Thread: Abolishing ICE Looks Likely To Become 2020 Campaign Issue For Democrats

Posted By Peter Hasson On 8:19 PM 03/09/2018


Left-wing pundits and activists are increasing pressure on Democratic politicians to embrace the fringe position of abolishing ICE.

Once a fringe idea on the far-left, abolishing the nation’s immigration enforcement agency now looks likely to become a campaign issue in the Democrats’ 2020 presidential primary.

Former Hillary Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallon came out for abolishing the agency in January. “ICE operates as an unaccountable deportation force,” Fallon argued. “Dems running in 2020 should campaign on ending the agency in its current form.”

“Should ICE exist?” MSNBC host Chris Hayes asked Democratic California Sen. Kamala Harris on Thursday. Harris’s answer — “certainly” ICE should exist — sparked a backlash among some liberals.

Liberal writer Jack Mirkinson on Friday slammed Harris for her answer in an article titled, “Not Good Enough, Kamala Harris.”

“Any serious defender of undocumented people in this country would look at ICE and know that it is a cancer that needs to be excised from the U.S. Pretending that the most diseased levers of state power can be molded into something better is a useless fantasy. ICE must be abolished. Anything less is not good enough,” Mirkinson wrote on Splinter, a left-wing website.

“Kamala Harris is very likely running for president in 2020. It should be a political problem for her that she is not willing to take her criticisms of ICE to their logical conclusion and call for its abolition. She should be asked, over and over again, why exactly she is willing to uphold the legitimacy of such a racist, corrupt, and thuggish organization,” Markinson concluded.

“Anyone else who decides to run—Bernie Sanders, Kirsten Gillibrand, Elizabeth Warren, Eric Garcetti, you name it—should be asked the same question.”

Left-wing publication The Nation on Friday pushed out a similar piece, entitled “It’s Time to Abolish ICE.”

“The idea of defunding ICE has gained traction among immigrant-rights groups horrified by the speed at which, under President Donald Trump, the agency has ramped up an already brutal deportation process,” The Nation’s Sean McElwee claimed.

Major donor-funded groups on the Left, including Indivisible Project, the Center for Popular Democracy and Brand New Congress, now support abolishing the ICE, McElwee noted.

“ICE​ is terrorizing American communities right now,” Angel Padilla, policy director of the Indivisible Project, told The Nation. “They’re going into schools, entering hospitals, conducting massive raids, and separating children from parents every day. We are funding those activities, and we need to use all the leverage we have to stop it.”

“This is a growing position on the left, and I imagine 2020 Democratic presidential aspirants will have to grapple with it,” Hayes, the MSNBC host, wrote on Twitter. He linked to McElwee’s article.

Acting ICE Director Tom Homan said Thursday that Democrats are being misleading about the illegal immigrants that his agency is deporting.

“Nine out of every 10 aliens we arrested [in the last fiscal year] did have a criminal history,” Homan told Fox News. “They don’t want to know the facts. They want to keep playing this political game and put smoke and mirrors up about what ICE is actually doing.”

http://dailycaller.com/2018/03/09/de...s-abolish-ice/

ICE needs to stop talking about just arresting criminals. They need to say every time, all the time, we arrest illegal aliens because that is the law, good or bad, criminal or not, our job is to enforce the law that requires illegal aliens be arrested, detained, ordered deported and then physically removed from the United States. Don't try to justify your existence based on "just criminals". The unemployed, non-welfare drunk driver illegal alien does less harm to our country than the illegal alien who has stolen a job, uses our welfare for themselves or their families, who never drives, drunk or otherwise. Point is: they all gotta go. There is no "good" illegal alien under US immigration law, because they are all criminals.

by NEIL MUNRO
9 Mar 2018
750 comments

Left-wing activists are pushing Democratic Party legislators to defund and block the deportation programs at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The left’s demands are rising as top officials at President Donald Trump’s Department of Homeland Security gradually revive federal enforcement of the popular immigration laws, and improve barriers to the inflow of foreign workers. The enforcement is helping force up blue-collar and white-collar wages because companies cannot easily import workplace-replacements from outside the United States.

But a coalition of 350 pro-amnesty and pro-immigration groups is asking Democratic Senators to chop funding for DHS in the pending 2018 omnibus funding bill, which is due for completion March 23:

We urge you to significantly reduce funding for immigration enforcement and detention in the FY2018 Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Department of Justice (DOJ) appropriations bills…

President Trump and his appointees have eliminated all prioritization and discretion from the system. There is no room for consideration of a person’s equities, including length of time living in the U.S., ties to their communities, or U.S. citizen children … DHS is undermining due process and regularly deporting people who should be receiving protection under U.S. laws. By unleashing this force with inadequate limitations, the Administration has fostered an unprecedented attack on immigrant communities which threatens our education system, our local businesses, and our nation’s values.

Congress must demonstrate its power of the purse and refuse to reward an agency replete with chronic fiscal mismanagement, inadequate oversight and a penchant for covering up serious allegations of misconduct … In light of these concerns, Congress should move to decrease ICE’s funding, not bail them out.

A 2013 poll by Gallup showed that at least 138 million people worldwide want to migrate to the United States, partly to escape terrible conditions in their home countries, partly to help their children and families, and partly to get decent jobs.

Without ICE to deter such mass migrations, the huge inflow would aid investors and real-estate owners dropping American wage levels and driving up real-estate prices.

