If Rep. Dave Brat, R-Va., signaled Republicans were going to oppose amnesty when he defeated then-House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s upset primary victory could mean more Democrats will want to abolish ICE.
Ocasio-Cortez toppled a member of leadership in Rep. Joe Crowley, D-N.Y., scuttling succession plans for House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. But in addition to local and intraparty dynamics that played in her favor, she channeled liberal outrage over President Trump’s immigration crackdown and the family separation at the border.
She campaigned on a platform that included abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement. “ICE is operating exactly as designed when it rips screaming children from parents,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “That’s exactly why we must abolish it.”
[Related: ICE chief Thomas Homan is retiring tomorrow, but he’s not going out quietly]
Just as Brat, a free-market college economics professor who ran largely against Cantor’s comparative permissiveness on immigration, foreshadowed the power of that issue years before Trump captured the Republican presidential nomination, the 28-year-old socialist Ocasio-Cortez illustrated the passionate progressive reaction.
“Some similarities,” Brat himself acknowledged to Fox News, “but major differences.”
In this political climate mainstream Democrats are going to find it increasingly difficult to defend the aggressive enforcement of immigration laws against poor people of color. A new litmus test could be forming.
“Abolishing ICE is of a piece with what the open-borders Left has always wanted: an end to any idea of immigration enforcement,” said Christopher Hajec, director of litigation at the Immigration Reform Law Institute. “What’s new is that candidates are so explicit about that agenda. Whether they’re motivated by unhinged hatred of Trump or something else, their worldview is on a collision course with that of the American people.”
That will be a tougher needle to thread for senators seeking re-election this year in states Trump won in 2016. This includes several in states where the president is still popular, like West Virginia, Missouri, Montana, and North Dakota, where Trump raised the issue Wednesday night.
If ICE were shuttered, Trump warned attendees at a Fargo rally supporting a GOP Senate candidate, America would be “overrun with the worst criminal elements you have ever seen.” He also said the idea was only supported by Democrats who want “anarchy.”
Trump is trying to fight the midterm elections on immigration and border security. The numbers suggest he could be right to do so, at least as far as motivating the base is concerned. A recent HuffPost/YouGov poll found that immigration was one of the top two issues for 55 percent of Republican and Republican-leaning voters, compared to just 10 percent who named tax reform, the preferred terrain of Republican congressional leaders.
Democrats are counterpunching by focusing on the broadly unpopular family separation controversy. But several lawmakers up for re-election this year or considering presidential runs in 2020 have faced questions about why they remained silent when families were separated, and unaccompanied minors detained, at a smaller scale during the Obama administration.
Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., stumbled when pressed on the question by CNN. “I had a lot of problems with Obama policies on immigration and family detention even then,” Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., insisted to MSNBC. “I reached out to the administration, wrote letters directly to the president, wrote letters to [Attorney General] Eric Holder.”
“It is just pitiful, always blaming someone else,” Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., complained when his Republican challenger Gov. Rick Scott criticized Obama’s 2014 policies.
Yet the liberal wing of the party isn’t exactly running away from abolishing ICE. A group of House Democrats have introduced a bill that would do just that. One of its supporters, Rep. Michael Capuano, D-Mass., is facing a progressive primary challenger who wants to abolish ICE.
Cynthia Nixon has made abolishing ICE part of her platform in her Democratic primary challenge against New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo. Nixon is no doubt emboldened by Ocasio-Cortez’s win.
The Nation on Thursday highlighted progressive candidates campaigning on abolishing ICE across the country. That same day, nearly 600 women were arrested at an immigration protest outside the Senate. They were chanting, “Abolish ICE!”
But the Trump administration will take the lead in pushing back.
“Every Democratic candidate could be asked now, maybe, ‘Do you agree or disagree with the new face of the Democratic Party that we should abolish Immigration and Customs and Enforcement?’” counselor to the president Kellyanne Conway told Fox News. “The brave men and women who are trying to process the claims and in many ways protect children who may be smuggled by people who are not related to them, may be in danger when they try to come here.”
That’s one similarity between Ocasio-Cortez and Brat Trump would like to prevent. Republicans won big in 2014 after Brat upset Cantor. The White House doesn’t want to see Democratic ICE abolitionists riding a blue wave this November.
