Photo : Andrew Harnik/AP

New York Rep. Alexandria Ocascio-Cortez voted against a measure on Wednesday to fund and reopen the government, which would’ve ended the longest shutdown in history, because the bill included funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the agency she campaigned to abolish in her 2018 campaign, NBC News reported.


“Most of our votes are pretty straightforward, but today was a tough/nuanced call,” she wrote in an Instagram story. “We didn’t vote with the party because one of the spending bills included ICE funding, and our community felt strongly about not funding that.”


Ocasio-Cortez stuck to her belief that ICE, an agency known for targeting undocumented immigrants with no criminal record for deportation, endangering their lives, and assaulting people in custody, shouldn’t receive another federal dollar.

After campaigning to abolish ICE, the congresswoman’s actions have been closely scrutinized. Earlier this month, writer Elizabeth King criticized Ocasio-Cortez for voting to fund and reopen the Department of Homeland Security through Feb. 8, which House Democrats argued would give them more time to debate solutions to President Donald Trump’s demand for a $5.7 billion border wall. ICE falls under DHS, so the move irked some supporters who questioned why she would vote to fund that parent agency.

Despite Ocasio-Cortez’s vote, the House passed the bill with the support of more than 220 Democrats and a handful of Republicans, according to NBC. But because the bill doesn’t address Trump’s demand for $5.7 billion to build a border wall, there’s little hope of it getting through the Senate, let alone to the president’s desk.