DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin tore into Illinois Rep. Delia Ramirez over her bill to abolish ICE and gut homeland security, branding the Squad Democrat an open-borders politician who puts illegal immigrants first.
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin and a department spokesperson unloaded on the progressive lawmaker after she advanced legislation that would scrap Immigration and Customs Enforcement, abolish Customs and Border Protection, and dismantle most of the Department of Homeland Security as it exists today.
The New York Post reported the exchange after both sides gave statements laying out a sharp clash over border enforcement, public safety, and what kind of federal agencies Americans should keep.
Ramirez, a Democrat from Illinois and a member of the progressive Squad, is pushing the Reimagining Safety Act. The measure would create a new “Department of Community Safety,” preserve agencies such as the TSA, FEMA, CISA, the Coast Guard, and certain customs functions, abolish ICE, abolish CBP, and begin building a separate civil immigration system.
Mullin rejected that approach in plain terms.
Mullin told reporters:
“Radical leftists are calling to defund the police and abolish DHS. It’s NEVER going to happen. Our 270,000 DHS patriots are keeping Americans SAFE, unlike this open-borders politician who refuses to prioritize Americans over illegal aliens,”
That is the core fight. One side wants to keep the agencies that arrest illegal immigrants and hold the southern border. The other wants to break them apart and replace them with a softer structure built around “community safety.”
Ramirez did not back away. She cast the department as a problem to be replaced and said Americans keep finding new reasons to tear it down.
Ramirez said:
“Every day, Americans wake up with a new reason to dismantle DHS, reimagine safety, and build something that honors our shared humanity.”
She went further, describing DHS as a “weapon” and arguing that the public can reshape government around mutual care instead of current enforcement power.
Ramirez also said:
“The people have the power to reshape the government: instead of the weapon DHS has proven to be, we need a department built on the best parts of who we are and can be, and the best examples of how we can take care of each other in hard times.”
And she accused Mullin and the department of lying to protect themselves:
“Markwayne and DHS will keep spreading cheap lies and fearmongering in a desperate attempt to save face because dismantling DHS and building something new is part of how we hold them accountable, stop corruption, and end their lawlessness,”
Her own words put the goal on the record. The bill is not a narrow reform. It is a redesign that removes ICE and CBP from the map.
A DHS spokesperson answered by pointing to the work agents are already doing in Illinois and arguing Ramirez has the incentives backward.
The spokesperson said Ramirez “should be thanking our law enforcement for removing these dangerous criminals from her district, NOT vilifying law enforcement.”
The department then highlighted illegal immigrants arrested in Illinois, including three named cases it said carried serious convictions. DHS identified Bulgarian national Rumen Georgriev as convicted of rape with a weapon, Somali national Abdukadir Haji as convicted of sex assault and rape, and Cuban national Samuel Reyes-Silva as convicted of robbery and homicide.
Those examples sit at the center of the department’s case: the agencies Ramirez wants abolished are the same ones removing people with violent records from American communities.
The spokesperson tied political rhetoric to rising danger for officers on the job, saying:
“This type of rhetoric is contributing to a more than 1,300% increase in assaults against them as they put their lives on the line,”
And added:
“While sanctuary politicians smear ICE, law enforcement is arresting criminals and saving countless American lives.”
DHS is drawing a straight line from “abolish ICE” talk to hostility against the agents still making arrests. Ramirez is drawing a straight line from DHS itself to corruption and “lawlessness.” Both sides are now on the record. Only one side is proposing to erase the enforcement arms.
Calls to abolish ICE have grown louder in recent months, including after agents shot a Venezuelan national in Austin, Texas, and after earlier backlash tied to the killing of two U.S. citizens. Ramirez’s bill goes further than a slogan. It would abolish ICE, abolish CBP, the agency charged with stopping illegal crossings at the southern border, and replace the current DHS structure with a Department of Community Safety.
Mullin’s answer was absolute. He said the 270,000 people working under DHS are keeping Americans safe and that abolishing the department is never going to happen. The spokesperson’s answer was practical: look at who is being taken off the streets in Ramirez’s own state while critics attack the force doing the arrests.
The legislation, as described, keeps TSA screening, disaster response at FEMA, cyber defenses at CISA, the Coast Guard, and some customs work. It removes the two agencies most directly tied to interior enforcement and border control. That is the trade the bill makes. Ramirez calls it accountability and shared humanity. DHS calls it an open-borders refusal to put Americans first.
Taxpayers fund the agents who arrest convicted rapists and killers who entered the country illegally. Those same agents now face a sitting member of Congress who says the department that employs them should be dismantled and rebuilt around a different idea of safety. Mullin and his department say the record in Illinois shows why that idea fails the people who live with the consequences.
Americans still expect a government that removes dangerous illegal immigrants and backs the officers who do it, not a Congress that treats those agencies as the problem.
