Over a hundred liberal Democratic lawmakers have signed a letter pressuring Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries to publicly endorse dismantling Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a demand that exposes just how far left the party's activist base has dragged its leadership.
The letter, obtained by the publication City and State and reported by the New York Post, was sent Monday to Senate Minority Leader Schumer and House Minority Leader Jeffries. Its signatories include state Sen. Julia Salazar of Brooklyn, Assemblymember Diana Moreno of Queens, and City Councilmember Shahana Hanif, all card-carrying members of the Democratic Socialists of America. The group urged both leaders to use their positions to, in the letter's words, "defund and dismantle this rogue federal agency."
The signatories cited two recent deaths involving ICE officers as their stated motivation. But the letter's language went well beyond any single incident. It framed ICE itself, the agency responsible for enforcing federal immigration law, as a fundamental threat to American communities and democracy, despite the agency having existed since 2002 as part of the post-9/11 reorganization of federal law enforcement.
The letter did not merely ask for reform. It demanded abolition. And it explicitly positioned recent congressional Democratic efforts to block ICE and Border Patrol funding as insufficient.
From the letter:
"We applaud recent efforts by congressional Democrats to block funding to Trump's ICE and Border Patrol, but we must go further. We can no longer ignore the threat that ICE, which as only existed since 2002, poses to our communities and to our democracy."
That framing is revealing. Congressional Democrats have already moved to defund immigration enforcement, and more than a hundred of their state and local counterparts are telling them it still is not radical enough. The letter demands that Schumer and Jeffries "leverage your positions" to finish the job.
For voters who believe the federal government has a basic obligation to enforce immigration law, the letter reads less like a policy proposal and more like a concession that the Democratic Party's left flank now views border enforcement itself as illegitimate.
Jeffries has not adopted the "Abolish ICE" label. But his public statements have moved steadily in that direction. He has backed measures requiring ICE agents to remove masks while operating inside the Capitol, and he spoke last week with TikTok personality Aaron Parnas about shutting down the government over refusing to fund immigration enforcement.
Jeffries' own words leave little daylight between his position and the letter's demand:
"ICE has to be dramatically reformed. Immigration enforcement in this country should be fair, just, and humane. ICE is currently out of control. And perhaps most importantly, we're not giving a dime to Donald Trump's violent mass deportation machine."
He calls for "dramatic reform," pledges zero funding, and labels the entire enforcement apparatus a "violent mass deportation machine." The only thing separating Jeffries from the letter's authors at this point is a slogan he refuses to say out loud.
Schumer's office, meanwhile, responded through spokesperson James Martin with a statement that leaned into the party's anti-ICE posture rather than pushing back against it.
"Senator Schumer led the longest shutdown in history to stop ICE's abuses, and that fight is not over. Democrats will not let up until we stop the killings, cruelty, and end the impunity."
Martin's statement did not address the letter's specific demand to abolish ICE. But it did not reject it, either. Instead, it positioned Schumer as already leading the charge against the agency, a framing that gives the letter's signatories exactly the kind of rhetorical cover they were looking for.
The letter did not emerge in a vacuum. It arrived against a backdrop of accelerating socialist influence inside the Democratic Party, particularly in New York. DSA-backed candidate Brad Lander defeated Rep. Dan Goldman by nearly 30 points in New York's 10th Congressional District, a seat Goldman had won with 66 percent of the vote just two years earlier, as the Washington Examiner reported.
At a Brooklyn victory party following recent socialist primary wins, activists directed chants of "You're next!" at Jeffries as his face appeared on a television screen. The moment captured the degree to which the DSA wing now views establishment Democratic leaders not as allies to persuade but as obstacles to remove.
Jeffries' political standing makes him vulnerable to exactly this kind of pressure. His approval rating among Democrats sits at just 41 percent, and 39 percent of voters told Pew Research they had never heard of him. For a House minority leader, those numbers represent a strikingly weak foundation, one that socialist organizers have noticed and intend to exploit.
When asked about the socialist threat, Jeffries offered a clipped response: "First of all, I've clearly rejected those things. That's number one. Number two, my record speaks for itself." But the record is precisely the problem. Jeffries-backed candidates have fallen in primary after primary, replaced by DSA-aligned challengers running to his left on immigration, policing, and economic policy.
The ambition behind the letter becomes clearer in light of the DSA's national convention in Chicago, where delegates made no effort to disguise their intentions. The Washington Free Beacon reported that socialist organizers described themselves as "deeply integrated" with the campaign infrastructure of DSA-backed New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, and they spoke openly about using that model to seize control of the broader party.
One delegate from Atlanta put it bluntly: "The time for protest campaigns and messaging is over. The time for winning is now. We can win the Democratic primary in 2028." Another delegate, from central Indiana, declared: "The Democratic Party is dying. They have less support than the Republican Party."
Jeffries himself met with Mamdani, a signal that the establishment is accommodating the socialist wing rather than confronting it. That accommodation has consequences. When 100-plus DSA-aligned lawmakers can draft a letter demanding the abolition of a federal law enforcement agency and the party's two highest-ranking leaders respond with statements that amount to "we're already fighting ICE," the accommodation has become capitulation.
The broader numbers tell the same story. Socialism now polls more favorably than capitalism among Democratic voters. Democratic Socialists poll 13 points higher than Democrats in Congress, as Breitbart documented during the New York primary results. Claire Valdez, endorsed by Mamdani, defeated Jeffries' preferred candidate in the 7th Congressional District, another establishment loss in what has become a pattern of socialist victories over Jeffries-aligned moderates.
Even sitting Democratic senators have begun to acknowledge the shift. Sen. Chris Murphy said publicly: "I don't know man, who is the Democratic Party if it's not the voters? Democratic voters choose candidates, not party leaders. And party leaders need to listen to what voters are telling us, and right now they are demanding our party be bolder." That kind of language from a sitting senator amounts to a concession that the party's center of gravity has moved decisively leftward.
The letter puts Schumer and Jeffries in a familiar bind. Endorse abolishing ICE and they alienate whatever remains of the party's moderate wing, voters in swing districts who still believe the federal government should enforce immigration law. Reject the demand and they risk a full-scale revolt from the DSA base that has already shown it can end careers in primary elections.
So far, both leaders have chosen a third path: talk like abolitionists without using the word. Jeffries pledges zero dollars for enforcement and calls ICE a "violent mass deportation machine." Schumer's office boasts about leading the longest government shutdown in history to block the agency. Neither will say "abolish." Both are functionally there.
The article's own internal count underscores how broad the pressure campaign has become. More than 100 state and local Democratic officials, not fringe activists, but elected lawmakers, signed their names to a letter demanding the end of federal immigration enforcement. The signatories include DSA members holding office in Brooklyn, Queens, and across New York City's political landscape. A sitting senator, Elissa Slotkin, has already called on both Schumer and Jeffries to step aside for new leadership.
There is a minor discrepancy in the reporting, the article body describes "more than 100" signatories while a photo caption references "nearly 100 New York pols." Whether the number lands just above or just below the round figure, the scale of the demand is clear. This is not a handful of activists shouting from outside the building. These are officeholders inside the Democratic coalition telling their national leaders to dismantle the agency that enforces federal immigration law.
When more than a hundred elected Democrats sign a letter calling for the abolition of ICE and their party's top two leaders respond by bragging about how hard they have already fought the agency, the argument is over. The only question left is whether anyone in the Democratic Party still believes the law should be enforced at all.