The trio of House Democrats who on Thursday introduced legislation to abolish the embattled U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency now say they will vote against their bill.
“If Speaker Ryan puts our bill on the floor, we plan to vote ‘no,'” bill sponsors, Reps. Mark Pocan of Wisconsin, Parmila Jayapal of Washington, and Adriano Espaillat, said in a joint statement shared with the Washington Examiner Friday. The bill had been announced Thursday morning.
The admission comes a day after House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, a California Republican, told Fox News late Thursday he would bring the bill, which Republicans largely oppose, to the floor for a vote later this month. The bill is not expected to pass the GOP-controlled chamber.
During a press conference Thursday, House Speaker Paul Ryan said the bill’s language held the “craziest position I’ve ever seen.”
“We know Speaker Ryan is not serious about passing our “Establishing a Humane Immigration Enforcement System Act,” so Members of Congress, advocacy groups, and impacted communities will not engage in this political stunt,'” Pocan, Jayapal, and Espaillat said.
The group said they plan to take control of the floor during the vote and instead “force an urgently needed and long-overdue conversation on the House floor.”
“We will discuss the thousands of families still separated by President Trump’s cruel zero-tolerance policy, the 800,000 young people whose lives have been thrown into turmoil by the president’s decision to end DACA, and the abuses carried out by Immigration and Customs Enforcement,” they added. “We look forward to the day that we have meaningful action on the issues covered by our bill.”
[Related: Legislation to eradicate ICE would dissolve agency within a year: Report]
The bill proposed the forming of a commission that would review the Department of Homeland Security agency’s responsibilities and then transfer some to other department entities. It’s unknown how that review would affect ICE’s deportation operations, which immigrant advocate groups have long opposed.
The agency was created in March 2003 and its two offices, Homeland Security Investigations as well as Enforcement and Removal Operations, carry out more than 400 federal statutes related to immigration. It is the second-largest criminal investigation organization after the FBI.
When an illegal immigrant is taken into law enforcement custody, ICE agents in that region of the country are alerted and can issue a warrant for that local agency to hold him or her for up to 48 hours until federal agents can pick that individual up from jail.
Hundreds of sanctuary cities and countries across the country have said they will not honor ICE requests to hold onto a criminal illegal immigrants. ICE then organizes “raids” in certain regions of the country where it will go after usually 50 or sometimes hundreds of the most wanted criminal illegal immigrants that were not held for them in jail. Those individuals are then put into removal proceedings.
ICE most recently came under fire in early June following the Justice Department’s call on U.S. Customs and Border Protection to refer for prosecution all illegal entrants, including adults of family units apprehended illegally entering the U.S. between ports of entry.
Recently retired ICE chief Thomas Homan told the Washington Examiner earlier this month that the “abolish ICE” calls from some Democratic lawmakers and political candidates were misdirected because his agents were not the ones separating families, and that the Border Patrol was actually doing it.
