Three weeks after unveiling the proposal at a news conference in Chicago, Illinois Rep. Delia Ramirez formally filed the Reimagining Safety Act in Congress on October 13 — legislation that would dismantle the Department of Homeland Security entirely, abolish both ICE and CBP, and end all immigration detention in the United States. It is the most sweeping federal restructuring proposal to emerge from the progressive wing of the Democratic Party in years.
The bill arrives as a documented surge in ICE-involved shootings and detention deaths has sharpened the immigration debate with just weeks remaining before November's midterm elections.
The Federal Actions That Intensified the Moment
The timing of the October 13 congressional introduction was deliberate. The day before, Homeland Security Investigations agents — a directorate within ICE — conducted a pre-dawn search of Rep. Ilhan Omar's Washington home in connection with a federal criminal investigation. Omar said publicly she believed the operation was "an attempt to target political enemies and weaponize federal law enforcement," and House Democratic leaders condemned the action as a disturbing escalation of enforcement against a sitting member of Congress.
Ramirez framed the raid as institutional behavior, not an isolated incident. "DHS has been utilized by the government to target and persecute those they consider the public enemy," she wrote in a statement shared with The Intercept.
A Cascade of ICE Violence
The Omar raid was not the only recent trigger. On October 8, an ICE agent shot 28-year-old Oscar Belgal in the neck during an attempted street arrest in New York City while Belgal's 5-year-old son sat in the back seat of his car. Seven shell casings were recovered at the scene. DHS contended Belgal had accelerated his vehicle into federal agents, but the shooting drew immediate condemnation from city leaders regardless of those circumstances.
Belgal's case was one in a documented escalation. A Government Executive review published in July 2026 found that at least 22 people had been shot at by federal immigration officers since the start of the current Trump administration, with six of those encounters fatal — three of the deceased being U.S. citizens. The tally has continued growing since that accounting. On the detention side, Human Rights Watch and Physicians for Human Rights reported in June 2026 that at least 52 people had died in ICE custody over the administration's first 500 days, as the death rate climbed 140 percent even after accounting for the 77 percent expansion in detention capacity. The National Immigration Project has tracked at least 28 deaths in immigration detention in 2026 alone.
"Just this week, our communities were reminded that DHS is a weapon," Ramirez wrote, "pointed at a father shot in front of his 5-year-old and at Congresswoman Omar."
What the Bill Actually Does
The Reimagining Safety Act is a detailed legislative blueprint, not a symbolic gesture. Under its provisions, a new Department of Community Safety would replace DHS, channeling funds toward violence intervention programs, social workers, medical professionals, and interpreters to support asylum-seekers at the border. Ramirez's office estimates the proposal would redirect at least $150 billion in current DHS appropriations back to communities across the country.
Immigration enforcement authority would shift to the Department of Justice, while both TSA and the Coast Guard would move to the Department of Transportation — a transfer Ramirez said is designed to insulate those agencies from political interference. FEMA and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency would be preserved under the new structure.
According to The Intercept's reporting on the bill's text, the legislation would also bar placement on the federal no-fly list without a criminal conviction or an active warrant — a direct challenge to a database that civil liberties groups have long described as arbitrary and racially biased. The bill would additionally curtail the Secretary of State's authority to designate foreign terrorist organizations, a power invoked against pro-Palestinian activists and, in August 2026, against UK-based Palestine Action, which the Trump administration designated a global terrorist organization.
A Post-9/11 Architecture Under Fire
DHS was created in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, consolidating dozens of federal security functions when it became operational in 2003. Ramirez's bill frames the surveillance and enforcement apparatus that grew alongside it not as a reformable institution but as a structurally broken one that cannot be fixed from within — and specifically targets the legal authorities that have expanded DHS's reach over more than two decades.
The White House Fires Back
The administration's pushback was sharp. When Ramirez first unveiled the bill in September, DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin dismissed it outright: "Radical leftists are calling to defund the police and abolish DHS. It's NEVER going to happen." A department spokesperson responded to Ramirez by circulating a list of individuals ICE had arrested in her Illinois district.
Ramirez accused Mullin of "cheap lies and fearmongering," countering that the bill specifically protects CISA, TSA, and the Coast Guard — the agencies Mullin implied would disappear. "Every day, Americans wake up with a new reason to dismantle DHS, reimagine safety, and build something that honors our shared humanity," she said.
The Long Odds — and the Larger Argument
The bill's immediate legislative path is closed. Congress is on recess through the November 3 midterm elections and will not reconvene until at least the week of November 9. Even after members return, only a small group of House Democrats has publicly backed abolishing ICE; fewer still have endorsed dismantling the department entirely. Republicans control the chamber, making a floor vote a near-impossibility in this session.
Ramirez has nonetheless framed the Reimagining Safety Act as something beyond a current vote count — a declaration of what a Democratic House majority, if November delivers one, could put in motion, and a legislative argument that more than two decades of post-9/11 federal enforcement architecture can be dismantled by statute.
"Every person dead in detention, every neighbor deported to a third country, every family separated," Ramirez wrote, "is a reason DHS must be dismantled and something new must take its place."
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