Deporting Illegal Aliens that Abuse Law Enforcement Animals

Dogs and horses serve as critical assets in federal law enforcement and immigration operations. Horses are often helpful partners for crowd control, event security, securing rugged areas along the border that vehicles cannot access, and ceremonial duties, while dogs excel at scanning passengers and cargo to detect things like drugs, foreign animal disease, and harmful plant pests, preventing such threats from entering our country. 

Unfortunately, along with the severe and concerning rise of attacks on federal law enforcement officers – assaults against ICE agents have risen by over 1,300 percent – have come attacks on their animal partners. 

In June 2025, a five-year-old beagle and Customs and Border Patrol detector dog named Freddie was violently kicked by an Egyptian national arriving at Dulles International Airport from Cairo after Freddie alerted authorities to the man’s suitcases, which contained prohibited agricultural products. Freddie sustained injuries and was unable to return to work for two weeks.

Similarly, during the violent riots against ICE in Los Angeles that same month, two protesters assaulted L.A. County Sheriff’s Department horses by repeatedly pushing a horse, hitting the horse’s muzzle, pulling on a horse's reins, and pulling on another horse's bridle.

These animals should be respected and protected, not cruelly abused. House Republicans are bringing forward legislation to ensure that any foreign national that assaults a law enforcement animal like Freddie is inadmissible and removable from our country. 

H.R. 4638, the Federal Working Animal Protection Act, introduced by Rep. Ken Calvert, creates a ground of inadmissibility and a ground of deportability explicitly for aliens who harm law enforcement animals to prevent animal abusers from entering the U.S. and streamline their removal from our nation.

Will Democrats join us and vote to deport illegal aliens who abuse animals, or will they stand by and vote to allow these criminals to remain in America?