In a bid to further pull the Democratic Party to the hard left, Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA) has opted to plumb dark depths. Not content to denigrate the nation’s institutions as poorly managed, her latest outburst directly compares Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) with the notorious KKK.
Harris on Nov. 15 attempted to bully Ronald Vitiello, President Trump’s nominee to lead ICE, into admitting that the federal agency that enforces our nation’s immigration laws is akin to a violent racist hate group that terrorizes Hispanic people instead of African Americans.
Vile Smear
After Vitiello dismissed seeing any “parallels” between ICE and the Klan, an arrogant and condescending Harris prodded him further: “Are you aware that there is a perception that ICE is administering its power in a way that is causing fear and intimidation, particularly among immigrants and specifically among immigrants coming from Mexico and Central America?”
When Vitiello again rejected her loaded line of questioning, Harris smugly asked him, “Sir, how can you be the head of an agency and be unaware of how your agency is perceived by certain communities?”
Harris has been roundly criticized by conservatives for her wildly inappropriate remarks, with many seeing them as ear candy for the 2020 Democratic primaries, which of course they are. Fact is, despite the lunacy of Harris’s comments, the California leftist has to hustle to keep up with her potential 2020 opponents in the race to bash ICE.[perfectpullquote align=”right” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=”24″]”Cruel,” “immoral,” “Klan.” These are the epithets you have to fire against federal law enforcement officers in order to win a Democratic primary these days.[/perfectpullquote]
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) has hammered the agency in recent months. Warren said in June that “the president’s deeply immoral actions have made it obvious we need to rebuild our immigration system from top to bottom starting by replacing ICE with something that reflects our morality and that works.” Continuing to paint a picture of effective immigration law enforcement as evil, Warren in October echoed her earlier comments by stating ICE “is not making us safer, and it sure doesn’t reflect our values.”
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) also called for the abolishment of ICE over the summer, ominously describing it as a “deportation force” in a manner meant to conjure images of jackbooted authoritarian excess.
I believe we need to protect families who need help, and ICE isn’t doing that. It has become a deportation force. We need to separate immigration issues from criminal justice. We need to abolish ICE, start over and build something that actually works. https://t.co/JtSN68k4Fd
— Kirsten Gillibrand (@SenGillibrand) June 29, 2018
Not to be outdone, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) issued a call to “abolish the cruel, dysfunctional immigration system we have today and pass comprehensive immigration reform.”
Radical Direction
“Cruel,” “immoral,” “Klan.” These are the epithets you have to fire against federal law enforcement officers in order to win a Democratic primary these days.
It can be argued that Democrats lost three close, high-profile midterm election races because their candidates expressed hostility towards ICE. Florida gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum openly called for the abolishment of the agency. Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams said ICE “terrorizes families” and Texas senatorial candidate Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-TX) expressed a willingness to scrap ICE outright.
All three candidates’ opponents were able to make hay out of this. Yet to call these positions politically unwise misses the point. None of these candidates would have won Democratic nominations without being highly critical of ICE in the first place.
Harris’s vulgar grandstanding is another key post-midterms signal that Democrats will be moving further to the left in the 2020 presidential race. The party’s Sisyphus herself, Hillary Clinton, knows she has to drape herself in an even more radical hue if she is going to get a chance to push her boulder up the hill once more, two years from now. Democrats are outdoing themselves to be all-out open borders and all-in on universal health care and an expanded welfare state. They look fully poised to run the most radical presidential campaign by a major political party in modern American history.
With populist firebrand President Trump seemingly a sure bet to win the GOP presidential nomination, there’s no other way to put it. The 2020 election is shaping up to be a nationalist vs. communist confrontation the likes of which this country has never seen.
