ICE in Dems’ crosshairs as Biden heads to WH

Last month, an illegal immigrant from El Salvador wanted back home for murder was deported via ICE Air after being caught in Framingham.

Will such arrests be few and far between under a Biden administration?

“Abolish ICE” has been a rallying cry on the left for several years, partly in response to President Trump’s immigration policies, and partly due to the progressive penchant for viewing illegal immigration as more of a faux pas than a crime. Hence the politically correct term “undocumented.”

Biden himself has not called for the agency’s abolition, but he has vowed to reverse many of Trump’s immigration policies. And Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, while also not asserting that ICE should be abolished, had this to say about the agency: “I think there’s no question that we’ve got to critically re-examine ICE and its role and the way that it is being administered and the work it is doing,” she told MSNBC. “And we need to probably think about starting from scratch.”

Harris has also compared the agency to the Ku Klux Klan.

As the Washington Times reported, Harris told ICE chief  Ronald Vitello in a 2018 Senate hearing  there was a “perception” that his personnel were using “fear and intimidation” in the same way the KKK did.

“I thought it was totally unprofessional, unfair,” Vitello told the Times. “She can say whatever she wants about me personally, but she was trying to tar the whole agency. I think it was a disgrace.”

Vitello said that if Biden and Harris won, “CBP’s in a world of hurt. ICE is going to be in a world of hurt if these two prevail.”

And as the past month or so has taught us, there are many cooks throwing elbows in the kitchen.

New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has wasted no time in finding fault with centrist Biden’s Cabinet picks. She commands media attention, as well as that of the progressive wing of the party.

‘Abolishing ICE isn’t a radical thing to do, it’s a humane thing to do,” she tweeted.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, though passed over so far for a post in Biden’s administration, is nonetheless a player on Capitol Hill. She too, is no fan of ICE, posting on Facebook in 2018 “We need to rebuild our immigration system, start by replacing ICE.”

Biden will face pressure to make radical reforms — and America will face the fallout.

The December deportee, Marvin Alexander Figueroa-Mazariego, 40, was flown back to El Salvador.

“We’re very grateful that together with our HSI partners this dangerous fugitive who sought to avoid justice in his home country was removed from New England,” said Todd M. Lyons, Field Office Director, ERO Boston.

Lyons added: “We remain committed to seeking out and removing any illegally present criminal fugitives who think they can evade the law. Our focus will always be on those who continue to pose a potential threat by hiding in our communities in Massachusetts.”

Catching criminal fugitives, staving off threats to public safety, arresting drug and weapons smugglers and confiscating kilos of fentanyl — these are the things that ICE does.

If progressives get their way in undermining and diluting ICE operations, they will throw up serious roadblocks to any efforts to “build back better.”

from Boston Herald https://ift.tt/3843749