By Breitbart News Network | Created at 2026-09-02 12:31:35 | Updated at 2026-09-03 07:57:47
1 day ago
Arkansas Democratic Senate nominee Hallie Shoffner is denying that she wanted to defund Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), despite previously saying she would vote to defund the agency as it currently exists and would not spend another dime on it.
Shoffner, who is challenging Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), made the remarks June 7 at an Immigrant Heritage Month Business Expo in Springdale, Arkansas, as Breitbart News reported.
Asked whether she would vote to defund ICE, Shoffner answered, “I would vote to defund ICE as it exists right now.”
“Immigration and Customs Enforcement was created not that long ago, and it no longer serves the purpose it was originally created for. I would not spend one more dime on ICE, not just because of the human dignity issue, but also the fact that it is now the largest law enforcement agency in the country,” Shoffner said.
She also argued that ICE has “ten times the budget of the organization that fights child sex trafficking” before pointing to hunger in Arkansas as what she described as a more pressing issue.
“Let’s not spend one more dime until we start fixing the real issues that’s happening, which is the fact that we’re the hungriest state in the country. There are 180,000 hungry children in Arkansas. Why don’t we start talking about that?” Shoffner said.
During the same event, Shoffner described immigrants, regardless of their legal status, as essential to the country.
“I don’t care whether these are folks that have documents or not; this is a community that is essential to the fabric — the social, cultural, and economic fabric — of this country,” she said.
Shoffner accused the government of treating the immigrant community as an enemy and said an immigration system should put “human dignity at the forefront” while considering the needs of small businesses and immigrants themselves.
“What we have to recognize is the folks that are here, whether they have documents or not, are contributing to the small business economy, and the small business economy is what runs America,” she said.
Shoffner also summarized her view of the government’s responsibilities on immigration by saying it should enforce good laws, avoid laws that do not make sense, “treat human beings like human beings,” and “don’t be an asshole.”
As Cotton’s campaign began running attack ads against her, Shoffner commented on the senator’s Facebook page: “Why don’t you roll the full tape, Tom Cotton, and let Arkansans hear what I actually said?”
“I don’t want to defund ICE. I want to reform it,” Shoffner wrote. “But you already know that.”
She then challenged Cotton to a debate, “so Arkansans can hear our positions for themselves.”
Shoffner also denied wanting to abolish immigration law enforcement during a recent Arkansas television interview when an anchor confronted her with claims made in one of Cotton’s campaign ads.
“This is not news here, but one of the ads says that you want more illegal immigrants in the country, you want to abolish immigration law enforcement, that you’ve given to Kamala Harris 25 times,” the anchor said. “And I’m gonna give you a chance to refute that, and then we’ll maybe dissect it a little bit more.”
“I mean, I’ve learned so much, so many things about myself I never knew before,” Shoffner responded.
“Did you say those things?” the anchor asked.
“Did I what?” Shoffner replied.
“Did you say those things? That you—” the anchor repeated.
“When it — no,” Shoffner responded.
Before her Senate campaign, Shoffner served as executive director of Seis Puentes, a Little Rock nonprofit whose mission is to empower Central Arkansas’s Latino community. She told the Arkansas Times in 2012 that one of the group’s goals was to help “undocumented Hispanics” navigate American systems and “engage them in the process,” and Seis Puentes has partnered with the City of North Little Rock to help illegal immigrants obtain “valid photo ID.”
Shoffner said on the District 3 Podcast in January that she “grew up in an immigrant community” because farm workers in her area generally came from Mexico and Honduras and that “many of them were undocumented.” She also discussed the use of the H-2A program to recruit workers from Mexico and South Africa, saying her farm employed five Mexican workers who returned annually and arguing that “we must not discount the importance of community — of immigrants who basically power the small business economy.”
Shoffner’s record beyond immigration also includes progressive advocacy and policy positions, as well as ties to radical Democratic political operatives and candidates.
In 2010, while working with Promsex, a “feminist NGO” in Peru that says it seeks through advocacy to help build an “egalitarian society” in which people “make decisions about their sexuality and reproduction,” Shoffner wrote that she marched at the front of Lima’s ninth annual Gay Pride Parade and that Promsex funded the event and carried its opening banner. She called the experience “incredible” and wrote that she was “so happy to be a part of the [Promsex] family.” More than a decade later, in 2021, the Foundation to Promote Open Society, which is associated with billionaire George Soros, gave Promsex $300,000 for “general support,” according to the foundation’s Form 990.
In an April 2025 essay, Shoffner wrote that MAHA (Make America Healthy Again) was “doing real harm to the very communities it claims to uplift,” called the movement “dangerous,” and said it “pretends food can replace healthcare.” She also accused Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the movement of undermining trust in vaccines, medicine, and public institutions. “We already lack hospitals and OBs. Now RFK Jr. wants to erode what little public health trust we have left?” Shoffner wrote. “That’s not ‘freedom.’ That’s negligence.” She also criticized Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ request to exclude sodas and candy from federal food stamp benefits, writing that doing so after cutting funding for public schools to purchase fresh food from local farmers was “like sitting in the Amen Corner on Sundays while stabbing your neighbors in the back every other day of the week.”
Shoffner’s campaign paid Louisville-based digital and influencer firm Good Influence $47,500 for “online consulting” in four 2025 payments, according to FEC data. The firm was also used by Maine Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner, who faced backlash over a tattoo resembling the Totenkopf and past Reddit posts in which he referred to himself as a communist, called police “bastards,” described white rural voters as racist and stupid, and said Purple Heart recipient Pfc. Ted Daniels did not “deserve to live.” Platner also accused the federal government of having “invaded our state” over immigration enforcement and referred to dangerous, criminal illegal aliens as “fellow Americans.” He suspended his campaign July 8 following sexual assault allegations, which he denied.
