Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ), whose state has been at the forefront of former President Joe Biden’s illegal immigration crisis, signaled over the weekend that he does not support President Donald Trump deporting illegal aliens back to their home countries.
Kelly made the remarks during an NBC News interview on Sunday on “Meet The Press” when asked about ICE agents carrying out routine immigration raids.
“Do you support what you are seeing so far, the deportation plan, as it’s been carried out by the president?” asked host Kristen Welker.
“Yeah, I don’t,” Kelly said. “For a number of reasons. It seems to be more about intimidation of a big population of people. It’s going down the road of mass deportation, which he said he would do, which would rip communities apart. These are really bad ideas.”
“It’s all about scaring and intimidating people,” he said. “It’s the same thing for Guantanamo Bay. Building a facility there is because it just sounds very frightening to a lot of folks. When you’re a criminal, we need to find where you are and we need to take you into custody, and if you’re not documented, you should be returned. That makes sense. I’m all about public safety and border security. But we’ve got to do it in a way in accordance with our values.”
