Jayapal on Abolish ICE: I Fear ICE, CBP ‘Very Difficult to Reform’, May Have to ‘Recreate and Redefine’

On Monday’s broadcast of MS NOW’s “Ana Cabrera Reports,” Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) responded to a question on abolishing ICE by saying that she fears “the people that have been hired into ICE and CBP now and the enormous amounts of money that we have put in have made it very difficult to reform. And I think we may have to recreate and redefine what the requirements of those agencies are. And so, that’s upcoming when we get the gavels back.”

Host Ana Cabrera asked, “Under President Trump’s first term, there was a call to abolish ICE over his immigration policies, and you even introduced legislation to terminate ICE in 2018 and transfer its responsibilities to other agencies. And now we’re starting to hear renewed calls to abolish ICE. I’m just curious where you stand on this issue right now.”

Jayapal answered, “Well, first of all, there’s a DHS appropriations funding bill that is coming up in Congress. And I think that we should not be giving a dime more to ICE or CBP unless we have significant guardrails and accountability, things like, you have to have a judicial warrant for an arrest, you have to make sure that people have legitimate bond hearings and due process, these ICE and CBP agents should not be masked. There’s a whole set of things that my subcommittee has drawn up and passed on to leadership and those who are negotiating the appropriations bill, because I think that Americans are quite horrified by what they’re seeing. So, that’s the first thing.”

Jayapal continued, “The second thing is, when we have the gavels back, Ana, I do think that we need to look, completely, at DHS. It is a massive agency. We should look at where should the responsibilities of DHS lie, and how do we want to structure these agencies? Because I do worry that the people that have been hired into ICE and CBP now and the enormous amounts of money that we have put in have made it very difficult to reform. And I think we may have to recreate and redefine what the requirements of those agencies are. And so, that’s upcoming when we get the gavels back.”

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