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Rep. Delia Ramirez On The Fight Against ICE And For America's Immigrants

Rep. Ramirez has been one of our true heroes in the fight to end ICE's violence and lawlessness

Simon Rosenberg

Feb 18

READ IN APP

Greetings all. Excited to bring to you a new conversation with Rep. Delia Ramirez of Illinois. Hopium regulars will recognize her as I’ve been sharing videos of her incredibly effective engagement with Trump officials on ICE’s terror campaign and mass deportation over the past few months. Here is that video from a December Homeland Security Committee hearing with Secretary Noem that I’ve shared again and again, as I think her indictment of Noem and DHS in this segment is among the compelling and powerful I’ve ever heard:

Simply, Rep. Ramirez has emerged as one of our most significant leaders in our battle to rein in ICE, end mass deportation, and block the building of the detention camps, and I’m grateful she was able to spend some time with us. A video recording of our conversation is above, and a transcript is below.

Two moments in our discussion stood out to me:

I think for the sake of this country and the future of this country, Democrats have to come together and say enough is enough. And understand that what is happening to immigrants will have an impact on every one of us for generations to come if we don’t come together and stop them. And stop them now.

And:

And Simon, let me say to you, I often think about this moment and I say this often… fascism always requires a public enemy. Today, they will tell you it is immigrants. It is trans youth. It is the press. Tomorrow, it is whoever they deem undesirable or a threat to fascism.
And so we must understand that we’re in this fight together. If they’re coming for one of us, they’re coming for all of us. And this is a moment for us to ask ourselves, what kind of country are we fighting for? Are we willing to fight for? And how do we come together?

Rep. Ramirez was among the first in Washington to understand the threat of what DHS was becoming under Trump-Vance-Miller, and has fought ferociously over the past year. Here’s a sample of some of what she’s done for all of us:

In April 2025, Rep. Ramirez became the first member to call for Secretary Kristi Noem to resign
In May 2025, Congresswoman Ramirez hand-delivered a letter to Secretary Noem requesting her resignation after confronting her with the unconstitutional, illegal weaponization of DHS.
In December 2025, she took the first step toward Noem’s impeachment and requested that the House Judiciary Committee conduct a complete investigation into the Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s unlawful and potentially impeachable actions.
In January 2026, Congresswoman Ramirez and Congressman Seth Magaziner (RI-02) announced the DHS Use of Force Oversight Act to statutorily require a DHS policy on the use of force and de-escalation by agents.
In January 2026, Congresswoman Ramirez led 71 members of Congress to demand the House Committee on Judiciary immediately start investigation hearings on Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s unlawful and potentially impeachable actions.

In our conversation Rep. Ramirez talks about a new bill she has introduced, the Melt ICE Act, which ends detention and electronic monitoring, and redirects ICE funding to community-based services in the communities must impacted by ICE’s terror campaign.

This is a deeply informative, timely, and at times emotional discussion about our deeply consequential fight to rein in ICE, end mass deportation and block the building of the detention camps. I am proud to bring it to you and excited that we can now count Rep. Ramirez as a member of this remarkable community.

So get the discussion as soon as you can - I promise it will be worth your time.

Keep working hard everyone. The momentum is with us, and we need to keep fighting as hard as we can - Simon

Biography - Representative Delia Ramirez (IL-03)

The daughter of working-class Guatemalan immigrants, Congresswoman Delia C. Ramirez is an accomplished legislator, social service director, community leader, and coalition builder who has dedicated her life and career to advocating for working families. She proudly represents IL’s 3rd Congressional District as the first Latina elected to Congress in Illinois and the entire Midwest. She currently serves on the Committee on Homeland Security and the Committee for Veterans Affairs, where she is the top Democrat on the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations.

In Congress, Representative Ramirez is building on the bold and people-centered agenda she championed during her time in the IL General Assembly. As the only member of Congress in a mixed-status family, she is leading the fight for comprehensive immigration reform and finally making a pathway to citizenship for Dreamers like her husband, Boris. Having spent nearly two decades in the nonprofit sector, Representative Ramirez understands the challenges working people face every day, which is why she is a staunch advocate of housing as a human right, healthcare for all, climate justice, and the fight to preserve and protect our democracy.

Representative Ramirez's commitment to her community and working families was shaped by her lived experiences as a lifelong resident of Chicago’s Humboldt Park neighborhood. Both of her parents worked low-wage jobs to give their children a fighting chance to escape poverty. The Congresswoman witnessed firsthand how important social services were as she grew up watching neighbors come to her church for housing assistance, food, and services for the undocumented. These experiences ignited a fire, a passion, and a deep commitment to public service.

