Ilhan Omar isn’t hiding it anymore. She’s not couching it in euphemisms or burying it in policy papers. She stood at a town hall meeting this week and said, plainly, that Democrats are having serious conversations about dismantling the Department of Homeland Security.
Not reforming it. Not restructuring it. Dismantling it. The entire department. The one created after 3,000 Americans died on September 11th.
“There is a lot of conversation about what the dismantlement of the Department of Homeland Security should look like,” Omar told her audience.
That’s not a fringe activist at a campus rally. That’s a sitting member of the United States Congress, describing active conversations among her Democratic colleagues about eliminating the cabinet-level department responsible for protecting the American homeland.
And she says support is growing.
The Escalation
Omar has been calling for abolishing ICE since she arrived in Congress in 2019. At the time, she says, most Democrats were “resistant to the idea.” That resistance is apparently fading.
“What I will say is that there is an easier conversation happening today than six, seven years ago when I got to Congress, about what we need to do with ICE, which is to abolish it,” Omar said.
But abolishing ICE was always the appetizer. The main course is DHS itself. And Omar is now publicly acknowledging what the trajectory has been pointing toward for years — the progressive wing of the Democratic Party doesn’t just want to defund immigration enforcement. They want to eliminate the entire security infrastructure that houses it.
Earlier this month, Omar called ICE an “occupying paramilitary force” and demanded the prosecution of Trump adviser Stephen Miller. “When we say there needs to be accountability for the architect of the terror we are facing in Minneapolis and so many other cities, which is Stephen Miller, we mean we need accountability for him now.”
Terror. That’s the word she used. Not for the illegal aliens committing violent crimes. For the man enforcing immigration law.
What DHS Actually Does
Here’s what Ilhan Omar is proposing to dismantle. DHS isn’t just ICE. ICE is one agency among many under the DHS umbrella. Abolishing the department means abolishing — or orphaning — all of them.
Customs and Border Protection. The agency that patrols the border, staffs ports of entry, and intercepts drugs, weapons, and human trafficking operations.
The Transportation Security Administration. The people who screen 2.5 million airline passengers every day. The ones standing between you and the next September 11th.
FEMA. The Federal Emergency Management Agency. The entity that responds to hurricanes, earthquakes, wildfires, and every other natural disaster that hits American soil.
The U.S. Secret Service. The agency that protects the president, the vice president, former presidents, and their families.
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. The entity defending American power grids, water systems, financial networks, and government databases from cyberattacks by Russia, China, Iran, and every other hostile actor probing our defenses daily.
That’s what Omar wants to dismantle. Not just the immigration enforcement she disagrees with. The airport screeners. The disaster responders. The presidential protection detail. The cyber defenders. All of it.
Because she doesn’t like ICE.
The Logic of Destruction
The progressive strategy has always followed the same pattern. Start with the politically vulnerable target — ICE, in this case — and use it as the entry point for a much larger demolition project.
“Abolish ICE” sounds radical but narrow. It’s one agency. One function. Easy to frame as opposing a specific enforcement approach rather than opposing law enforcement itself.
“Dismantle DHS” is the real goal. And Omar is now saying it out loud because the Overton window has shifted enough within her caucus that she feels comfortable doing so.
The logic is transparent. If you can’t win the policy argument — if you can’t convince Americans that open borders are good, that immigration enforcement is wrong, that sovereignty doesn’t matter — then you destroy the institution that implements the policy. You don’t change the law. You eliminate the agency that enforces it.
It’s the same thinking behind defunding the police. You can’t convince voters that crime doesn’t matter, so you defund the cops. You can’t convince voters that borders don’t matter, so you dismantle the department that protects them.
The Midterm Gift
For Republicans heading into November, Omar’s comments are the kind of opposition research money can’t buy. A sitting Democratic congresswoman, on camera, telling voters that her party is actively discussing the elimination of the department that protects the border, screens airline passengers, responds to hurricanes, guards the president, and defends against cyberattacks.
Every Republican candidate in every swing district in America should be playing this clip on a loop. Every ad should feature Omar’s face and her words: “There is a lot of conversation about what the dismantlement of the Department of Homeland Security should look like.”
That’s not a Republican characterization. That’s not a conservative spin. Those are her words. Verbatim. On video. At a public event.
Democrats will try to distance themselves. They’ll say Omar doesn’t speak for the party. They’ll say it’s just one member. But Omar said the quiet part loud — that the conversations are happening, that support is growing, and that the resistance she encountered in 2019 is melting away.
If “defund the police” cost Democrats seats in 2020, “dismantle DHS” could cost them a generation. Because Americans may disagree about immigration policy, but they don’t disagree about whether the country should have a department responsible for protecting it.
Omar just told America what her party wants to do with that department. The voters will remember in November.