A candidate for New York Attorney General says Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) under the Trump administration is treating immigrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border as "criminals and national security threats," triggering "a legal and moral emergency" in America.
"Lawyers, as the protectors of the rule of law, must demand the end of indefinite family detention centers, must insist that all children get guaranteed legal representation, and should join the growing movement to abolish ICE," Zephyr Teachout, a Democrat and associate professor at Fordham Law School, writes in Tuesday's Guardian.
"ICE undermines what we aspire to be as Americans, and is an unaccountable and inhumane political tool, treating all immigrants as national security threats ... The children are treated as tools at the most vulnerable developmental times in their lives.
"We won't rest until every family is reunited and until the policy of indefinite detention is totally abandoned … Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely. It is not an accident that ICE and Customs and Border Protection have become tools of illegality: it is part of the design. Therefore, we must abolish ICE."
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