Accountability is Not Revenge: Democrats Should Give Up the ‘Log Kya Kahein Gai’ Mentality
- Republicans will call any investigation a witch hunt. Silence buys nothing. It only tells the families of Renee Good, Alex Pretti and Nurul Amin Shah Alam that their losses mattered less than a news cycle.
Nearly two weeks ago, voters handed Democrats something rare: not a narrow opening but a mandate. The party flipped seven Senate seats, won back the House by a wide margin and took legislatures in places that hadn’t gone blue in decades. The first part of the message was plain: nearly nine in ten voters said the cost of living was a major factor in their vote. The second part was just as loud, if harder to poll. Americans are tired of a government that answers to no one.
Affordability and accountability. Democratic leaders say both words. But within a day of the results, they began emptying the second one of meaning.
“I haven’t had a single member of the House Democratic caucus talk to me about impeachment,” Hakeem Jeffries, the likely next speaker, told reporters the day after the election. On television, he added that Americans “don’t want us to get even.” Asked whether he would support impeaching the president, Chuck Schumer, who expects to lead the Senate, pointed to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth instead and said, “That’s up to the House.” Before the election, Kamala Harris had warned the party not to focus on impeachment at all.
Accountability is not revenge. And the people it is owed to can no longer vote.
Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old mother of three, was shot and killed by an ICE agent in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in January. Weeks later, also in Minneapolis, Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse who had gone to help an observer shoved to the ground by agents, was shot dead by Border Patrol agents. Video contradicted the government’s account. Silverio Villegas González was killed by an ICE agent in Franklin Park, Illinois. Ruben Ray Martinez, a 23-year-old American citizen, was killed by an ICE agent on South Padre Island, Texas.
Other deaths came more quietly. Nurul Amin Shah Alam, a 56-year-old Rohingya refugee from Myanmar who was nearly blind and spoke no English, was released by Border Patrol agents in Buffalo, New York, on a February night and left outside a closed coffee shop miles from his home. No one told his family. He was found dead five days later. Mohammad Nazeer Paktyawal, an Afghan father of six who served alongside American forces, died in ICE custody in Texas less than a day after agents arrested him, his family says, in front of his children. Parady La, a father who came to this country from Cambodia at age two, died in federal detention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Geraldo Lunas Campos, 55, died at a detention camp near El Paso, Texas; local authorities ruled his death a homicide.
We have seen what happens when voters lose faith. In 2024, too many people looked at uninspiring leaders and stayed home. This month, they came back. Democrats can honor that with courage, or squander it.
They are not isolated cases. At least 60 people have died in ICE custody in less than two years of this administration, more than twice the toll of the four Biden years. Fiscal 2026 was the deadliest year in the agency’s history. And ICE has been slow even to tell us: of 49 deaths in custody since January 2025, it issued an interim death notice within 48 hours in only 15, according to Senators Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock. If this is what we know, I am convinced we do not yet know the scale of what has happened inside these facilities, and some of it may rise to crimes against humanity. The only way to find out is to look.
That means subpoenas, sworn testimony, independent autopsies and inspectors with unannounced access to every facility. It means following the chain of command past the agents in the field to the officials who designed these operations and told the public stories that video later contradicted. And if that chain leads to the Oval Office, it means impeachment.
I know the objection. Conviction requires 67 senators, and Democrats will hold 54. Impeaching a president who won’t be removed is theater, the argument goes, and investigating a political rival looks like the very abuse Democrats campaigned against.
I grew up with a phrase for this kind of thinking: log kya kahein gai, “what will people say?” In many South Asian families it governs everything: what you study, whom you marry, what you hide. I learned early that it is a trap. People will talk no matter what you do. The only question is whether fear of their talk keeps you from doing what is right. Keep a strong moral compass, be guided by what is just, and live your life.
The Democratic leaders fretting about appearances are living by log kya kahein gai. Republicans will call any investigation a witch hunt. They will say it whether Democrats investigate thoroughly or timidly, whether they impeach or not. Silence buys nothing. It only tells the families of Renee Good, Alex Pretti and Nurul Amin Shah Alam that their losses mattered less than a news cycle.
Nor is impeachment theater when it is the remedy the Constitution provides. The Supreme Court has given presidents broad immunity from prosecution for official acts. If a president cannot easily be charged in court, impeachment is the main way the law reaches him at all. An ordinary citizen whose actions led to people’s deaths would face the full weight of the law. The person in the highest office should not face less. Anything else is not prudence. It is timidity.
None of this competes with affordability. Schumer has said Democrats want to investigate ICE raids across the country. Good. Then follow that work wherever it leads. Congress has always legislated and conducted oversight at the same time.
We have seen what happens when voters lose faith. In 2024, too many people looked at uninspiring leaders and stayed home. This month, they came back. Democrats can honor that with courage, or squander it worrying about what people will say. People will talk either way. Let them talk about a party that finally did what was right.
Afsheen Shamsi, a Pakistani American immigrant and civil rights advocate, is an elected member of the Princeton and Mercer County Democratic committees in New Jersey, a former president of the Princeton Community Democratic Organization and a former co-chair of the South Asian American Caucus of the New Jersey Democratic State Committee. She serves on the national board of Emgage Action and on Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman’s Immigration Advisory Council. She writes in her personal capacity.