Bernie Sanders goes beyond the call to abolish ICE, says America’s ‘cruel, dysfunctional immigration system’ must end

While the call to abolish U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is now prevalent throughout the country, Sen. Bernie Sanders, (I-Vt.), said that the call to action must go beyond abolishing ICE and, instead, must end America’s cruel immigration system as a whole.

Sanders said that Congress must go further and “abolish the cruel, dysfunctional immigration system we have today and pass comprehensive immigration reform,” Common Dreams reported. Sanders voted against the “creation of DHS and the establishment of ICE” in 2002 and is now building a grassroots movement calling for comprehensive immigration reform.

“That will mean restructuring the agencies that enforce our immigration laws, including ICE,” Sanders said. “We must not be about tearing small children away from their families. We must not be about deporting DREAMers, young people who have lived in this country virtually their entire lives.”

We must not be about forcing over 10 million undocumented people, many of whom have been here for decades, to continue living in fear and anxiety. Congress must do what the American people want. Let us create a humane and rational immigration system.

— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) July 3, 2018

But the “systemic cruelty of the American immigration system” has been around long before Trump took office, Common Dreams reported.

While the immigration rights community has been fighting against America’s immigration system for decades, the Trump administration’s new family separation policy has only recently made Americans aware of the country’s “barbaric immigration system,” in which 66 percent of the population said it can no longer tolerate.

As Ryan Cooper wrote on The Week, “The vast deportation machine relies on inattention to conduct its evil business. It needs to become an article of faith among regular Democrats and independents that the whole operation should be shut down, and that process is well started.”

Sanders’ statements on immigration are being hailed as the grassroots movement needed to confront America’s “cruel” immigration system and pass comprehensive immigration reform.