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Democrats’ “suicidal empathy” on immigration will “destroy our country,” a Republican senator warned after his proposal targeting sanctuary city policies was included in the reconciliation package funding Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP).
In a Tuesday interview with Fox News Digital, Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., argued that Democrats’ approach to immigration is also driven by political self-interest and not entirely by the desire for moral high-ground.
“There’s an electoral play here. It’s about raw power,” he said.
Schmitt’s provision, which was included in the House-passed funding package Tuesday, would provide $350 million for ICE agents to arrest criminal illegal immigrants after their release from state or local custody. It comes as law enforcement in sanctuary states and cities continue to refuse to cooperate with federal officials.
Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., blamed “leftists” for the rise in political violence while questioning FBI Director Kash Patel during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in the Hart Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 16, 2025. Schmitt referenced the assassination of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk and said, “Don’t give me this both sides bullshit!” while attributing most political violence in the U.S. to liberal politicians, groups and individuals. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Schmitt also warned that failing to deport illegal aliens is a threat to the West itself.
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“I think it’s a very important time for Western civilization, honestly, to stand up and say, ‘no, we actually believe in sovereignty. We believe that a country can decide who can come and who has to go,’ and that this is our moment,” he said. “And the easiest of low-hanging fruit is to say that when you’re here illegally and you’ve committed a violent act, when you’re released from prison, we’re actually going to send you back home, and that’s what this legislation does.”
In sanctuary cities and states, officials often flout federal immigration law and refuse to coordinate with ICE to ensure criminal illegal aliens are deported after they’re freed, Schmitt explained.
“And I know that sounds crazy, but that’s the practical implication,” said Schmitt, adding that there were 18,000 such cases in 2025 alone.
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“These violent rapists or other violent criminals are just being let loose into the community,” said Schmitt, who argued that being in the country illegally — even without committing a violent crime — is justification enough for deportation.
“But these sanctuary jurisdictions have decided that they would rather let these criminal illegal aliens back in the community than have them deported. That’s how inverted the morality is on all this,” he continued. “And so this sets to right that wrong. It says that these sanctuary jurisdictions… you don’t want to cooperate? Okay, well we’re going to have the resources to go do it on our own with ICE.”
Schmitt’s successful provision and the larger debate on the funding bill comes as criminal illegal aliens continue to make headlines. Just last week, four members of the barbaric Venezuelan Tren de Aragua street gang pleaded guilty to murdering two Americans by gunning them down in cold blood.
A man is arrested by ICE agents in Monassas, Virginia, on May 15, 2026. (Leigh Green for Fox News Digital)
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Another illegal alien in California, accused of killing a two-month-old baby, grinned in court during a pretrial hearing on June 2.
Yet another illegal alien was sentenced at the end of May to 25 years in prison after raping and impregnating a 12-year-old girl in Missouri.
“I can’t explain why they wanted an open border,” Schmitt said of the opposition party. “I can’t explain why they don’t want criminals deported from this country. I can’t explain why they don’t want people denaturalized who have, you know, committed terrorist acts in this country.”
“That’s on them, but we’ve got a job to do, which is to make the American people more safe.”
An ICE agent monitors hundreds of asylum seekers being processed inside the Jacob K. Javits Federal Building in New York City on June 6, 2023. (David Dee Delgado/Getty Images)
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Schmitt noted that arresting criminal illegal aliens when they’re released from jail is also much safer than arresting them in immigration raids and operations, and expressed disbelief that such a policy has not yet been implemented.
“I can’t believe it hadn’t happened before, but I also don’t know that we’ve really been confronted with political leaders on the other side here who just don’t believe in the sovereignty of our country, and that’s kind of where we’re at. I mean, they wanted to defund ICE,” he told Fox News Digital.
“They don’t really want enforcement of our federal immigration laws, and I think the American people do.”