The left-wing Nation magazine is also drumming up support for ending ICE operations. It cited several activists and Democratic politicians who promise to shut down ICE:

Suraj Patel, a child of immigrants, is running a well-funded insurgent campaign against Democratic incumbent Representative Carolyn Maloney in New York’s 12th Congressional District. He would vote to defund ICE if he makes it to Congress. “ICE has crossed a red line under this president by harassing, pursuing, and terrorizing immigrants and activists all over this country with impunity. These mass deportations are forcing immigrants to live in fear, while making the rest of us less safe,” he said …

Abdul El-Sayed, a gubernatorial candidate in Michigan, told me that he “will not waste a dime of state taxpayer money to enforce laws that would tear apart families—and tear apart our economy.”

Jessica Ramos, who is running for a New York State Senate seat in Queens, has also endorsed defunding ICE.



Suraj Patel
@surajpatelnyc
.@realDonaldTrump has turned ICE into his deportation squad, terrorizing hard working families and making us less, not more safe. Congress needs to defund ICE until it stops acting with impunity. https://twitter.com/zekejmiller/stat...33692772278274 …
10:30 AM - Feb 22, 2018 · Manhattan, NY




Kaniela Ing
@KanielaIng
When they say defund Planned Parenthood (and destroy millions of lives), we say defund ICE (and save millions of lives).
7:01 PM - Feb 1, 2018


The push comes from the Democratic Party’s pro-immigration, open-border wing, which views enforcement as racist — and therefore illegitimate and illegal — because most of the migrants who are deported are non-white. According to the Nation:

The call to abolish ICE is, above all, a demand for the Democratic Party to begin seriously resisting an unbridled white-supremacist surveillance state that it had a hand in creating. Though the party has moved left on core issues from reproductive rights to single-payer health care, it’s time for progressives to put forward a demand that deportation be taken not as the norm but rather as a disturbing indicator of authoritarianism.

White supremacy can no longer be the center of the immigration debate. Democrats have voted to fully fund ICE with limited fanfare, because in the American immigration discussion, the right-wing position is the center and the left has no voice. There has been disturbing word fatigue around “mass deportation,” and the threat of deportation is so often taken lightly that many have lost the ability to conceptualize what it means. Next to death, being stripped from your home, family, and community is the worst fate that can be inflicted on a human, as many societies practicing banishment have recognized. It’s time to rein in the greatest threat we face: an unaccountable strike force executing a campaign of ethnic cleansing.

So far, Democratic leaders have kept their distance from the extremely unpopular demands — but likely will try to cut ICE’s funding and authority behind closed doors. They may also be aided by business-first Republicans who do not want to their donors’ illegal-immigrant workers get sent home.

For example, California Democrat Sen. Kamala Harris told MSNBC that people who commit “serious and violent crimes” should be deported — implying that illegals who commit lesser crimes should be allowed to stay in the United States.

Some less hot-headed Democratic activists want to follow former President Barack Obama’s tactic of slowly stigmatizing ICE operations and gradually reducing repatriations:

Brett Banditelli
✔
@banditelli
Kamala Harris defends ICE's existence #AbolishICE pic.twitter.com/QjzI1Nq3n2


Rob Honeycutt
@robhon_
Sorry but the idea of abolishing ICE would kill any potential candidate's chances to win an election. Think in terms of framing the issue. Say: "ICE's role should not be as a modern version of the Nazi SS." Repeat ad infinitum.
9:39 AM - Mar 9, 2018

Immigration polls which ask people to pick a priority, or to decide which options are fair, show that voters in the polling booth put a high priority on helping their families and fellow nationals get decent jobs in a high-tech, high-immigration, low-wage economy.

Those results are very different from the “Nation of Immigrants” polls which are funded by CEOs and progressives, and which pressure Americans to say they welcome migrants.

http://www.breitbart.com/immigration...-deportations/

I hope some of these politicians start getting stiff prison terms. It seems like the DOJ doesn't quite know what laws to apply. I guess any form of assisting illegal aliens, whether in their first time here, or repeat crossers who have committed a criminal violation could be under "harboring" or "furthering the presence of illegals." I take a very literal view when the fed law speaks of concealing. I think any time they are in a building, whether in a medical office, a college class room, the audience for a political issue , testifying before a legislature---they are "Concealed."

In Mayor Shaaf's case I could see a federal obstruction of justice, since she did in fact alert those with criminal warrants. A little different are the politicians who *say* they are going to "resist Trump" and the federal authority he represents. Then they follow that through by actually using taxpayer funds to pay the legal expenses for their "resist" clients? IN other words they are using the money I pay in to help illegal foreigners evade federal law, and forming some kind of movement (conspiracy) to do this? Seems like a sedition charge could be a possibility.

With our county commissioners I asked for an "official misconduct" charge under state law, from the District Attorney. The reason was that the commissioners were actively creating an additional consituentcy, beyond the lawful constituency. They were allowing illegals to testify in meeting, asking for county funds, and Illegals are not constituents by our state's definition. Moreover, the illegals were threatening criminla action would take place if these funds were not granted. Then there were some constitutional clauses I cited, involving recognition of foreign commerce.

But hey, it's the left coast and these people seem to feel very impassioned about this issue. Let them just built the spider's web they want. Federal, state, whatever---charges as long as they get stopped. And what about the people who directly bear the cost of their illegal behavior. What about lawsuits. Their own kind is always suing someone, and sees the governments as a very easy target.