As Democratic voters seethe over President Trump’s immigration crackdown and demand more forceful opposition to him, two rising liberal figures showed how the issue had surged in importance for their party as they appeared on Sunday in Nevada, a traditional early presidential nominating state.
Speaking at a Democratic Party fund-raiser in Las Vegas, Senator Ruben Gallego of Arizona and Gov. JB Pritzker of Illinois condemned the recent tactics of federal immigration agents in Minneapolis, where two U.S. citizens were killed by agents in recent weeks, but they also made broader overtures that could preview their pitches in a 2028 presidential primary contest.
Mr. Gallego, who devoted much of his speech to laying out his biography and reassuring attendees that the promise of America remained intact despite recent tumult, said the chaos in Minneapolis and the “dehumanization of the Latino community” reminded him of the tenure of Joe Arpaio, the former Arizona sheriff long scrutinized for his harsh treatment of immigrants.
In an interview beforehand, Mr. Gallego said he wanted to see “dramatic changes” to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. He said he was not worried about a backlash from voters if Democrats pushed to overhaul the agency — and, if anything, he said, the risk was in not going far enough in the direction voters want.
“They don’t want our streets to become chaotic,” he said. “They don’t want to see Americans killed by masked federal agents.”
Mr. Pritzker also included lofty language and personal anecdotes, quoting Abraham Lincoln and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and talking about his mother’s struggle with alcoholism. But he spent more time directly laying into Mr. Trump, calling the agents in Minneapolis “thugs” and making comparisons between the president’s administration and Nazi Germany, as he has done in the past.
“It took the Nazis one month, three weeks, two days, eight hours and 40 minutes to dismantle their constitutional republic,” Mr. Pritzker said. “When Trump took office last year, I told my state, ‘We’ve seen this before in history.’” He added: “I do not invoke the specter of Nazi Germany lightly.”
In a statement, Abigail Jackson, a White House spokeswoman, said that ICE officers were acting “heroically to enforce the law and protect American communities,” and argued they had been endangered by “dangerous, untrue smears by elected Democrats.”
The slightly divergent approaches of Mr. Gallego and Mr. Pritzker — with the Arizona senator focused more on the future, and the Illinois governor on the present — showed how Democrats are wrestling to balance affirmative and hopeful messaging with full-throated opposition to Mr. Trump and his aggressive agenda.
Some Democrats have argued that they must present an alternative philosophy and a vision for governance, rather than simply being the anti-Trump party. At the same time, polling shows that Mr. Trump is growing increasingly unpopular over his handling of the economy, immigration and foreign affairs. Emboldened by voters’ anger over the situation in Minneapolis, Senate Democrats last week blocked an annual funding bill for the Department of Homeland Security in an effort to negotiate restrictions on ICE activity.
At a crossroads and desperate to regain control of Congress in the midterm elections in November, many Democrats are looking to the wide field of potential presidential contenders to lead the way on messaging.
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One of those possible candidates is Mr. Gallego, who is the son of Colombian and Mexican immigrants and who first rose to prominence in Arizona as a progressive brawler in state politics.
He has moderated his tone since then, staking much of his successful 2024 Senate campaign on correctly predicting that voters, including Latinos in Arizona, wanted tighter restrictions at the Southern border, and warning Democrats not to veer too far to the left on border security.
On Sunday, he used his time to unspool his unlikely success story, from growing up poor in Chicago to graduating from Harvard and fighting in the Iraq war as a Marine. He argued that his upbringing meant he understood Americans’ struggles with the high cost of living.
“I worked every job you can ever imagine, just to make ends meet,” Mr. Gallego said, recalling his time as a janitor and his jobs at a meatpacking factory and a hot-dog stand. “And it sucked. It sucked.” He added, “I did it so I could bring some dignity to my family.”
Mr. Pritzker, who has long taken a more combative stance against Mr. Trump than many other top Democrats, addressed the ICE raids more head-on. He recalled his state’s clash with the federal government last year, when agents fatally shot a Mexican man while trying to detain him, and shot and injured another woman who is a U.S. citizen.
“Donald Trump declared war on the people of Chicago and the state of Illinois when he sent his ICE and C.B.P. troops onto the streets,” Mr. Pritzker said, referring to Customs and Border Protection. And he denounced the baseless accusations from members of Mr. Trump’s administration that the two people killed in Minneapolis had been domestic terrorists.
“They lie as often as they breathe, but we’re not stupid or craven enough to believe them, are we?” he said.
A billionaire heir to the Hyatt hotel chain, Mr. Pritzker ended his speech on a more personal note, talking about how both of his parents died when he was young and how his mother fought for civil rights. “She showed me that speaking out for human rights might mean that sometimes you’re standing alone,” he said.
The efforts to court party bigwigs in Nevada — who had gathered for an event honoring Senator Harry Reid, the Democratic former majority leader who died in 2021 — came as the state vies to be first on the Democratic presidential primary calendar in 2028, along with several others.
Mr. Pritzker visited Nevada in 2024 to campaign for a ballot measure enshrining access to abortion in the state’s constitution, which he also spent money to support, while Mr. Gallego was there last year to meet with leaders of the influential Culinary Workers Union.
Earlier on Sunday, Mr. Gallego attended a service at a Black church in Las Vegas with Representative Steven Horsford of Nevada, and he urged the congregation to elect Democrats in November.
In the interview with The New York Times, Mr. Gallego stopped short of endorsing Nevada’s bid to be the first primary state, but said he was “for anything that shows a real representation of what a Democrat needs to do to win,” including “places like Nevada, which is, I would say, a very good example of the Democratic and the national base.”
Both Mr. Gallego and Mr. Pritzker impressed their audience in Las Vegas, which included the three Democrats in Nevada’s congressional delegation and Aaron Ford, the state attorney general trying to oust Gov. Joe Lombardo, a Republican, this fall.
Reuben D’Silva, a state assemblyman, said he was heartened by the “aggressiveness” of their messaging at a time when “we’re up for a big fight in 2026.”
And did he have any constructive feedback as each man hones a possible presidential pitch?
“I think they should spend more time in Nevada,” Mr. D’Silva said.
Kellen Browning is a Times political reporter based in San Francisco.
The post As Democrats Press Trump on ICE, Gallego and Pritzker Preview 2028 Pitches appeared first on New York Times.
