Dem Sen. Murphy on Voting Against DHS Funds Hurting Disaster Relief: We Aren’t Trying to Reform All of DHS

On Monday’s broadcast of NPR’s “Morning Edition,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) responded to arguments that voting against the DHS funding bill will delay money for things like disaster relief and the Coast Guard while letting ICE operate anyway by stating that “there’s nothing that would stop us from constraining the use of dollars that are both in the annual budget, but also the Big Beautiful Bill. And the fact of the matter is, we aren’t going to ask for the entirety of the Department of Homeland Security to be reformed.”

Co-host Michel Martin asked, [relevant exchange begins around 2:15] “[T]wo arguments that we’re hearing on the Democratic side against this — one is substantive, and one is political, let’s just take them separately. The first is that blocking this funding would be a mistake, because it’ll delay funds for things like disaster relief and the Coast Guard, and that ICE is going to be able to operate anyway due to the funding it got from last year’s Republican tax and spending bill. What do you say to that?”

Murphy answered, “Well, there’s nothing that would stop us from constraining the use of dollars that are both in the annual budget, but also the Big Beautiful Bill. And the fact of the matter is, we aren’t going to ask for the entirety of the Department of Homeland Security to be reformed. We’re going to ask for targeted reforms that will make our communities safer. We’re going to ask — the things that we certainly could demand and talk about are ending these roving patrols of officers who are not trained to do that kind of door-to-door operation, requiring warrants for arrests, requiring identification, and body cameras. These are things that would make these operations safer, would result in fewer people being hurt. I think these are going to be commonsense reforms that we’ll likely talk about, things that the Republicans really have no reason to be against, because I think the American people will support them.”

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