A New House Resolution Would Dismantle DHS and Defund Trump’s War Machine

For antiwar progressives in Congress, public disgust with Donald Trump’s violent, fumbling presidency has presented them with a specific challenge: confronting Trump’s brutality at home and abroad, while pressing a global reset button on human rights. With voters angry about tax dollars funding genocidal carnage overseas, and her Chicagoland district among the many communities reeling from Trump’s brutal deportation raids, Rep. Delia Ramirez of Illinois is pushing fellow Democrats to pick a side ahead of the midterm elections.

Flanked by allied lawmakers and groups from an array of social movements, Ramirez introduced a sweeping House resolution on May 13 that builds on her prior call to dismantle the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the parent organization of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The resolution calls to redirect massive military spending toward pro-peace initiatives and create an unprecedented independent federal commission to monitor human rights violations by the United States at home and abroad.

Titled the Renewed Mandate for Human Rights, Ramirez admits that, at 32 pages, the resolution is long. But she says it would put members of Congress on the record about issues on the top of voters’ minds, including excessive military spending amid spiraling anxiety about the climate crisis, health care, and public education.

“This is the kind of resolution that invites members of Congress and candidates on the campaign trail to really ask themselves, who are they, and what are they running on?” Ramirez told Truthout in an interview. “For me, it’s really about transparency and calling out systems of exploitation, and also what we want to replace those systems with.”

A child of working-class immigrants and a champion of raising the federal minimum wage to $25 an hour, Ramirez told Truthout the resolution is not a pie-in-the-sky wish list for progressives. She calls it a human rights mandate that draws a line in the sand for Democrats, and a critical framework for transforming Congress and the federal government at a time of rapidly rising authoritarianism and state violence.

“ICE needs to be abolished,” Ramirez said. “We need to create a human rights commission, a body that could do the work to dismantle the systems of oppression that have ruled this country since its founding, and turn this country into the kind global partner that really prioritizes the human rights and liberation of all people.”

The resolution acknowledges that state-led violence directed against civilians has tripled worldwide since 2020. The most glaring example is in Gaza and broader Palestine, where Israeli forces have killed more than 75,000 people and displaced millions from their homes. Diana Duarte, the policy and engagement director at the global feminist fund MADRE, said teams of medics in Gaza were forced to rebuild multiple times after their medical tents were destroyed by Israeli bombs paid for by the United States.

“We know that the U.S. is at a moment of reckoning,” Duarte told reporters on May 13 at a press conference for the resolution’s release. “We are facing the immediate and generational consequences of policies that violate human rights, from warmaking around the world to repression here at home.”

Within the U.S., Trump’s mass deportation campaign has led to at least a dozen killings by federal immigration officers in local communities since Trump returned to office, often during traffic stops. The deaths include U.S. citizens Alex Pretti and Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis, as well as Silverio Villegas González in Chicago. Good and González were driving vehicles when they were shot by federal agents.

At least eight people have died interacting with ICE in 2026 alone. Like many activists, Ramirez calls the death of González a “murder” by federal police, an allegation DHS denies; the agency has said officers fired in self-defense in all three killings, but DHS narratives have been repeatedly contradicted by eyewitnesses and video footage and fallen apart in court.

Those deaths in communities are in addition to the dozens of deaths of people held in crowded ICE jails and prisons. Immigrants and their family members say people held in those jails are denied medical care, claims that DHS has repeatedly publicly denied.

Much of the media attention on the brutal tactics of Trump’s immigration police has faded away after a high-profile leadership change, as well as renewed focus on the administration’s bloody military entanglements in the Middle East. But immigrant rights groups say ICE is still operating, just further out of public view after the demotion of Gregory Bovino, the face of Trump’s crackdown on immigrant communities, and the ouster of Kristi Noem, the disgraced former Homeland Security secretary.

Republicans in Congress worked this week to add more funding to the already bloated DHS budget, days after DHS shuttered the Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman — a watchdog meant to investigate allegations of abuse within immigrant jails. Setareh Ghandehari, advocacy director at Detention Watch Network, said inhumane conditions in ICE detention have been documented for years, and shutting down what minimal oversight exists is “unconscionable.”

“Over the past year, there have been increasing reports of death, medical neglect, use of force, isolation, retaliation, overcrowding, lack of food, and rampant transfers that cut people off from their loved ones and support networks,” Ghandehari said in a statement on May 5.

Ramirez said Trump’s mass deportation agenda has created an acute human rights crisis within the U.S. While Democrats forced a government shutdown over ICE’s aggressive tactics against civilians and protesters, Ramirez thinks they should pledge to dismantle the DHS altogether. Ramirez pointed out that DHS was created after 9/11, with many existing agencies brought under the control of a single presidential appointee — making it an optimal tool for repression as long as the department exists.

“Cruelty is the point, and Democrats need to ask ourselves what kind of leaders we are going to be in this moment, because DHS is always going to be used as a weapon [by authoritarians] against perceived enemies and anyone deemed undesirable,” Ramirez told Truthout. “So, we have to choose what side we are on.”

The Democratic establishment has been wary of slogans such as “Abolish ICE,” arguing that Republicans have used it in the past as a political cudgel. However, Ramirez said her resolution is not just about abolishing ICE but creating a framework to build what comes next. For example, ICE was created only two decades ago and can be replaced by a bolstered U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), which already manages the immigration and naturalization process for people applying for work permits and citizenship.

“We should be building a system under the Justice Department or a new agency that is really focused on human rights, diplomacy, and a just process; to truly do the work that USCIS was created to do,” Ramirez said.

Echoing digital privacy advocates, Ramirez, who is the ranking member of the cybersecurity subcommittee of the House Committee on Homeland Security, says DHS is using AI and other emerging technologies to violate civil rights and target Trump’s critics. Her mandate creates a framework for lawmakers to create an independent, standalone agency for cyber defense that would not be used for “targeting immigrants, to maintain this level of fear to keep winning elections by terrorizing communities,” she said.

Beyond laying out the framework for abolishing DHS, the resolution includes several other priorities, from LGBTQ rights to climate change. Ariana Kretz, policy coordinator at the Climate Justice Alliance, said communities across the U.S. have been displaced by climate-fueled disasters, including the January 2025 Palisades fire in Los Angeles, and deadly flash floods in Texas last summer. Meanwhile, Trump is eviscerating climate and environmental protections, Kretz said.

“This mandate demands that we determine our future, not Big Oil, not Big Tech, not authoritarians, but our people, and when we determine our future, our communities thrive,” Kretz said at the press conference on May 13. “It is time for our federal government to empower communities on the ground that are already doing the work, and that is what this legislation calls for.”

The Renewed Mandate for Human Rights has virtually zero chance of coming to the floor for a vote in the GOP-controlled House. But while the resolution might not become law any time soon, it’s intended to act as a forward vision at a time when approval ratings for Democrats are low and the party seems to be floundering in terms of big-picture policy ideas. However, progressive allies in Congress are already backing the framework, including Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Massachusetts), Rep. Yvette Clarke (D-New York), Rep. Nydia Velázquez (D-New York), and Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Michigan), according to Ramirez’s office.

Together, Ramirez said progressive women are challenging the “strongman idea of peace through strength” represented by Trump and his sycophants.