This week, at a rally in Georgia to mark his first 100 days in office, President Biden responded to leftist hecklers who chanted, “Close private detention centers!” “Abolish ICE!” by begging, “I agree with you. I’m working on it, man. Give me another five days.”
HECKLERS: “CLOSE PRIVATE DETENTION CENTERS. ABOLISH ICE.”
BIDEN: “I agree with you. I’m working on it, man. Give me another five days.” pic.twitter.com/oaJle6BrLw
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) April 29, 2021
“Folks, you all know what they’re talking about,” Biden added, according to Newsweek. “There should be no private prisons, period… none, period. That’s what they’re talking about, private detention centers. They should not exist and we are working to close all of them… I promise you.”
“Not long after Biden took office, he signed an executive order aimed at closing all privately-run federal prisons,” Newsweek added. “Most private prisons in the U.S. were unaffected by the order because they are run at the state level. The order also did not apply to immigration detention centers, many of which continue to be run privately.”
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has been attacked for years by the political Left; as recently as Wednesday, the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Political Director, Ronald Newman, wrote a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas in which he stated, “ICE is currently paying to maintain thousands of empty beds at enormous taxpayer expense—wasting hundreds of millions of dollars that would be better spent on alternatives to detention and other programmatic priorities. As a matter of good governance, and particularly in light of the historically low number of people in ICE detention, it is time for ICE to dramatically downscale its network of more than 200 facilities. … We urge you to announce the closure of or termination of contracts for the 39 facilities lifted in annex to this letter.”
Newman previously served as “Director of Human Rights and Refugee Protection on the National Security Council in the Obama Administration, serving under National Security Advisor Susan Rice. There, he led Administration efforts to expand the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program,” the ACLU notes.
In August 2019, Fox News reported:
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) workers are facing a rapidly escalating series of threats, including protesters menacing their children and shots being fired at their offices, amid a rising tide of anti-ICE rhetoric from the left fueled by congressional Democrats, media voices and presidential hopefuls. Footage published Tuesday by Breitbart News shows protesters in Florida from groups such as Never Again Action and Black Lives Matter Alliance of Broward County threatening workers and former employees of the GEO Group, a private contractor used by ICE.
The family of GEO Group’s former general counsel, John Bulfin, was threatened. One protester yelled, “We know where all your children live throughout the country … John Bulfin you have kids in [bleeped out], you have kids in [bleeped out]. We know everything about you and you won’t just be seeing us here.”
More threats: “We’re not actually joking. John Bulfin you go to [bleeped out], you go to church on [bleeped out], you live on [bleeped out] the road. We are not joking.”