The White House on Monday criticized Cynthia Nixon, a Democratic actress running for New York governor, for criticizing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and said the agency could have helped stop the 9/11 attack against the largest city in the very state she hopes to lead.
“It’s deeply disturbing that Cynthia Nixon has no clue of what ICE does to protect Americans and New Yorkers every day from dangerous criminals, terrorists, child smugglers, and human traffickers,” Hogan Gidley, White House deputy press secretary, said in a statement Monday afternoon.
“The 9/11 terrorists responsible for the slaughter of 3,000 innocent people were foreign nationals on visas who committed immigration fraud and who should have been deported. ICE was created in the aftermath of that tragedy to help ensure that no similar atrocity would ever strike our nation again,” Gidley said. “It’s especially unfortunate that Nixon, as a New Yorker, not only advocates for the abolition of the very agency that would’ve helped stop 9/11, but also smears and slanders the tireless work carried out by the brave men and women of ICE to keep our country safe.”
Last Friday, Vice President Mike Pence made the strongest show of support on behalf of the Trump administration for ICE and said the Department of Homeland Security agency was “playing a critical role” in preventing the next major terrorist attack on U.S. soil since 9/11.
“The president sent me here today with a very important message. Under President Donald Trump, we will never abolish ICE,” Pence told about 200 employees packed inside a briefing room at ICE headquarters in Washington, D.C.
[Opinion: Cynthia Nixon’s ICE opposition only helps Trump 2020]
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.
Pence’s visit to ICE headquarters is the latest in the administration’s actions to defend federal immigration agents following family separations at the border as a result of the Trump administration’s zero tolerance policy. Opponents, including Nixon, have called for the closing of ICE for its role in border enforcement and deportation operations, and Pence criticized those who have gone further by threatening ICE employees.
In mid-June, Nixon, a progressive Democrat looking to unseat Gov. Andrew Cuomo, also a Democrat, declared ICE a “terrorist organization.”
Then, after Pence’s remarks to ICE employees last week, Nixon tweeted several statements that said if Pence was attacking her, she “must be doing something right.”
I can think of no better description than to call ICE a terrorist organization, and I will wear any criticism from @mike_pence as a badge of honor.
— Cynthia Nixon (@CynthiaNixon) July 6, 2018
“Parents who have lived here for decades, paying taxes, building small businesses. Parents whose children are legal U.S. citizens. Parents who have no criminal record. ICE’s mere existence causes many New Yorkers to live in daily fear that they will lose their family,” Nixon wrote on July 6.
Data from fiscal year 2017 shows 92 percent of the more than 110,568 administrative arrests ICE made from Jan. 20, 2017, through Sept. 30, 2017, were for illegal immigrants who had been previously convicted on a criminal charge.
As a sanctuary city, all five of New York’s boroughs do not honor ICE detainer requests for New York Police Department precincts to hold illegal immigrants for them to be picked up and taken into federal custody within 48 hours of being released from local custody.
A little-known state law mandates those convicted of “serious crimes” in the past five years must be held for ICE, even though the majority of illegal immigrants are not detained for ICE.
City data provided by the NYPD and the Department of Corrections indicate only 20 of the more than 2,000 people ICE requested in fiscal year 2017 were handed over. That figure includes 1,526 detainer requests for people in the custody of the NYPD and another 536 for people at DOC facilities.
ICE told the Washington Examiner that those convicted of lesser crimes who are picked up on new charges, as well as some who should be held under this state law, are being let go, forcing ICE to go to a person’s home or job to make the arrest.
ICE conducts enforcement operations in order to apprehend those who were not held for its agents. In June, it arrested 40 criminal aliens and immigration violators in the Empire State. Since September 2016, nearly 5,000 illegal immigrants convicted of other crimes have been arrested by its agents.
