MICHAEL GRAHAM: PRESSLEY’S ‘REALLY OUT THERE,’
When it comes to immigration, there’s “liberal,” there’s “Kamala Harris” liberal and then there’s “really out there.”
And that’s where you’ll find Boston city councilor and candidate for Congress Ayanna Pressley.
Pressley has joined the “Abolish ICE” movement, a push to completely eliminate the entire Immigration and Customs Enforcement department from the federal government. “If elected I will work with federal leaders to rehouse the non-immigration enforcement functions of ICE — including human trafficking and money laundering investigations — elsewhere in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, while immediately eliminating funding for enforcement and removal functions,” Pressley said.
The key phrase there is “eliminating funding for enforcement and removal” — aka “catching illegal immigrants and deporting them.” Any wonder that critics of the movement call it “open borders”?
The #AbolishICE movement is so far out there that even California U.S. Sen. (and possible left-of-Liz-Warren presidential candidate) Kamala Harris won’t go there. “Yes, ICE should exist,” she told MSNBC’s Chris Hayes.
According to Pressley, her anger at ICE is inspired by the Trump administration’s treatment of illegal immigrants at the border. Which is odd given that border enforcement is handled by Customs and Border Patrol, a completely different agency. CBP’s job is to keep people from sneaking across the border. ICE’s job is to catch the people who make it in.
It’s like burning down the RMV to protest the corrupt Staties on the Mass Pike.
But hey — #AbolitionICE! #Resist! #WhyIsEverybody HashTagging?!
Pressley and her supporters argue that abolishing ICE isn’t all that radical. The agency has only been in existence since 2003, and besides, Bay State Rep. Jim McGovern is an #AbolishICE guy, so how crazy and farleft can it be?
Oh. Right. Pressley also points to the actual legislation proposed yesterday by Wisconsin Democrat Rep. Mark Pocan that would eliminate ICE while creating a commission to “provide recommendations to Congress on how the U.S. government can implement a humane immigration enforcement system that upholds the dignity of all individuals.”
And what happens to illegal immigrants who overstay their visas or slip across the borders with their gang buddies while the commission is doing all that “recommending”? That’s where the #AbolishICE folks get vague.
Perhaps that’s because the entire movement was begun to delegitimize immigration enforcement entirely.
According to Vox.com, #AbolishICE as a liberal meme started with a March 9 piece in The Nation magazine by Sean McElwee, who says having an agency dedicated to deporting illegal immigrants is “incompatable with democracy and human rights.” He’s not a fan of the CBP/ICE employees, either, claiming they are “committed to the idea of what I could call ethnic cleansing.”
“Deportation is brutal,” McElwee told Vox.com. “It is probably the worst thing the government can do to you, next to death, and maybe even worse than that.”
Forced to go home to the country where you legally reside and where your family lives — a “fate worse than death!”
Yeah, Councilor Pressley, he seems like a reasonable guy ... .
Pressley is running against incumbent Congressman Mike Capuano. Two years ago he would have been one of the more liberal members of the House. But out on the post-Trump Democratic primary stump, he’s looking dangerously moderate. Will he embrace the madness and call for ICE to be shut down? Or will he try to explain to his base that while they may oppose how Trump is doing border enforcement, it’s a job that has to be done?
Capuano’s campaign declined comment, but his campaign webpage highlights the fact that he “wrote the City of Somerville’s first Sanctuary City ordinance when he was a member of the city council.”
If there were any chance of a serious GOP challenge — or even an unserious one — this sanity might remain unstated. But in a knee-jerk, party-line place like Massachusetts, there’s simply no downside to jumping on the open-borders crazy train and start blowing the whistle.