General Discussion

...what you're proposing may well be good for a Democratic majority with the numbers that allow them to decide with their own votes what goes into legislation.

This effort to change the DHS bill isn't about closing the agency. That isn't something Democrats can achieve on their own votes and initiative, and there certainly isn't any legislative avenue in this Congress to close ICE or DHS, so it's just something people talk about while they brush past the legislators actually legislating.

This effort is about what may be achievable in getting a sufficient number of republicans to agree; and then on to the WH.

We can certainly set up the ideal, something that you'd definitely see in a Democratic majority, or just accept that achieving even these demands may save lives - reforms that no republican is independently proposing, and few are really inclined to accept.

When people talk about political leverage, they should realize that Democrats have no actual legislative vehicle to impose anything, and that it's the republicans who are key to ANY reforms in this bill, not just the majority of Democrats who are behind this proposal that Jeffries and Schumer have presented on behalf of the 'united' Democratic membership who have already agreed to stand behind these principles.

This 'line' you're talking about isn't governing, it's just opposition, no matter how correct or valid.

As Bayard Rustin, one of the organizers of the March on Washington said in his book 'Strategies for Freedom,' for any movement or opposition endeavor to succeed, it must have a legislative demand at the head of it's concerns.

Also, as he wrote, unity among those of us who agree is less consequential in that effort than in getting others to agree with us.

It's a pragmatic choice between agitation and action, which is what this period in between elections (contests in which our ideals compete) is supposed to be about as our elected leaders work to reconcile diverse and often disparate interests and concerns into action or law.