Tina Smith: Customs and Border Patrol, ICE ‘Illegal Agencies’

Wednesday’s broadcast of CNN’s “The Source,” Sen. Tina Smith (D-MN) said Customs and Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) were “illegal agencies.”

Smith said, “I have voted countless times to fund all of the Department of Homeland Security including the Coast Guard and FEMA and other parts of the agency. And in fact, Democrats and Republicans in the Senate have passed bills numerous times to fund everything in the department except for ICE and Homeland Security and yet, here we are, because the House has not passed those bills.”

Co-host Brianna Keilar said, “What will you have achieved besides unity?”

Smith said, “What we have achieved is our unified vote to fund everything in the Department of Homeland Security except for these illegal agencies in Customs and Border Patrol and ICE. And again, I want to remind everybody who’s listening to this that what we wanted was to put some basic, common-sense safety guardrails on how these agents have been acting to stop the worst abuses, as we saw in my home state of Minnesota. And we weren’t able to even get our Republican colleagues to agree to that. So we might not have power in Congress, but we are not powerless to carry forward what we believe is the best thing for this country. And again, that’s why we have voted multiple times to fund the department and why Republicans are now taking this our way or the highway approach.”

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