In March of 2018, California’s freshman senator Kamala Harris said:
“Should ICE exist? Well, certainly. When we’re talking about people who’ve committed serious and violent crimes–you know... I’m a prosecutor. I believe there need to be serious, severe and swift consequences when people commit serious and violent crimes…and certainly if they are undocumented, they should be deported if they commit those serious and violent offenses. So, yes, ICE has a purpose. ICE has a role. ICE should exist. But let’s not abuse the power.”
[Dem Senator Kamala Harris Slammed for Defending the Existence of ICE (VIDEO), by Colin Kalmbacher, Law and Crime, March 10, 2018]
Realizing how popular the “abolish ICE” platform was becoming in the Democratic Party’s left-wing, in June she said:
I think there’s no question that we’ve got to critically re-examine ICE, and its role, and the way that it is being administered, and the work it is doing. And we need to probably think about starting from scratch.
[Kamala Harris Says Congress Needs To Change ICE, Perhaps ‘Start From Scratch’, by Paul Blumenthal, The Huffington Post, June 25, 2018]
Now it is November, and her transformation on the subject is complete. During confirmations hearings in the senate over whether or not to confirm Ronald Vitello as permanent director of ICE, the KKK came up. Sen. Harris asked:
“Are you aware of the perception of many about how the power and the discretion at ICE is being used to enforce the laws and do you see any parallels [to the KKK]?”
Vitello replied frankly, “I do not see any parallels.”
Backtracking somewhat, Sen. Harris went on to declare (albeit in the form of a question): “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?”
It is difficult to see any parallel, really. ICE is a government agency, while the KKK was/is an extralegal paramilitary group. ICE arrests and deports people, the KKK has never had any power to do so. The KKK is a race-based membership group, ICE, as a government entity, literally has an Office of Diversity and Civil Rights. The most recent data I could find for the racial makeup of ICE was from 2007, and it broke down this way:
That would put ICE’s non-white workforce at: 37.6 percent. In other words, the ICE workforce of 2007 was less white than the United States as a whole per the 2010 census, which put the non-Hispanic white population at 74.8 percent. I seriously doubt the makeup of the agency has changed dramatically in the last dozen years.
Moreover, and to belabor a point I have made before, ICE arrests and deports criminals: murderers, rapists, heroin dealers, etc. Sen. Harris knows this, she said as much as recently as March.
But who cares about such details when you have to appeal to your party’s far-left non-white base? In a mere eight months, Sen. Harris has gone from saying that ICE is necessary and a force for law and order to saying they are comparable to the KKK. As far as I’m concerned, she has officially announced her 2020 Presidential candidacy.
