Shoffner’s Claims of Police “Harassing” Illegal Immigrants, Coupled With Her “Defund ICE” Comments, Cast Doubt on Her Sudden “Pro-ICE” Stance
Arkansas Democrat U.S. Senate candidate Hallie Shoffner has resorted to lying about her own immigration record in a pathetic attempt to salvage her campaign against Senator Tom Cotton ahead of November’s midterm election.
On Tuesday, Breitbart News reported that Shoffner is now denying that she ever wanted to defund ICE. After Cotton’s campaign ran ads using her own words against her in footage that was originally uncovered by Loomer Unleashed, Shoffner posted on Facebook:
“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.”
There is just one problem. Loomer Unleashed has publicly shared the video of Shoffner telling the crowd at June’s NAACP Immigrant Heritage Month Business Expo in Springdale exactly what she wants to do to ICE:
“Yeah. I would vote to defund ICE as it exists right now.”
She also told the crowd, “I would not spend one more dime on ICE.” She doesn’t say she wants to reform ICE. Shoffner is calling for defunding ICE, which would effectively eliminate US national borders.
Shoffner’s remarks at the expo also included open praise for illegal aliens, as she told her woke audience that she doesn’t care whether immigrants are in the country legally or not:
“So, the first thing to know is that the immigrant community in Arkansas, in the United States and 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.”
Following Shoffner’s sudden “pro-ICE” conversion, Loomer Unleashed dug further into her immigration record. The truth is, Shoffner has been hostile toward immigration enforcement for well over a decade.
In a May 2012 Arkansas Times profile titled “Mi casa es su casa,” Shoffner explained that she went to work at an outreach center for illegal aliens after she saw law enforcement “harassing” them. The publication reported:
“As a student at the Clinton School, she worked with the Latino community in Northeast Arkansas, teaching a youth program for Mexican-American kids at a church in her hometown, where she said she often saw police and others harass undocumented workers. After graduating from the Clinton School, Shoffner saw an ad searching for a director for a non-profit to help Latinos and applied.”
The same article makes clear that the center Shoffner went on to run, Seis Puentes in Levy, was catering to illegal aliens. The Arkansas Times introduced Shoffner’s work as follows:
“This week’s cover story gives one example of how life in the United States can be hard for undocumented Hispanics. Over in Levy, though, where the Hispanic population has spiked in recent years, there’s a young Clinton School of Public Service grad working to make things a little better. Hallie Shoffner runs the non-profit Seis Puentes center on Camp Robinson Road.”
The profile went on to note that Shoffner said “undocumented Hispanics don’t even feel comfortable going to the public library, because they think of it as a government institution,” and that her center was there to help them.
So in 2012, Hallie Shoffner believed police were the problem and illegal aliens were the victims. In June 2026, she told a room full of immigration activists she would vote to defund ICE and “would not spend one more dime” on it. Now, with Tom Cotton’s ads airing across Arkansas, she suddenly wants voters to believe she is a champion of immigration enforcement.
As President Trump has warned on Truth Social, politicians who abandon the policies they have “supported and lived by for their entire career” are “conning the American public, and will flip right back.” The same logic applies to Hallie Shoffner. Her anti-ICE record is who she has been for her entire adult life.
Hallie Shoffner’s anti-ICE, pro-illegal alien agenda is too extreme for Arkansas, and no last-minute rebrand is going to change that. That’s exactly why re-electing Senator Tom Cotton this November matters.
