Jeh Johnson: Don't abolish ICE, reform it

[DonViejo]

By BRENT D. GRIFFITHS 07/07/2018 10:13 AM EDT

Former Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said Saturday calls to abolish the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency are misguided and doing so "would compromise public safety."

"During the Vietnam War, millions of Americans demanded an end to the war; no one seriously demanded that we abolish the entire Defense Department," Johnson wrote in an op-ed for the Washington Post. "Obviously, that would have completely compromised national security."

A former top Obama administration official, Johnson is now among the most high-profile voices in the Democratic Party distancing themselves from the progressive rallying cry adopted by a number of influential voices in the party, including a handful of possible 2020 candidates. Others like Illinois Democratic Sen. Tammy Duckworth have said the problem is not ICE, but the president in charge of setting its policies.

President Donald Trump has repeatedly highlighted the growing pushback on ICE, using the issue to attack Democrats as weak on immigration. Johnson wrote that one of the president's talking points — that abolishing the agency could hurt public safety — would be true if ICE was abolished outright.

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https://www.politico.com/story/2018/07/07/jeh-johnson-ice-immigration-reform-701666

[temporary311]

1. Is it desirable to reform an organization

that so willingly, even eagerly, goes Gestapo? That speaks to a culture that's corrupt to the very core of its being, so much so that any reformation would have to be so total and complete that it would be indistinguishable from forming a new organization. You leave even a quantum speck of that corruption behind and you run the risk of it metastasizing all over again. Better to burn it down and start over from scratch than run that risk.

[nycbos]

2. We have always had an agency for enforcing immigration law.

Before ICE there was INS. Most other Democratic nations also have immigration agencies.


I think Secretary Johnson's point is that there are ways to enforce our immigration laws in a humane matter.