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Progressive Caucus Backs Bill To Redirect ICE Money To Affordable Housing

The Congressional Progressive Caucus, a group of nearly 100 House Democrats, is formally endorsing legislation that would strip $175 billion from ICE and put it toward affordable housing.

The bill, introduced last month by Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-Calif.), would pull tens of billions of dollars in immigration enforcement funding from President Donald Trump’s so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act, and put it toward housing programs that reduce rents, expand homeownership and provide new incentives for affordable housing construction.

Specifically, Gomez’s bill would create a monthly Renter Tax Credit for families that pay more than 30% of their income on rent, provide $50,000 or more in down-payment assistance for first-generation homebuyers, convert vacant office buildings into affordable housing through a 20-35% Affordable Housing Conversion Credit, and expand production of affordable housing through a Low-Income Housing Tax Credit.

“This bill flips the script,” the California Democrat said in a statement last month. “We’re taking back Trump’s anti-immigrant slush fund and investing it in real housing solutions that actually help people while putting a check on the unaccountable police force he built to go after our communities.”

The progressive caucus, which has been vowing to rein in ICE, will announce its endorsement of Gomez’s bill later Wednesday.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/doj-fed-powell-golden-globes-2026_n_6964c61ee4b0b3be67eb8c89/liveblog_6967f35de4b0141cc9b21166

  • InevitableSwing [none/use name]@hexbear.netOPEnglish
    16·
    2 months ago

    Some Bluesky libs are actually falling for this shit. I’m so tired.

    -–

    Edit

    This is insanely smart politics because it sets the debate not at “abolish ice or not”.

    But “gestapo or affordable housing”.

  • InevitableSwing [none/use name]@hexbear.netOPEnglish
    12·
    2 months ago

    I <3 David Simon. He’s such a lib.

    In this tv series - he exposes stuff like police corruption, police violence, and corrupt politicians. A similar writer/producer in different country - would be yelling at political parties demanding change. But all he does get angry and petty online at people including leftists, announces he’s going to block them, and does that. And now when the gestapo is on the rampage - here he is bringing the heat to the dems and holding their feet to the fire by saying “The isn’t stuff about the police had terrible messaging! This is okay. You can use the term ‘abolish’ in this case!”

    To Dems squeamish about the phrase “Abolish ICE” – it’s not the self-defeating rhetoric of Defund or Abolish Police. INS, Customs, Border Patrol are intact to police immigration. ICE did not exist to snatch any random brown people and shoot moms in the head until 2003. We’re okay walking it back.

    https://bsky.app/profile/audacityofdespair.bsky.social/post/3mcg62bpptk24

    -–

    Edit

    Comments to Simon and his replies.

    Border Patrol is a fuckn dumpster fire too. They’ve been a corrupt incompetent organization for about a century. Gonna have to do something about them too.

    Reform as necessary. But no one needs to be occupying cities and shooting people. Someone will need to be on any nation’s borders.

    -–

    I reckon ICE has hired too many deep rooted violent bigots that it would be impossible to root them all out.

    I reckon the same. I also reckon that we do not need storm troopers occupying American cities in order to have a functional immigration policy and create a reasoned, legal and consistent pathway to citizenship. We just need to govern ourselves like something better than frightened, racist shitheels.