the government away from detention and deportation and toward services it describes as community based.

"For too long, DHS, ICE, and CBP have operated with impunity, tearing families apart, violating civil rights, and spending billions of taxpayer dollars on a system that makes none of us safer," Ramirez said in a statement announcing the bill. She framed the proposal as a full rethinking of what federal safety agencies do rather than an adjustment to existing ones.

The bill is cosponsored by Reps. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, Raul Grijalva of Arizona and Jim McGovern of Massachusetts. Ramirez's office said more than 40 organizations have endorsed it, including immigrant rights and civil liberties groups.

The Department of Homeland Security was created in 2002, in the reorganization of the federal government that followed the September 11 attacks. It brought ICE and CBP together with a range of other agencies under one cabinet department. Proposals to break it up or significantly restructure it have surfaced from both the left and the right over the years, though none has advanced far in Congress.

The Reimagining Safety Act faces long odds. With Republicans controlling the chamber, a bill that would eliminate ICE and CBP is not expected to receive a committee hearing, and it has no path to the floor in the current session. Supporters have presented it as a marker of where part of the Democratic caucus wants immigration policy to go rather than as a measure likely to become law soon.

Ramirez, first elected in 2022, sits on the House Homeland Security Committee. Her district covers parts of Chicago and its western suburbs.