New York City mayor Bill de Blasio is calling for the abolishment of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
In the wake of nationwide protests against the Trump administration’s immigration policies, de Blasio told WNYC radio Brian Lehrer on Friday that ICE should be abolished.
Following the interview, de Blasio echoed his statements on Twitter.
“Every country needs reasonable law enforcement on their borders. ICE is not reasonable law enforcement. ICE is broken, it’s divisive and it should be abolished,” the mayor said.
The far-left New York Democrat joined more than 20 other mayors in traveling to the Southern border last week and was turned away from a migrant detention center in Tornillo, Texas.
“This is our federal government denying access, and not allowing information, and it’s not America. It’s crazy,” de Blasio said as he demonstrated outside Tornillo Migrant Children’s Facility.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” the mayor scoffed. “These are public facilities paid for with taxpayer dollars. How on earth are we not allowed to see what’s happening to these children? It’s astounding, and it feels really un-American.”
Bill de Blasio now joins the ranks of other high-profile New York Democrats demanding ICE be dismantled. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) called for the agency to be abolished in an interview with CNN’s Chris Cuomo on Thursday.
“I believe that it has become a deportation force. And I think you should separate out the criminal justice from the immigration issues,” Gillibrand told Cuomo. “I think you should reimagine ICE under a new agency, with a very different mission, and take those two missions out. So we believe that we should protect families that need our help, and that is not what ICE is doing today.”
“And that’s why I believe you should get rid of it, start over, reimagine it and build something that actually works,” the Democrat lawmaker added.
Prior to her interview with CNN, Gillibrand joined hundreds of demonstrators protesting inside the Hart Senate Office Building against the Trump administration’s now-halted family separation policy.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the self-styled Democrat-socialist who sunk incumbent Rep. Joe Crowley’s (D-NY) reelection bid in New York’s 14th congressional district, has made abolishing ICE a key campaign promise.
“As overseen by the Trump administration, ICE operates with virtually no accountability, ripping apart families and holding our friends and neighbors indefinitely in inhumane detention centers scattered across the United States,” the 28-year-old Democrat says. “[I] believes that if we are to uphold civic justice, we must abolish ICE and see to it that our undocumented neighbors are treated with the dignity and respect owed to all people, regardless of citizenship status.”