Rep. Delia Ramirez criticizes ICE treatment of pregnant, postpartum immigrants

Transcript - Simon Rosenberg And Rep. Delia Ramirez

Simon Rosenberg:
Welcome everyone, Simon Rosenberg back with a special show today. Joining me is Congresswoman Delia Ramirez from the Third District of Illinois. Welcome Congresswoman.

Representative Delia Ramirez:
Hi, thanks for having me.

Simon Rosenberg:
So listen, in our community, we've become sort of fans of yours in the last few months and your appearances in Congress and the hearings have really inspired us. It's just really great to have you here because for anyone who's a regular Hopium reader, they know that I've been sharing your videos frequently, and sometimes, you know, several days in a row. Because I felt as someone who's worked on this issue of immigration for over twenty years… my grandparents all came from other countries, I'm a New Yorker, and I feel very connected to this immigrant journey that so many people are on… I feel like in that hearing in December, when you spoke to Secretary Noem, that you were using language and words and descriptions of what was happening that were, I think, far ahead in many ways of people in Washington about really understanding the gravity of what ICE was doing.

In part because you'd all lived it in Illinois. And I wonder if you can just talk about your experience in the last few months with ICE, where you think we are in the fight with ICE. What do we need to be doing now? What can people do to help you in this fight? And just bring us up to speed with your assessment of things.

Rep. Delia Ramirez:
Yeah. Well, Simon, first of all, I'm really grateful that you're sharing much of the work and certainly the way that we are talking about where we are in this moment. You often then have heard me say that the greatest threat to our security in interior cities around the country is called the Department of Homeland Security, the same agency that supposedly was created to protect the homeland. And what I think that more and more of my colleagues are are feeling and seeing is that, you know, the danger of infusing resources into DHS abuse of power has come to their own door, to their own districts.

And what we know very well is that a number of us for months had been screaming [at the] top of our lungs about what DHS, specifically ICE and CBP, were doing. You know, even as they started in California and then moved into places like Chicago with Midway Blitz. And I'll tell you, Simon, when we were in the midst of that government shutdown fight in D.C. in September, oftentimes I said to our leadership, in Caucus, we're talking about the shutdown. We're talking about the ACA and health care, of course, incredibly important issues, the fear of the government shutting down. But in the state of Illinois, specifically in the city of Chicago, every front cover story is not about a shutdown. Most people on the ground weren't even thinking about the shutdown. They were wondering, is today the day that ICE may shoot me, drag me out of my car, beat me in front of my child? Will my son or daughter see me tomorrow? And what happens to me as an ally, right? And so many of my constituents have said, you know, I had never really been involved before, but I heard that two parents from my kid's school were taken. So I've taken a phone, I've taken a whistle, and I am doing nothing, everyday watch from 3:00 to 5:00pm at my local school. So, you know, I think it's important to say that here in Illinois, we're not living the terror to the extent we were in the way we were in September… [but] that the impact of what we've seen around the country, the impact of what we're going to see in Minneapolis is going to, in many cases, be felt for decades to come.

Which is why I think, Simon, it's important for us to ask ourselves, what does real action look like? Because training simply is not enough. A couple of basic reforms or things like saying, well, you know, I think a big win in this appropriation process [is needed] so that DHS can get their money is to ensure that the agency doesn't deport US citizens. Simon, that's already the law… we should be ensuring that we and they follow the law, and then we should prosecute them when they won't. But that's not the reform we're talking about. And I think ultimately we have to come back to the reality that these agents, and I think Simon, you've talked about this before, they're not really rogue. The Department of Homeland Security was created and built to violate our rights and has been empowered to act with impunity in the way it was formed after 9/11.

Simon Rosenberg:
Well, and I think that what's so interesting… you said a whole bunch of things that I want to come back to. But one of them is that I think that one of the things we've been talking a lot about at Hopium is that our ambition has to grow in terms of what we want out of this debate that we're now in with them. And look, like every other legislative process, we're going to get three quarters of what we wanted and then we're going to come back and fight in the future so this fight will continue. Because as Tom Homan keeps telling us, they have no interest in slowing down. And in fact, we're seeing now that there's a massive buying spree of detention camps all around the country. Part of what I just want to drill down on [is] something that you said, that we've been talking about, which is I think there are multiple things we have to do here in the next few months.

