Former Obama ICE Director: ‘It Should Be an ‘Abolish Trump’ Movement, Not an ‘Abolish ICE’ Movement’

Monday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” the former acting Obama director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement  John Sandweg said Democrats’ calls to abolish ICE are misguided.

On calls to abolish ICE, Sandweg said, “I think it’s unfortunate and misguided. I understand the frustration when you see policies like we’ve seen at the border where you’re separating kids, when you see the interior immigration enforcement policies—we’re targeting the wrong people and no longer going after criminals. I can understand where this frustration stems from. It should be an abolish Trump movement, not an abolish ICE movement. it’s not ICE’s fault that the administration adopted these policies.”

He added, “First we need to look how we use immigration detention. We adopted this concept we have to detain people to be tough. That’s not true. Advances in technology with alternatives to detention—ankle bracelets—we can utilize those technologies to have effective immigration enforcement without detention. But the reality is, ICE does a lot of critical work. ICE is divided into two halves. One half is criminal special agents. When I was there, we were doing amazing cases, like saving children from child exploitation.”

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