What started off as a fringe-left “open borders” slogan promoted by an openly socialist Democratic candidate has now apparently become part of the platform of the Democratic Party: A bill sponsored by multiple House Democrats proposes legislation to officially “Abolish ICE.”
The Washington Post obtained a draft of the “Abolish ICE” bill on Tuesday. The author of the bill is Democratic Rep. Mark Pocan (WI) and its co-sponsors include Democrats Rep. Pramila Jayapal (WA) and Adriano Espaillat (NY), both of whom, the Post notes, are immigrants.
The bill, the Post reports, would “shutter ” the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, and “probe whether its agents had flouted international law, and create a special commission to rethink how the federal government handles asylum seekers and undocumented immigrants.”
“The ICE brand has been so damaged by the president that it can no longer accomplish its original mission,” Pocan told the Post. “Even ICE agents recognize that ICE doesn’t do what it was intended to.”
Pocan’s anti-ICE comments echo those of the new “rising star” of the party: Democratic Socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who campaigned on the issue, decrying the agency as “the draconian enforcement” that “routinely violates our civil rights” and recently falsely claiming that it imposes a “quota” system for rounding up illegals.
But how do voters feels about the idea? A new Politico/Morning Consult poll found that most of them hate it:
Only 1 in 4 voters in the poll, 25 percent, believe the federal government should get rid of ICE. The majority, 54 percent, think the government should keep ICE. Twenty-one percent of voters are undecided.
But a plurality of Democratic voters do support abolishing ICE, the poll shows. Among Democrats, 43 percent say the government should get rid of ICE, while only 34 percent say it should keep ICE. Majorities of Republicans (79 percent) and independents (54 percent) want the government to keep ICE.
