A Democratic National Committee panel voted by more than two-to-one to urge Congress to abolish ICE and stop detaining illegal immigrants, a move that lays bare the party's leftward drift on the issue voters consistently rank near the top of their concerns.
The DNC Resolution Committee approved Resolution #27 on a 27-to-12 vote at the party's summer meeting in Austin, Texas, calling on Democratic lawmakers to craft legislation that would dismantle U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the federal agency responsible for enforcing the nation's immigration laws. The resolution also demands an end to immigration detention, declaring that "no person should be caged for a civil matter," and calls for new pathways to citizenship for illegal immigrants already in the country.
The vote is non-binding. It does not set the party's official platform, which will be determined at the 2028 convention. But it signals where the energy inside the Democratic Party apparatus sits, and it is not in the center.
The Austin meeting did not produce a single, unified position. AP News reported that the DNC approved two competing resolutions, one calling for outright abolition of ICE and another calling for "concrete reforms" to the agency. The fact that both passed on the same day captures the party's fractured stance on immigration heading into the midterms.
DNC Chairman Ken Martin tried to paper over the split. In a statement to the Associated Press, Martin acknowledged the disagreement but framed it as a shared impulse:
"Clearly, the one thing that unites Democrats, regardless of their position on reform versus abolish or whatever other ways to change what's happening, is people believe that what ICE is doing right now, and CBP and the federal government, should stop. There has to be a better way."
That formulation, "reform versus abolish or whatever", is not a message. It is the absence of one. And it tells voters that the party's leadership either cannot or will not draw a line against its most radical members.
Not every Democrat in the room was comfortable with the direction. DNC member Yvonne Reeves-Chong opposed the abolition measure and, as the Washington Examiner reported, urged her colleagues to focus on winning elections instead:
"I would strongly suggest we get to the business of winning races so we can make the policies that make a difference."
Her plea did not carry the day. The abolition resolution passed by a comfortable margin.
The text of Resolution #27 does not stop at dismantling the enforcement agency. It urges Democratic members of Congress to "craft legislation abolishing ICE and enacting immigration reform that provides pathways to citizenship, protects workers, and ensures dignity for all impacted people."
Read plainly, the resolution envisions a world in which the federal government stops detaining illegal immigrants, shuts down the primary interior enforcement agency, and offers citizenship to those who entered the country unlawfully. It also calls for restricting DHS funding and closing detention facilities by ending private prison contracts.
And there is an accountability provision aimed not at lawbreakers but at law enforcers. The resolution urges Congress to "pursue civil and criminal accountability for any federal agent, attorney, or official who lied under oath, misrepresented evidence, or gave false testimony regarding DHS conduct, and to remove qualified immunity and other protections." Qualified immunity is the legal shield that protects government officials, including federal agents, from personal lawsuits when they act within the scope of their duties.
Strip away the committee-speak and the resolution's priorities come into focus: stop enforcing immigration law, release detained illegal immigrants, give them a path to citizenship, and then prosecute the agents who carried out enforcement. The party that spent years insisting it only opposed illegal immigration now has a committee resolution on record that treats enforcement itself as the problem.
The Austin vote did not happen in a vacuum. It is part of a pattern that has been building for months. Socialist-backed candidates have swept Democratic primaries across the country, pushing the party's center of gravity further left on immigration, policing, and economic policy.
DNC member Michele Johnson, who proposed the abolition resolution, offered a revealing justification for the move. "I think one of the reasons why people are not trusting the party is because we sound so academic," Johnson said, suggesting that the party needed bolder, more direct positions rather than cautious reform language.
The logic is striking. Voters do not trust the party, so the answer is to adopt a more extreme position on immigration enforcement. It is the kind of reasoning that makes sense inside a committee room and nowhere else.
That internal dynamic has already reshaped Democratic primaries. In Colorado, a socialist candidate toppled a 15-term Democratic incumbent, and similar results have followed in New York and other states. The activist wing is not waiting for permission from party leadership. It is taking over the machinery.
RNC Chairman Joe Gruters wasted no time framing the vote for voters. "Democrats made it official: they care more about protecting violent illegal aliens than American families," Gruters said.
The statement is blunt, but the DNC gave Republicans the material. A recorded 27-to-12 vote to abolish ICE and end detention is not a leaked memo or an off-the-cuff remark from a backbencher. It is a formal action by a party committee, taken in the open.
Immigration remains a politically potent issue. AP News noted that only 39 percent of U.S. adults approve of Trump's handling of immigration, down from 49 percent at the start of his second term. But the same polling shows immigration remains a stronger issue for Trump than either the economy or Iran. Democrats are not winning the argument by moving left, they are ceding the middle ground.
The DNC's summer meeting also produced a unanimously passed resolution reaffirming the party's commitment to DEI, diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, at a time when voters punished Democrats on that very issue in 2024. Fox News reported that the Resolutions Committee approved the DEI measure with a full 400-plus member vote still pending. RNC communications director Zach Parkinson called the meeting proof of "just how disconnected Democrats are from the values and priorities of everyday Americans."
Democrats lost the White House, the Senate, and failed to retake the House in 2024. Their response, apparently, is to double down on the positions that contributed to those losses.
A Gallup survey reported in April 2026 found that roughly 900 million people worldwide would like to migrate. Of those, approximately 134 million said they would prefer to move to the United States. Those figures give some sense of the demand that would exist if the United States dismantled its interior enforcement agency and stopped detaining people who crossed the border illegally.
Resolution #27 does not address how the country would manage that demand. It does not propose an alternative enforcement mechanism. It does not explain who would carry out immigration law if ICE were abolished. It simply declares that detention is a civil matter, that "no person should be caged" for it, and that Congress should act accordingly.
The resolution also has no binding force. The committee that passed it cannot compel a single Democratic member of Congress to introduce a bill, cast a vote, or make a speech. But party resolutions shape messaging, fundraising, and primary politics. Candidates who defy the activist base on immigration will face pressure from the left, and the Austin vote makes clear where that base stands.
The pattern echoes what happened with "defund the police" in 2020. That slogan started as an activist demand, became a party litmus test, and eventually forced even its original champions to distance themselves from their own records. "Abolish ICE" is now following the same trajectory, adopted by the party machinery before anyone has thought through what comes after.
Meanwhile, Democratic leadership in Congress has shown little appetite for the kind of confrontation the activist base demands. Senate Democrats recently folded on a government shutdown fight, handing Republicans a political win rather than holding the line on spending priorities. The gap between what the committee rooms demand and what the caucus delivers keeps widening.
Ken Martin can call the vote non-binding. Democratic strategists can dismiss it as an internal exercise. But the DNC Resolution Committee recorded a 27-to-12 vote to abolish ICE, end immigration detention, offer citizenship to illegal immigrants, strip qualified immunity from federal agents, and pursue criminal charges against enforcement officials. Those are the party's own words, in its own resolution, passed by its own committee.
Voters who want secure borders, functioning enforcement, and consequences for illegal entry now have one more data point about where the Democratic Party is headed. The resolution may not have the force of law, but it has the force of honesty, a rare moment when a political party said exactly what it meant.
When a party votes to dismantle the agency that enforces immigration law and calls it progress, the rest of the country is entitled to ask: progress toward what?
