Every incumbent House Democrat opposed last year’s GOP tax package, which handed $75 billion to ICE to spend over four years. But those who voted for a non-binding pro-ICE resolution have been pilloried for it. And Republicans have noticed, running ads in Democratic primaries that highlight the “abolish ICE” views of the candidates they think would be easier to beat.

Democratic primary voters had a negative view of ICE even before the Minnesota killings, which amped up the salience of the issue in campaigns. In March, national polling for YouGov found that 77% of self-identified Democrats wanted to “abolish” the agency. Support for new ICE restrictions, like requiring its agents to wear uniforms and no masks, are even more popular.

Democrats who expected competitive races in November were cautious about taking solidly anti-ICE positions. Some voted last year for a resolution, introduced after a shooting at an ICE facility, that endorsed “full support for ICE agents, officers, and staff performing their law enforcement duties.”

That resolution became an albatross in Democratic primaries. In Minnesota, where many D.C. Democrats believe that Rep. Angie Craig is their stronger candidate for U.S. Senate, Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan has hammered her for votes that “empowered Donald Trump and praised ICE.” In Michigan, where the same Democrats want Rep. Haley Stevens to replace retiring Sen. Gary Peters, her vote for the resolution has helped her progressive challengers with primary voters.

“Michigan needs a Senator who will stand up against this paramilitary force and is unafraid to abolish a violent agency weaponized against us,” said Abdul El-Sayed, the progressive public health leader endorsed by Bernie Sanders last week.

Both Craig and Stevens faced those attacks after allies had tried to help them — with ads about their fight against ICE. In Michigan, a pop-up PAC called the Center for Democratic Priorities began running ads that thanked Stevens for her Hold ICE Accountable Act, which has no co-sponsors and is unlikely to pass. In Minnesota, another pop-up nonprofit, the Civic Progress Fund, ran similar thank-you ads for Craig, setting up another attack on her record from Flanagan.

Craig, like Stevens, has defended the resolution vote, and blamed Republicans for a “gotcha” move of adding pro-ICE language to what would have been a clean statement on anti-semitism. “Would the lieutenant governor have voted against a resolution to condemn anti-semitism?” she asked HuffPost.

Secretive groups that are helping far-left candidates have frequently portrayed them as true-blue ICE abolitionists. Lead Left PAC, which Democrats suspect is a GOP-funded pop-up, is boosting a left-wing county commissioner in Pennsylvania’s 7th District, where Gov. Josh Shapiro and a coalition of liberals support moderate firefighter Bob Brooks. The PAC’s ad portrays McClure as the only Democrat who “kicked ICE out” of his community.

Lead Left is doing the same in Texas’s 35th District, a new seat that was drawn to elect a Republican, but that Democrats hope to compete for if they nominate moderate police officer Johnny Garcia. The PAC has been helping Maureen Galindo, a sex therapist whose attacks on “zionist billionaires” have offended Jewish Democrats.

A mailer from Lead Left, shared with Semafor, tells voters that Galindo will “permanently dismantle ICE, and work to prosecute any ICE agent who participated in Donald Trump’s program of family separation.” And a Lead Left digital ad running in the district clips moments from a candidate forum where Galindo said that “ICE shouldn’t exist,” and “we need to eliminate ICE completely.”