Number one is rein in ICE and get ICE to end the violence and the lawlessness. But the second thing is we need to force ICE to focus on the criminals and leave the rest of us alone. And I think that's not about citizens. That's about the immigrant communities that are being terrorized, the legal immigrants, not citizens, but the legal immigrants who are being detained and disappeared. And that we have to do what you did in Illinois, and what the people of Minnesota did, which is we have to stand by our neighbors and really fight for them. I mean, the position of the Democratic Party for 21 years has been that we want the undocumented community to be legalized and to be given a path to citizenship. That's our position. We don't believe in mass deportation. And we need to really make it clear, I think, about where we stand on this. And it was great to see Leader Jeffries last night say in an interview he did on PBS that the terror of these immigrant communities across the country has to stop. He was a good ally last night and made it very clear that he doesn't believe in mass deportation. We need to, I think, as a family, be far more clear that we are fighting for everybody here… leave the rest of us alone.

Rep. Delia Ramirez:
Yeah, I agree Simon and look, let me say to you I think that this moment for every single Democrat around the country who is saying leave our immigrant communities alone, you are devastating our small businesses, you are sending our children into generational trauma… they're saying it's unacceptable that the DHS is terrorizing our communities. I really believe they have to do more… more than call for training or these bare minimum policies, for guardrails, and what I mean by that is, Simon, I'm saying, look, yes, Noem needs to resign. I was the first member of Congress to ask for her to resign back in April. I'm glad that for the most part, actually most of my colleagues in Congress at this point, at least on the House side, are saying she needs to be impeached if she doesn't resign.

There also needs to be more oversight today. Simon, I spent almost three hours in immigration court watching Somali refugees seeking asylum go through a proceeding with a judge that was just promoted to be the Deputy Chief of Immigration in this courtroom because the previous judge was just too fair. And so, she was fired for being too fair. So we need to do more of this oversight and make sure that whether it's judges or these profit making detention center leaders, that they know that we are doing everything we can to provide oversight and to hold them accountable.

And yes, the masks must come off, but also that Americans, that everyday people, are past reforms of a department that has used their taxpayer dollars to execute people in broad daylight. And it means that we all have to be clear that there has to be a cut and clawback to DHS funding — that we have to bring justice to the masked criminals and the criminals in the administration that have led these efforts. And ultimately, we have to dismantle ICE and that people are no longer going to settle for some minor reforms. Simon, I absolutely agree with you on goal. If there are people that have committed these crimes, these are the folks that they should target. But what you and I have seen is that 90% of the people they're targeting are everyday people, many of them folks that have been in this country for 35 years, have put boys through college. And these are the people that are being terrorized. Or the 3,800 children that are in cages right now in Texas.

Simon Rosenberg:
So we showed a poll I’ve been sharing daily. A poll YouGov did when they asked people should undocumented immigrants be deported or stay in the country and deport was only 22% in this poll. One of the things that I’ve been heartened by is that the country has has made it clear they’re not for mass deportation. They want people to be left alone. They want the terror regime to end. The public is on our side on this and is giving us tremendous running room to be much more ambitious, frankly, than I think we’ve been.

And I think another area that you've been involved in is the detention camps, the detention centers… we've seen now reporting that of that 40 billion dollars that was allocated, an extraordinary amount of money, just an incredible amount of money, to expand the detention capacity, that they're now buying up — they're going out and really trying to implement this. They're spending the money. We reported on today the Social Circle detention facility in Georgia. A year ago, the property was assessed at 29 million dollars, and DHS bought it from a Russian for $130 million. You know, four times the assessed value of the property. The level of corruption that is now happening and their manic desire to stand these up to sort of meet Stephen Miller's rancid dark dreams that he has about all this. The level of corruption that we're seeing here is just it's just staggering.

And so, I do think that you're right. I'm with you on your ambition on this. You know, the next thing that for us, in addition to ending mass deportation, is that we have to stop the building of these detention centers because once they get built, they're going to get filled.

Rep. Delia Ramirez:
Yeah. And we know that the ones that they have in fact built — they have been filled. I think that Simon to that point, I'm glad you brought that up because I have a bill for that. You know how people have a lot of feelings and what words to use these days. Well, let's start then with Melt ICE. The Melt ICE Act would prohibit the Department of Homeland Security from using funds from the one big ugly bill to detain or monitor immigrants. It effectively disrupts ICE and CBP's immigration enforcement where they're targeting particularly, whether it's Somalian people in Minnesota or Latino people, around the country. And it actually redirects those taxpayer dollars back into the communities that have been most impacted by immigration enforcement to be able to use those resources for community-based wraparound services, including housing and healthcare.

