Ducey camp criticizes Garcia over ICE stance
Technically, David Garcia, the Democratic candidate for Arizona governor has never said he wanted to “abolish” the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.
But his discussion in the past week of dismantling and rebuilding it has provided fodder for the re-election campaign of Gov. Doug Ducey — and the national Republican Party — to paint Garcia as part of the “Abolish ICE” movement.
Both the Ducey campaign and the Republican National Committee touted a poll released Wednesday by Data Orbital that showed that more than 64 percent of Arizonans don’t support calls to abolish ICE.
The campaign and party said the poll showed Garcia was out of step with the views of the state’s voters.
The once-fringe idea of abolishing ICE has been touted, in a fashion, by more mainstream Democrats in recent weeks.
Those who have talked of abolishing ICE include Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a surprise victor for the Democratic nod for a New York congressional seat; Cynthia Nixon, the actress-turned-New York gubernatorial candidate and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass.
Garcia stepped into the fray on Monday by releasing a statement in which he talked of “replacing ICE with an immigration system that reflects our American values, values I and so many before have served to protect.”
Garcia, an Army veteran, released his statement in response to reports of immigrant children, separated from their parents, who had been held in a
private office building in Phoenix.
His call for replacing ICE with a different agency echoes the sentiments expressed by other Democratic politicians. But in his statements this week, including at a debate on Tuesday, Garcia has avoided the word “abolish.”
Garcia said in an interview Wednesday that it was not a political calculation.
He said the “Abolish ICE” phrase alone, “isn’t providing a solution to this issue.”
The polling agency, in a statement Wednesday, said that its finding showed Arizona voters “do not support calls by leading Democratic candidates in Arizona to abolish the agency.”
Data Orbital President George Khalaf said in an interview that the “candidates” in the statement referred to Garcia and he thought it was a fair representation of Garcia’s views.
Khalaf said he thought the nuance between “abolish” and “replace” would be lost in most voters’ minds.
“I don’t think there’s going to be a tangible difference in the minds of voters,” he said, “unless the broader talk about it is also that broader nuance.”
The poll was taken Monday and Tuesday through live calls to 550 likely voters, 70 percent of whom were reached by landline phone, Data Orbital said. It had a margin of error of 4.18 percent, the polling company said.
Ducey, in an opinion column published Tuesday in USA TODAY, said that the calls to abolish ICE were dangerous and misguided.
“As a border state governor who wakes up every day and goes to sleep every night with the safety and security of Arizona citizens at the top of mind, I want to be clear — this call to abolish ICE is not only wrong — it is reckless, and puts the people of my state and others in direct threat,” he wrote.
Ducey, in that nationally published column, did not refer to Garcia.
Patrick Ptak, a Ducey campaign spokesman, said that Garcia has made his stance clear, however.
“He is calling for the elimination of ICE as it stands now,” Ptak said. “That’s on him.”
Ptak sent a string of media clips that characterized Garcia as calling for the abolition of ICE.
He also sent a link to a tweet by Garcia’s former campaign manager, Bill Scheel, that used the hashtag: #AbolishICE. The Garcia campaign said that Scheel consults with the campaign, but has not managed it since October.
Garcia said the issue is too large to be reduced to an argument over a single phrase.
“It’s a false choice between (President Donald) Trump’s cruelty towards families and towards separating children and Ducey enabling that cruelty,” he said, “and this open borders discussion. I believe there’s another way.”
Garcia said he wanted to replace ICE with an “immigration system that matches our American values.”
“Ripping kids from their parents, having them represent themselves in court are not our values,” he said, during the phone interview before a campaign stop Wednesday in Greer.
Ending such practices, which he called “historic atrocities” would mean replacing ICE with “a system that needs to be built from the bottom up.”
Garcia said he was asked about this ICE comments on Wednesday while on a tour of the White Mountains area. But the discussion was not an argument about the words “abolish” and “replace.”
“We have to get back to a productive conversation,” he said. “That’s exactly what it was in Payson, a productive conversation with people who recognize that we need an immigration system in this country that works.”
State Sen. Steve Farley, D-Tucson, also seeking the Democratic Party’s nomination for governor, didn’t call for the abolition of ICE in a candidate debate Tuesday. But, he called the zero tolerance policy that has resulted in separations of parents and children “reprehensible.”
Farley said he would reform the state’s policies on Mexico, connecting with governors of states in southern Mexico and working to build that region’s economy.
“Then you would have less people trying to come over here,” he said, “and they would have a great life at home.”
Kelly Fryer, another Democratic gubernatorial nominee, said during Tuesday’s debate that she’s long been a foe of the nation’s immigration policies. She said she opposed an Obama-era policy that resulted in Border Patrol agents dropping immigrants off at bus stations.
“Abolish ICE is not a hashtag for me,” she said. “I’m not new to this.”
Neither Ducey’s campaign nor the Republican Party release mentioned Farley and Fryer. Polls show Garcia leading in the Democratic race, though many voters are undecided.