The Democratic nominee for Senate in Arkansas, Hallie Shoffner, has given several different explanations about her June statement that she "would vote to defund ICE," now saying that she does not support defunding the agency and climbing into the comments of a Facebook post from her opponent Sen. Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) to argue the point.
The Washington Free Beacon reported in early July that Shoffner said in June that she "would vote to defund ICE as it exists right now" and "would not spend one more dime on ICE." Her statements came in response to a question about what she "would do for the immigrant community" and "undocumented community," stating that she does not "care whether these are folks that have documents or not."
Now, Shoffner is denying that she ever said she would vote to defund ICE. In an interview on Sunday, an Arkansas news anchor asked her whether she said "those things," to which Shoffner replied "No," saying, "What I have called for when it comes to immigration is reform."
Shoffner has even taken to leaving comments on Cotton's Facebook page. Under a video Cotton posted in which he responds to a voter about what defunding ICE would do to Arkansas, Shoffner wrote, "I don't want to defund ICE. I want to reform it."
Just over a week after Shoffner's comments came to light, in mid-July, an anchor at the ABC affiliate in Little Rock asked her to "explain what [her] basis is for ICE to be defunded." Shoffner did not dispute that characterization of her views, instead saying, "I think we should definitely take a second look at ICE."
At a town hall in Saline County later in July, Shoffner told a potential voter that she had no intention of defunding ICE if elected.
"So, I want to be clear that I don't want to defund any law enforcement agency," Shoffner said on July 27. "I do not believe in thoughtlessly eliminating any government agency, whether it's ICE or USAID. That means that. Tom Cotton and others have funded ICE to the tune of $170 billion. That is a lot of money, and supposedly it is to secure the border and deport violent criminals and make our communities safer. But that isn't what's happening, because Americans are dead, legal residents are dead. We have harmed and terrorized thousands of innocent people. High-profile, front-page news."
Shoffner added that she wants to "secure the border" and "deport violent criminals" while fixing "a system that is incredibly bureaucratic and backlogged."
"I want to bring Arkansans to the table to come up with solutions," she said. "That means workers, immigrants, their families, their communities, employers who want workers who want to follow the law. Why wouldn't we craft an efficient immigration system around what Arkansans actually need? And I'll end with the fact that history does not look kindly when a people are afraid of their own government, and we can all agree that there are folks out there who are afraid, and that is never okay."
In response to an inquiry about which position Shoffner holds—whether she intends to "vote to defund ICE as it exists right now" or whether she does not "want to defund any law enforcement agency"—her campaign manager denied any inconsistency between the two.
"I reject the premise that these statements are somehow contradictory, when they are not, or the implication that calling for accountability for any federal agency, particularly one that gets funding in excess of every other federal law enforcement agency combined, is inappropriate, when it isn't," wrote campaign manager Anna-Lee Pittman. "Shoffner believes that the United States must have a safe and secure border, however that is not the end of the answer. We must also fix an immigration system that has been broken from years of partisan gridlock."
Shoffner's flip-flop on defunding ICE comes as she campaigns against Cotton in a deep-red state that President Donald Trump carried by more than 30 percentage points in 2024. Polling on the race—rated "Solid R" by the Cook Political Report—has been sparse, but a survey conducted in February showed Cotton with a 22-point lead over Shoffner.
The Democrat has not made immigration a focus of her campaign, but she does have a history of working on the issue as a left-wing activist, having served as executive director of Arkansas nonprofit Seis Puentes—which helps illegal aliens learn "how systems work" in the United States, the Free Beacon reported in January.
Shoffner hired a marketing firm to rebrand her as "FarmHerHallie," presenting herself as a lifelong Arkansan farmer. She has also emphasized "fairness" for "everyone who works hard" as a core component of her candidacy, even though she had appeared before the Arkansas House State Agencies and Governmental Affairs Committee to testify against a bill to "prohibit discrimination or preferential treatment" on the basis of race in state agencies and public schools, the Free Beacon reported in March. Shoffner argued at the time that the effort would hurt "groups like people of color."
