Rep. Yassamin Ansari Says ICE Has Become Trump’s ‘Paramilitary Force,’ Calls for Agency to Be Abolished

Rep. Yassamin Ansari said the Department of Homeland Security’s decision to direct Immigration and Customs Enforcement to pause most non-urgent vehicular stops nationwide amounts to the “bare minimum” response after fatal shootings of immigrants in Houston and Biddeford, Maine, within the same week.

Ansari discussed the policy change in an interview with Meidastouch reporter Pablo Manriquez, who asked her: “What do you make of this change in VHS today where immigration agents will no longer be stopping, like doing vehicular stops, like stopping people in their cars after the killings in Houston and Maine?”

“Well, they just murdered two people a week,” Ansari responded. “So that’s the bare minimum that they should do.”

“I think that ICE has been this paramilitary force for Donald Trump and Stephen Miller now for well over a year and a half throughout the entirety of the second Trump presidency,” Ansari said. “They have fatally shot 11 people. They have locked up tens of thousands in horrific detention centers across this country because they want two private prison companies to make money.”

“I think ICE should be abolished,” she said. “I think that we need to prosecute the people who are carrying out these crimes.”

“But it also shows that when Americans speak up and when Americans call their members of Congress, organized protests, that it does make a difference,” Ansari said. “And Americans, by and large, are outraged now by ICE. ICE is extremely unpopular. Donald Trump is underwater as it pertains to his policies on immigration enforcement. And so, yeah, the administration is realizing this.”

“But let’s not give them any sort of accolades for this,” she said. “This is not something that ever should have happened to the beginning. ICE should not be operating in this way. What they’re doing is not law enforcement. It’s not immigration enforcement. It’s outright murder, and it needs to be stopped.”

Watch Rep. Yassamin Ansari’s interview below!