Progressive Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum, who won the Democratic primary in Florida’s race for the governor’s seat on Tuesday, said he wants to replace U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement with the Justice Department.
“We want to replace ICE with the Department of Justice, an entity that has not been tarnished in the same way as ICE has,” Gillum told CNN Wednesday morning.
Tallahassee Mayor @AndrewGillum pulled off an upset in FL’s Dem. gubernatorial primary last night.
“What we are clear about is that we can run wholly on our values,” says the Bernie Sanders-backed progressive, who will now face a GOP congressman closely allied with Pres. Trump pic.twitter.com/2qfLmIbjcM
— New Day (@NewDay) August 29, 2018
Several Democratic lawmakers and candidates have called for the abolition of ICE, especially after Trump’s zero tolerance policy on immigration caused an upsurge in the cases of family separation at the border earlier this summer. ICE, however, is responsible for the enforcement of immigration laws in the U.S. interior, and doesn’t play a role in family separation at the border.
Gillum is the first black candidate to win a major party gubernatorial nomination in Florida, and he shares many of the same sentiments as Sen. Bernie Sanders, I- Vt., and New York congressional candidate and self-proclaimed socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
As a progressive, Gillum says he believes his win proves that candidates like him can run on their values and win.
“I am a champion for treating healthcare as a right and not a privilege,” Gillum said when discussing his drive to create a single-payer healthcare system.
“And expanding medicaid in the state of Florida for 700,000 people who right now do not have access to healthcare … but I happen to believe that’s not Left, or Right, or center – that that’s common for the everyday people of this state,” Gillum said.
Gillum was outspent by his Democratic challengers by the millions, but he won the Democratic primary with 34.3 percent of the vote.
Gillum will face incumbent congressman Rep. Ron DeSantis in the general 2018 midterm elections in November. President Trump said Wednesday morning that Gillum is the “dream” opponent for DeSantis.
