Dem candidate’s support for abolish ICE movement is ‘disgraceful,’ former immigration official says
EXCLUSIVE:
A former acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) director, who served during the final days of President Trump’s tenure in the White House, is warning of the danger some congressional Democratic candidates pose to the agency’s mission of securing America’s borders and protecting United States citizens.
Several Democrats running for office in states around the country have come under fire for their views on immigration and how they believe issues at the southern border should be handled as border patrol agents continue to be overwhelmed by large influxes of illegal migrants.
One Democratic Senate candidate in particular, Wisconsin Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, who is seeking to unseat incumbent GOP Sen. Ron Johnson in the Badger State’s Nov. 8 midterm election, has liked numerous tweets that called for ICE to be abolished and criticized the agency. Similarly, in 2019, Barnes told the Wisconsin-based immigration group Voces de la Frontera Action that the “wrong ICE is melting.”
In an interview with Fox News Digital, Jonathan Fahey, a former deputy assistant secretary for the Department of Homeland Security who later served as the acting director of ICE from December 2020 to January 2021, reacted to the rhetoric from Barnes and considered it to be detrimental to ICE’s mission to provide safety for Americans.
“It’s kind of interesting how he’s trying to walk this back now because he’s running for election, trying to center himself to the middle,” Fahey said of Barnes. “He was associated with groups, liked tweets and other stuff to show that he wanted ICE abolished and it’s really just anti-ICE. He and others have been on this crusade to just take down ICE, demonize ICE agents in every single respect by calling them racists, delegitimizing what they’re doing, and treating them like they’re doing something heavy-handed, unlawful, when they’re simply just doing their job, trying to keep our communities safe and our country safe.… It really is disgraceful.”
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Dem candidate’s support for abolish ICE movement is ‘disgraceful,’ former immigration official says
