NOT TIME TO FIRE ICE

The Washington Times Weekly - - Politics -

Lead­ing Democrats de­mand­ing that Im­mi­gra­tion and Cus­toms En­force­ment — ICE — be abol­ished. The fed­eral agency was cre­ated 15 years ago in re­sponse to 9/11 and re­lated threats. A new Rasmussen Re­ports sur­vey, how­ever, finds vot­ers are not ready to put ICE on ice: 55 per­cent op­pose the idea, in­clud­ing 69 per­cent of Repub­li­cans, 53 per­cent of in­de­pen­dents and 44 per­cent of Democrats. Only 25 per­cent over­all fa­vor shut­ter­ing the agency.

Amer­i­cans should be privy to the ac­com­plish­ments of ICE, how­ever. The White House press of­fice has re­leased some com­pelling num­bers.

Dur­ing fis­cal year 2017, ICE En­force­ment and Re­moval Op­er­a­tions ar­rested over 127,000 “crim­i­nal aliens” on such charges as homi­cide, drug and weapons charges, as­saults and kid­nap­ping of­fenses. There were, in fact, 1,800 homi­cide of­fenses and 4,818 gang-re­lated ar­rests. In ad­di­tion, ICE agents seized 2,370 pounds of fen­tanyl, 6,967 pounds of heroin and spent some 630,000 in­ves­tiga­tive hours on fen­tanyl con­trol.

“Abol­ish­ing ICE would mean open bor­ders be­cause it would elim­i­nate the agency re­spon­si­ble for re­mov­ing peo­ple who en­ter or re­main in our coun­try il­le­gally, in­clud­ing drug deal­ers; gang mem­bers; and child mo­lesters, rapists, and other sex of­fend­ers. Calls to abol­ish ICE are an in­sult to these heroic law en­force­ment of­fi­cers who make sac­ri­fices ev­ery day to se­cure our bor­ders, en­force our laws, and pro­tect our safety and se­cu­rity,” the White House said in a state­ment. Kindly fol­low Jen­nifer Harper on Twit­ter @HarperBul­letin

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from USA

© PressReader. All rights reserved.