Sen. Richard Blumenthal and Rep. Robert Garcia had already scheduled the latest Democratic public forum on immigration agents’ use of force when an officer shot a Venezuelan immigrant on Sunday.
For nearly three hours in a Senate office building Tuesday, Democrats gave a platform to family members of those fatally shot as part of the Trump administration’s aggressive push on immigration enforcement. They also made the case that no accountability would come unless Democrats regain power.
“I also feel your anger, and we should share that anger, and it is anger that should be directed at the administration,” Blumenthal said to Sean Murphy, an attorney representing the family and estate of Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, who was fatally shot in Biddeford, Maine, in July. “But it also ought to be directed at Congress.”
The forum was one of a dozen unofficial “shadow hearings” Democrats have hosted since late last year, in the Capitol and in states where shootings have taken place. With Americans souring on President Donald Trump’s handling of immigration, Democrats see a rare avenue to resonate with voters on an issue that devastated them in the 2024 election.
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On Tuesday, Sen. Alex Padilla of California previewed action to come from the party. “We’re all committed to accountability in all its forms, and when we get the gavels back, we’re going to move on that aggressively, starting with the investigations,” he said.
And Rep. Jasmine Crockett of Texas, who lost her bid for the Senate, put it more plainly: “It is time to vote them out,” she said.
Rep. Chellie Pingree of Maine hosted one of the field hearings in Biddeford after an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent shot and killed Guerrero, a Colombian national who wasn’t the target of the ICE operation. She said the hearings served as a way to prove to voters that Democrats would seek accountability.
“It is a huge issue in the midterm, absolutely,” Pingree said Tuesday. “And people will have high expectations if Democrats take control of the House, or the House and Senate, that we’re going to do something about it.”
Sen. Susan Collins, the Maine Republican in a reelection dogfight, has called on ICE to enact more reforms beyond the recent equipping of agents with body cameras. And a source close to the longtime senator recently told The Washington Sun that of all the potential administration-induced impediments that could crop up, a second ICE shooting is the one that worries them the most and could be too difficult to overcome.
During the unofficial hearings, Democrats have been honing a message on Trump’s immigration crackdown that seeks to incorporate an issue polls show voters are even more concerned about than immigration: corruption. That has become a central topic in competitive House and Senate races.
“This kind of personal account will raise awareness about ICE’s corruption and provide an impetus for action after the election,” Blumenthal, of Connecticut, told The Sun after the forum. Blumenthal and Garcia, of California, have held five of the hearings.
Sarah Pierce, who handles immigration issues for the centrist Democratic group Third Way, said Democrats “need to criticize this administration and the radically horrendous things that they’re committing in the name of immigration enforcement.”
“But they need to do so in a way that doesn’t allow voters to associate them with a lack of any sort of immigration enforcement,” Pierce said. “There’s this Biden hangover that Democrats are fighting against.”
The mothers of Renee Good and Ruben Martinez, both shot and killed by ICE agents, said during the Tuesday forum that they voted for Trump.
“I did vote for him, and that is something that I truly regret,” said Martinez’s mom, Rachel Reyes. “A lot of Americans feel like me right now, especially the Latin community. It’s just awful. We haven’t heard anything from any Republican whatsoever.”
That sentiment is reflected in recent polling. A Fox News poll this month found that 60% of Hispanic voters think immigration enforcement has gone too far, with 53% of all voters saying the same. The majority of all voters, 55%, and of independent voters, 58%, disapprove of the president’s handling of immigration, according to an Ipsos poll conducted last week.
Democratic strategist Maria Cardona said linking corruption to the violent tactics of immigration agents and the lowering of ICE’s training standards, the subject of one of the February forums, appeals to a broader range of voters.
“Yes, it’s about the cruelty of how they carry out these enforcement mechanisms, but the issue of corruption, the issue of this being a huge abuse of power, a huge waste of taxpayer money — all of those issues are critical in helping the American voter understand that this is not what they voted for,” she said.
Political strategist Chuck Rocha views the Democrats’ approach to ICE ahead of the midterms as a message on corruption rather than immigration. While he said there’s “no doubt” that it will be effective in the midterms, Democrats would soon have to come up with a plan if they win control.
“You don’t see anybody rolling out what the solution they have for whatever immigration policy A, B or C is,” Rocha said. “We need to get some details done and show people what we’re for, not just what we’re against.”
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