Gavin Newsom, Kamala Harris: ‘Reform’ ICE, Don’t ‘Abolish’ ICE

California’s Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom and Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA), two of the most left-wing politicians in the country, are resisting pressure to back the campaign to “abolish ICE.” Instead, they say that the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency should be reformed.

Harris, who is considered a likely presidential contender for Democrats in 2020 told MSNBC in June that the country needed to “probably think about starting from scratch” regarding ICE.

Newsom, who is running for Governor of California and is also thought to have future presidential ambitions, took a similar stance, as quoted by the San Francisco Chronicle:

Count California gubernatorial candidate Gavin Newsom as being in the “reform” but not the “abolish” camp when it comes to what should be done with the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.

President Trump “has transformed ICE into a cruel deportation force, one that targets and detains children and law-abiding families with the same intensity as high-level criminals,” Newsom said Tuesday in a statement to The Chronicle. “The agency needs fundamental reforms, and most of all, we need a president who respects immigrants and their families.”

That position puts Newsom in the same neighborhood as another California Democrat, Sen. Kamala Harris, who called last week for “starting from scratch” with an overhaul of the 15-year-old agency.

The call to “abolish ICE” has become a new litmus test for the Democratic Party and the left. The activist base of the party is pushing its leaders to abolish the agency, and some members of congress or congressional candidates are signing on to the effort.

But those with ambitions for the highest office — including Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) — are resisting pressure to call for the agency to be scrapped entirely.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. He is also the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, which is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.