The latest popular crusade of the anti-borders cohort has become to “abolish ICE.” This rally call isn’t particularly new, as the fringes of the far left have been calling for utterly unrestricted immigration for years now. However, highly visible freshman members of Congress, especially Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), have moved the needle in the Democratic Party far enough that the slogan has now been adopted by most of the front-runners for the 2020 Democratic presidential primary.
Now, Tlaib is taking the rallying cry to an even more extreme, not to mention illogical, level by recommending people go on hunger strikes to try and pressure the federal government into abolishing the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Agency.
“I want you all to shut [ICE] down. We can shut them down. Don’t wait for this Congress to act,” she declared at a Detroit fundraiser. “I know what they’re going to say, they’ll go, ‘What do you mean Rashida?’ Well I’ll tell you. There are some people that are using hunger strikes…”
The Michigan Democrat is essentially admitting that the open-borders lobby cannot convince Congress to abolish ICE in a constitutional manner, so she hopes to create some sort of PR nightmare that scares the federal government into no longer enforcing our immigration laws.
Hungers strikes have been used throughout history to assist in achieving noble causes, such as equal voting rights, ending slavery, etc. However, abolishing ICE would directly threaten those freedoms, ironically, and make all Americans less safe.
For example: ICE is not only charged with apprehending immigration law violators, they’re also responsible for hunting down international criminals, and are on the front lines combatting sex trafficking in the United States. During the “Final Four Weekend” – a major college basketball tournament in early April – ICE agents arrested 47 people in a child sex trafficking sting, and rescued 28 victims in total. The agency also conducts similar raids during Super Bowl Week.
Combatting human and sex trafficking is not an uncommon task for ICE. In his State of the Union Address, President Trump honored an ICE Agent, Elvin Hernandez, for his work that helped lead to the rescue of more than 300 women, and put more than 1,500 traffickers behind bars. Somewhat infamously, Rep. Tlaib and several other prominent Democratic representatives refused to stand and applaud Hernandez’s actions.
Americans want our laws to be fully enforced, and ICE agents work hard every day – often under difficult conditions – to ensure that happens. These brave men and women will not be stopped by the childish fits of a representative who is threatening to not eat her dinner unless the Federal government gives her what she wants.