Democrats should “play hardball” ahead of a looming partial government shutdown and use their “leverage to reform ICE,” according to a new polling memo circulating among Democratic senators Tuesday.

The polling, in the field January 23 to 26 during the height of public backlash to Alex Pretti’s killing in Minneapolis, found that 58 percent of likely midterm voters want ICE to be reined in. More voters prefer reforming ICE than the number who prefer eliminating the agency entirely by 30 percent to 19 percent, according to the survey shared first with POLITICO.

“Voters want ICE to follow the law, and focus enforcement on people who pose a threat to public safety. They want to see tangible changes to ICE operations and oppose letting ICE detain U.S. citizens, enter homes without warrants, or fail to wear identifying uniforms,” according to the memo. “There is a desire for immigration enforcement that is lawful, reasonable, and effective. “

The memo was written by Adam Jentleson, the former chief of staff to Sen. John Fetterman (D-Penn.) and top aide to former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), for his organization the Searchlight Institute, which conducted the 1,502-person online survey alongside Tavern Research.

The influential new think tank seeks to push the Democratic Party toward broadly popular positions, regardless of ideology. In the case of ICE, Jentleson writes, Democrats should embrace reforming, not abolishing, the agency.

“Democrats should use their leverage to demand commonsense reforms to ICE that have the backing of broad bipartisan majorities of Americans,” Jentleson writes in the memo, which came across the desk of aides to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer Tuesday and continued to make the rounds among Senate Democrats early Wednesday.

A spokesperson for Schumer did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Searchlight’s latest survey finds that “bipartisan majorities of voters oppose ICE’s lawless tactics, including detaining U.S. citizens (73 percent), entering people’s homes without warrants (79 percent), and failing to wear clearly identifying uniforms (70 percent)”, according to the memo.

The polling comes as Senate Democrats are demanding to re-negotiate a hulking DHS funding bill ahead of a Friday midnight deadline for a partial government shutdown, carving it off from a six-bill appropriations package.

“This is likely to be their last major leverage point for several months at least if not for the rest of the year” to curtail the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, Jentleson told POLITICO. “But there’s a larger reason, which is that the tragic events that have unfolded in Minneapolis have shocked the conscience of Americans and brought their attention to the horrible shit that ICE is doing. Those two things combined give them a lot of leverage at this moment.”

Democratic likely midterm voters were split in the poll over how to change ICE, with 34 percent favoring reforming ICE and 33 percent wanting to get rid of it as an agency — meaning that it’s “a coin flip among Democrats,” Jentleson said. That indicates that in contested Democratic primaries, it’s not clear which side of that debate will have the edge with base voters.

What’s clearer, he wrote in the memo, is that voters do support some degree of immigration enforcement. The memo notes that the view that “immigrants living in the U.S. illegally should not be deported” receives no more than 30 percent support among Democrats and young people, and even less among other groups.

Senate Democrats have embraced this push.

Speaking on the Senate floor Tuesday, Schumer seemed to set the predicate for the partial shutdown, saying any administrative actions on ICE wouldn’t be enough and that “any fix should come from Congress. The public can’t trust the administration to do the right thing on its own and the Republicans and Democrats must work together to make that happen.”

Senate Republicans face a Friday midnight deadline to avert a shutdown. GOP Sens. Thom Tillis and Lisa Murkowski have said that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem should be fired. President Donald Trump acknowledged shaking up his border security leadership team Tuesday.

“Senate Democrats should embrace this reality and use their leverage to achieve meaningful changes that rein in ICE’s abuses and refocus the agency on its critical law enforcement mission,” Jentleson writes.

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