The Democratic National Committee's Resolution Committee voted 27-to-12 to urge congressional Democrats to craft legislation abolishing ICE and releasing detained illegal immigrants, a move that lays bare the party's leftward drift on border enforcement.
The vote, taken Saturday at the DNC's summer meeting in Austin, Texas, approved Resolution #27, which calls on Democratic members of Congress to dismantle Immigration and Customs Enforcement, create pathways to citizenship for illegal immigrants, shut down detention facilities, and strip qualified immunity from federal immigration agents. The resolution passed by a margin of more than two to one, with only 12 committee members voting against it.
The resolution does not carry the force of law. The committee has no power to compel congressional action, and DNC Chairman Ken Martin was quick to downplay the vote's significance. But as a formal expression of where the party's internal machinery stands, the message is unmistakable: a decisive majority of the DNC's resolution-drafting body wants the federal government's primary immigration enforcement agency eliminated.
The resolution's language leaves little room for interpretation. It states that the DNC "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." A separate provision declares that "immigration detention is civil, not punitive, and no person should be caged for a civil matter."
That framing, treating immigration enforcement as a civil proceeding indistinguishable from a parking ticket, would, if adopted by Congress, effectively end the federal government's ability to hold illegal immigrants while their cases are processed. It would release into American communities anyone who crossed the border unlawfully, so long as they had not been charged with a violent crime.
The resolution goes further still. It calls on Democratic lawmakers "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." In plain English, the DNC panel wants to make it easier to sue and prosecute the men and women who enforce federal immigration law.
That provision alone would send a chilling signal to every ICE and CBP agent in the field. Stripping qualified immunity, the legal doctrine that shields government employees from personal lawsuits when they act in good faith under existing law, would expose rank-and-file officers to civil litigation for carrying out their duties. More than 100 liberal Democrats in Congress have already pushed party leaders to back ICE abolition, and the DNC vote adds institutional weight to that campaign.
DNC Chairman Ken Martin tried to split the difference after the vote. He told the Associated Press that the resolutions do not set the party's platform. But his own words revealed how far the consensus within Democratic leadership has shifted.
Martin told the AP:
"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."
Read that again. The chairman of the Democratic National Committee said the "one thing that unites Democrats" is opposition to ICE and CBP operations. He did not limit his criticism to a specific policy or a particular enforcement action. He said the agencies' work "should stop." That is not a call for reform. That is a concession that the party's center of gravity has moved to the abolition camp, whether Martin wants to use the word or not.
The Austin meeting actually produced two competing resolutions on ICE, one calling for "concrete reforms" and another, Resolution #27, calling for outright abolition. Both passed. The Washington Examiner reported that the dueling votes exposed a significant intraparty split ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, with the abolition faction clearly holding the stronger hand on the committee.
Republican National Committee Chairman Joe Gruters wasted no time framing the vote for a national audience. "Democrats made it official: they care more about protecting violent illegal aliens than American families," Gruters said.
The RNC chairman's statement was blunt, but the political math behind it is straightforward. Polling has consistently shown that immigration enforcement ranks among voters' top concerns. A party resolution urging the abolition of the agency responsible for that enforcement, combined with a call to release detained illegal immigrants, gives Republican candidates a concrete document to cite through November.
The DNC's progressive wing has been building toward this moment for years. House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries has refused to rule out a floor vote on abolishing ICE, even as he has tried to play down pressure from his left flank. The Resolution Committee's vote makes that pressure harder to dismiss as a fringe position.
A Gallup report from April 2026 puts the stakes of the DNC's position in sharp relief. The polling firm found that approximately 900 million people worldwide would like to migrate, and roughly 134 million of them would prefer to move to the United States.
No serious person believes every one of those 134 million would arrive tomorrow. But the DNC resolution offers no limiting principle. It calls for pathways to citizenship, an end to detention, and the abolition of the enforcement agency. If Congress followed the resolution's logic to its conclusion, the United States would have no dedicated interior enforcement body, no mechanism to detain people who enter illegally, and a standing invitation to citizenship. The question of how many of those 134 million would take the offer is one the resolution's authors apparently did not feel compelled to answer.
The leftward drift on immigration is not confined to DNC committee rooms. Democratic primary voters in Minnesota chose a candidate who vowed to dismantle ICE over a moderate incumbent, signaling that the abolition position is winning real races, not just internal party votes.
And the party's moderate wing knows it is losing ground. Moderate Democrats have launched a multimillion-dollar campaign to push back against democratic socialists within their own ranks, an acknowledgment that the progressive faction is setting the agenda.
Step back and consider what Resolution #27 asks for in total. Abolish the enforcement agency. End detention for civil immigration violations. Create pathways to citizenship. Strip legal protections from the agents who enforce existing law. Pursue criminal charges against officials who, in the committee's judgment, misrepresented DHS conduct.
Every element of that package points in the same direction: make it functionally impossible to enforce immigration law against anyone who has not committed a violent crime, and make it personally dangerous for any federal employee who tries. The resolution does not propose an alternative enforcement structure. It does not explain how the government would process or track the millions of people in removal proceedings. It simply demands that the current system be dismantled.
Martin insists the vote does not bind the party. He is technically correct. But the 27-to-12 margin tells a different story about where Democratic energy, organizing power, and institutional momentum are headed. Twelve committee members voted no. Twenty-seven voted yes. The abolitionists did not squeak by. They dominated.
The resolution has no force of law. But it has the force of direction, and right now, the Democratic Party's direction is toward a country with no immigration enforcement agency, no detention capacity, and open legal liability for anyone who once tried to hold the line.
Voters will decide in November whether that direction is the one they want. The DNC just made the choice a little clearer.
