The American people spoke clearly in November 2024. They elected President Trump with a mandate to restore the rule of law at our border and to carry out the largest deportation effort in our nation’s history. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is now executing that mandate – lawfully, professionally, and under intense political pressure. Nevertheless, congressional Democrats are determined to sabotage enforcement from the inside, this time by holding DHS funding hostage unless ICE fundamentally changes how it operates.

In fact, the current standoff is a conflict about whether immigration law will be enforced at all. Democrats are demanding that ICE abandon its long-standing use of administrative warrants and instead obtain judicial warrants for routine deportation arrests, a move that would paralyze enforcement in practice while preserving the illusion of legality.

Let’s be clear: administrative warrants have been the norm in immigration enforcement for almost 75 years. They are a core feature of the immigration system Congress itself designed. Immigration enforcement is a civil process, governed by the Immigration and Nationality Act (enacted in 1952, under President Harry Truman), not the criminal code. Under 8 U.S.C. § 1226 and related provisions, immigration officials are expressly........

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