1. United States
2. Va.
3. Letter

I know that if you don’t vote for the appropriations bill, you’ll be tying up funding for seven other departments, too, and the result will be another government shutdown. The whole point here is leverage. Democrats never voted for the Big Ugly in the first place. This is your one opportunity to constrain ICE. The only way ICE should get any funding is if its agents are (1) prohibited from carrying and using firearms, stun guns, teargas, pepper-spray or any other potentially lethal or injurious weapon or chemical; (2) required (in policy and practice) to get warrants before searching homes or automobiles or places of work or worship; (3) clearly identified and their vehicles clearly identified; (4) prohibited from making stops or arrests based on someone’s appearance. If you and the rest of the Senate Dems (and the two Independent senators who caucus with the Dems — Angus King and Bernie Sanders) vote NO tomorrow, it will give you bargaining leverage to get such constraints on ICE. And it will put Senate Republicans in a bind. They will either have to accept the constraints on ICE or take the heat for another shutdown.