President Donald Trump pledged to protect Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) from the onslaught unleashed against the agency by leftists and their allies in the Democrat Party at his Thursday rally in Great Falls, Montana.
“The Democrats want open borders, which means lots of crime,” the president said while slamming incumbent Democratic Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT), who has repeatedly tried to frustrate the Trump administration’s immigration agenda. “We want tough, strong, powerful borders, and we want no crime. And we’re gonna protect ICE.”
“We protect ICE. They protect us and we protect them,” Trump continued, adding later, “We protect ICE, and our border patrol, and our law enforcement.”
The rally was held in part to support Republican Senate candidate Matt Rosendale, who is aiming to unseat Tester in a state Trump won by more than 20 points by running on a strong immigration enforcement platform.
So far, Tester, running to retaom such a vulnerable seat, has not joined the growing ranks of Democrats who insist they want to “abolish ICE,” the primary immigration enforcement agency in the country. The concept is deeply unpopular among swing voters, and support has long been reserved to American communists and other far-left groups.
However, in the wake of the widespread outrage among the media and political left over a different agency, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol’s detention of accused illegal aliens separately from children with which they were apprehended, mainstream Democrats have joined in the call to abolish ICE.
So far, Tester’s fellow Senate Democrats Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, and a number of Democrat representatives have signed on to the campaign that would effectively end all interior enforcement of American immigration laws, effecting an “open borders” policy.
Trump joked about the abolish ICE campaign’s latest high-profile protest, when an open borders activist scaled the Statue of Liberty with an “Abolish ICE” sign, leading to an evacuation of the Statue and Nation Park Service officers being forced to rescue her. “You saw that clown yesterday on the Statue of Liberty? You see the guys that went up there?” Trump asked the crowd. “I wouldn’t have done it. I would have said ‘let’s get some nets and wait ’till [she] comes down.’ Just get some nets.”