In a debate with her opponent, State Rep. Geoff Diehl (R-MA), Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren said that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) does not make the United States safer.
Diehl prompted Warren’s response by stating, “We prosecuted about 61 members of an MS-13 gang in Boston; somebody was killed just a few months ago on an East Boston beach. That person was apprehended by ICE and that’s what we need to do: allow them to do the job of identifying those criminals who are here illegally and committing crimes. They’re the ones who are keeping our streets safe but you want to get rid of that agency wholesale.”
Warren proceeded to rip ICE by cherry-picking certain instances in order to attack the agency, concluding that ICE is “not working” and “not making us safer.” She opined:
I want to see this agency reformed, because an agency that can’t tell the difference between the rift between a seven-year-old girl, between a woman going in for brain cancer surgery, and a terrorist or a criminal, is an agency that is not working; it is not making us safer, and it sure doesn’t reflect our values.
Warren’s cavalier dismissal of ICE flies in the face of ICE’s work in her own backyard. On October 4, ICE joined the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Massachusetts, the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), the U.S. Marshalls, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), to announce the arrests of dozens of defendants in and around Lawrence, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston.
The operation involved seizure of 10 kilograms of deadly fentanyl. As ICE noted, the operation “targeted major traffickers of fentanyl, opioids and other drugs, as well as repeat felony offenders, many of whom were also illegally present in the U.S.; eight aliens had already previously been deported at least once before and will be prosecuted for criminal re-entry, All of those arrested have prior convictions for acts of violence, firearm offenses and/or drug trafficking; and many were determined to be illegally present in the United States.”
The CDC reports of fentanyl: “State reports have indicated that increases in synthetic opioid-involved deaths have been associated with the number of drug submissions obtained by law enforcement that test positive for fentanyl but not with fentanyl prescribing rates. These reports indicate that increases in synthetic opioid-involved deaths are being driven by increases in fentanyl-involved overdose deaths, and the source of the fentanyl is more likely to be illicitly manufactured than pharmaceutical.”
Warren has made clear her hostility for ICE and President Trump’s perspective on illegal immigration before; on June 30, addressing a rally, she called for abolishing ICE, stating:
President Trump seems to think that the only way to have immigration rule is to rip parents from their family, is to treat rape victims and refugees like terrorists and to put children in cages. This is ugly and this is wrong and this is not the way to run our country. The president’s deeply immoral actions have made it obvious we need to rebuild our immigration system from top to bottom starting by replacing ICE with something that reflects our morality and that works.