New York City democrat socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani says he supports abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
"I am in support of abolishing ICE," Mamdani told ABC's "The View" in an appearance Tuesday. "And I'll tell you why, because what we see is an entity that has no interest in fulfilling its stated reason to exist.
"We're seeing a government agency that is supposed to be enforcing some kind of immigration law, but instead what it's doing is terrorizing people no matter their immigration status, no matter the facts of the law, no matter the facts of the case.
"And I am tired of waking up every day and seeing a new image of someone being dragged out of a car, dragged out of their home, dragged out of their life.
"What we need to see is humanity, and there is a way to care about immigration in this city and this country with a sense of humanity. What we're seeing from ICE is not it, and we haven't seen it in a long, long time."
Humanity does not apply to the left's treatment of legal ICE operations, according to Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons, who called out what he described as hypocrisy and the weaponization of obstruction to defame the agency's work.
"There are so many people that voted for President [Donald] Trump's agenda that want ICE to make their neighborhoods safer, but all too often we're portrayed in the worst way," Lyons told Newsmax on Tuesday night.
"So the first thing is: When ICE is out there, we are going out on targeted enforcement operations. So we know the targets we are going after, and unfortunately, we've seen a lot of agitators, a lot of people impeding ICE, a lot of people assaulting officers, and unfortunately, some of them are U.S. citizens.
"But the problem is, if you're a U.S. citizen, lawful permanent resident, or an illegal alien, and you impede or you assault or strike an officer, you are going to be arrested by ICE, an ICE special agent, deportation officer, federal law enforcement officers.
"They have the ability to arrest those agitators or people that commit crimes, including U.S. citizens."
Lyons added a warning to sanctuary city and state Democrats he said are fueling unrest or engaging in outright obstruction of federal operations over which they have no jurisdiction.
Democrats are drafting legislation in Democrat strongholds that would bar ICE officers from future careers in law enforcement, Lyons lamented.
"To demonize them and then not let them be local or state law enforcement after they've done their ICE career and when they want to continue to serve, that's automatically assuming that ICE officers are in the wrong and that just can't happen," Lyons said.
Democrats obstructing federal ICE operations, beware, he concluded.
"Homeland Security Investigations, along with the FBI and our other federal partners, are taking a deep dive and looking at criminal investigations to these groups that sponsor these agitators," Lyons said.
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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