Dem Rep. Yassamin Ansari threatens to let government shut down if ICE isn't defunded

By 
 September 10, 2025

Democrats remain highly triggered over President Donald Trump's bolstering of the abilities of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to actually do their job and boot illegal aliens out of America.

That was proven once again, according to Breitbart, by Dem Rep. Yassamin Ansari (D-AZ), who threatened to help shut down the government by not voting on a spending bill unless the "rogue" ICE agency is defunded.

Not surprisingly, her temper tantrum happened during an interview on CNN International’s “The Brief," with host Jim Sciutto.

The two were discussing a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling on ICE enforcement issues, which apparently set the radical liberal lawmaker off.

What did she say?

Ansari described the federal law enforcement agency as "rogue" and, as Dems usually do, referred to Trump and his top administration officials as pushing "racist" immigration policies.

"ICE is a rogue agency with now so many agents and officers who feel extremely emboldened, are completely in lockstep with Donald Trump and Stephen Miller’s extremely racist mass deportation policy, and I was gutted by this news today."

She added, "This is now another step in complete approval and legalizing Donald Trump and Stephen Miller’s racist agenda. And it starts in Los Angeles, and they’re going to feel emboldened to do this in many other places. And I’m concerned about a district like mine in Phoenix, Arizona, where we are a district where more than 64 languages are spoken, a diverse community."

Scuitto, being the good Democratic ally that he's paid to be, teed up a question about shutting down the government in response to Trump's ICE policies.

“Looking ahead, you have another shutdown, government shutdown looming. As you know, Democrats went along with Republicans to fund the government in the spring. Should they do so again now, or should they refuse, and, in effect, shut the government down to block policies, well, like ICE, that you’re talking about here?" he asked.

“[F]irst of all, this is not our responsibility, in the sense that the Republicans have control of all three branches. They have the presidency, the Senate, and Congress. So, if they have a budget that they want to pass, they can always do so.”

Not voting for budget

She was reminded by the CNN host that they will need some Democratic votes to pass the funding bill, referring to Republicans.

That's when she indicated that unless ICE is defunded, she won't be voting for it.

“Correct. And, again, my view is unless they are going to roll back some of the egregious policies that they passed a couple of weeks ago, unless they’re going to make sure that Medicaid isn’t cut, unless they’re going to take away funding from ICE, which they quadrupled in the last budget, then I do not intend to vote for this budget.”

Only time will tell if that becomes a major bottleneck for Republicans.

" A free people [claim] their rights, as derived from the laws of nature."
Thomas Jefferson