House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, pressed on live television to support abolishing ICE, responded with a line that will haunt him: “I don’t understand anything that you just said.”
The exchange happened Friday on The Joy Reid Show, where The Left Hook podcast host Wajahat Ali laid out a damning case against the agency. Sixty-five percent of people detained by ICE had no criminal convictions, according to the Cato Institute. ICE has killed eight people this year alone. Public disapproval has skyrocketed from 30 percent to over 60 percent in just three weeks.
“If you lead on something, people will follow,” Ali told Jeffries. “The wind is behind your back for the first time ever.… Why not lead, and say ‘abolish ICE’?”
Jeffries refused.
“I spoke English,” Ali replied to Jeffries’s claim of confusion.
.@RepJeffries "can't understand" my questions about why he won't lead and embrace "Abolish ICE."
— Wajahat Ali (@WajahatAli) February 15, 2026
I was speaking English, and my microphone wasn't muted.
Listen for yourselves. pic.twitter.com/Fhkwdsitqy
The Democratic leader eventually offered some words about wanting “taxpayer dollars to make life more affordable for the American people, not brutalize or kill them,” but pointedly declined to engage with the actual question. “I’m gonna use the language that I wanna use; you can use the language that you wanna use,” Jeffries said.
The “language” Jeffries prefers? Asking ICE agents to wear body cameras and not detain U.S. citizens—the latter of which is already illegal. He’s calling this “bold, meaningful, dramatic” change.
It’s a familiar Democratic dance: acknowledging the problem while refusing to name the solution. ICE is at its lowest approval rating ever. The agency has been terrorizing immigrant communities, killing people, and detaining citizens despite court orders. And the top Democrat in the House won’t even entertain the possibility of dismantling it.
Ali wasn’t asking Jeffries to abolish ICE tomorrow. He was asking him to articulate a long-term goal—to lead. Jeffries’s response was to pretend he couldn’t understand basic English.
“I think Wajahat Ali was clear,” one user wrote on Twitter. “He acknowledges the current fight, but asks Representative Jeffries to lead on the long term goal of abolishing ICE. I don’t understand the leader’s reticence on that very simple, and frankly moderate, position.”
Meanwhile, DHS is partially shut down, ICE agents are ignoring court orders, and Democrats are negotiating with themselves over how much brutality is acceptable. The wind is at their backs—and Jeffries is pretending he can’t feel it.