Who should be in hot water over ICE policy?
The Republican Governor’s Association is running a nasty, misleading — but probably effective — ad against Democratic gubernatorial candidate David Garcia for urging an overhaul of the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.
Weird.
The governors didn’t run such an add when the ultra-conservative Heritage Foundation suggested the same thing.
Or when 19 ICE agents wrote to the head of Homeland Security asking for the same thing.
Or when Homeland Security’s own inspector general questioned the existence of ICE, writing in part:
We could not find any documentation that fully explains the rationale and purpose behind ICE’s composition. One senior official offered the following explanation . ... ICE was established with not a focus on supporting a particular mission, but on building an institutional foundation large enough to justify a new organization.
Garcia has been loudly critical of the administration’s now-abolished policy of separating families at the border. And of the sloppy and seemingly incompetent way reunifications have been going. Or not going. With most of the children still not reunited with their parents.
He is advocating for a “top to bottom” overhaul of the immigration system, which just about every politician in all political parties has declared to be broken.
Garcia says he wants an “immigration system that matches our American values.”
He told The Arizona Republic’s
Richard Ruelas, “Ripping kids from their parents, having them represent themselves in court are not our values.”
The narrator on the attack ad against Garcia says in part, “Abolishing ICE could mean more drugs smuggled across our borders and more gang members in our neighborhoods... David Garcia’s reckless policy could put Arizona families at risk.”
Here’s a simple fact.
The governor of Arizona has zero control — none — over ICE. The governor of Arizona cannot alter or abolish a federal agency.
However, the ad isn’t about abolishing ICE; it’s about abolishing Garcia’s chance of defeating Gov. Doug Ducey.
The governor visited one of the kiddie prisons where separated children are being held. He said that he didn’t think separating kids from their parents was a good idea.
He said the federal government should fix our broken immigration system, but he didn’t make any significant suggestions or make any significant demands about how the separated children were being cared for in facil-
ities inside Arizona.
Ducey did try, mistakenly, to blame it all on former President Barack Obama, who never had a policy like the one imposed by the Trump administration.
And Ducey found time (or had one of his people find time) to write an opinion essay for USA TODAY indirectly slamming Garcia.
It reads in part, “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.”
A “call” to abolish ICE puts no one at risk.
And why not consider the possibility of streamlining our broken immigration system, a plan that may or may not include folding ICE into another agency within our enormous immigration bureaucracy in order to eliminate some of the overlapping (and competing) duties of multiple agencies?
Particularly since such suggestions previously have been made by a highprofile conservative think tank, 19 ICE agents and Homeland Security’s in- spector general.
I understand that a political campaign based on frightening voters can be effective. That strategy has worked in Arizona for years, and it put Donald Trump in the White House.
But which Arizona politician should be taking heat over ICE: the one who stood up for the children or the one who stood up for the bureaucracy?