Democratic Arizona Sen. Ruben Gallego came just short of saying that ICE should be abolished completely, instead calling for the agency to be “totally torn down” and replaced with an agency that’s not run by a bunch of lawless thugs like we’re seeing now.
Gallego also told CNN’s Jake Tapper he supports a funding freeze when the bill to fund the government comes up for a vote again at the end of this month:
TAPPER: A CNN poll this week found that half of Americans, more than half, really, think ICE is making cities less safe.
A growing number of Democrats are renewing calls to abolish ICE entirely in the wake of the death of Renee Good a couple weeks ago. You have said that ICE is a problem, it’s out of control, but that abolishing ICE would be a mistake. Why?
GALLEGO: Well, look, I think ICE needs to be totally torn down. It has to be created in the image of what people want, right?
And what does that look like? From my experience running in Arizona, in a very hard, hard state when it comes to immigration and immigration issues, people want immigration enforcement that goes after criminals, right, and focuses on criminals, and immigration enforcement that is actually focused on security, and not the goon squad that has come from Stephen Miller and Donald Trump, one that issues warrants, one that doesn’t have people masked and acting like we’re a Third World police force.
