Former Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf told Newsmax on Thursday that Democrats are using the Senate funding fight as leverage to weaken Immigration and Customs Enforcement, after a test vote failed to advance a spending bill over DHS funding.
Speaking on "Carl Higbie FRONTLINE," Wolf said Democrats are pushing for "significant reforms" at ICE as a pretext to restrict enforcement operations and undermine public safety.
"This idea of shutting down the government or at least partially shutting down because you want, quote, 'significant reforms at ICE,'" Wolf said. "What they really want is to limit ICE operations. They want to put officers in danger."
Wolf, now chair of the Center for Homeland Security at the America First Policy Institute, argued that cooperation between ICE and state and local law enforcement is essential to maintaining order, warning that sanctuary policies have the opposite effect.
"And so if you want to make communities safer or you think that you want to have safer interactions with ICE, you actually try to encourage cooperation with your state and locals," he said. "Because here's what we know: When there is cooperation with state and local law enforcement and ICE, there is safety, there isn't chaos."
"But when you have sanctuary city policies, and you have rhetoric from officials, there's chaos," Wolf added.
He blamed Democrat-led sanctuary jurisdictions for fueling disorder and then using that chaos to justify restricting ICE authority.
"And so what the Democrats are doing is saying, look, we're going to create chaos with our sanctuary policies. And then to solve that, we're going to limit ICE's authority. I hope the Republicans don't fall for that," he said.
Wolf also singled out Minnesota Democrat Gov. Tim Walz, saying his policies have put ICE officers at risk.
"Look, DHS does and ICE does millions of operations a year in every state and almost every jurisdiction around the country," Wolf said. "And why is it that we only have a problem in Minneapolis? It's because of his policies, his rhetoric that's endangering ICE officials who then have to protect themselves."
He added, "This isn't overly complicated. This isn't high calculus here. This is very straightforward," Wolf said. "If you cooperate with ICE, there's not going to be chaos."
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