If you ask people, even if you talk to them now about what are the greatest needs right now, the pocketbook issues, housing and healthcare are still among the top three. Right now, they're worried if they're going to be executed by ICE, if they're going to be able to afford their rent or pay their mortgage, or they're going to be able to go to the doctor. This is a bill that redirects those resources back into communities to be able to prioritize taxpayer dollars for the well being of people instead of the corrupt mechanism in, to your point, Stephen Miller's mind, to criminalize immigrant children while making sure that Donald Trump's campaign donors have the highest yield of profit and that he makes more money through his shares and stocks for private detention. The reality is we have to end this corruption.

And part of why you heard me even say last week — when I looked at the ICE director's face, when I looked at the USCIS director in the face, and CBP, is I was looking at evil. These are people who work for the Department of Homeland Security under the leadership of Secretary Noem and Donald Trump who are allowing this president and the secretary to to redirect money for profit and pain of children. And I think it's important for us to call it what it is. The Department of Homeland Security, even right now, when we did not approve the additional appropriation funds, is working and operating as if they're okay. Well, think about it. We gave them how much money? A hundred and seventy billion dollars. And they're talking about warehousing people. Todd Lyons is talking about using human beings as Amazon packages. “We're going to ship them out as quickly as possible.” And someone is going to make billions of dollars as a result of it with your taxpayer dollars or mine. We need to call it out and I have a bill for it.

Simon Rosenberg:
Well, we'll make sure we promote that when we release this video. Thank you for that. And let me ask, I want you to reflect back on something you've been talking about, which is the generational trauma of kids. Can you talk a little bit more about that?

Rep. Delia Ramirez:
Simon, it's hard for me to talk to you about it without feeling like I'm going to get a little tickle in my throat. The number of children that I've heard from directly, teachers who I've heard from directly and parents who say, my child does not want to go to school because they're really afraid that they're going to come back to an empty home. Teenagers who are saying that they're literally refreshing their Instagram and TikTok to make sure that they're not watching footage of their parents being shot, dragged or beat. Kids who were grade A students who right now are failing classes because they can't concentrate, because they're living a nightmare every day. Whether it's because Kristi Noem is on their television talking about how she is going to use the propaganda she's using on Spanish television to say, if you came to this country illegally, we will hunt you down, we will find you and we will deport you, or because they know someone who has been taken.

What we're hearing and seeing in our children — it’s going to take generations to recover from. We're talking about a level of impact that I'm hearing from mental health providers where you're going to see these six-year-olds really see the impact that this is going to have on their lives as they’re teenagers… eight, nine years from now. The number of seven year olds who are talking about considering suicide because that is easier than having to worry about being in a cage because they know that there's a bunch of seven, eight, nine, five year old children right now in detention in a place with a measles outbreak or with worms in their food. Kids who are writing letters to their classmates right now and saying, I miss you. I'm so sorry that I can't see you ever again. And I don't even know if I'll make it back to my home country. But I'll end, Simon, in talking to you about Steven, my own constituent, a fourteen year old eighth grader who is autistic, who is right now in the same private detention center that Liam Ramos was at just a few weeks ago. This little boy has been in detention for 64 days with his father. Every single day, his conditions are worsening.

And when I questioned the supervisor of that detention center, you know what he said to me? Well, Congresswoman, he failed his credible fear interview. “I'll be deporting him.” And I said to the supervisor, Mr. Hernandez, how would you feel if you're a fourteen year old autistic child who can't see his mother who is in terrible living conditions? You think you'd pass whatever test they'd put in front of you? If it weren't because my office is following the case closely, working with that lawyer, that little boy would have been deported three and a half weeks ago. But the conditions he's living in — he'll never forget. These are children, Simon. And I think for the sake of this country and the future of this country, Democrats have to come together and say enough is enough. And understand that what is happening to immigrants will have an impact on every one of us for generations to come if we don’t come together and stop them. And stop them now.

Simon Rosenberg:
Listen, we know from history that if the rights are lost for any of us, they're lost for all of us.

Rep. Delia Ramirez:
That’s right.

