The night after Democrats won back the House, Raw America managing editor Carl Gibson spoke with Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.), who is the vice-ranking member of the House Homeland Security Committee, and set to chair the committee’s oversight subcommittee in the new Congress. Ramirez — who herself won reelection to a third term Tuesday night — plainly laid out her plans for the Trump administration officials responsible for the president’s ICE crackdowns across the country. Gibson and Ramirez covered various topics, including:
Ramirez’s plans to formally request appearances from former DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, current DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin, border czar Tom Homan and former Border Patrol Commander Gregory Bovino, and to subpoena them if they refuse to appear
The congresswoman’s response to presumptive incoming House Speaker Hakeem Jeffries’ claim that voters don’t want Democrats to “get even”
Her call for the new Democratic majority to pursue a two-pronged strategy of both accountability and affordability in the next Congress
Why she believes Democrats are now in their strongest position in decades to pass comprehensive immigration reform legislation
Why Democrats shouldn’t allow the possibility of a Trump veto to get in the way of passing Medicare for All, a $25 minimum wage and immigration reform
Whether congressional hearings in 2027 can seed potential “Nuremberg 2.0” trials under a future Democratic-led Department of Justice
The importance of pursuing accountability for federal agents’ killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis
How Democrats can learn the lessons of Reconstruction, and why this work is personal for Ramirez
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Gibson opened the conversation by asking Ramirez about a Bluesky post she published on election night, addressed to Noem, Miller, Mullin, Homan, and Bovino, telling them to clear their schedules, and asked her directly if she is planning to compel them to testify.
“Carl, I meant every single word on that Bluesky post, and I certainly know that Stephen Miller got the note because his wife made sure that he saw it,” Ramirez said, noting that Miller’s wife, Katie, personally replied to her post on X.
The three-term congresswoman laid out her agenda for the oversight subcommittee, explaining she wants a full investigation into “the corruption, the abuse of power, the immunity in which these agents have been operating under,” along with a full accounting of the DHS diverting FEMA appropriations to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and to deportation planes, and how Secretary Mullin has spent money that should have gone to the Transportation Security Administration and the U.S. Coast Guard.
She said if her initial requests for voluntary testimony get ignored, she’ll move forward with the subpoena process.
“We will formally subpoena every one of them,” Ramirez said. “I’m going to spend the first six months doing all of the investigation, all of the oversight work that Congress should have been doing on this agency that has been really an agency of terror for so many.”
Gibson then asked Ramirez about a claim that House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York made on Wednesday’s episode of Morning Joe on MS NOW that “the American people don’t want us to get even; they want us to get things done on their behalf.” He asked whether Ramirez agreed that holding officials accountable amounts to getting even, and whether she would vote for Jeffries as speaker.
Ramirez first remarked that Gibson asked two questions and “snuck in the second [question] about the speakership”) but focused her answer on the first.
“This is not about getting even. This is not a tit for tat,” Ramirez said. “This is about justice and accountability.”
She pointed out that Congress has authority over every dollar spent by the government, and reminded the audience that the children of Silverio Villegas González — who was killed during ICE’s crackdown in the Chicago — are now wards of the state of Illinois.
“I don’t get to look at Silverio Villegas’s children, who are orphans right now, and tell them, ‘Oh, we can’t really get even,’” Ramirez said. “Democrats can walk, run, and chew gum at the very same time.”
Ramirez said she spent 14 hours at various polling places in her district on Election Day. She observed that many voters — including young first-time voters whose parents are currently in detention centers — told her what they expect her to do: “Make them pay.” She said her constituents also want Medicare for All, lower costs, lower gas prices and an end to the war in Iran.
“If we don’t do our job, we’re going to see the impact of that and the consequences come 2028,” Ramirez warned.
Gibson then piggybacked on Ramirez’s point by saying that Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia also told CNN Democrats can “walk and chew gum." He then highlighted another Bluesky post from Ramirez promising to “hold every fascist in the administration accountable” while fighting to lower the cost of living.
The congresswoman argued that the current Republican-led Congress “has not lived up to the task of its mission of being a co-equal branch of government,” saying that the current majority ceded its Article I powers. She added that Republicans allowed Trump to launch an illegal war with Iran that has not only made Americans less safe, but driven up costs for virtually all consumer goods. And she said that with sprawling majorities in both the House and Senate, Democrats “are in the strongest position to pass immigration reform.”
She said young Latino voters were responsible for helping Democratic Senator-elect James Talarico win in Texas, and that young voters in former GOP strongholds like Kansas and Iowa turned out in unprecedented numbers simply because they are “so sick and tired of seeing a federal government getting away with murder.”
“Our leadership has to understand that we can’t continue to run away from doing our darn job in addressing immigration,” Ramirez said. “You can’t talk about affordability without talking about immigration reform.”
