Rep. Delia Ramirez, Democrat from Illinois, stood at a podium on September 23 and introduced legislation called the Reimagining Safety Act. The bill would abolish ICE, eliminate Border Patrol, dismantle the Department of Homeland Security, and redirect all DHS funding to a new entity called the "Department of Community Safety."

She called DHS "the single greatest threat to our public safety today."

Not cartels. Not fentanyl traffickers. Not the people who actually threaten public safety. The agency that stops them.

Ramirez didn't stumble into this framing. At the 2025 Panamerican Congress in Mexico City, she told the audience: "I'm a proud Guatemalan before I'm an American." She has publicly described herself as a "proud anchor baby." These are her words, chosen deliberately, repeated on record. Twitchy's coverage noted that she leaned into the branding at the press conference — as Fox News correspondent Bill Melugin and reporter Julio Rosas covered the event live.

The Reimagining Safety Act doesn't just target ICE. It would eliminate Customs and Border Protection, the Coast Guard, and the Secret Service. Ramirez claims TSA, FEMA, and CISA would be retained, though the bill's own language calls for repealing "the authorities that give DHS its power." Which authorities get repealed and which survive isn't a detail you leave vague when you're proposing to dismantle a cabinet-level department. Unless the point was never the policy.

Ramirez admitted as much. "We know that this bill is going to be agitational," she said. Not transformational. Not necessary. Agitational. She used the word herself.

So the bill isn't designed to pass. It's designed to generate a press conference. Mission accomplished — just not in the direction she intended.

A sitting congresswoman who identifies as Guatemalan before American, who brands herself an anchor baby, who calls the Department of Homeland Security the greatest threat to public safety, introduced a bill to abolish border enforcement while the Trump administration is conducting the largest deportation operation in a generation. Every opposition researcher in the country just bookmarked that press conference.

Ramirez cited 57 deaths in DHS custody since January 2025 as justification. Within 72 hours of her announcement, reporting surfaced on the case of Wilbur Rafael Garces Perez, 28, who was shot in the back while in custody. Individual cases of misconduct deserve investigation — and they get investigated under the existing system. What they don't justify is eliminating the Coast Guard, the Secret Service, and every agency responsible for border security because a member of Congress wanted a headline.

The bill proposes redirecting DHS funds to "working family programs" through a Department of Community Safety. No enforcement mechanism. No border function. The name tells you everything: safety without the part where you actually secure anything.

She said it was agitational. She called herself an anchor baby. She said she's Guatemalan before American. Then she introduced a bill to abolish the agency that enforces the border she crossed.

The midterm ads are already written.