Simon Rosenberg:
And this is not about immigrants. It’s not about undocumented or illegals. It's about us. It's about all of us… listen, in the last two weeks, they've jailed five Black journalists. They've tried to jail two Senators and four of your House colleagues. They've already crossed the line where the detention will not just be those people, but it will be their domestic political opponents. I mean, this is the way it always goes in history. And this is why if we can't stop this now, if we don't understand the gravity of this fight in order to to stop this now, then you know, once they start coming for anyone, they come for all of us. To your Governor’s credit, right, he said if they're going to come here, they gotta come through me. It was a great moment in this fight. He's been an incredible leader through all of this. And I guess the last thing I just want to say because what you're describing is something we've been talking about a lot… which is that the restrictionist movement started out in 2005… this is how long I've been in this fight… by being for mass deportation. We passed the bill. They passed a bill in the House that called for the arrest, deportation and felonization of all 11 million undocumented immigrants. That bill then led to the protests that you may remember in 2006 all across the country.

Then the Hispanic vote went from being leaning Republican to being Democratic. And so the Republicans got scared of what happened. And they backed away from deportation, mass deportation, and they moved back to self deportation. But self deportation, which sounds softer and easier, actually requires terror. And it requires to instill extraordinary fear so people will self deport. And part of what you just described is how central the fear and the terror regime is to their actual plan. They want people to be terrified that they're going to get rounded up so they self deport and get them out of the country so they don't have to spend the money, and tear the country apart, and families apart. And so what people need to realize is that terror is the central strategy in order to execute their dark plan to remove ten, twenty, thirty million, forty million people out of the country. And it's why, if anything, what will happen is it will escalate and not deescalate.

This notion that we're in a period of deescalation is ignorant of their actual plans and what they're trying to do. They're dramatically escalating by trying to buy all these detentions, centers and put them online. And so, this is an incredibly consequential moment in our history.

Rep. Delia Ramirez:
It really is.

Simon Rosenberg:
And I just want to say to you, as a fellow American, thank you for your patriotism and your leadership. And your clear voice in a time when I don't know that we had all figured out exactly what was really going on here. But I think there is now a deep understanding in the public and in Congress about the need for us to do something really meaningful and significant here.

Rep. Delia Ramirez:
That's right. And Simon, let me say to you, I often think about this moment and I say this often… fascism always requires a public enemy. Today, they will tell you it is immigrants. It is trans youth. It is the press. Tomorrow, it is whoever they deem undesirable or a threat to fascism.

And so we must understand that we're in this fight together. If they're coming for one of us, they're coming for all of us. And this is a moment for us to ask ourselves, what kind of country are we fighting for? Are we willing to fight for? And how do we come together? I think the second piece of that I think is really important to say is for 40 years we have not fixed this immigration system. My parents are United States citizens for the last two decades because of Ronald Reagan in 1986. We as Democrats cannot campaign on something and then blame it on the filibuster and not get it done. And when we are in fact in the majority, we have to do something about this truly broken immigration system and about the reality that there is no real legal pathway to this country. Because if we don't address it, we will be here again. And this is a moment for us to really understand how we got here in order to never be here again. But my hope comes from the young people who are doing these walkouts, the people who are protesting, the number of people who are part of rapid response, mutual aid, whistles, cell phones.

Today, Simon, as I did legal observation, I was the only member of Congress there… there were probably about 25 people from Somalia, refugees there waiting to be seen. But there were 20 legal observers, people young and old who are saying, I can't do everything and I can't show up to every protest. I can't make every call. But here's what I can in fact do. That's what gives me hope for where we can be together. And to understand that Donald Trump will try to use ICE in order to be able to establish the paramilitary police he wants to stop free and fair elections. And we must understand that this is so much bigger than immigrants and that it's going to take all of us to fight together for the country that we deserve.

Simon Rosenberg:
I'm with you every step of the way, my friend. Thank you for your leadership, your passion, and your fight and your grit. This is what we need to do. This is the fight. We’ll come back another time… your admonition to our family that we have to deal with this now and stop half measures… the time for half measures on immigration are long past us. The country is wildly behind us. We need to be operating with incredible ambition and confidence that this is a fight worth having. And I'm just grateful for your leadership. It's been great to get to know you tonight. And, you know, let us know if you've got news, if you've got things you need me to pump out to the Hopium community, just tell your able team to be in touch with me. And Congressman good luck. You know, we're in the middle of the shutdown, we gotta come out the other end of this with something, if we do a deal, it's got to be something deeply meaningful for all of us.

Rep. Delia Ramirez:
That’s right. And fundamentally change the way that people are being treated on the streets every day. Absolutely. Thank you, Simon.

Simon Rosenberg:
Keep fighting. Thanks everybody. If you like this, please hit like so more people can see it, subscribe to Hopium if you're not a subscriber, and share this with everybody you've ever met. Congresswoman Ramirez has been a remarkable leader for us in a challenging time, and it was a great pleasure to introduce her to the Hopium community tonight. Thanks, everybody.