An ICE agent shot a gun near Mikie Sherrill’s former district. One of the candidates vying to replace her wants to abolish the agency.

An ICE agent firing a gun near Gov. Mikie Sherrill’s former congressional district has brought new attention to the agency in the race to replace her.

Analilia Mejia, who campaigned on abolishing ICE, won a close and crowded Democratic primary to replace Sherrill in Congress in a victory for the progressive movement that coincides with a national debate over President Donald Trump’s deportation agenda. Even some Republican officials have been speaking out against ICE’s tactics.

Mejia will compete with Joe Hathaway, the former Randolph mayor who ran unopposed in the Republican primary, in an April special election. While Hathaway is far from supporting Mejia’s call for an end to ICE, he has also voiced support for making changes to the agency.

The encounter that has brought their views into focus happened Tuesday in Morris County. The incident, in which an ICE agent fired a gun in Roxbury, is under investigation by the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office. The AG’s office said no one was injured.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, said the officer shot at an undocumented immigrant’s tires in self- defense during a targeted effort to detain him.

“This is a public safety issue,” Mejia said in an interview. “Abolishing ICE, to me, is the only reasonable step forward, because it is clear that ICE’s and DHS’ recruitment practices are clearly failing the American people. Their oversight and training is clearly failing the American people, and they have zero accountability.”

In Roxbury, a township of about 20,000 people roughly 40 miles from New York City, local residents recently protested a potential proposed ICE facility, which Democratic politicians and the all-Republican town council alike oppose.

The township, which contains mostly Republican and unaffiliated voters, falls right outside of Sherrill’s former district, which includes other parts of the same county and has become fairly reliably blue.

Mejia said Tuesday’s confrontation raises concerns about guns going off in residential neighborhoods or near schools, and that it shows the “recklessness” of the Department of Homeland Security. She said she’s been in conversation with local Democratic officials who question DHS’s account of the incident.

Hathaway disagrees with Mejia’s views on ICE, but he also stopped short of defending DHS when asked about Tuesday’s incident. He said in an interview that he needs more information to comment.

“I think it’s generally not a good thing when politicians try to stick our nose in and stoke the flames and politicize these kind of things before we know the facts,” he said. “I certainly don’t want to do that in this case.”

The GOP candidate is critical of the state’s Immigrant Trust Directive – the sanctuary policy that limits local law enforcement’s cooperation with ICE, but he also said he supports improved training, de-escalation tactics, and technology for ICE agents. He said American citizens who peacefully protest should be kept safe, though ICE agents also need to be able to detain undocumented immigrants effectively.

A New York Times and Siena University poll published in late January found that a “sizable majority” of voters believe ICE “has gone too far” while roughly half support Trump’s deportations and handling of the southern border.

DHS said the undocumented person driving the car in Roxbury had a criminal history of drug trafficking charges, drug possession, and driving under the influence, and that a judge issued an order of removal for him in 2021. The federal agency said he “rammed into a law enforcement vehicle and weaponized his vehicle in an attempt to run an officer over” while trying to “evade arrest.”

“Following his training, the officer defensively used his firearm and shot out the tires of the vehicle to stop the threat,” an unnamed DHS spokesperson said. “Thankfully, no one was injured.” The driver was arrested and taken into ICE custody, DHS said.

The attorney general’s office requested any witnesses share video footage of the incident. The request came right before Sherrill’s administration launched an online portal for New Jerseyans to submit videos of ICE, which she initially announced on Comedy Central’s The Daily Show. Video footage shared by bystanders contradicted the Trump administration’s account of two recent deadly shootings by federal agents in Minnesota.

Mejia argued during her campaign that ICE cannot be reformed and should be replaced with something else, such as a more efficient system of processing asylum or citizenship applications.

“I’m not calling for open borders,” she said Wednesday. “I’m not calling for the eradication of a system. I’m actually calling for the cease and desist of the violence of the occupation of American cities, of the overreach from this administration and the erosion of Constitutional protections.”

She said she believes Congress, in the short term, should stop funding ICE, reallocate funds for the agency that came as Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act slashed funding for social services, stop surveilling and collecting data from Americans, and end qualified immunity for agents.

Senate Democrats blocked a funding bill for DHS Thursday amid unsuccessful negotiations with The White House to make changes to immigration enforcement operations following the shootings in Minneapolis.

Hathaway said he is “willing, absolutely, to come to the table to reform” how ICE operates, but that he also wants to see changes to sanctuary policies.

Sherrill’s administration has not provided more information about the Roxbury incident, citing an ongoing investigation.

“We recognize that matters of this nature raise concerns within our communities … it is my duty to protect the safety of residents of this state and uphold the Constitution. I will do everything in my power to fulfill this responsibility,” Acting Attorney General Jennifer Davenport said.

On Wednesday, Sherrill signed an executive order prohibiting ICE from operating on state-owned private property unless there’s a judicial warrant and launched a “know your rights” guide for residents interacting with immigration agents.

Mejia, who grew up in Elizabeth and lives in Glen Ridge in Essex County, said that as an Afro-Latina she feels less safe during Trump’s immigration crackdown and that she takes precautions like carrying her passport or being careful where she speaks Spanish.

“It happening close to home is, of course, troubling, but this is an escalation that we have been seeing for years,” said Mejia.