Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., said Democrats’ approach to immigration amounts to “suicidal empathy” and warned that it could “destroy our country” if sanctuary city policies continue to block cooperation with federal immigration authorities.
Schmitt made the comments Tuesday in an interview with Fox News Digital after his proposal targeting sanctuary jurisdictions was included in a House-passed reconciliation package that funds Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection.
The provision would direct $350 million toward ICE efforts to arrest criminal illegal immigrants after they are released from state or local custody. Schmitt said the funding is necessary because officials in sanctuary states and cities often refuse to coordinate with federal immigration authorities.
“There’s an electoral play here. It’s about raw power,” Schmitt said, arguing that Democrats’ immigration position is not only about claiming the moral high ground but also about political advantage.
Schmitt said the issue reaches beyond normal partisan fights and cuts to the question of national sovereignty.
“I think it’s a very important time for Western civilization, honestly, to stand up and say, ‘no, we actually believe in sovereignty. We believe that a country can decide who can come and who has to go,’ and that this is our moment,” he said.
He described his proposal as a basic public safety measure.
“The easiest of low-hanging fruit is to say that when you’re here illegally, and you’ve committed a violent act, when you’re released from prison, we’re actually going to send you back home, and that’s what this legislation does,” Schmitt said.
According to Schmitt, sanctuary jurisdictions often decline to notify ICE when criminal illegal immigrants are being released from custody, preventing federal authorities from taking them into immigration custody. He said there were 18,000 such cases in 2025 alone.
“And I know that sounds crazy, but that’s the practical implication,” he said.
Schmitt argued that those policies leave dangerous people in American communities who should instead be removed from the country.
“These violent rapists or other violent criminals are just being let loose into the community,” he said.
He added that, in his view, being in the country illegally is enough reason for removal even before a violent crime is committed.
“But these sanctuary jurisdictions have decided that they would rather let these criminal illegal aliens back in the community than have them deported. That’s how inverted the morality is on all this,” Schmitt said. “And so this sets to right that wrong. It says that these sanctuary jurisdictions… you don’t want to cooperate? Okay, well we’re going to have the resources to go do it on our own with ICE.”
The debate comes as several high-profile crimes involving illegal immigrants have drawn national attention. Last week, four members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua pleaded guilty to murdering two Americans. In California, an illegal immigrant accused of killing a two-month-old baby appeared in court June 2 and was seen grinning during a pretrial hearing. Another illegal immigrant was sentenced in late May to 25 years in prison after raping and impregnating a 12-year-old girl in Missouri.
Schmitt said he cannot understand why Democrats oppose tougher immigration enforcement.
“I can’t explain why they wanted an open border,” he said. “I can’t explain why they don’t want criminals deported from this country. I can’t explain why they don’t want people denaturalized who have, you know, committed terrorist acts in this country.”
“That’s on them,” he added, “but we’ve got a job to do, which is to make the American people more safe.”
Schmitt also said arresting criminal illegal immigrants as they leave jail is safer than trying to find and arrest them later during ICE operations.
“I can’t believe it hadn’t happened before,” he said. “But I also don’t know that we’ve really been confronted with political leaders on the other side here who just don’t believe in the sovereignty of our country, and that’s kind of where we’re at.”
He pointed to past Democratic calls to defund ICE as evidence that the party does not support strong immigration enforcement.
“They don’t really want enforcement of our federal immigration laws,” Schmitt said. “And I think the American people do.”
