Abdul El-Sayed, who is campaigning to fill Sen. Gary Peters’ (D) open seat in Michigan, is calling for the abolition of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) — which reignites a talking point first championed by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) that was abandoned by Democrats following President Donald Trump’s re-election.
During an interview with podcaster Evan James, El-Sayed claimed that $185 billion, which is four years’ worth of funding that was given to ICE as part of the One Big Beautiful Bill, is being spent “to shoot people in the face.”
“It seems to me that the middle position is like, this shouldn’t exist,” El-Sayed said, referring to ICE.
Then, El-Sayed, whose father is an immigrant from Egypt, called ICE agents a “paramilitary force of thugs.”
“Why is ICE this way? Well, it’s because Donald Trump has been waging, at this point, an 11-year war against the U.S. Constitution itself,” El-Sayed said. He recognized that ICE and the pretext of immigration is the best way for him to create a paramilitary force of thugs who he can put on your street corner to be only accountable to him.”
“I would like to abolish the agency that has existed, in large part, to end or at least push back against the rule of law and the Constitution,” El-Sayed said. “That should be an obvious thing that everyone should say.”
In January, the Searchlight Institute, which often issues memos to Democrats urging them to take more popular positions widely held by the American public, released a memo that told elected Democrats and those running for office in the midterms to drop the “abolish ICE” talking point.
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“Confronted by these excesses, some on the left have renewed their calls to ‘abolish ICE,’” the memo reads. “But let’s be clear that advocating for abolishing ICE is tantamount to advocating for stopping enforcement of all of our immigration laws in the interior of the United States — a policy position that is both wrong on the merits and at odds with the American public on the issue.”
The latest polls show El-Sayed and Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI) essentially tied in the Democrat primary for the Michigan Senate seat.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com.
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