When Gibson noted that people have been demanding immigration reform for decades, Ramirez observed that it had been 40 years since the Immigration Reform and Control Act was signed into law in November of 1986.
“I was three years old. I’m old now,” she said.
As Gibson and Ramirez discussed immigration reform, Gibson then pointed to the case of Lorenzo Salgado Arrajo in Houston, reminding viewers that he had been in the green card process for years when ICE agents shot him to death this summer. He then asked whether Democrats would be able to use the next two years to make their case to voters the kinds of policies they could enact with a Democratic president and large majorities like FDR had when he passed the New Deal.
Ramirez said this was only possible if Democrats “get out of our own way with excuses.” She said the incoming House and Senate majorities shouldn’t wait to pass immigration reform, Medicare for All and her own legislation that would raise the federal minimum wage to $25 (which Gibson argued for ** in a 2021 op-ed for Barron’s**) regardless of whether Trump signs or vetoes them.
“This idea that we shouldn’t be passing legislation out of Congress that the president will veto is so small-minded and so narrow, and it doesn’t meet the moment,” Ramirez said. “You should be passing everything you possibly can, and then you let the American people point to who is in the way of their healthcare, who is in the way of their housing.”
She said the goal Democrats should aim for is a Democratic president to sign those bills within the first 100 days of 2029, and for Democrats to build a coalition built to last, as opposed to one that falls apart after a single election.
“I’m interested in a commitment with the Democratic Party where working people see us as their party for the next eight, 10, 12 years, and as long as we can,” she said.
Gibson observed that any criminal referrals that come out of House committees like Ramirez’s would ultimately land on the desk of the Trump Justice Department, which is led by Attorney General (and former Trump criminal defense lawyer) Todd Blanche. He then wondered whether the next two years of investigations could serve as the evidence-gathering process for a future Democratic attorney general, noting that Democratic Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon (** who Raw America interviewed in August**) has called for a “
“Absolutely,” Ramirez said. “To twiddle our fingers and just say there’s nothing really we can do until we actually have a Democratic president is a failure of our leadership.”
Ramirez said she was personally over blaming Donald Trump for the state of the country and instead wants Democrats to do the work necessary to make sure a “fascist” can never again take the reins of government. She also warned that if Democrats fail to prove their ability to lead to working-class voters, they may abandon the Democratic Party entirely. She said the real fight lies in fighting corporate money in politics, including within the Democratic Party.
“We’ve also been beholden to corporations, by lobbyists, by money in politics,” Ramirez said. “That is not a Republican problem only.”
Gibson turned to Minneapolis, where voters left “I Voted” stickers on memorials to Renee Good and Alex Pretti, both killed by federal immigration agents. He noted that Jonathan Ross, the agent who killed Good, has faced no consequences, nor have the agents who killed Pretti as he tried to defend a woman being assaulted. What could Ramirez’s committee do about Noem, Miller, and the officials who labeled Good a terrorist after her death?
Ramirez said the committee will bring in those responsible and build a case, adding that removing someone from office isn’t justice. She noted that Noem, though out as DHS secretary and recently fired as special envoy for the Shield of the Americas, is still drawing a taxpayer-funded salary as a senior adviser at the State Department.
“What the heck is she doing? She shouldn’t be advising on anything,” Ramirez said. “That woman should be behind bars, and that’s what justice looks like.”
She also cited reports of women raped in detention, and said dismissing accountability tells victims “their trauma isn’t worth acknowledging.” Ramirez stressed that abuses haven’t stopped just because the cameras have moved on, noting that more than a million people have been detained or deported in the past year and a half.
“We want people to know that if you committed a crime, whether you are a cabinet leader, whether you are someone in the streets, justice is justice for all, not just some of us,” she said.
“For Me, It Is Personal”
To close, Gibson invoked Andrew Johnson’s gutting of Reconstruction after the Civil War, done in the name of “healing,” which paved the way for Jim Crow, lynchings, and the Red Summer. He asked what Ramirez and the new majority would do to make sure those lessons are learned this time.
Ramirez answered with a story from Election Day. A local PAC leader trying to buy school board seats told her not to take it personally. Her response: it’s not personal for him, but it is for her. She spoke about attending a public school without a social worker and struggling with depression as a teenager, and said that’s exactly why fully funding neighborhood schools matters to her.
“This work is personal for a number of us,” she said, pointing to newly elected members coming in with a mandate from constituents who expect them to deliver.
“We don’t have 10 years to prove ourselves. We have nine months to prove ourselves before we are back collecting signatures to get on the ballot,” Ramirez said. “We have a mandate, and we have a few months to prove to the people that we have, in fact, earned their support.”
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