Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell is expressing disbelief that some of his fellow senators would support the phasing out of ICE, the U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agency.
In a floor speech, the Republican majority leader shot back at protesters who recently locked arms to block elevators in a Louisville building that houses an immigration court, labeling them fringe "far left" activists.
McConnell then went on to lament "leading Democrats taking cues from the open borders, socialist crowd and proposing to eliminate the very agency that enforces federal immigartion laws within the interior of our country."
Democratic leaders, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Kirsten Gillibrand, have criticized ICE and signaled that the country needs to rethink or retool its immigration enforcement.
"The President's deeply immoral actions have made it obvious that we need to rebuild our immigration system from top to bottom, starting by replacing ICE with something that reflects our values," Warren wrote in a Facebook post in early July.
Those comments came in the wake of the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy, which led to the separation of thousands of migrant children from their parents at the border.
McConnell recently visited ICE agents in Louisville to thank them after the recent demonstrations.
In his comments on the Senate floor, the GOP leader highlighted the agency's thousands of convictions for robbery, sexual assault, and homocide in FY 2017, adding, "This is hardly a controverisal mission; it's essential."
