“It’s time to abolish ICE,” Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate Maggie Toulouse Oliver said Tuesday afternoon.
Toulouse Oliver made the statement in a press release, saying, “ICE no longer prevents terrorism, instead it creates terror in the United States.”
She also said she supports comprehensive immigration reform.
The Secretary of State, one of two top-tier Democrats seeking the party’s nomination to replace retiring U.S. Sen. Tom Udall, cited raids by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement over the weekend.
The raids appeared to result in relatively few arrests after Donald Trump promised widespread arrests, which his administration said would target 2,000 recently arrived migrants and enforce deportation orders against them.
This included many families who refused to open their doors to ICE agents.
Toulouse Oliver said that ICE, which was created in 2002 in response to the 9/11 terror attacks, has overstepped its original mission.
“ICE has gone from a strategic agency working to protect all Americans from terrorist attacks on our soil to a veritable secret police agency that raids family homes with impunity, turns the plight of asylum-seekers into Facebook jokes and treats people from other countries as less than human,” Toulouse Oliver said. “We need professional, well-funded and accountable law enforcement agencies working together to focus on the safety of everyone in our country.”
A Facebook group of current and former U.S. Border Patrol agents included a number of sexist and other bigoted posts, which U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials condemned.
CBP is separate from ICE, but both are under the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which was also created in response to 9/11.
“I’m not talking about open borders; I’m talking about comprehensive immigration reform that allows for the monitoring of who’s coming and going, but that also creates a clear path to citizenship,” Toulouse Oliver said.
