By Joseph Backholm

For several weeks, the national conversation has been consumed by ICE. While the Trump administration was resolved to remove people from the country who entered illegally, well organized, well funded groups mobilized to protest and, in some cases, obstruct immigration enforcement. Tragically, two people died. Investigations will determine whether officers acted appropriately, but the political reaction was immediate. Even if ICE wasn’t eliminated, many saw this as the moment to reform how it operated.

We’ve seen this dynamic before. A handful of police shootings several years ago sparked the “Defund the Police” movement — an idea that briefly surged, then quietly faded because it couldn’t survive contact with reality. The fact that law enforcement sometimes makes mistakes does not mean law enforcement is unnecessary.

While some fixated on efforts to neutralize ICE, something else happened: a war with Iran. Reasonable minds can disagree over the wisdom of the attack, but when it comes to our national security, that debate is academic now. The United States is involved, and involvement brings consequences. One of them is an elevated risk of terrorism in the short term.

Which brings us back to ICE.

Right now, Washington is deciding whether to fund the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Three times, the House has passed a DHS funding bill. Three times, Senate Democrats have refused to support it, preventing it from reaching the 60 vote threshold. Notably, efforts to stop funding for Homeland Security don’t impact ICE funding. Republicans anticipated that Democrats would try to cut ICE funding, so they’ve already funded it into the future, and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s (D-N.Y.) party knows this. So Democrats are holding up funding for the rest of our national security infrastructure (counterterrorism, cybersecurity, border technology, FEMA preparedness) until ICE is reformed. Specifically, they want body cameras, visible personal identification, and a ban on masks for agents.

Why insist on exposing agents’ identities? You may remember that a Minneapolis church was disrupted by former CNN personality Don Lemon and a group of activists in Minneapolis because one of the elders was an ICE agent. Perhaps they want more of that? It’s difficult to harass someone if you don’t know who they are or where they live.

The irony here is hard to miss. Critics of the Iran operation argue — reasonably — that it puts Americans at greater risk of retaliation. Fine. But if that’s your genuine concern, you’d expect some urgency around funding Homeland Security. Instead, those same voices are the ones blocking it. You can’t claim to worry about American safety in one breath and defund its defenders in the next.

And consider the scale of the challenge. Roughly 10 million people entered the country illegally during the Biden administration. We don’t know who they all are, and it’s reasonable to assume some may be angered by recent events involving Iran’s leadership. Whether one supports or opposes the Iran operation, this is not the moment to deprioritize Homeland Security.

But what if keeping Americans safe isn’t as important to you as winning elections? If that’s the case, bad behavior by ICE serves your purposes, so you provoke until they do something you can be outraged over. If winning elections is the highest priority, a retaliatory terrorist strike gives you something else to blame Trump for.

They may not want a terrorist attack, but there is a silver lining if it happens.

The old saying used to be that “politics stops at the water’s edge.” Perhaps those days are gone. After all, politics seems like the only explanation for the fact that we’re acting more concerned about ICE than terrorists. Today, some of us are more interested in doxing ICE agents than prioritizing national security in a moment of heightened global risk.

Joseph Backholm is Senior Fellow for Biblical Worldview and Strategic Engagement at Family Research Council. This article was originally published here.